Why Should a Diocese Write the Guidelines?

[[ Hi Sister Laurel, why couldn't you just write the guidelines for a diocese?]]

Important question, Thank you! To a certain extent, what I provided in the earlier post are the guidelines I might provide for any diocese. They focus on the essential or defining elements of c 603 and so too, on the elements any Rule lived in the universal Church under c 603 should address. They are, I think, the minimum guidelines anyone considering profession under c 603 should be able to speak to and write about based on their lived experience. I believe any diocese writing guidelines should include these and also fill in the subsections I merely alluded to in the article. But a diocese is a local church within a communion of churches, a living reality with its own history, needs, character, qualities, leadership, and so forth. These may call for guidelines I have never thought of and for that reason, the diocese itself needs to create at least some of the guidelines for a c 603 vocation lived in this local church.

This is one aspect of having someone petitioning to be professed and eventually consecrated in an ecclesial vocation. They are seeking to be professed within the universal Church, yes, and they are also seeking to live this vocation within and on behalf of the diocesan (and often a parish) faith community itself. The stability associated with monastic life (specifically Benedictine life) is duplicated in this particular way. (Hence, if a diocesan hermit wants to move to another diocese and remain a diocesan hermit, the new bishop must agree to accept her profession and consecration.) Though I can see the need for and say something to a candidate about dealing with this specific form of stability in her Rule, I simply don't have a sense of the history or character of a local church other than my own to do more than this.  So, while I might be able to suggest ways a candidate can think and pray about making the ecclesiality of her vocation clear in her Rule, the actual quality of that ecclesiality in the local church is not something I can speak to nearly so well as the diocesan personnel also working with the candidate, and, one hopes, as the candidate herself once she becomes fully sensitized to this.

The other reason I believe a diocese needs to formulate guidelines (and this includes working in consultation with someone living a c 603 life or, perhaps, with staff from another diocese that has professed and consecrated c 603 hermits successfully) is what I have mentioned before: the discernment and formation process is meant to be educative for everyone involved --- though in different ways. Often we write to learn. Paradoxically, often we write to truly listen as well.

Follow-up on Dioceses and Guidelines

[[ Dear Sister, I liked the piece on Dioceses and Guidelines, particularly because you indicated mistakes made by both the diocese and by hermit candidates. You gave me the sense that moving from guidelines to a livable Rule took a lot of dialogue between the candidate and diocesan personnel. Is that common? Do dioceses balk at providing this kind of attention? How frequent should such conversations be? And who should take part? I'm concerned because in my diocese we only have a single person in the vocations office (not counting the secretary) and I wonder if he could create the kind of guidelines you are talking about. 

Beyond that, I wonder if he would have the time to meet with a candidate very often as part of ongoing discernment and formation. Hermits are not a big part of his job; priests (or baby priests) are! [I think the reference here is to seminarians. s.l.o'n] I can see how the process is supposed to lead to mutual education as well as discernment and formation of/for the candidate. Are dioceses usually open to this kind of learning? Aren't vocations people supposed to understand the various vocations?? How about candidates? Are they open to such an intense process? If I gave your article to my diocese would they be able to fill in the guidelines from the four main points you drew? And if they could not do that, would you be willing to help them?]]

WOW! Lots of very good questions!! Thank you! Yes, the process I envisioned in the last post and more generally, in the process of discernment and formation I have already described before, is meant to involve a lot of conversation and mutual education. One of the difficulties with c 603 is that it likely envisioned candidates with a history of religious life working with other religious who are all experienced with living a Rule and community constitutions and such. While it is unlikely that any of these folks would have ever written a Rule, they would have a strong sense of the importance of drawing from experience and would be able to recognize or distinguish promising from unsuitable candidates at little more than a glance. At the same time, they would be familiar with the need to give someone a really good shot at a fruitful process of discernment, growth, and maturation in eremitical life, understanding that such a process can bear fruit even if the candidate does not have or fails to persevere in a c 603 vocation. Finally, they would be pretty comfortable with the way the Holy Spirit tends to surprise us with a God who comes to us in the unexpected and even the unacceptable place!! But generally speaking, our diocesan offices are not staffed in this way today.

This means that most dioceses do not understand c 603 vocations (or eremitical vocations more generally) and may not be clear how to work with them. They may hold the same kinds of stereotypes and biases re hermits and hermit life prevalent in the general population. But in my experience, diocesan staff want to learn what they can, especially about vocations they have little experience with. When I was waiting for the bishop's acceptance of my petition, we met and talked and he said at the end of the conversation, [[Well, now I have a lot to learn!!]] It was a very promising statement and I have been grateful in all of these years since that he was open to learning! Before this I worked with a Sister serving in vocations and as Vicar for Religious. She came to my hermitage regularly and we talked. She also took a road trip with (I think) the Chancellor of the Diocese to meet with the Prior of the Camaldolese monks at New Camaldoli in Big Sur about what they looked for (and what she should look for) in a healthy hermit. That meant a several-hour ride down the CA coast, and very likely, an overnight stay as well as an equally long drive home!! I am still impressed by the care this indicated.

