[[Sister Laurel, it seems to me that Vatican II asked Christians to turn toward the world in service. In this way, we got a lot of service from the laity, which was very good. What I wondered was what that did to the contemplative life and even to esteem for contemplative prayer amongst the laity? Did it have an effect, or was it all kind of neutral? I am asking because you said few people understand your vocation, and I wondered if Vatican II had a part in causing that. For instance, you write against a notion of fleeing from the world when world means God's good creation, and I think I understand this, but how does contemplative life serve the world? Did Vatican II sort of cut the legs out from under esteem for the contemplative life?]]
What really great observations and questions! While some, including Thomas Merton, suggested he perceived a developing "activistic, antimystical, and antimetaphysical Christian consciousness leading Christians 'to repudiate all aspiration to personal contemplative union with God and to deep mystical experience, because [among other things] this is a pagan evasion, [and] an individualistic escape from community, '" others point to the very strong statement of Vatican II, "The contemplative life belongs to the fullness of the Church's presence" as part of their disagreement with Merton's position. Vatican II also took steps to preserve papal cloister and in the document on Religious Life supported contemplative life while asking that outdated customs and practices be pruned from the life. On balance I would say that Vatican II preserved contemplative life and required attention to what would invigorate or reinvigorate it, even as the Church, in response to the entirety of the council's writings and thrust, took a different and more incarnational perspective on the nature of the secular world.
Some of the Contributions of Vatican II
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I do agree that while Vatican II wrote in ways that would preserve and stress the Church's esteem for contemplative life, the accent on apostolic service or ministry had consequences that were not wholly anticipated. So did the accent on a (sacred) secularity that reflected God's incarnation in Jesus. This supported the potential sacramentality of the created world and invited humankind to honor the sacred nature of creation, and it softened the gulf between heaven and earth, thus allowing people to think in terms of the new heaven and new earth being established right here and right now in light of Jesus' death, resurrection, and ascension. Heaven and earth were seen by Scripture scholars and theologians to interpenetrate one another, and this implied letting go of a focus on "getting to heaven" while "fleeing the world"; it meant embracing more of what Rahner called a mysticism of ordinary life. This shift changed approaches to contemplative life to some degree, but my sense is that it led to healthier and less elitist notions of contemplative and eremitical life.
It is true that Vatican II was confronted with specific interventions on behalf of eremitical life, and while the council did not establish eremitic life directly as a state of perfection as Bp Remi de Roo called for, the revised Code of Canon Law, which was also part of the council's mandate, made room for this with c 603. Still, while Vatican II did not take a direct stance on eremitical life, it did considerably strengthen the Church's dependence on Scripture, and this implied not only a recovery of the desert tradition and its strong accent on encounter with God in the silence of solitude, but also the importance of a deep prayer life accompanying and underpinning any active ministry. Jesus' own life, especially as portrayed in the Gospel of Luke, gave us a strong theology of hospitality, including the importance of hospitality to the God who would be Emmanuel in silent and individual prayer. This strong emphasis on the importance of Scripture in the life of the Church also gave us the robust incarnational theology noted above.

Even Thomas Merton's criticism of Vatican II's influence was countered by his "turn to the world" and his reworking of the way the contemplative or the solitary life is related to and serves the world --- itself a clear theme at Vatican II. That was anticipated and prepared for by Merton's epiphany at 4th and Walnut on the streets of Louisville just a few years before the council. This epiphany was the root of his turn to the world, his rethinking of vocations to the silence of solitude, and his appreciation of the universality of calls to contemplation. It just took some time for this new plant to blossom, but my sense is it flowered in the soil of Vatican II, which, in her appreciation of the goodness of God's creation and in her universal call to holiness, did indeed take a new and non-dualistic view of "the world". For all these reasons, I would have to say Vatican II's esteem for and protection of contemplative life more generally, and eremitic life more specifically, though often accomplished indirectly, is well established.
Justifying the Existence of Contemplative and Eremitical Life:
In other words, I would suggest that any failure to esteem contemplative life generally and eremitical life more specifically comes from somewhere other than Vatican II itself, and that makes me wonder if contemplative life hasn't always been misunderstood in some significant ways, not least by drawing a hard line between heaven and earth and treating the world outside the monastery or hermitage as profane. In any case, I would argue that the reasons for this are not due to Vatican II itself. So, how does contemplative life generally, and solitary eremitical life more specifically, serve the Church and the larger world? How can we justify its existence, especially if it is not escapist or individualistic? I have been writing about this under the label, "existential solitude", or interior solitude, and the call to explore this, so let me just summarize my position on this here.

Every human being is constituted in a state of existential solitude. This solitude is inviolable, and no one can enter into it with us, no matter how close our relationship with them is. This state of existential solitude means that at the depths of our being, in the very center of our lives, we exist alone with God (though most people may be consciously unaware of God dwelling in the depths of their being). Whether we are consciously aware of this or not, this is how we are constituted as human beings, and it is in coming to terms with this specific solitude that we become authentic human beings capable of loving God, ourselves, and others. (By the way, this foundational relationship, which is intrinsic to human existence, is the source of the Church's teaching on the inviolability of conscience.) Contemplatives, and especially hermits, are committed to plumbing the depths of this existential solitude, to finding God there where he resides closer to us than we are even to ourselves, and witnessing for the sake of others to both God and the nature of authentic human being.
When Benedictines, for example, enter a monastery, they do so to "seek God". They do this not because God is not "out there" in the world, or because God is tucked away here in this monastery, needing to be found in the sacred place rather than the profane world! No! In light of the Christ Event, both the monastery and "the world" are sacred places! Instead, people come to the monastery to seek God because he is within us, deep, deep within us, and because the journey to the depths of ourselves takes time, patience, courage, determination, encouragement, and thus, various forms of structure and support. In particular, it takes the faith community and sacramental life of the Church along with the canonical structures, which provide for a stable state of life in which this journey to the depths of our being may be securely undertaken. The Church serves the c 603 hermit in this way so that s/he may undertake this journey that reveals human beings (and God as well) for who they really are.

There are so many sources of (mis)understanding regarding what constitutes truly human existence in our world today. The hermit and contemplative life provide one radically countercultural definition. This vision stresses every person's existential aloneness and, at the same time, the communal nature of every human life. Merton was worried Vatican II would destroy any sense we each have that the inner journey to the center of ourselves must be made by every person in whatever state of life they live their humanity. When he used terms like, "activistic, antimystical, and antimetaphysical Christian consciousness", he was concerned individuals would no longer see the quest for union with God as essential to every Christian life, no matter the value of their active ministry. My sense is that Vatican II gave us a more robust access to Scripture and to a Jesus whose humanity was rooted in faithful prayer (i.e., dialogue with God at every level of his being) and expressed in his active ministry and life with others, as well as in his regular turn to solitude. Both of these revealed Jesus' union with God and the nature of divinity and humanity. Contemplatives, and especially hermits, live our lives dedicated to the dialogue with God that constitutes the core of authentic humanity. We each make this profound and profoundly humanizing journey over long years, and witness to this constitutive relationship for the sake of all of God's creation. That is the primary value of our lives.