Hermits giving Property to Dioceses?

[[Dear Sister, I want to become a diocesan hermit and turn over my house to the diocese. I would still continue to live here and even pay rent but after I was finished with the house, they could use it for another hermit or small retreats, etc. I read where another online hermit did that or tried to do that. Unfortunately, my own diocese seems  reluctant to accept my offer. Why would they not want to take over property in this way? It would certainly make my own detachment from material goods more complete and would be good business for the diocese as well.]]

Thanks for your questions.Although I cannot say with any certainty why your own diocese decided as they did, I can point to some elements which may have or likely did come into play. The first thing is you are NOT a diocesan hermit and may never be one. For a diocese to accept such an arrangement and then, some time later, agree to admit you to profession, they would find they are open to charges that there was an element of quid pro quo here rather than simple and honest discernment. One cannot purchase admission to profession nor barter for it nor should one ever give the appearance of having done so. This could only hurt the church in both short and long term and it would certainly cast the credibility of your own vocation and possibly the solitary eremitical vocation into doubt. I am sure you do not want people in the diocese saying that you were professed because you gifted the diocese in this way; neither would you ever want to hear, "Well, that other candidate was every bit as qualified, but she did not have any property, so they refused to profess her." I am not approving gossip but such a gift prior to your being admitted to profession and living the life for some time can give unfortunate appearances which could be disedifying to all concerned.


The situation could become even more difficult if the diocese accepted the arrange-ment and then failed to admit you to profession. What happens if you decide to move to another diocese? The house belongs to the diocese you are leaving; it cannot be sold by you, used as a source of your own upkeep in the future, etc. Beyond this, how might you feel in such a situation? How might the diocese feel or what complications could this cause for them? And even further, how might you feel if, besides failing to admit you to profession, the diocese decided at some point they had to sell the property or use it for other purposes (for instance for the hermitage of a publicly professed diocesan hermit who needs a more suitable hermitage than what she has already)?

You see, I am afraid if another Bishop came in or something serious happened and the diocese needed to sell off assets to take care of the situation, you would find yourself needing to find a new place to live. It has certainly happened to convents of nuns and so forth. With the high level of parish closings today and dioceses often strapped for money selling off lesser assets is something which is simply required. Unless you turn the property over to your diocese with strings attached, contingency clauses, conditions which assure your right to live there permanently, there is no way you could really protect yourself in such a matter. Yet, were contingency clauses added I think you would need to give up any notion of becoming a diocesan hermit because you could no longer convincingly affirm for people that the gift of  your property was not an element in your admission to vows. Again, that would be harmful to the vocation generally, to you, and to the diocese and its people.

Secondly, while there is a clear tension involved in diocesan hermits who need to care for themselves financially and also live contemplative lives of poverty in the silence of solitude, it is important that the vocation not be seen to be a sinecure where a diocese provides a place to live, etc. The hermit (and this includes the hermit candidate) really does need to be independent of the diocese in certain ways. This is good for both parties and for the vocation more generally. Dioceses certainly don't want folks showing up on their doorsteps saying, "X is living in  a house that belongs to the diocese; I want to do the same and I want to do it as a diocesan hermit!!"

A diocese is going to be very cautious in doing anything which could contribute to such a situation. Discernment needs to be as open to the Holy Spirit as possible and people need to be able to believe this is the case. Should you ever be finally or perpetually professed as a diocesan hermit, you will be able to revisit the issue of giving your property to the diocese. Still, you should know that a diocese might not want to do this even several years after perpetual profession because a hermit needs to maintain her ability to support herself. Selling her property at some point in later life may be a primary way of ensuring she has the resources to continue her independence as she moves to low income housing, a care facility, or something similar.  A diocese is not going to want to be complicit in a situation where they are somehow coerced or leveraged into feeling morally obligated to support a hermit in later life. (What they choose to do freely is a very different matter.)

