Cleric regular

Catholic priest, deacon or bishop who is a member of a religious institute

Clerics regular are clerics (mostly priests) who are members of a religious order under a rule of life (regular). Clerics regular differ from canons regular in that they devote themselves more to pastoral care, in place of an obligation to the praying of the Liturgy of the Hours in common, and have fewer observances in their rule of life.

Clerics regular are those bodies of men in the Church who while being essentially clerics, devoted to the exercise of the ministry in preaching, the administration of the sacraments, the education of youth, and other spiritual and corporal works of mercy, are at the same time religious in the strictest sense of the word, and living a community life according to a rule approved by the Holy See. In the Corpus Juris Canonici the term "clerics regular" is often used for canons regular, and regular clerics are classed by authors as a branch or modern adaptation of the family of canons regular. This is because of the intimate connection existing between the two; for while separated from the secular clergy by their vows and the observance of a community life and a rule, they form a distinct class in the religious state, the clerical, in opposition to the monastic, which includes monks, and hermits. Then followed the Clerics Regular of the Good Jesus, founded at Ravenna in 1526, and abolished by Pope Innocent X in 1651; the Barnabites or Clerks Regular of St. Paul, Milan, 1530; The Somaschans or Clerks Regular of St. Majolus, Somasca, 1532; the Jesuits or the Society of Jesus, Paris, 1534; the Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of Lucca, Lucca, 1583; the Clerics Regular, Ministers to the Sick (Camillians), Rome, 1584; the Clerics Regular Minor, Naples, 1588; the Piarists (Clerics Regular of the Mother of God of the Pious Schools), Rome, 1621; and the Marian Fathers of the Immaculate Conception of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Poland, 1673 (who upon renovation became a clerical congregation in 1909). Since the close of the 17th century, no new Orders have been added to the number, though the name Clerics Regular has been assumed occasionally by communities that are technically only religious, or pious, congregations, such as the Clerks Regular of Our Saviour (1851–1919) and the Society of the Pallium (1851).