Any Further Take Aways on the Hermit Situation in the Diocese of Lexington KY?

[[Dear Sister, I wondered if you see any lasting lessons in the situation with Cole Matson and the Diocese of Lexington? It's been almost a year since you wrote about this, and I wonder if there is any important takeaway for you? Thanks.]] 

Thanks for your question. Unfortunately, I don't have much more to say about this situation than I did a year ago around Pentecost. My takeaway a year ago was that c 603 can be implemented wisely if the local ordinary recognizes it as a legitimate vocation that is a gift of God to the Church and the larger world. This presupposes that the people discerning the vocation with the candidate and the local ordinary 1) follow the candidate for sufficient time to be sure of their motives, their experience of assiduous prayer in the silence of solitude, and the way God is working in their lives, and 2) that they are not trying to use the canon for some other irrelevant agenda, no matter how important that is to either the bishop or the candidate. 

At the same time, I came away last year with a sense of the way some bishops fail to understand this vocation, or apparently, care much about it in any case. By extension, I came away with the sense that Bishop Stowe did not believe Cole Matson had any real vocation if he could allow him to make profession in a vocation he admitted he knew he didn't have. In his statement to the media Bp Stowe said that Cole was a sincere person who wanted to serve the Church, and it was for that reason that he was admitting Cole to profession under c 603. Bp Stowe also noted that the eremitical vocation is essentially a quiet and secluded vocation, not priesthood or a call involved with Sacramental ministry, so he didn't see where this would do much harm: [[. . . hermits are a rarely used form of religious life. . .but can be either male or female. Because there's no pursuit of priesthood or engagement in sacramental ministry, and because the hermit is a relatively quiet and secluded type of vocation, I didn't see any harm in letting him live this vocation.]]

At this point, I have to say what strikes me about Bp Stowe's points here remains what struck me last year. What is missing from this response is any sense of serious discernment or even struggle with the decision Bp Stowe made. Similarly lacking is any sense that Stowe actually values this vocation or sees himself as responsible for it in the way c 605 calls for him to be. One does not admit to public profession someone who feels called to something else merely because they want to serve the Church, no matter how sincere they are. Moreover, one does not imply one is doing so in order to keep the person out of public view, or in order to limit the degree of ecclesial influence or significance they have. I wonder what Bp Stowe's response would have been had Cole Matson actually asked him to ordain him as a matter "of justice"! It seems clear that Bp Stowe's response would have been "No, we can't do that," which begs the logical follow-up question, "Why not? Is something more than sincerity needed for admission to ordination, but not for being a canonical hermit? 

There are correlative questions as well and Bishop Stowe is not the only one responsible for answering these, both doctrinally and pastorally: if one must be male, then is Matson still disallowed? He asked to be professed as "Brother Christian", after all. Mustn't one be male to be identified in that way? If Matson can be Brother Christian, why could he not be ordained as Father Christian? As Matson moves toward perpetual profession and consecration, are sex or gender still issues in this situation? Why or why not? (A vow of chastity in any consecrated vocation necessarily involves an affirmation of one's sex because it calls for a commitment to an exhaustive manliness or womanliness in all one is and does within this state of life. This is one of the reasons we use titles like Brother or Sister for consecrated religious.) Since Bishop Stowe is a Franciscan, I would have expected him to be sensitive to this issue, and not just in regard to ordination.

The questions continue: Must Cole Matson honestly claim to be called by God to this specific vocation? That seems not to be required for c 603 profession in the Diocese of Lexington, and neither does meaningful mutual discernment, though these apply in every other diocese and the whole of the Universal Church in considering professing a c 603 candidate or admitting them to consecration. And finally, if Cole Matson truly wants to serve the Church, then why should he be allowed to seek or be professed (publicly vowed and commissioned by the Church) in an ecclesial vocation whose fullness and integrity God entrusted to the Church and codified in universal law, when Matson claims not to be called to this vocation yet made first vows anyway? How does that serve anyone, much less God, other candidates for c 603 consecration, or the Church to whom this vocation has been entrusted as a gift by God?

