Hi Sister O'Neal, I think you have written about this before but I read the following in a blog after I looked up "public and private hermit vocations". [[Or, if public profession is God's will and the hermit's accepted format for profession of promises or vows, Canon 603 does not need to be utilized or incorporated. If not, the hermit is publicly avowed and consecrated, but not bound by that Canon. Regardless of Canon 603 or not, a public profession is that: public. People know.]] Can you either comment on this or point me to other places where you have already done this? (redacted slightly)
Yes, I have written about this issue quite a bit. You can find pertinent posts under labels like "public vs private vows", "lay hermits v diocesan hermits, " "consecrare vs dedicare" etc. There are several misconceptions in this comment, three of which are quite significant.
The most fundamental error comes in the last sentence which asserts essentially that whether a profession is canonical (canon 603 in this case) or not, so long as it is done in front of people and people know of it, then it is a public profession. This is not true. When we speak of public vows we are not speaking of vows which involve some degree of notoriety --- no matter how modest that may or may not actually be. We are speaking about vows in which the person assumes public rights and obligations. Public vows are received "in the name of the church" and in such a profession the person assumes a new ecclesial identity (in this case, that of a diocesan hermit) while private vows are not received in the name of the Church --- even if they are witnessed by the Pope --- and do not indicate a new ecclesial identity. (In this case one is and, at this point in time, remains a baptized lay person with all the legal rights and obligations which come to one by virtue of baptism --- no small matter --- but the legitimate rights and obligations involved in being a solitary Catholic Hermit do not attach.)
The second, but related error comes in the first sentence where the writer affirms that public vows as a hermit can be made but that canon 603 need not be used. Were this writer speaking of religious eremitical life (semi-eremitical life that is) where hermits are publicly professed as part of a religious congregation like the Carthusians, Camaldolese, etc, this statement would be strictly true. Persons publicly professed in this way use other canons but not canon 603. But in the given context, where s/he is speaking about a solitary hermit, it is not true. To state what I have written before here in reference to the history of canon 603, etc, if one is to be publicly professed as a solitary hermit one MUST be professed under canon 603. There is no other option within the Roman Church. This is part of the significance of canon 603. Canon 603 makes something possible in universal law which has never been possible before. So, if one truly believes she has discerned that God is calling her to be publicly professed as a hermit in the Roman Catholic Church, she must seek admission to profession and consecration under Canon 603. This will entail the Church's own discernment in the matter because ecclesial vocations are vocations where God's own call is mediated by the Church. They are never assumed by the individual on her own. Again, public vocations involve the assumption of rights and obligations not found in private vocations so the Church must be involved in the discernment of such vocations. Canon 603 is precisely the Canon through which such rights and obligations are granted or assumed by the solitary hermit.
The final error involves the use of the term consecration. This is a really common mistake and I have heard people at every level of the church make it in adopting the common usage re "consecrating oneself" but it remains a mistake. Namely, consecration is not simply the act of giving oneself to God. In fact, it is not something a human being does at all. Vatican II rightly (and carefully) reserved the word consecration for the action of God alone. Since God is Holiness, only God may make holy --- only God, that is, may hallow or set something aside as holy. The human action involved in profession is "dedication." In definitive or perpetual public vows the act of profession is accompanied by prostration, the calling on the communion of saints to witness and participate in what is happening, and a solemn prayer of consecration. We refer to the entire event as "profession" or "consecration" but even so, consecration per se is something only God does. Meanwhile, the proper term for a person with private vows is "dedicated." The act they make in making private vows is an act of dedication.
Further, except for baptism itself, we reserve the term "consecrated" as a kind of shorthand for entry into the "consecrated state." Here the term "state" refers to a stable state of life or "status." Private vows do not initiate into the consecrated state of life nor do significant private prayer experiences where God in Christ touches and "consecrates us"; thus, it is not accurate to speak of a person with private vows as "consecrated." (By virtue of our baptisms we are all consecrated by God but this does not initiate us into what is called the "consecrated state (of life)." It is important to remember this in case we are tempted to think that "consecrated state" means "holier than everyone else" or a "higher vocation." There is nothing "higher" or "holier" than Baptism and the recreation that occurs there. After all, we can leave the obligations of the consecrated state but we cannot ever truly leave the obligations of the consecration of Baptism behind.)
Hope this helps.
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