Even though persons should have vocations to the marriage state in the sense that God would not require anything higher of them, yet they are privileged to enter the religious state if no impediment exists.
Proofs of this doctrine:
1. The MIND of Church. The Church sacredly guards for all her children the privilege of entering the religious state, even after promise of marriage: "Be zealous for the better gifts. And I shew unto you yet a more excellent way."
2. It is of faith that virginity is preferable to matrimony: "If any one saith that the marriage state is to be preferred before the state of virginity, let him be anathema."—COUNCIL OF TRENT.
The religious state is a more usual and a safer way of preserving virginity than a life in the outer world.
3. The invitation to the counsels is general; it may be accepted by anyone who is not prevented by some particular impediment, as marriage, sickness, or home obligations.
"The three counsels—of poverty, chastity, and obedience—constitute the substance, of the religious state."—SUAREZ.
4. "I say to the unmarried, and to the widows: it is good for them if they so continue, even as I. . . . The unmarried woman and the virgin thinketh on the things of the Lord, that she may be holy both in body and in spirit. But she that is married thinketh on the things of the world, how she may please her husband."—ST. PAUL.
5. "As it is the duty of the pastor to propose to himself the holiness and perfection of the faithful, his earnest desires must be in full accordance with those of the Apostle when, writing to the Corinthians, he says: 'I would that all men were even as myself;' that is, that all embraced the virtue of continence."—CATECHISM OF COUN. TRENT.
6. "A life of continence to be desired by all."—Marginal résumé of the above paragraph, CATECHISM OF COUN. TRENT, page 225.