Finally, I would suggest you consider that your own concern with detachment from material things needs to be resolved in other ways just as all hermits or hermit candidates do. Sometimes  it is the way we keep our possessions which tests our detachment and helps it grow. Sometimes giving stuff away is less a sign of true detachment than it is a signal that we are attached to a particular vision of ourselves, to some stereotype, to a tendency to impulsivity rather than to actual generosity, etc.

You see, it is possible that the desire to give something like this to the diocese, especially before one is established as a diocesan hermit, is linked to the sense that this is a way of really "belonging to" the diocese in a special way, or perhaps a way of gaining their gratitude for one's life and presence there, or simply to convince oneself of how generous, detached, or committed to poverty one really is. (While I do not think this is true of you, I do know of one case where I personally believed it to be true and where I was fairly convinced there was at least subconscious "bartering" going on on the would-be hermit's part. In any case this person was not yet a diocesan hermit and his offer was entirely premature.) While none of this last situation likely applies to your own situation, these are some of the reasons a diocese is unlikely to accept such a gift by someone who is discerning a vocation as a diocesan hermit.

Francis as Enacted Parable

Because of the conjunction of the Feast of St Francis and the first months of the thus-amazing papacy of his name-sake it is hard not reflect on the similarities and differences between them. At the same time I am impressed with the people who have asked me about the Pope, commented on his interviews, spoken of the changes in the Church, mentioned possibly returning to the Church, asked about the roles open to them as adults in the Church, expressed an excitement they have not felt for a long time, etc etc. What is doubly surprising to me are the number of these people who are not Catholic, who have felt entirely alienated from the Church for a variety of reasons, who rarely speak to me about religion per se or their stance regarding the Church. Then too there are the Catholics waiting to see if the Pope REALLY does anything besides "empty gestures" or "meaningless words." Because of all this and more I was thinking about Pope Francis as a parable, a living parable-in-act who is challenging the whole Church to be what the Church is commissioned by her Lord to be. With Francis' papacy we (and here I mean EVERYONE) have a new chance to enter into this huge and complicated story of the mercy of God and choose between the visions of reality we find there.

When Jesus told stories his hearers entered into them alone to meet Jesus and the God he proclaimed face to face. Sometimes they carried personal baggage into the story and, for whatever reason, left with it once again apparently untouched by the encounter except for a hardening of their hearts following an initial disorientation perhaps. Sometimes they brought similar baggage into this holy space and found that Jesus' touch healed them of their woundedness and lifted the burden they carried from their shoulders even as it offered them a yoke of a different sort altogether. They left with a renewed step and determination to journey on with this man. Some found the story they were living was one they regretted and discovered Jesus' offered them a place in a new one with a new future and the hope they thought they had lost forever. Some discovered that the cost of entering the "Kingdom" Jesus offered in his stories was simply too high, demanded too much in terms of worldly status and prestige, required too much in terms of self-honesty or humility, paid far too little in terms of power or temporal security, offered only the company of other sinners --- and other disciples of God's Christ. Some of these simply walked away but others saw the danger of these stories clearly and became implacable enemies of the man Jesus and his entire project.

Jorge Mario Bergoglio, now known to the world as Francis is another living or "enacted" parable. (He is not a Christ but a Christian; he is what we are each called to be.) He is busy telling the story of the mercy of God, of a Church which is open to sinners (in fact it is ONLY open to sinners!) and to modernity with all the messiness such an encounter will involve. He is telling his own story, that of a sinner set free by the mercy of God; it is, as he knows very well, the story of a Gospel with a preference for the poor and  a God whose love is unconditional and inescapable (though we may choose to live our lives rejecting and trying to flee from it). He tells this story with his own gestures and words; he tells it in ways which are inviting and convincing, expansive and inclusive, humble and extravagant, and which therefore open up the reality of God's Kingdom to all of those who have felt disenfranchised for any reason whatsoever. For those in positions of privilege Francis' parable-actions are not so welcome perhaps. Putting a ring on the finger of the younger son and a robe around his shoulders also meant an unwelcome change for the older son --- despite the Father's reminder that all he has is the elder Son's and he is with him always.

