Once Again on c 603 and the Reasons it was Created

[[Hi Sister, why do you say that c 603 was not created to deal with abuses of eremitical life? It seems reasonable to me to create a law to deal with abuses and if there were hermits in the church I bet you there were abuses!]]

Hi there, and thanks for the question. I last referred to this idea in Should Hermit Vocations be Respected? What I said there is: [[. . . the Church chose to make the solitary eremitical vocation a canonical one. She did so because she believed it to be a gift of God to the Church and showed that she esteemed this vocation precisely as a gift of God, not because hermits were giving her problems (in fact, solitary hermits had almost totally ceased to exist in the Western Church; all the Church had to do was to ignore any that remained to ensure that death spiral was completed). Even if this was untrue, one does not give someone canonical standing simply to correct abuses. Besides, without officially recognizing (and thus, esteeming) hermit life in law, what abuses would there be?? A standard or norm must be established in law before there can be abuses.]] 

As you can see, I mainly argued canonical standing primarily had to do with the Church's esteem for the vocation. Remi de Roo had become Bishop Protector of about a dozen hermits who had left their monasteries after long years of solemn profession because their monasteries did not allow for hermit life in proper (i.e., their own congregational) law. There was no canon (universal) law on eremitical life. In the Middle Ages and some later the Western Church had hermits and anchorites and these were mainly regulated by diocesan laws administered under the local Ordinary, however, by the 16th - twentieth centuries, solitary hermits were dying or had mainly died out. (They never died out in the Eastern Church, possibly because hermits were always linked to a monastic community.) This primary reason is rooted in simple historical fact.

The notion that c 603 was created to deal with abuses only makes sense if, 1) there was a universal norm (canon) that defined the normative eremitical life, and 2) the Church was being plagued in some way by numerous canonical hermits or people calling themselves hermits and living in disedifying or destructive ways --- for instance, by preaching heresy or somehow seducing people away from the faith or their ordinary obligations. However, this was not the case. In later centuries, there were almost no or no canonical hermits while heresy was dealt with under existing canons and people who were otherwise problematical were dealt with through normal civic and ecclesiastical channels, not least the Sacrament of Penance.

It is important to ask oneself some basic questions: Without such a norm or canon, who says what is an abuse? Who says what is essential? Who defines what is healthy or witnesses to the values the Church sees as critical for such a way of life? And of course, if there is no official hermit vocation, why would the Church care if some relatively rare "weirdos" lived such an eccentric life so long as their begging, toll management, forestry, wandering, and other activities did not detract from the life of the Church? Yes, some bishops established norms in their own dioceses for local anchorites and hermits, but there was never a canon in universal law before c 603. There was no norm, no defined lifestyle, no set of defining elements, and no paradigm people needed to embrace if they were to be considered an authentic hermit. And there certainly was none that established someone in the consecrated state of life as a hermit.

Paul's insight on the fact that before the law there was no sin holds here too. Before there is a normative canon defining hermit life, there can be no abuses of hermit life. There are just a huge variety of ways of living as an individual, only some of which the Church might consider eremitical if she felt there was a reason to do so. Moreover, one does not consecrate someone who is not living their life well in order to correct the way they are living. That is simply nonsense. It's a little like taking heretics and making them Papal theologians in order to correct their theology. Not a very well thought-out  solution!  The canonist who is reported to have said c 603 originated to deal with abuses seems to have been under the impression that the 1917 Code of Canon Law provided for hermits. Had that been true his explanation might have made sense, but since there was no mention of hermits in the 1917 Code, it does not do so. Can canonical standing provide a way to deal with hermits not living their commitments (once there are such things)? Yes, of course and c 603 does that, but that was not primarily why it was promulgated, nor does it include any mention of sanctions itself.