Can a Transsexual Person be admitted to Profession and Consecration Under C 603?

[[ Dear Sister, would the church profess or consecrate a transsexual (transgender?) as a diocesan hermit? I don't want to give more details. I just wondered if there are any hard and fast rules about this. Would you encourage a transsexual to seek profession and consecration under c 603? It seems to me that since there is no community, no one would be particularly troubled much less harmed by such an act. Are you aware of any transsexuals who are diocesan hermits? Thanks.]]

Thanks for your questions. Let me begin with some comments about transgender persons and sacraments as a preliminary to answering your questions. This might give you an introductory sense of how seriously the church takes the question of allowing transgendered persons to be professed and consecrated as religious. From all that I have read about the church's stance on transgendered persons in this regard, two considerations are always raised: 1) the honesty or lack of honesty involved (including self-honesty, potential self-deception, or questions of personal transparency), and 2) the possibility of scandal. The person involved must be acting freely, openly, and transparently, and there must be no cause for scandal. Still, there is relatively little out there in writing from the church. In speaking about the sacraments, for instance, the church only speaks of baptism as clearly open to transgendered persons (and some dioceses may still be disputing that). After that, things become even more complicated. Even having a transgendered person serving as a godparent for someone is not without complications. While religious profession and consecration are not sacraments, admission of a transgendered person to these definitive steps of public commitment within religious life raises even more difficult questions that also revolve around the questions of honesty or personal integrity and scandal.

Consecrated Life: A Call to Foundational Womanliness or Manliness

With consecrated eremitical life, some of these same questions apply whether we are speaking of semi-eremitical life or solitary eremitism under c 603. Remember that the profession of a diocesan hermit is a public commitment with public rights and obligations. This means the whole church has a right to hold certain expectations concerning the one being professed and/or consecrated. The most fundamental of these, no matter whether the person identifies as male or female, has to do with their foundational womanliness or manliness and their fulfillment**. Are they gifting God and the Church with their lives in this way because they (and those discerning with them!) sincerely believe they are being called to human wholeness and holiness (including a recognizable psycho-sexual maturity) in this state of life in Christ or is there something else at play here? Stated another way, are they embracing this life because they (and those discerning with them) feel assured that God's love for them calls and will bring them to psycho-sexual maturity, that is, to the highest expressions of manliness or womanliness one may achieve in this way or not? Will they witness to this foundational task and achievement as well as to the way God's non-gendered and self-sacrificial love makes it both a possibility and reality? 

First and foremost, a vocation to eremitical life is a call to human wholeness and holiness in loving dialogue with God in the silence of solitude. This can occur in the presence of various forms of gender dis-ease or gender dysphoria and other significant limitations. One gives the whole of oneself (including one's dis-ease) in the trust and expectation that God completes and makes one truly and fully alive in Christ with the abundant life promised in the Gospels. In fact, because the hermit gives up the use of so many specific gifts necessary for active ministry, this particular witness seems to me to be the essence of the eremitical call. The God of Jesus Christ is affirmed as the One who loves us just as we are and empowers us to love and live with whatever difficulties our lives include. We suffer with and in Christ in ways that witness to God's power to make sense of even life's worst apparent absurdities. We approach this promised achievement with hope that in giving ourselves totally (including what seems "broken" within us, so too will we find, complete, and transcend ourselves in Christ, and we do this for the sake of others who need and seek the same redemption and fulfillment.

The Church does not Recognize. . .

The church does not recognize that a person's fundamental manliness or womanliness (even as incipient) changes with gender-affirming transition. Moreover, the church identifies this fundamental given as consonant with one's sex at birth. Certainly, dimensions of one's fundamental manliness or womanliness are affected by hormones, genetic manipulation, and surgery, though in Catholic theology, these changed dimensions are not identical to a change in one's fundamental womanliness or manliness, one's foundational sexuality. Despite a person's profound and painful dis-ease with his or her assigned birth sex, that sexual identity remains a gift and a task s/he is meant to realize in psycho-sexual maturity within whatever given limitations or seeming inconsistencies there may be. Assuming no intersex problems cause physician errors in determining sex, the church's current teaching on admitting a suitable candidate*** to profession and consecration is clear: if one is born (or determined to be) female at birth, one must be professed and/or consecrated as a female; if born male, then profession/consecration must be as a male. 