I remain surprised at folks who say Francis has not yet done anything substantive. In fact he has changed the horizon of all of our hopes and expectations for the institutional church; he has reminded us all that we are the ones responsible for proclaiming the Gospel with our lives. He has offered us a living parable we can engage at any time just as we engage the Word of God in the Scriptures. He has begun to signal to people that the Church can be a home, that they too can come back from their travels to "far places" and be welcomed back as men and women of genuine authority, Sons and Daughters whose place is at the head of the table not mere servants groveling for the crumbs fallen from the feasts of their "betters". He has done more to evangelize the world around us in six and a half months of ministry than many have done as "soldiers of Christ" with their raging judgments and militant attempts to condemn and proselytize the contemporary world. As a result people are talking about their faith, their hopes, their excitement and their past disappointments and yearnings as well --- and they are doing so in ways I have not heard in more than 4 decades.


Francis is not perfect (thank God!). He is not Christ. But he is Christlike and he is that in a convincing way. He is creating a sacred space much as Jesus' own parables did and people can enter into that space whenever they desire to and at any one of many entrances. Dogma and doctrine, as fascinating as they may be to systematic theologians and as truly indispensable as they are in the life of faith, do not function this way. For those denying substantive change is actually occurring look at what happened because Jesus told homely stories about weeds and wheat, prodigal sons and fathers,  lost and found coins, wedding feasts, and turning the other cheek or walking the extra mile. Look what happened because he ate with sinners, overturned tables in the Temple, called tax collectors to let him share a table with them. He was not crucified because he was doing nothing substantive but because he was overturning reality in an unimaginable way! He was crucified because he inflamed people's imaginations and unleashed long-suppressed hopes and vision. So too with Francis who has unleashed an energy I associate with the Holy Spirit. That Spirit recreated Francis and we must allow him to do the same to us so that we in turn can become Christ's Body and Blood broken and poured out for the world.

Hermits and Recluses

Dear Sister Laurel, what is the difference between a hermit and a recluse? I read the following regarding two recent professions and it seems to conflict with what you have written. Is the Bishop wrong? [[In his homily, Bishop Taylor said it is important to understand that a hermit is not the same thing as a “recluse." “You can’t just be married ‘in general;’ in marriage you are always bound to a particular person. Well, in the religious life, that’s the difference between being a hermit and being a recluse. Both separate themselves from the world to a degree, but only the hermit is bound by vows to the person of Jesus.” (See Bishop Taylor’s complete homily on page 15. ]]

Bishop Taylor's usage can be mistaken and misleading but I suspect we are in profound agreement nonetheless. I think what he is trying to speak of is the difference between a person who lives alone and may be reclusive for selfish or otherwise inadequate reasons --- inadequate that is, for a hermit, especially for a diocesan hermit --- and one who lives solitude because of love of God and others.  (I am guessing here because I have not seen the whole homily and actually could not access it.) Hermits, as I have said many times here, are not simply people who live alone, nor are they folks who are failures at living with others, are misanthropic, narcissistic, individualistic, etc. They are separated from others to the extent the silence of solitude demands they be because they love God and all that is precious to God; this is their primary relationship and witness. They allow it to be the foundation of their lives as well as the gift they live for others. Their relationship with the whole of creation is conditioned by their solitary relationship with God. It allows them to exercise a prophetic presence in the world which desperately needs lives of silence, solitude (a form of communion and relatedness) and loving commitment which are not simply rooted in roles or productivity but instead in BEING. (Together these represent what canon 603 refers to as "the silence of solitude")

David Menkhoff and Judith Weaver

Where the Bishop seems to have gotten the language wrong (and I say "seems" because, 1) newspapers don't always get things right in what they report, and 2) context makes meaning clear!), is to neglect the fact that recluses are also a legitimate form of eremitical life. As I have said here, every hermit must be open to the possibility that God is summoning or will summon them to greater and greater degrees of reclusion at some point in their eremitical lives. In the history of eremitical life two congregations have been given permission to allow recluses, the Camaldolese and the Carthusian. Even so, every diocesan hermit might find they are called to reclusion --- though providing for daily needs might be more difficult than for those living in community. It would take some organization and the cooperation of the hermit's diocese and parish to really allow for full time reclusion.

