Once Again on Bishop Remi de Roo and the Origins of C 603

[[ Dear Sister, were the original hermits under Bp Remi de Roo unhappy with life in their monasteries? Were they disgruntled because of Vatican II in some way? Were they fighting against their superiors? There's a story being posted by another hermit claiming Bp de Roo was a dissenting Bp and was unhappy with Vatican II, and the group of women hermits that came under him were pushing him to lobby for them to become hermits when their superiors didn't want for them to become hermits. The story continues that they wanted to force the church to give them prestige and status of some kind and got Bishop de Roo to lobby for that under canon law. I read your version of the story and wondered if maybe you had put a good spin on things because you liked Bp de Roo. Do hermits really want status and prestige and to be respected?]]

The way I have told the story in the past is the way I understand it to have taken place. Monks (please note), long in solemn vows, found themselves called to greater silence and solitude than their monastic life allowed, and their proper law (i.e., the law proper to a specific Order or monastery) did not allow them to live as hermits. If they wanted to do that, they had to leave their vows, be secularized, find an appropriate living situation, and embrace eremitic life outside their monasteries. No one was disgruntled; no one was contending with his superior. No one wanted to leave his vows or monastic life. However, they had discovered a divine call to eremitical solitude after long years of disciplined lives of prayer in the monastery and desired to follow that call. (Remember that eremitic life was often considered the goal or height of monastic life.) 

Unfortunately, because the proper law of their monasteries had no provision for this, they either had to dismiss what they felt was a divine call or leave their monastery and embrace eremitic life outside it. But Canon law (universal law)  had no provision either! (This is decades before C 603.) Thus, they moved from the relative security of the monastery and their long commitment to God in that life to lives as hermits in the larger world in order to pursue the even greater solitude God called them to.

In what I consider risky acts of real faith, courage, and sacrifice, these men sought the dispensation of their solemn vows** and release from the consecrated state from the Vatican; trusting God alone, they left their monasteries -- their homes for decades in some cases -- and began living as hermits. Eventually (@1965), about a dozen such men came together under Bishop Remi de Roo as their Bishop Protector and set up (or joined) a laura (colony of hermits) in British Columbia. This was no quest for status or prestige. It was an extension and even an intensification of their monastic vocation to seek God! Because of his experience with these men, Bishop de Roo found eremitical life edifying (i.e., capable of building up the church) and a gift from God; for that reason, he made an intervention at Vatican Council II seeking to have the eremitical life recognized as a state of perfection. (We now use the terms state of consecrated life or consecrated state.) He outlined about eight or ten reasons the Church should recognize eremitic life in this way. 

Nothing happened at VII itself, but the council made the reform of the current Code of Canon Law necessary, and work began on that. When the Revised Code was published or promulgated in October of 1983 (almost 20 years later), the Church Fathers had included c 603 dedicated to the solitary eremitical life. Even later, CICLSAL, the Congregation for Institutes of Consecrated Life and Societies of Apostolic Life (now Dicastery, DICLSAL), allowed for solitary hermits to join together in lauras, though these were not to rise to the level of a juridical community. (There are other limitations on these lauras or lavras, many of which were developed by the Bishops of Spain for hermits there. For instance, a lavra could not have more than three c 603 hermits.)

I have written about the Church recognizing the vocation and holding it in regard. In doing so, neither I nor anyone knowledgeable about the situation that I am aware of has suggested that hermits themselves desired, much less lobbied for, prestige or status (beyond desiring standing (status) in canon law appropriate to an ecclesial vocation!), nor that they sought to "force" the Church into anything. Should hermits be respected? Of course, just as we respect any person, vocation, or the One who is their source. In any case, there is nothing wrong with wanting to be respected. It is a universal human need and one of the most fundamental ways we truly love ourselves and one another. There are outmoded ways of thinking about humility that pair it with humiliation and treat it as though it is identical with a terrible self-image and corresponding denigration of self. Genuine humility, however, is about a loving and honest self-knowledge and self-valuation, especially as this is reflected in the infinite love of God, who delights in each of us.

Bishop Remi de Roo, I believe, was the youngest bishop at Vatican II. He attended all four sessions and found his life completely turned on its head by the changes made there. Far from disagreeing with it, he was energized by it and completely on board with the movement and reform in the Church that resulted. As far as I can tell, he spent the remainder of his life trying to implement Vatican II consistently as he experienced the Holy Spirit calling him and the Church to do. (When I met him a few years ago, he was doing a presentation with my former bishop, who had also attended VII, and Massimo Faggioli, a Church historian, speaking about Vatican II and, as I recall, its continued implementation.) Despite his eventually resolved diocesan financial difficulties, he worked for justice throughout his tenure as bishop. This included efforts to accomplish both the greater involvement of the laity and the correlative decrease in clericalization in his local Church, support for the ordination of women, and the development and maintenance of a strong and sensitive relationship with the indigenous people of Canada. 

____________________________________________

** One exception to the need to seek a dispensation and the secularization experienced by most of these monks was Dom Jacques Winnandy, who, with Brother (later, Father) Lionel Pare in 1964, was allowed by his Abbey to start a laura*** of hermits. Formerly an Abbot at Clervaux (Belgium), he came to, and lived in, British Columbia as an elder of the laura until 1972, when he returned to a hermitage near his own Clervaux Abbey. He lived as a hermit there for another 25 years until about six months before his death at Clervaux Abbey. (Source of above picture: Brandt, M. Charles. "A monk of the Diaspora." The New Catholic Times: 5 Jan 2003.) 

*** A laura established today under c 603 does not and must not rise to the level of a juridical community. These hermits (in 1965) lived individually, but under an elder as part of the Hermits of St John the Baptist. Again, Bp Remi de Roo became their Bishop Protector and was edified by their lives.