Sister Fiacra, OCSO, Glencairn

In the handful of dioceses and candidates I have worked with, there have been varying degrees of eagerness to work with the process, but my sense is still that these people want to do the best they can for candidates for c 603 profession and consecration. Yes, vocation personnel should have a working knowledge of the vocations they work with (or may work with !) but remember that most dioceses do not have c 603 hermits and of those that do, Vicars for Religious coming into office after the hermit has been consecrated may never even have met her! They certainly don't call her for advice or information without setting this up ahead of time! We want Vicars for Religious or Vocation directors to gain their knowledge of this vocation from conversations with real hermits who live the life and can speak to what it looks like from within the vocation itself. One way of securing this kind of education is with a process like the one I have discussed in the past that uses a c 603 hermit to mentor the candidate in her process of writing a Rule. In such an arrangement, everyone learns!! Not just the candidate!!

Some candidates are very focused on this process and give it their time, energy, prayer, study, and reflection. When this is the case, working with them is a complete joy, and ordinarily I have found their dioceses enthusiastic and very cooperative as well. Occasionally, someone is less enthusiastic or careful about the nature and quality of the vocation in front of them. You asked about frequency of meetings so let me address that here. There are a couple of different ways to do this but here is my preference: 1) as mentor I work with the person @ once a month and we talk about how they are doing with the life, the elements of the canon, the process of writing a liveable Rule, etc. 2) When the person has made progress on a section of the Rule, a meeting is scheduled with the diocesan team so they can get to know the person better and hear how these last several months have gone. This is a chance to see how the person is growing, how a Rule develops over time, and the ways the candidate lives the guidelines and understands (or is coming to understand) the critical dimensions of this ecclesial vocation.

Ideally, the Rule and how it is coming along as one transitions from living guidelines to composing a vision of how one is called to embody c 603, is what drives the meetings. Some candidates will set up such meetings for themselves and the diocesan representatives and apprise them of their progress; I think this is by far preferable since it accents a candidate's initiative and confidence; it also allows her to develop relationships that may have lasting value within her diocese. The team might be composed of the Vicar for Religious, Director of Vocations, and perhaps a canonist along with a c 603 mentor. Meanwhile, in such a process, the diocesan team can contact me anytime with questions or concerns or with a request for an evaluation of how the process is coming along, and I will do the same with my own questions or concerns!! The process is not meant to be onerous for diocesan personnel or for anyone else for that matter. It is meant to be authentically discerning and formative. As noted above, in such a process everyone is educated.

If you would like a copy of the last article (and this one as well), please email me. If your diocese wants to talk about it for any reason, I am happy to do that. We can talk about that more down the line if there is a need.

Should Dioceses Supply Guidelines for the c 603 Hermit?

One of the questions that comes up in regard to Dioceses and the Hermit's Rule of Life is whether it is appropriate for the Bishop to write the hermit's Rule and simply require she live accordingly. In the past I have argued that it is inappropriate, and I have put forth reflections on c 603 vocations and the importance for both discernment and formation that the hermit write her own Rule. Also, of course, this respects the unique way the Holy Spirit works in each hermit's life and assists her to be truly attentive to that. But the idea of the diocese supplying guidelines on living eremitical life in this diocese that one lives prior to writing a truly liveable Rule, and that will also be subsequently embodied in some way in that Rule is a really good one and one I have written about only a couple of times perhaps a decade ago or so. It's time to pull that topic up once again, partly because it belongs to my larger project on the discernment and formation of diocesan hermits, and partly because both hermits and dioceses need to understand the appropriateness, nature, and place of such guidelines as they move forward with processes of discernment and formation.

Quite often I hear stories about dioceses that tend to expect a hermit to go off and write a liveable Rule in a few weeks. They may leave this single concrete requirement of the canon to the last on a "to do" list while considering it the easiest part of the canon to fulfill. They will sometimes do this saying something like, [[There, now all we need is your Rule of Life!! Just go off and write that and we will be all set!]] But such an approach misunderstands the nature of a Rule and the difficulty of writing one, especially a liveable one or one that belongs integrally to the diocese's own discernment and formation processes with a c 603 hermit-to-be! Other times, dioceses go the opposite direction and write the hermit's Rule for her, although my sense is this is a much rarer problem. I addressed all of this in 2012, Should a Bishop Write the Hermit's Rule?