In my own writing I tend to reserve the word recluse for this form of eremitical life while I use misanthrope (or narcissists, etc) for the person who is reclusive for those less worthy reasons than a hermit's life both requires and nurtures. (I do tend to use the term "reclusive" in an almost universally negative sense however; for hermits I would speak of their tendency to solitude --- not entirely satisfactory I guess --- or to anachoresis (withdrawal for valid reasons.)) There is an overlap here in the meaning of the term recluse which makes it easy to misunderstand without sufficient context. I am sure Bishop Taylor's context makes his usage clearer than this one snippet does.

I would also disagree with the statement about vows in some ways though again we may be in essential or deeper agreement than those disagreements indicate. What I believe Bishop Taylor was getting at in this statement is that canonical eremitical life in the Church is a publicly committed form of consecrated life, and one of love centered on the person of Jesus Christ. It should also be clear that he sees it in terms of espousal or marriage. If I am correct that this was what he was saying, then I think he is profoundly correct. A publicly vowed life centered on Christ, and in fact publicly espoused to Christ, is vastly different from a reclusive life undertaken in woundedness, selfishness, and/or the absence of any real commitment. The first is the life of the silence OF solitude, the other is the life of the inner "noise" and unease of isolation.

Meanwhile, my sincerest congratulations to the two new diocesan hermits who were recently perpetually professed: Brother David Menkhoff and Sister Judith Weaver. Both were professed at the same liturgy in the hands of Bishop Anthony B Taylor on Sept 10th, 2013 in the Morris Hall Chapel, Little Rock, Arkansas. Both have lived as hermits for a significant period of time before making this commitment. Menkhoff has done so under private vows for at least 10 years, and Weaver first as a Benedictine nun (4 years or more) and later as diocesan (about 8 years). They have "begun" a great adventure --- "begun" because perpetual profession does indeed change everything even while a great deal remains exteriorly the same! I am excited for them and for their diocese and parish.

Followup Question on Dissent from Vatican II

[[Dear Sister Laurel, [in light of your earlier response on "how we get on with it" I wondered:] 

How do you feel about consci-entious dissent from Church teaching? If you affirm that right, do you affirm it also for say members of the SSPX who dissent in conscience from the teachings of Vatican 2? It's just a question that popped up in mind whilst reading your excellent response to my question. Thanks. ]]

Hi there,

A few introductory comments first. The Bishops of Germany and later those in the US noted at least two kinds of dissent, one legitimate and one not. To be legitimate these Bishops said that three conditions needed to apply: 1)  one must have striven to give positive value to the teaching and to personally make it one's own; 2) one must ask seriously whether one has the theological expertise to dissent responsibly from ecclesiastical authority; and 3) one must examine one's conscience for possible conceit, arrogance, selfishness, and other negative motives. With regard to noninfallible teaching (which means it is reformable and might actually be in error --- though the chance is not strong) the US Bishops laid down the same essential conditions but expanded the third one to include the condition that this dissent did not give scandal and the second one to specify that such dissent was not to impugn the authority of the church.

Too often folks do not take the care needed in their dissent and for that reason, while the position they hold may be held in good conscience, they actually will act imprudently and possibly in ways which are disedifying or even scandalous. Both German and American Bishops agreed that dissent can be responsible but that this does not excuse one from also conscientiously teaching the authentic teaching of the church if one is in such a ministry or office.