None of those questions have been answered by Bishop Stowe over the last year that I have heard, nor, apparently, has the USCCB or DICLSAL come to a public conclusion about all of this. And yet, we may be approaching the time when Cole Matson would ordinarily be admitted to definitive (perpetual or solemn) profession and consecration under c 603.  (Usually, this is three to five years from the date of first vows, so perhaps this is still a year or more off.) I would say it is important for people to understand that Cole's current vows are temporary and were renewed at least once. Cole has not, however, been consecrated. That is reserved for the rite of perpetual profession. My own sense is that consecrating someone as Brother x, if you were not open to ordaining them as Father x because of 1) their sex or 2) an insufficient sense of them having such a vocation, would raise a lot of questions in that person's regard!

Personally, as a c 603 hermit, I was and still am offended by Bishop Stowe's characterizations of the c 603 vocation. He makes it sound like a superficial form of religious life that can serve as a catch-all for those without any religious vocation at all. He also explicitly states that it (assuming he means c 603 itself) is "rarely used" -- an unfortunately utilitarian term (N.B., he does NOT say this is a rare vocation per se)! These are exactly the senses c 603 hermits have been contending with for more than 40 years! And yet, here comes a bishop who is apparently either ignorant of the nature of the vocation, or perhaps more wed to an agenda shared with Cole Matson, using c 603 as a stopgap when the Church has not provided some other way to be professed outside a community. ( Please note, the Episcopal Church allows this kind of arrangement, but not the Roman Catholic Church, which requires that one not simply be a solitary religious (a religious without a congregation or institute), but instead, insists that one truly be a hermit.) 

My own recent experiences of existential solitude and the deep and treacherous journey this can entail make me even clearer that our Church's bishops must listen to the experience of hermits today (as well as through the centuries!) and take real care before professing or consecrating anyone at all as a solitary hermit under c 603. Genuine eremitical life is not for the faint of heart, and I think that is even more true for solitary hermits! If one enters hermitage truly seeking God and (at least putatively) seeking to give one's entire self to God in this vocation, one should be aware of the fact that God will take one up on all of that! Woe to the person committing to such a vocation without truly feeling called to it in the depths of their being! If they are lucky, the least they will suffer from for the rest of their lives is an ongoing sense that they are a hypocrite and a coward, or, perhaps, just a fool! Both the candidate and her bishop should be aware of these things. 

And I think that here is the final thing I came away with last year and have to double down on today, namely, the service the hermit gives the Church, the reason this is an ecclesial vocation, is not found in any external or part-time ministry the hermit may also do. The service the hermit does the Church is to confirm that what she teaches about the gospel is true, namely, that even in the depths of human darkness and sin, God is present, knowable, and at work to bring life, light (meaning), and hope out of it. The hermit will find God in the really extraordinary "ordinary" things of life, AND she will find God in the depths of loneliness, suffering, death, and despair or near-despair as well. 

This journey of assiduous prayer and penance, including both external and existential solitude, is something every authentic hermit commits to make for God's sake, for her own sake, and for the sake of the Church and the veracity and power of her gospel. She does so because God has called her to do so. This profound sense of call is the only thing that could sustain such a life in integrity. Christ's peace is real, but it is not as the world knows or gives it. Instead, it is truly discovered only when one sees the face of God in one's deepest hungers and yearnings. To do this means one will journey to the place within us where those hungers and yearnings and all they promise and call us to become, have their origin and fulfillment in God. One cannot begin such a journey with a lie, much less sustain (or be sustained in) it to its depths. When one builds on sand, eventual tragedy is inevitable.

Thanks for the questions. I guess I had more to say about them than I realized at first!

Once Again, On Whether Bishop Stowe Believes Cole Matson Has a Vocation

[[Sister Laurel, why would you say that Bishop Stowe seemed not to believe Cole Matson/Brother Christian had any real vocation at all? He professed him as a diocesan hermit! Doesn't that indicate a belief in a vocation?]] 

