[[Dear Sister, you wrote: "I have to ask Cole [Matson] if he really believes his vocation is more real than the hundreds of those whose dioceses turned them away when they wanted to use c 603 as the "only available canon" to become publicly professed despite not feeling called to be a solitary hermit? That is simply the height of arrogance." I haven't heard anyone else raise this question. Have there really been hundreds of persons turned away from dioceses who were seeking admission to profession under c 603? Why is it so many people are turned away? Has Bishop Stowe turned others away? Will he feel compelled to profess anyone who comes to him with this petition? It seems to me that Bishop Stowe kind of cut the heart out of the c 603 vocation.]]Thanks for your questions. Several of them I really can't answer (I can't read minds, including that of Bishop Stowe) but here is what I know. Yes, there have been hundreds and hundreds of persons turned away from profession under c 603 throughout the country and many times more than that throughout the world. In my own diocese, I know from a meeting with the Vicar for Religious about 10 years after my consecration (meeting was @2017) that they had seen a steady stream of people seeking to be professed in this way during this time. The estimation was an average of 1/month for a period of @10 years. So, in my diocese alone at least 120 persons besides myself had sought profession under c 603 through 2017. If we extend that for the next 7 years, that's another @84 persons which is @204 persons in a single diocese in the US. What Father Robert Herbst (OFM Conv) said at the time was that none of those had gotten as far as I had. That means that the diocese did, in fact, give some serious time in discernment to some of them depending on the case.
Since there are only about 100-150 diocesan hermits (fewer than 1 per diocese) in the US, it is clear that most candidates (@ 24 out of 25) do not make it very far towards perpetual profession and consecration. Still, we believe that the majority of these 100-150 persons are living authentic eremitical lives and a significant number of those turned away by their dioceses truly believed they had genuine vocations to solitary eremitical life. We can put that last number at several thousand. So, yes, even if we minimize the numbers in every way possible we are still looking at a rare vocation where hundreds and hundreds have been turned away from admission to profession and eventual consecration.
Why People are Turned away from Profession and Consecration under c 603
People are turned away from canonical profession for many reasons. Sometimes dioceses have a sense the person cannot really live this vocation in an exemplary way; sometimes the person cannot support themselves adequately without working outside the hermitage. Sometimes physical and mental illness have suggested dioceses ought not profess the person --- and sometimes these conclusions were sound. (At other times they demonstrated a faulty sense of the solitary eremitical vocation or the desert context illness can provide.)
Candidates have been refused because their spirituality is unsound, because they don't have sufficient background in (practical) theology, prayer, or eremitical and monastic life which means they either don't understand what they are asking, or will not be able to live it fruitfully in a healthy way. Some candidates are refused because they are grieving some significant loss, have just left religious life for reasons other than feeling called to solitude, and so forth. These persons still need to transition to life outside marriage or religious life in community before seeking to be professed in a new vocation. (Sometimes bishops may underestimate the degree of transition between life in community and solitary eremitical life. In my experience, it is as significant as moving from secular life to solitary eremitical life.) And as noted, a number of dioceses refuse to implement c 603 (or c 604) simply because they believe these are stopgap or fallback vocations.While I cannot answer the question about others being turned away from profession under c 603 in the diocese of Lexington in the past, and while I don't know what Bp Stowe will feel compelled to do in the future, the question of genuine discernment and formation of such vocations are a burning question for every diocese, but particularly now for the diocese of Lexington. One of the things that comes up again and again with candidates is the question of precedents. For instance, a candidate may want permission to reserve Eucharist before being admitted to profession, much less to consecration. But this would set a precedent for others seeking admission to profession in this and other dioceses we can argue we ought not establish. Thus, ordinarily, dioceses ask candidates to wait until they are admitted to perpetual profession for this permission (not least because life in cell without reserved Eucharist is typical of eremitical life through the centuries, and also because the hermit needs to be able to affirm the presence of Christ in all of the ways Christ is present in the hermitage, particularly in the Word of God). The precedents now set in the Diocese of Lexington are significant. They include:
- Professing a transgendered person because they are transgendered and (in light of a continuing church position on this issue) have not been able to enter religious life before this.
- allowing reservation of Eucharist despite not having been consecrated nor even having discerned this vocation,
- allowing c 603 to be used in a stopgap way as a framework for non-eremitical vocations and then calling them "hybrid hermits"or "diocesan monks" or some such vacuous designation.
- entertaining agendas (rather than vocations) as a sufficient reason to admit to an ecclesial vocation.
- Calling a biological woman "Brother" and clothing her in a male habit.
- Allowing (or providing) a so-called diocesan hermit a place to reside on monastery grounds. (While this is something a candidate or diocesan hermit can arrange for themselves, it usually happens only after the person has lived eremitical life for some years and has a longstanding relationship with the monastery. In any case, this establishes a precedent for candidates to c 603 life and others might be allowed to expect similar living arrangements being made available.)
- Allowing a so-called diocesan hermit to work both afternoons and evenings outside the hermitage in a highly social job. (One also assumes the diocese has approved a Rule of Life that established this as "eremitical".)
- Allowing a candidate's profession without a history of living eremitical life in any capacity and in ways that make genuine discernment and formation with diocesan personnel and mentors unnecessary.
- Professing someone who can afford extended stays in monasteries to get some formation in religious life. (Most candidates will not have this ability. On the other hand, if the diocese paid the expenses of such stays, it sets the precedent that the diocese will do so for every candidate for profession under c 603 with insufficient background to live eremitical life.) In either case, a precedent has been established that needs to be made available to other candidates for c 603 profession.
- Professing someone whose life contradicts what the church considers normative for consecrated life and so too, is attempting to live this contradiction "in the Church's name". (A vow of obedience becomes doubtful, at best, in such a situation.)
- Professing a person who rejects her biological sex, and lets her make a vow of chastity in celibacy --- a vow promising to live her vocation to authentic womanliness as fully and exhaustively as a chaste woman can and should do despite an inability and unwillingness to live such a vow.
Questions Raised by Such Precedents:
Each of these precedents in the Diocese of Lexington raises questions there and in other dioceses. But concerning the Diocese of Lexington, the question raised at the bottom is this: Who may not expect to be professed as a c 603 hermit in the Diocese of Lexington if they seek it? What is a good enough reason to deny profession to anyone seeking that under this canon? As you have affirmed yourself, Bp Stowe's actions with regard to Cole Matson did indeed cut the heart out of the vocation. It can now be said that in the Diocese of Lexington (and as they thus recommend to every other local church), one does not even need to be a hermit to be professed and consecrated as a hermit. Anyone wanting to be professed, any person saying they have always desired to become a religious and were unjustly refused, can now approach the Diocese of Lexington and ask them to profess them with the same justification that Cole Matson did.
Meanwhile, the defining characteristics of c 603 may be dismissed as "guidelines" rather than defining characteristics if they are not simply jettisoned altogether. Beyond this, Bishop Stowe might reasonably be approached by anyone with a normal prayer life for permission to reserve Eucharist in their own homes. He might now be asked to give permission for anyone wishing to wear a habit or to style themselves as Brother x or Sister y and expect others to to recognize them as such. All they have to promise, it seems, is that they have always desired this but were turned away in the past (or in other dioceses), and that has been terribly painful. If someone else can write them a Rule of life, then even better.
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