Beyond these two kinds of dissent these Bishops also looked at whether such dissent was public or not. They realized that sometimes one's legitimate dissent must actually be made public, that that is indeed the responsible thing to do in limited cases. My answer to your question really has to do with this public vs private distinction (though SSPX involves reformable vs irreformable teaching as well as public vs private). The rest is for background because I do not hold the position that says NO dissent is ever licit or that ALL dissent is irresponsible so the Bishops' thinking on this is important. So is Vatican II's teaching in regard to the hierarchy of truths. Since Vatican II enunciated a category of teaching which was noninfallible calling for "obsequium animi religiosum" and which itself includes a range of meanings all centered on the sincere attempt to accept the teaching, Vatican II clearly foresaw that there COULD be responsible dissent. However, the corollary is also clear here: if one dissents one must continue to try to think with the Church in this matter, and will continue to form and inform one's conscience appropriately. One may continue to dissent but in this too she will try to serve the Church and the Truth.

Your questions:

In any case,  in a situation where one honestly dissents and has made a conscience judgment on the matter, the Church's own teaching on the primacy of conscience teaches the person has the right and indeed the obligation to act in accord with this conscience judgment. (Nothing the Bishops put forward as conditions changes this in any way whatsoever except to sharpen the situation perhaps.) At the same time a person must bear the consequences of her decision and the actions that flow from it. If the dissent is private then there is very little risk of consequences being damaging (unless prudentially the person SHOULD have made the dissent public as the responsible thing to do), nor of the Church taking action in some way. However if the dissent is public then while the person is still obligated to act in good conscience, the risks of scandal and other damages are very much greater and for that reason the consequences too may have much greater or far-reaching import.

The members of SSPX can and may well be dissenting from the teaching of Vatican II in good faith. If so, they are obligated to follow their consciences. To do otherwise is SINFUL, always and everywhere. (It is always better to err in a conscience judgment and act in good faith than to simply act in bad faith and contradict one's conscience judgments.) The problem comes not from that original decision but from the multitude of weighings and examinations of conscience that have (or should have) come after this. Have they met the conditions the Bishops in Germany and the US laid out? Have they acted in ways which respect the teaching authority of the Church (namely an ecumenical council verified and validated now by six Popes) or which do not impugn that authority? I think the answers to these and many others are unclear and differ from person to person. I also think that as time goes on it is easier to fail in one's duties to the truth by failing to reassess matters (including one's own motives, openness, humility, etc).

Still, the simple answer to your question is the members of SSPX have the same obligation we all have to form, inform, discern, make a conscience judgment, and act on that judgment. In doing so they are acting in conformity with Church teaching.The corollary in cases of dissent also holds for them: they are required to continue to form and inform their consciences in such an undeniably serious matter, to discern what the values and disvalues are they must preference as time goes on, and then they must make a new judgment and act on that conscience judgment. They must continue to strive to think with the Church and thus give at least "obsequium animi religiosum" in these matters even if they cannot give an assent of faith (assuming faith is the level of assent ultimately called for), for instance. They will also need to accept the consequences of their conscience judgments --- whatever those are --- up to and including excommunication.

I hope this helps.

Homily of Pope Francis for the Feast of St Francis

HOMILY OF POPE FRANCIS

MASS ON THE FEAST OF ST FRANCIS OF ASSISI

BASILICA OF ST FRANCIS

4 OCTOBER 2013

I give you thanks, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, for you have hidden these things from the wise and understanding, and revealed them to babes” (Mt 11:25).

Peace and all good to each and every one of you! With this Franciscan greeting I thank you for being here, in this Square so full of history and faith, to pray together.

Today, I too have come, like countless other pilgrims, to give thanks to the Father for all that he wished to reveal to one of the “little ones” mentioned in today’s Gospel: Francis, the son of a wealthy merchant of Assisi. His encounter with Jesus led him to strip himself of an easy and carefree life in order to espouse “Lady Poverty” and to live as a true son of our heavenly Father. This decision of Saint Francis was a radical way of imitating Christ: he clothed himself anew, putting on Christ, who, though he was rich, became poor in order to make us rich by his poverty (cf. 2 Cor 8:9). In all of Francis’ life, love for the poor and the imitation of Christ in his poverty were inseparably united, like the two sides of a coin.