Thanks for your question. I had hoped this was clear from several different posts, but let me try and explain it a bit better. God calls each of us to do something unique, something only we can do because only we will meet the needs of the situation with the self we are. (God may call many individuals to do a larger work, but in every case, the vocation a person answers is their own individual and unique vocation.) Moreover, God calls each of us to a vocation where we ourselves will be fulfilled in the way God wills for us and in the way the Church and world really need.  This unique call is our vocation.

When Cole Matson convinced himself he was called to public vows rather than to the vocation he had described to me in terms clearly empowered by the Holy Spirit, and when he determined to use c 603 as a means to public profession despite the fact that the Church does not recognize any such vocation, Cole let go of his God-given vocation and substituted something else, and something far less worthy in its place. Tragically, Bishop Stowe colluded in this, and by affirming Cole in a vocation he claimed not to be called to, Bp Stowe seemed to indicate he really didn't care that Cole's true vocation was going unanswered. He may even have demonstrated he believed there was no such true vocation. Of course, Bp Stowe also indicated not only an ignorance of the nature of c 603 vocations, despite having been written about this to some extent by a diocesan hermit,  but he indicated he may not care about these vocations themselves.

When bishop Stowe described why he decided to (attempt to) profess Cole Matson it was a particularly anemic statement in terms of vocation. If you recall, he spoke mostly about what the vocation did not involve (ordination, sacramental ministry). He said, [My willingness to be open to him is because it’s [note the objectifying lack of personal pronoun] a sincere person seeking a way to serve the church,’ Stowe said of Matson. ‘Hermits are a rarely used form of religious life … but they can be either male or female. Because there’s no pursuit of priesthood or engagement in sacramental ministry, and because the hermit is a relatively quiet and secluded type of vocation, I didn’t see any harm in letting him live this vocation.’ . . .]] In other words, [[Whom could it hurt? It's not like s/he was asking to be made a priest! Hermits are tucked away from anything really central in the church, so what difference could it possibly make?]]

While technically true in several ways, all of this manages to misunderstand the nature and significance of the solitary eremitical vocation, the reasons discernment and formation of such vocations require real diligence, knowledge, and focused care, and it misunderstands especially the place they serve in the life of the Church. The idea of professing someone who does not honestly claim to feel called by God to this specific vocation, and who in fact, claims to feel truly called to another vocation entirely, does a disservice to the vocation and the person involved. Especially, eremitical life is not meant as a way of preparing one for the ministry apostolic religious are mainly involved in. For instance, eremitical solitude, in particular, is not about relaxing in one's hermitage or recharging one's spiritual batteries so one may minister elsewhere, like the theatre, where Cole Matson's main energies go for the majority of the day and evening.

The solitude of the hermit is the context of her main work, namely prayer. Moreover, it is an intensely demanding reality, not least because human beings are social creatures and are not ordinarily meant to come to human wholeness in solitude, but also because when this is the nature of one's solitude, it will be about meeting oneself and becoming more and more profoundly truthful with oneself about who one is and is called to be. One will deal with past woundedness, personal sin, frailties, limitations of all sorts, and the way one colludes with untruth and death even in a vocation given over to life and the very Source of Life we call Abba. Sister Jeremy Hall (Silence, Solitude, Simplicity: A Hermit's Love Affair with a Noisy, Crowded, and Complicated World) spoke of the desert as the place of encounter; above all, that means living towards, for, and from one's maturing encounter with God, but at the same time, it means living in light of a continuing encounter with oneself, a coming to terms with all of that, and, an integration of one's whole life in terms of these continuing forms of encounter. It is this integration that we call holiness while growth in this is what we call sanctification (but also humanization and divinization).