Though this is a dimension of one's vocation most will recognize in terms of the vow to chastity in celibacy, when the church clothes the candidate in religious garb or styles the person Brother or Sister it also reflects this truth. Given the church's own teaching here, how is the church to clothe and address a transgendered person who was originally female for instance? Though fundamentally a woman in the church's eyes, does this person style herself as Brother  X_____ and represent a call to authentic manliness? 

The church sees a profound contradiction here on the most fundamental human level; what one claims (to be) and proclaims at profession conflicts with one's natural sexual identity, and for this reason, the church does not admit someone living as a transgendered person to profession or consecration. To do so would be dishonest and, if the professing bishop allowed the faith community to know about it in an entirely transparent way, it would cause significant scandal. (For that matter, were the bishop admitting a transgendered person to profession and consecration to knowingly withhold this from the faith community participating in the profession I think that too would legitimately cause significant scandal.)

In approaching your questions, I began with the most foundational element or dimension of the hermit's life because it is deeper and more extensive than the changes involved in gender-affirming transitions can change or achieve. It can be argued that the Evangelical Counsels and particularly the vow of chastity in celibacy (consecrated celibacy) can be understood in terms of this foundational identity as well as in other terms that may be more familiar to readers. Chastity in celibacy deals with integrity in relationships and the commitment to love others in the way Christ loved; thus, it also implies being true to one's fundamental manliness or womanliness to carry all of this out. As I understand the church's position, if gender (that is, the subjective experience of sexuality) fails to match one's sexuality (an objective reality not necessarily dependent upon or consonant with one's experience of one's sexuality), and one cannot love oneself as created and called to be, the ability to make a binding vow of chastity becomes problematic. 

Are there Currently Transsexual Diocesan Hermits?

I am not aware of any transgendered persons who have been professed or consecrated as diocesan hermits. I am personally aware of only one transgender person who sought profession under c 603 several years ago. I opposed his admission to profession (he is a trans male), but N.B., I did not do so based on the fact that he was transgendered  per se, but instead because he approached profession as a solitary hermit deceitfully and fraudulently. This person told me he (purportedly along with his bishop) planned on using the canon as a "matter [or way] of [achieving] justice" and was clear he was using the canon as a stopgap way to get publicly professed, something he knew from reading this blog that I have objected to. (He claimed to have discerned a call to "public profession" but not to eremitical life; the church does NOT recognize such a call apart from particular forms of religious life which may then require public vows.) There were other issues as well (bishop-shopping for an amenable bishop, an intention to create (or join) a community after consecration, the use of temporary profession to experiment and "gather data" on whether or not this life was a fit at all, among others), and in each of these, some degree of pretense and bad faith were apparent. Thus too, the validity of such a profession would have been questionable at best. (One canonist who was consulted opined the profession/vows would be invalid (cf c 656.4 and On Withholding the Truth), while another suggested sacrilege could also be involved were such a profession attempted.)

As you might surmise, this instance of a proposed profession raises several important questions. The one I want to focus on here has to do with using profession and consecration as a means to take a stand on something one considers unjust in the church, or for any other reason than expressing and embracing a genuine sense of a call to consecrated life (and in this case, to solitary eremitic consecrated life). Canon 603 sometimes seems a simple canon for folks to seek profession under even when they have not discovered or discerned a truly eremitical vocation. Artists or scholars of all sorts might like to do something like this while they write or paint or work on dramatic, cultural, and research projects; sometimes such folks justify the peace and solitude needed for such careers in terms of a too-casually defined "eremitism".  Authentic hermits know that the heart of the eremitic vocation is not writing, other artistic pursuits, or research even when hermits may also do these things. To call these (much less oneself) "eremitical" simply because they require silence and solitude is a distortion of what eremitical life lived in the name of the Church is all about. Still, it is easy to "justify" this kind of distortion of the vocation by asking the question (along with its implied negative answer) that you have raised yourself, "Whom does it hurt?"