What does Saint Francis’s witness tell us today? What does he have to say to us, not merely with words – that is easy enough – but by his life?

1. His first and most essential witness is this: that being a Christian means having a living relationship with the person of Jesus; it means putting on Christ, being conformed to him.

Where did Francis’s journey to Christ begin? It began with the gaze of the crucified Jesus. With letting Jesus look at us at the very moment that he gives his life for us and draws us to himself. Francis experienced this in a special way in the Church of San Damiano, as he prayed before the cross which I too will have an opportunity to venerate. On that cross, Jesus is depicted not as dead, but alive! Blood is flowing from his wounded hands, feet and side, but that blood speaks of life. Jesus’ eyes are not closed but open, wide open: he looks at us in a way that touches our hearts. The cross does not speak to us about defeat and failure; paradoxically, it speaks to us about a death which is life, a death which gives life, for it speaks to us of love, the love of God incarnate, a love which does not die, but triumphs over evil and death. When we let the crucified Jesus gaze upon us, we are re-created, we become “a new creation”. Everything else starts with this: the experience of transforming grace, the experience of being loved for no merits of our own, in spite of our being sinners. That is why Saint Francis could say with Saint Paul: “Far be it for me to glory except in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ” (Gal 6:14).

We turn to you, Francis, and we ask you: Teach us to remain before the cross, to let the crucified Christ gaze upon us, to let ourselves be forgiven, and recreated by his love.

2. In today’s Gospel we heard these words: “Come to me, all who labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you and learn from me, for I am gentle and lowly in heart” (Mt 11:28-29).

This is the second witness that Francis gives us: that everyone who follows Christ receives true peace, the peace that Christ alone can give, a peace which the world cannot give. Many people, when they think of Saint Francis, think of peace; very few people however go deeper. What is the peace which Francis received, experienced and lived, and which he passes on to us? It is the peace of Christ, which is born of the greatest love of all, the love of the cross. It is the peace which the Risen Jesus gave to his disciples when he stood in their midst and said: “Peace be with you!”, and in saying this, he showed them his wounded hands and his pierced side (cf. Jn 20:19-20).

Franciscan peace is not something saccharine. Hardly! That is not the real Saint Francis! Nor is it a kind of pantheistic harmony with forces of the cosmos… That is not Franciscan either; it is a notion some people have invented! The peace of Saint Francis is the peace of Christ, and it is found by those who “take up” their “yoke”, namely, Christ’s commandment: Love one another as I have loved you (cf. Jn 13:34; 15:12). This yoke cannot be borne with arrogance, presumption or pride, but only with meekness and humbleness of heart.

We turn to you, Francis, and we ask you: Teach us to be “instruments of peace”, of that peace which has its source in God, the peace which Jesus has brought us.

3. “Praised may you be, Most High, All-powerful God, good Lord… by all your creatures (FF, 1820). This is the beginning of Saint Francis’s Canticle. Love for all creation, for its harmony. Saint Francis of Assisi bears witness to the need to respect all that God has created, and that men and women are called to safeguard and protect, but above all he bears witness to respect and love for every human being. God created the world to be a place where harmony and peace can flourish. Harmony and peace! Francis was a man of harmony and peace. From this City of Peace, I repeat with all the strength and the meekness of love: Let us respect creation, let us not be instruments of destruction! Let us respect each human being. May there be an end to armed conflicts which cover the earth with blood; may the clash of arms be silenced; and everywhere may hatred yield to love, injury to pardon, and discord to unity. Let us listen to the cry of all those who are weeping, who are suffering and who are dying because of violence, terrorism or war, in the Holy Land, so dear to Saint Francis, in Syria, throughout the Middle East and everywhere in the world.

We turn to you, Francis, and we ask you: Obtain for us God’s gift of harmony and peace in this our world!

Finally, I cannot forget the fact that today Italy celebrates Saint Francis as her patron saint. The traditional offering of oil for the votive lamp, which this year is given by the Region of Umbria, is an expression of this. Let us pray for Italy, that everyone will always work for the common good, and look more to what unites us, rather than what divides us.