Most people have regular avenues of escape or at least significant relief from this kind of intensity of encounter. But not the hermit. Even her recreation serves the quality of her commitment to this paradoxical vocation of encounter. Witness to this encounter, an encounter that is meant to be at the heart of every Christian vocation, is the actual mission of the hermit. Yet, in Bishop Stowe's approach to and description of c 603 life, one would never imagine such an intense process lay at the heart of the vocation. The approval Stowe gave Matson to spend more than two-thirds of his day in the theatre underscores both parties' ignorance of this foundational dynamic of eremitical life; for Bp Stowe, this ignorance points to a failure to perceive Cole Matson as having been called to it as well. (If you don't understand it exists, how can you recognize someone is called to it? More, how can you affirm them in this vocation?) The tragedy of all of this, however, lies not only in the misrepresentation of this vocation (though I admit that tragedy is significant, indeed), but also in the failure involved by not finding (or creating) a more appropriate avenue for Cole to respond to his true vocation, which itself argues that perhaps Bp Stowe doesn't truly believe in Cole Matson's true vocation.

Regrets? What Would You Say to Cole Matson if you Could Speak to Him?

[[Hi Sister Laurel, do you feel any regret over having shared Brother Christian's letter to you, or yours to Bishop Stowe, his Metropolitan, and the Nuncio? Brother Christian formally objected to your having done this. Should these missives not have remained confidential? I am wondering if you have spoken to Brother Christian recently and what you would say to him if you could speak to him.]]

Thanks for your questions. No, I don't regret sharing these, though let me be clear, apart from the quote regarding Cole's motives and the agenda of transgender justice included in my letter to Bishop Stowe, I did not share Cole's emails to me. What I shared were my own letters of concern to Bishop Stowe et al. Even then significant parts of these, mainly having to do with my concern for Cole's welfare, remained off the record and the journalist with whom I worked (Gina Christian) was very good about honoring that. My own letters were not confidential (they were directed to representatives of the larger Church with the understanding others would be consulted in their regard) and while Cole might have thought his own correspondence would be held in confidence he later made public statements (and participated in public acts!) which made it important to state the truth as he revealed it to me. One statement was particularly compelling in this way. Cole noted to one reporter who published it at the end of the article: [[“I don’t have a hidden agenda, I just want to serve the church,” he said. “People can believe that or not.”]] And again, in another article, [[My only agenda is the Gospel.]]

Of course, Cole's own remarks to me directly contradicted these well-publicized statements. As he told me, his aim was public profession; private vows were not enough. He knew he was using c 603 as a stopgap when no other avenue to religious profession was open to him, and he knew I would disapprove. He knew as well that he did not feel called to eremitical life, much less to solitary eremitical life. Still, he noted that C 603 "felt truer" than beginning a lay community. "Felt truer" might work in horseshoes, but not in vocations and certainly not in the petition that one be allowed to make vows to God! I could not allow this lie to stand uncontested or the truth to remain hidden, particularly as others touted Cole's "heroic faith," and apparent determination to hang onto his identity as a Catholic while he supposedly "followed his vocation even to the loneliness of eremitical life".

Add to that the fact that two public professions (even if these were held in a private setting with Bp Stowe and a single witness, they remain public professions) --- public acts of worship --- had occurred and the faithful of the Diocese of Lexington were being encouraged to see Cole as a religious Brother and diocesan hermit who had truly discerned a rare and exemplary vocation. Comments by Bishop Stowe on the nature of c 603 life also made it compelling that I share my letters to him with others because of Stowe's studied disingenuousness about his use of the canon --- his "whom could it hurt?" approach to the matter, particularly so long as Cole was not seeking ordination or marriage. These comments were made as though I had never written Bishop Stowe with detailed concerns from within the solitary eremitical vocation itself, or that he had not acknowledged both my vocation and knowledge of c 603 life.

I sincerely wish Bishop Stowe had entered into a dialogue with me regarding the way I saw things and the way he himself saw the matter two years ago. Both of us had spoken at length with Cole Matson. Both of us could have honestly noted we had Cole's well-being uppermost in mind. Bishop Stowe could have done that and postponed any profession until we both had a clearer sense of the real issues here and came to some degree of agreement and understanding regarding why he felt compelled to misuse a canon in the way Cole had proposed he do. I might not have needed to consult canonists or write either his Metropolitan or the Papal Nuncio, and I certainly might never have needed to do the kind of interview a situation riddled with dishonesty made necessary because of the 2024 Pentecost circus Cole's public announcement occasioned. 