As I have written before in Whom does it hurt?, and also On Intervening in Professions, any kind of fraud is harmful, particularly when it concerns an institution that depends on trust and Gospel witness to the truth as well as to what is possible when one lives for, with, in, and from God in the silence of solitude. I simply cannot see any justification in the kinds of deception present in such instances when one is (ostensibly) petitioning to live consecrated eremitical life in the name of the same Church one is essentially thumbing one's nose at in the very same act. That is especially true when other ecclesial communities (including sacramental ones like the Episcopal Church, for example) allow individuals to be publicly professed as solitary religious without concern for sexual identity or a requirement that these religious purposely live genuinely eremitical lives. As you can see, questions of personal integrity, transparency, and the potential for scandal are significant in matters like this. Thus, until church teaching and praxis on this changes, though I might encourage them to explore life as a non-canonical hermit, I would not encourage a person identifying as transsexual to seek profession and/or consecration as a c 603 hermit.

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Notes:

Please note that language referring to trans persons is fluid and relatively idiosyncratic. For an introductory summary of how various terms are generally defined, please see https://www.apa.org/topics/lgbtq/transgender-people-gender-identity-gender-expression. Especially helpful is the discussion of the distinction between sexual orientation and gender.

**In Catholic Theology and in this blog essay, sexuality is used to refer to the most foundational call to womanliness or manliness, not merely in terms of superficial social roles and expectations or even in terms of mere biology. It is deeper and more expansive than these while, especially in terms of one's given biology, it remains generally consistent with these. In Catholic theology, the whole person is sexual. There are distinctively manly and womanly ways of understanding, feeling, and acting. Everything we think, or imagine, our motivations and perceptions of or responses to value are conditioned by the fact that we exist either as men or as women. Catholic theology affirms this is true even in the presence of gender dysphoria, and whether or not a person self-identifies as male, female, or some non-binary alternative (transgender, transsexual, mx, zie, or hir) precisely because this manliness or womanliness is deeper and more fundamental than gender identity itself. 

*** As  I understand it, a suitable candidate would need first to "detransition" and then live and discern the vocation just as any other person would do. The same conditions, requirements, time frames, and so forth would have to be met including medical and psychological testing. One would need to go through the usual stages of such a life, particularly concerning the development of a contemplative life that then calls for even greater solitude. There would need to be a special assurance that the candidate was not using c 603 in some ulterior way as a stopgap to profession.

We Do Not First Discern a call to Public Vows: Clarification

[[Sister, what did you mean when you said there's no such thing as a vocation to public vows. Don't you have a vocation to public vows?]]

Thanks for the question. I could definitely have been clearer, but I was trying to limit my description of the situation. Using myself as an example then, I can say I have an eremitical vocation. I needed to discern that first and only after that whether or not I was called to public profession, and even further in what eremitical context? For instance, I lived under private vows for a number of years and then discerned I was called not just to eremitical life, but to solitary eremitical life as an ecclesial vocation and therefore to canonical profession and consecration under c 603. The Church agreed with my own discernment and (eventually) Bishop Vigneron (a new bishop after the retirement of his predecessor) was clear he would not require me to jump through hoops I had already jumped through. After a wait of about a year and couple of months from our initial appointment, Bp Vigneron perpetually professed and consecrated me on 02.Sept. 2007. At that point, I had lived as a hermit for 23 years and was very sure of my vocation, first as a hermit and then, as someone called to live it as a public ecclesial vocation.

So, you see, my vocation includes (public) profession but it is not to (public) profession per se. My vocation is to solitary eremitical life and though in time I chose to seek admission to public vows/profession, I might have discerned it was meant for me to live this calling alone under private vows, or in a laura with significant solitude but supported by other hermits -- with either private or public vows. I might also have discerned a call to semi-eremitical life under public vows. What is clear is the fact that the vocation comes first and the mode of commitment is discerned second. In the situation I was describing the person seeking profession got the cart before the horse. S/he "discerned" s/he was called to make public vows and then looked for a context (including a new diocese) that would accept her where s/he might live those out.  