I make my own the prayer of Saint Francis for Assisi, for Italy and for the world: “I pray to you, Lord Jesus Christ, Father of mercies: Do not look upon our ingratitude, but always keep in mind the surpassing goodness which you have shown to this City. Grant that it may always be the home of men and women who know you in truth and who glorify your most holy and glorious name, now and for all ages. Amen.” (The Mirror of Perfection, 124: FF, 1824).

Happy Feast of St Francis!!

The above picture was sent to me by a friend, a Franciscan Sister I have known since @1985 when she served as Director of Vocations (or Vicar for Religious) for the Diocese of Oakland. She sent it in celebration of today's Feast of St Francis of Assisi. I think it is truly wonderful and hope you also enjoy it.

Recently I have been reading about St Francis' spirituality and theology. There is a fine series on the Franciscan Heritage available on a number of diverse aspects of Francis' theology and, in case you have not read it, I highly recommend Sister Illia Delio's, The Humility of God. It is theology that is tremendously exciting and very readable too. There are also a number of fine books out by and about Francis, the new Bishop of Rome. One of these is Untying the Knots. Another is a book of homilies and addresses by Francis from before his election to the papacy entitled Encountering Christ.  

In the meantime, all good wishes for a wonderful feast of St Francis. I think we can all agree that in the first months of this new papacy the significance of St Francis for the Church has been renewed for us all, Franciscans and non-Franciscans alike. Let his compassion, joy, and poverty guide us as we allow ourselves to be remade and we reform the Church in the image of the risen Christ Crucified.

How Do We "Get on with it?"

[[Dear Sister, I quite enjoyed your post on Vatican II. I was wondering though as to how we "get on with it" when the documents are not only ambiguous but purposefully written that way. As such, we need a hermeneutic in order to interpret them. . . .For my part, a hermeneutic of continuity with the previous 1960 years of Catholic theology, piety and practice is the only way to understand the Council. Otherwise it becomes an oddity. 

You said that no serious theologian saw a rupture. This might be the case, but in the everyday life of the Church the missive "that's so pre-Vatican II" is repeated almost in a knee jerk manner. In my graduate studies that term was often bandied about.  So when you say "get on with it", what do you mean? Do you mean the restoration of the  pride of place of both Latin and Gregorian chant in the liturgy that the Council document on the liturgy asked for? It seems that people who say this don't mean all of the Council but only the parts they like (that includes conservatives).  I would welcome your thoughts on how we "get on with it" when the Council documents propose no new dogma (as they say quite clearly) but only a matter of approach (which is 50 years old). They are also ambiguous. You can read almost anything into them. Ambiguous documents result in ambiguous implementation which we have clearly seen in the last 50 years. As a person born long after the Council I would like to put this Council in a much broader context of Church history. ]]

Pre and Post Vatican II Churches?

Thanks for your questions. When I say "get on with it" I mean what I heard Francis say: Vatican II and the way it approaches reality in light of the Gospel of an unconditionally merciful God is irreversible. Proclaim and live that out in all the ways Vatican II set forth and perhaps too, ways Vatican II did not imagine or foresee.  Proclaim the Gospel of God's unconditional love and mercy in word and deed. That is the openness and mission we are called to as Christ's own Church. Be that! Thus we must ask ourselves what Vatican II sought to achieve, what were its overarching values and aims, what did it teach us about ourselves and the Church as such? What did it say about the Church in the modern world and the way in which the Church was to approach this world? While Benedict XVI taught rightly that there was only one Church, which was both pre and post Vatican II, if his comments are taken as suggesting there was nothing significantly new with regard to Vatican II or that one cannot rightly distinguish between the counter-reformational incarnation of that church and the post Vatican II incarnation, those comments are being significantly misunderstood. In the case of those asserting what has come to be called "a hermeneutic of continuity" it will be by those who refuse to hear these comments in its various and rich contexts.