As it is, I came away from Cole's announcement feeling that Bp Stowe simply chose to ignore significant input on the nature of c 603 as well as regarding my own concern for Cole's wellbeing, not only in 2022, but in 2024 when he stated why he had used the canon as a mere legal loophole. That also left me feeling compelled to state the truth of the matter. Meanwhile, you ask a really difficult final question, viz, what would I say to Cole if I could speak to him now? Gina Christian asked the same question when she interviewed me and I am not sure I have any more of an answer now than I did two weeks ago. This morning, however, I wrote Bishop Stowe and Cole both with a possible solution to the situation as it stands. In part this is what I said,

[[Cole, you have tried transgender interventions and still found something in your being that was not eased by any of that. You insist that the fact that people will not admit you to religious life is the cause of this existential yearning and emptiness. I don't think it is. Religious life is not the answer to that experience you described to me in 2019, nor is your yearning for religious life its cause. Right now, religious life represents a lie you are holding onto in place of the truth.

This is the truth I know from my own eremitical life, Cole. God is the answer here and can empower you to come to terms with who you are as you stand naked (so to speak) before your Lord in the Tabernacle. Can you risk making that journey deep into the depths of your own poverty? Can you find the courage to affirm a God who delights in you even when you might hate yourself? That is the God of the hermitage and that is the good news an authentic hermit (including the non-canonical or lay hermit!!) has to share with others. Can you find the courage to do that, because that vocation is open to you now. That is the opportunity I believe God has set before you in place of diocesan eremitical life. It is more radical than anything you have embraced thus far. And its capacity for good in the Church is greater than anything you have glimpsed thus far. I believe Bp Stowe would support you in this. I know I would.]]

If Cole and Bishop John Stowe embraced this solution, Cole would continue to be a hermit (though not a diocesan hermit) and supported by Bp Stowe and the Diocese of Lexington. He could continue to work as he does now because he does not have to represent the elements of c 603 in the same way a c 603 hermit does. He could continue living where and as he does since he already pays rent for his hermitage. Bp Stowe could permit him to reserve Eucharist and wear a habit on the premises but not in public. More important than all of the externals, such a situation would allow Cole the time and space to become a contemplative, then a hermit who has met and dwells with the God authentic hermits know --- a God in whom the deepest healing becomes possible. Cole's inner life and correlative ministry would be empowered by the Holy Spirit and the potential for fruit growing from this life would be richer than anyone could imagine. What I would say to Cole is what I said this morning, namely, please consider this proposed solution as an option in which everyone could win.

Sister Laurel, was this the Case You Were writing about?

For those wondering if my blog posts on the 6th and 17th of May were about the situation referred to in the following link Cole Matson Diocesan Hermit?, the answer is yes. Both posts (cf. Professing a Transsexual? and Followup Questions) had the situation with Bishop John Stowe and Cole (aka Christian) Matson in mind. I have seen the article strategically announcing Cole's coming out as transgendered; over time I will write further about the situation (including some questionable canonical advice apparently given to Bishop Stowe). 

Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective) this matter is now an open church issue and, within the limits of my vocation as well as my theological expertise, I will continue to contribute to any ongoing dialogue, particularly from the perspective of the appropriate and inappropriate uses of canon 603. As always, if readers have other specific questions or comments on diocesan hermit life or on this specific case,  I am more than happy to respond. If you are simply wondering if this was the case I was referring to and have been involved in in one way or another during the last several years, this is your answer. Please, no more emails on that question!

Postscript: By the way, in case folks are wondering, while I am disappointed with and seriously critical of Bishop Stowe regarding this specific situation, I have more generally agreed with his positions and appreciated his courage on some things. I also was touched by his timely and gracious response to my letter of June 2022. Perhaps all of that is another reason besides c 603 itself that the current situation raises such complex and intense feelings for me.