But of course, that is not the way one reaches the point of making vows. One needs a sense of being called to a specific vocation with a specific charism, and mission, before petitioning for admittance to even temporary profession. One must know oneself as suited and called by God to these before public vows even make sense. Again, with eremitical life one comes to know one's call in at least a general way, and only after (or alongside) this does one consider and prepare for the vows one will need in order to embrace this vocation fully and appropriately. The vows support and shape the vocation; in any case, they are not the vocation itself.

Thus, my complaint was twofold: 1) the person described had not discerned an eremitical call in any context (non-canonical, solitary, laura-based, semi-eremitical in a community of hermits, etc.) --- something which ordinarily takes years, and 2) s/he claimed a vocation to public vows, something that in and of itself, does not actually exist. There is clearly more to this complex story. Even so, the grounds enunciated above are the ones you asked me to explain about so I hope that part of the situation is clearer.

Questions re: Intervening in Cases of Fraudulent or Dishonest Profession

[[Dear Sister O'Neal, since you write about your concern with fraudulent hermits and associated issues, I wondered if you would interfere in an eremitical profession you thought was dishonest or fraudulent. Do you have that right? Have you ever done this?]]

Thanks, you have provided a difficult constellation of questions and also something of a leap from my admitted concern with such things. I will drop the term "interfere" from your first question and replace it with "connect with those responsible" or perhaps, "intervene in some appropriate way" in order to share one's concerns. 

That done, I need to say that any person with genuine knowledge directly impacting the nature and quality (and this can include even the validity) of a public profession has not just the right but the obligation to share that knowledge in an appropriate way. Moreover, bishops and others involved in overseeing such vocations have the obligation to hear and seriously consider these concerns. Public professions involve ecclesial vocations which affect the entire Church. They are also public acts of worship and if there is actual deception or fraud at their heart, such an act of worship can become a serious scandal and that can rise to the level of sacrilege. It can also invalidate the profession being made -- one source of the scandal involved. When we are dealing with Canon 603 professions where the total number of solitary canonical hermits are, relatively speaking, so very few and the vocation is both rare and even more rarely understood --- and also because dioceses are cautious in dealing with the implementation of C 603 anyway --- serious scandal can affect the credibility of the entire vocation. When this happens, genuine vocations to C 603 life are likely to be further prevented from being professed by the Church --- a kind of functional suppression of the solitary consecrated eremitical vocation.

What Steps does one take?

Depending upon the seriousness of the problem and one's own degree or kind of involvement and expertise, one may take a number of steps. The first will be prayer, and prayer will accompany any other steps one takes. If one has a relationship with the one being professed, one will generally contact them first to state one's concerns and allow a clarifying response. One will certainly confer confidentially with those in one's life who understand such concerns and can give feedback on how they would proceed (pastors, spiritual directors, religious in roles of formation or leadership, et al). In very serious cases, especially if any responses one has gotten from the persons involved are unsatisfactory, one might seek the advice of a canon lawyer to be sure one's assessment of seriousness is correct and to see what other steps one may need to consider taking.

Beyond this, one may decide one needs to write the bishop of the diocese in which the profession has taken or is to take place to inform him of one's concerns. Generally speaking, I think this is usually as far as one would take the situation because one trusts that the bishop knows more about the situation than one does oneself. However, sometimes writing the bishop, though usually essential, is insufficient; occasionally one's own knowledge may be greater than the bishop's or the situation is greater than this specific profession per se seems. In such cases, one may also be advised to contact the bishop's Metropolitan and even the US Nuncio as the direct US representative to/of the Vatican.

Being sure of Serious and even Grave Matters:

None of this should ever be done lightly, of course, and one needs to be really sure one understands the situation fully and has a good sense of the nature of the vocation one is concerned about. With c 603 there is a tendency already for some bishops and chanceries to say something like, [[Whom will it hurt?]] when deciding to profess non-hermits under c 603 because they tend not to understand eremitical life more generally, nor the significance of c 603 and what it witnesses to, more specifically. But because such professions do cause harm, including to the person seeking to be professed and assuming public responsibility for this vocation in law despite their not being called in this way by God, it may take someone living the vocation to clarify why such a profession is a mistake. I am not saying that such a profession is necessarily a mistake that rises to the level of scandal and beyond (ordinarily it may be rooted in simple ignorance), but this "whom does it harm?" approach does reflect a somewhat careless attitude about c 603 vocations which can allow for the stopgap use of the canon in much more seriously abusive situations as well.