Failures by Diocese and Hermit:

Bearing that article in mind, what happens when either a diocese refuses to treat what they provide as true guidelines or the hermit decides s/he knows too much about eremitical life to accept such guidelines -- the two entirely antithetical possibilities? The basic answer to both questions is that strong and authentic ecclesial vocations will be lost, immature and slavish ones incapable of mature obedience will be established, and the Church's understanding of c 603 and its vocations will not grow as these need to -- meaning further solitary eremitical vocations will not be admitted to profession or even to mutual discernment processes. If the bishop or other diocesan personnel write the hermit's Rule for her, they are failing to discern this vocation. Likewise, they are failing to listen to the Holy Spirit and the way she is working in the contemporary church. If, on the other hand, the hermit acts as though she knows it all already and refuses to at least prayerfully consider the vision of the life the Diocese has provided as preparation for a meeting to discuss what works and what does not and why, she is simply demonstrating a lack of calling to an ecclesial vocation and possibly her unreadiness for vows of obedience or religious poverty.

A set of guidelines is important for the diocese to provide for all candidates. Not only will this assist the hermit in writing an adequate Rule of life based on lived experience, but every candidate will have the same starting point and the adaptation they each make will be able to be assessed more easily in terms of the Holy Spirit, contemporary eremitical life, and the healthiness of the individual hermit's spirituality. Still, it is critical the Diocese regards these as guidelines the hermit herself will flesh out (or prune as she truly feels called to) over time. The diocese might say, your Rule should cover religious poverty, but not spell out what that must look like in a particular hermit's life. At the same time, it is critical the hermit uses these guidelines in considering her Rule of Life, and that she tries to embody them in some real way in whatever Rule she eventually writes. (Thus, to continue the example, a hermit will take what is in the guidelines re religious poverty, and spell out the nature of that poverty and how she personally lives this out before profession and, after profession, how she will live it in law under c 603.)

What Should Such Guidelines Include?

So what should such guidelines include? It seems to me that these need to spell out the elements any liveable Rule must address. These include, 1) the requirement of a brief history and discussion of the place of eremitical life in the life of the Church. (Here, because of the way she recounts this story, is where the candidate begins to formulate the vision of eremitical life she intends to live in the 21st century as a piece of living history!) 2) The central elements of c 603 and the Evangelical Counsels; in dealing with this guideline, the candidate must be able to spell out how she understands each of these, why she understands them as she does, and how she lives them out in the present. 3) The importance of the public and especially the ecclesial nature of the vocation. Here the candidate will need to address her place in both the universal and the local Church, including her sacramental life, any limited ministry she needs to undertake, and the degree and nature of contact she will have with the parish community. 4) Relationships with the Bishop, delegate, and spiritual director. Here the candidate or hermit needs to spell out how she understands herself to be related to and participate in the Church's ministry of authority; she would include the role of a delegate (if she has one), frequency of meetings with the Bishop (once or twice a year is typical but not carved in stone), spiritual direction, and the way she regards both c 603 and her own Rule of Life.

Such guidelines will have subsections that spell out expectations and, for the hermit's part, the nuts and bolts of each larger section. For instance, in section #2, the hermit will discuss finances, living poverty, provision for health insurance, living space, work and how this meets her needs for stricter separation from the world, religious poverty, the silence of solitude, penitential life,  persevering prayer, and so forth. Also included, for example, will be use of social media, to what extent this is allowed and for what legitimate purposes, etc. This list is not exhaustive, but suggestive of some of what guidelines might list and what any good and liveable Rule must contain.

What if the Diocese and Hermit Cannot Agree?

If the diocese and the hermit find themselves far apart on this or on any element of the guidelines, these can be worked out in a series of conversations over time as both parties come to know the nature and quality of the vocation in front of them, and the hermit/candidate writes this or that draft or draft portion of a liveable Rule. The point is that the diocese provides guidelines of what she requires a hermit life to reflect along with what a sufficient Rule will include, and the hermit tries to accommodate all of these elements in a mature way as she explores the nature of an ecclesial vocation as she personally is called to live it!! As the process of discernment and formation moves forward, both parties will learn from the other, flexibility will increase, trust between the candidate and diocesan staff will grow, as will the sense either that this vocation is truly of the Holy Spirit, or it is not. 

Eventually, either the Hermit's Rule will be granted a Bishop's Decree of Approval and the guidelines will have done their job and be left behind for the more adequate and personal Rule of Life, or the candidate will be unable to write a liveable Rule that both meets the requirements of both the universal and the local Church and is true to the way God is calling her, and she will cease to be a candidate for c 603 profession and consecration -- at least for the time being!! So long as both parties have truly listened to one another and the Holy Spirit in this process and grown in their understanding of contemporary eremitical life under c 603, it can be considered successful.