Followup Question on Crash Course Post

[[Dear Sister O'Neal,  were you afraid some people would believe that because they can't be Catholic hermits and want to be hermits anyway, that they believed they couldn't be Catholic anymore either? That is what it sounded like. I wouldn't have believed anyone would interpret things that way, but I am really glad for the lesson in the difference between non-canonical and illegal!! Also, I liked the added examples about the difference between a police officer living in San Mateo and a San Mateo police officer. Those were helpful. Thanks for that!!]]

Hi there! You're welcome! Yes, I had heard a recording of someone concluding that because she could not call herself either a consecrated or a Catholic hermit and wanted to remain a hermit (because she experienced this as a call from God), she thought she couldn't be a Catholic any longer either. She felt she would be an illegal hermit, which was not true. I definitely didn't want her to believe either of these things! She had just apparently come to terms with the fact that in the Roman Catholic Church only canonical hermits are consecrated, or better, are in the consecrated state of life, and may therefore call themselves Catholic hermits, but this other bit seemed to be a bridge too far; I didn't want a misunderstanding causing her to leave the Church she loves. And, apart from her situation, people must get a sense of what it means for a hermit (and others) to live an ecclesial vocation in the name of the Church. 

One can be professed, consecrated, and commissioned by the Church to do this as a c 603 hermit, or a member of an eremitical or semi-eremitical institute of consecrated life, but one can also live as a Catholic AND a hermit in the lay or non-canonical state. That has always been the predominant way of being a hermit, even when bishops were approving some hermits to wear hermit tunics and preach or anchorites to live in the midst of town. The most important examples of hermits in the Church's history, one could argue, are the Desert Abbas and Ammas; I don't think the Church is going to declare them to be outside the Church simply because they were non-canonical or not overseen by a bishop!! Canon 603 provides a normative vision for all eremitical life in the Church, but living under this canon, "in law," is not the only way to live eremitical life in the Church today and we should not make the mistake of thinking it is, particularly if we take seriously that there are many members and many gifts in this One Body.