When only the canonical meaning of the term was envisaged, the state of the “counsels” as embraced by religious (can. 487) tended to monopolize any treatment of the evangelical counsels. As a consequence, “seculars”, who live in the world, seemed deliberately to choose the opposite, namely the state of the “precepts”, and the counsels of Christ would have been of little interest for them. But can we say that the religious themselves still recognize the “counsels”, as a higher way containing no e…