Economics and Charisms/5 - Amid rules and daily practices, there is a risk of losing the seed received at the beginning of one’s vocational journey. The challenge for communities is to move from viewing works as a measure of their “merits” to a style of trust and free responsibility
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on July 26, 2026
The God revealed in the Bible has many aspects, but first and foremost He is a God of liberation, a giver of freedom. The liberation from slavery in Egypt is the paradigm for all liberations from every form of slavery. Jesus brings the experience of liberation to its culmination, and Paul has shown us with extraordinary force that without this liberation, no mature spiritual freedom is possible. Yet believers struggle greatly to live out this freedom. Even in religious life, the famous opening line of J.J. Rousseau’s The Social Contract often rings true: “Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.” What, then, happens in the development of religious life if what is meant to be a great place of freedom can turn into an experience of “chains”?
The problem lies in the idea, deeply rooted in every homo religiosus, that one’s “justification” (being righteous) and salvation can be earned through works. The do-ut-des principle, for example, was not only the law of Roman commercial life; it was also the foundation of its religion—of its “commercial” relationship with the deities—managed by the complex machinery of sacrifices. And unfortunately, despite Jesus and Paul, we have not yet managed to free ourselves from the sacrificial logic of faith—“When a family realizes that the daily Mass commemorates other deceased people besides their own, they often ask me, ‘But what portion of the Mass goes to my deceased loved one? Is the price the same?’” a priest told me yesterday.
What are the consequences of this “Pelagian” view in the life of religious communities?
A preliminary remark.
When a person discovers a religious vocation, they feel no conflict between their own freedom and binding themselves closely to a Rule; and if they did feel such a conflict, this would be the first sign of an absent or immature vocation. Binding oneself “forever” is perceived as an enhancement of freedom. Fidelity to the Rule—and to the many religious practices—is therefore lived with enthusiasm, and everything speaks solely of liberation. And so their early years pass, even if spent in a cloister—and it is this distinct freedom and joy that captivates so many.
However, the critical issues emerge when we look at how people develop over time. Once their youth is over, religious practices and norms—“the Rule”—are internalized day after day, and without realizing it, fidelity “to the vocation” becomes fidelity “to the Rule.” The faith of the initial vocation is gradually “operationalized”; the promise of the beginning becomes a technique, and day after day, the what I do comes to coincide with the who I am. And at the same time, another tendency takes root: if righteousness is measured by conformity to the Law, one lives with a growing sense of inadequacy and guilt, because the Law’s ideal standards highlight the gap between what we ought to do and how (little) we actually do. Confession ends up becoming a neurotic practice, which paradoxically reinforces the feeling of being in a state of sin, in a life increasingly centered on oneself: “The power of sin is the Law” (1 Cor 15:56). The pursuit of holiness becomes a moral matter of conformity to the Law, in individualistic exercises where people become believers, priests, and gods of the cult of their own ever-more-distant perfection. The search for one’s own spiritual “well-being” turns into a trap: “One should think more about doing good than about feeling good: and in this way one would end up feeling better as well” (The Betrothed).
The encounter with Jesus—which was supposed to overturn religious logic—fails miserably, resulting in a return to the pre-Christian ethic of salvation through works and its meritocracy. All meritocracies cause great moral harm, and religious ones even more so, because they produce oceans of guilt in people who always feel unworthy. Religious meritocracy amplifies the sense of imperfection and guilt to an extreme degree—the double-entry ledger of earth and heaven, recording faults and merits, is always in the red; one feels like a perpetual, insolvent debtor burdened by a debt that grows even due to accumulated interest: and the archaic Vedic man returns, the one who was born with four debts to settle in the course of his life.
This happens when conformity to one’s charism or vocation is understood as the perfect fulfillment of the Rule and its works, and the vows are viewed as meritorious “works”—the most meritorious, because they entail the greatest sacrifice in the three decisive spheres of human freedom: sexuality, autonomy, and possessions. And if the Rule takes the place of the Law, “Christ died in vain” (Gal 2:21), and monasticism reverts to that ascetic experience well known in the pre-Christian world (the Essenes, for example).
How, then, can one live out one’s relationship with the Rule, with the practices, and with all those “techniques” linked to the identity of a vocation in the Christian-Pauline spirit?
Simply—though in reality this is very difficult and rare from an empirical standpoint—by experiencing the development of a religious vocation as a gradual liberation from the Rule-Law, granting it, with Paul, only the status of a “tutor” for the young (Gal 3:24). The growth of a vocation should therefore consist in a liberation from the entire set of practices and norms that constitute the “work” of a religious; the experience of “faith” should free us from “religion.” Thus, one should participate in Mass, the Liturgy of the Hours, and spiritual retreats because one chooses to do so in the spirit, and not because it is written in the Rule. And if at times, or for a period, a nun does not feel the need to participate in the liturgy, this should not be interpreted as a sign of betrayal, but only as the evolution of a vocation toward freedom from the Law. And yet, what is unfortunately often observed among the “consecrated” is a Pelagian obsession with not missing any devotional practice—I have known quite a few people who, if they fail to say the rosary today, say two tomorrow; if they miss a Mass, they feel compelled to make it up, caught up, in good faith, in a pagan conception of religion.
But—and here lies the crucial point—how can we hold together a community of people where each individual participates in or abstains from the liturgy based on their own stage of spiritual development? This is also because the strength (and beauty) of a monastic community lies precisely in seeing people remain faithful to their practices regardless of the desires and choices of each member. We shouldn’t forget, however, that a community where members participate in the liturgy every day because they haven’t attained the spiritual freedom to choose not to attend is very different from a community where (almost) all members participate by choosing to do so out of the freedom they’ve attained to choose not to. To an outside observer, they may seem the same, but they’re very different—a difference that also implies different prospects for a bright future.
This fifth installment concludes this brief journey through communities and the economy (and beyond). I hope it has been useful in some way, and if we have bored you, know that, to quote Manzoni once more, “it was not done on purpose.” Thanks to those who have accompanied me, thanks to Editor Marco Girardo, and to Matteo Liut, editor-in-chief of *Cattolica*, who welcomed me into its pages. Goodbye.