It is in these more serious situations that I personally would probably contact the folks in authority with my concerns and knowledge. I not only believe I can do this, for several different reasons, but also that I am obligated to do this. The question in such an instance is how do I do this in a way which is most charitable and most educative re: the c 603 vocation --- and that is where the majority of the prayer accompanying the entire discernment process in such a matter comes in. I think one must accept that if one's intervention (letters, consultations, conversations, etc) prevent a profession under c 603 there will be significant pain for the person so affected and too, there will likely be personal pain and anguish for oneself as well. However, there is something larger than the individual proposing to make public vows involved here, namely the well-being of the vocation itself which is a Divine gift and the faith of the assembly/church, and one must accept that as well.

Once Again, "Whom does it Hurt?" 

At the same time, it must be made vividly clear that allowing someone to take on public responsibilities for a vocation they do not have is hardly charitable to them either. Doing so invites the person to live with the senses of failure, mediocrity, and hypocrisy all their days, something which is surely a cause of constant pain and doubt pervading everything they are and do. Eremitical life is not about relaxing day in and day out in some form of extended vacation; it is not entered into so that one may do one's painting or writing or pottery, or even research and scholarship, etc. Eremitical life is about the hard (but also painful and joyful) work of seeking God, being grasped by God, and allowing oneself to be remade in and by God in every moment and mood of one's life --- and doing so in the silence of solitude. Absolutely there will be some space and time for activities like those mentioned as well as some limited ministry in one's parish if one truly feels called to these, but these will, first of all, serve one's vocation to "the silence of solitude", not substitute for it. 

In fact, such activities will have to be relinquished or modified to some extent the moment they distract or detract from one's eremitical vocation of living "with God alone". In other words, even what one might perceive as meaningful and fruitful work contributing to the good of mankind would need to be relinquished if it conflicted with one's call to live with and for "God alone" in eremitical solitude!! Also, because we are all social creatures, most folks are called to personal wholeness and holiness in community, not in the silence of solitude. Very few are called to this (or will even understand it), and for that reason, for most people, such a calling would be dangerous to and destructive of their very personhood, their very selves. It is critical that all discernment of authentic solitary eremitical vocations recognizes this or the result of our professions will be fraudulent, inauthentic, mediocre, unhappy, possibly psychologically unbalanced, and disedifying "hermits" created by their professions to live the terms of c 603. Again, how could this be considered charitable or a truly pastoral decision on the part of a diocesan bishop?

Finally, let me say that someone attempting to be professed for a vocation they do not, in their heart of hearts, truly believe they have from God --- and here I mean the vocation itself, not the profession it allows or requires, the time and space it provides for various activities, as a means to some other end, and so forth, but the vocation itself --- says with their whole lives how little they esteem this vocation, those who truly do have it and frankly, the God who calls people in this way! I have been in contact with several people over the years who sought or considered seeking admission to

profession under c 603 as a means to some other end despite being very clear they did NOT believe God had called them to this. One, who thought s/he was called to "public vows" (there is no such vocation!) was willing to make profession and then live as a hermit "to see if it worked out." If not, s/he claimed s/he would walk away from it and try something else. 

But of course, this demeans the entire idea and nature of profession and certainly, all of the genuine discernment people do before ever being admitted to profession. It was offensive to anyone with a vocation to consecrated life. It was offensive to anyone charged with the ministries of discernment and formation. Moreover, it was offensive to the whole church which believes that God calls people --- recognizably and for God's own purposes --- to true vocations and that the church (hierarchy, representatives, and other leadership) must attend to these calls as seriously as God means them to. We have come a long way from the early days of Canon 603 and reflection on the vocation leaves us with no reason to treat it as a relatively insignificant or otherwise meaningless catch-all. We recognize the vocation is relatively rare, but perhaps too, that it is more meaningful for that very reason. In particular, this means that those in authority must not encourage, much less yield to the temptation to use C 603 as a stopgap means to profession simply because other vocational avenues are not open to a candidate.