Remember that the entire Council was meant to chart a course by which the Church could move away from the counter reformation, anti-modern world stance or perspective which had led to a fortress mentality in every dimension of her life. It was meant to achieve a move away from a highly centralized Church of ecclesiastical princes and effectively disenfranchised peasants which reflected the world and rule of Constantine more than it reflected Christ or the Kingdom of God --- even as it also forgot it was NOT the Kingdom of God but its servant. This was connected with a tendency to harshly assert truth in terms of anathemas, to approach moral theology in terms of manuals which were sin-oriented rather than focused on PERSONS and God's love for them, or in terms of their need for a grace always given gratuitously. It was linked to a notion of a hierarchy of vocations which failed to make clear (or even appreciate) the universal call to holiness, to clericalism, and to a liturgy which was in the main so far from being "the work of the People" as to be a scandalous parody of that term. It was a Church which lived from the catechism rather than the Scriptures and which often forbade or condoned and encouraged those in authority to forbid the laity to read the Bible. It was a Church which was defensive, condemnatory, and even frightened of change or modernity while it treated Divine truth as a possession delimited in dogma rather than as an illimitable gift God bestowed in the Spirit; it forgot that this truth was one which the Church was called not only to discover afresh day by day and submit to humbly, but which it was entrusted to mediate freely to everyone as the Master's steward.

The Significance and Power of "Approach":

Yes, as you say, the Council demanded a new approach. But this is no small matter any more than those symbolic gestures of Francis (bowing and asking for our prayers before blessing us as he first stepped out on the loggia, climbing aboard the bus with the rest of the cardinals, eating daily with everyday people and priests, renouncing the papal palace, making his own phone calls, arranging his own interviews, etc etc) have been small matters in his approach to the papacy. Speaking in terms of something as "only a matter of approach" is similar to saying it is "just a matter of semantics" or "only a symbol." It clearly indicates one has not adequately appreciated the power or significance of these things. If I were to ask you what is most powerful and memorable about Francis' papacy thus far I would bet you would answer in terms of his approach to this office. Further, his approach is consistent with his message and this too was true of Vatican II.

 John XXIII spoke clearly of the medicine of mercy and desired a return to the sources (Scripture and the Church Fathers) of our faith. He was clear that the Church was to be OPEN to the modern world, rooted and trusting in the power of God and his Gospel, and reform itself in continuity with the early Church to be a community of true disciples, a Pilgrim People of God rather than an entrenched triumphalistic and self-satisfied island in the middle of a yearning, needy world. John desired a catholicity which meant a Church which served as leaven within  the dough (the more Greek sense of the term katholicos) instead of a huge circle which still excluded some --- the more Latin meaning of the term "universalis". In short, he desired a listening and loving Church which could engage the contemporary world as ecclesia docens et discens (a teaching AND learning church) and in every way proclaim the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Unfortunately, this shift in mindsets was resisted by some (a minority) in the hierarchy who in some cases were the same men who set the draft schemas for the Council which were generally rejected by the Bishops as a whole. This resistance hardened in some ways and this is a significant reason there are ambiguities in the documents.

Thus the struggle to implement this new pastoral "approach" did lead to tensions and ambiguity in the documents themselves. Thus too however, the documents themselves point immediately to their originating linguistic, historical, and theological contexts for keys to interpreting them.  And this is tremendously significant for it points to the fact that the documents cannot be read or understood without reference to the very Council or conciliar event in which they were composed. They cannot be taken out of that context and read fundamentalistically without due regard to the history and struggle (or the overarching Spirit!!) which created them, the language they used, the ways in which they were redacted, the schemas which were rejected and which they replaced, nor even without regard to one another. (In some cases one document will change the way we read another.) They are indeed unlike the documents produced by prior councils in language and tone and they differ significantly from former Councils' preponderance of dogmatic formulas and lists of anathema but I would argue their tensions and ambiguity do not allow us to read anything and everything into them. Instead it demands we read them historically and critically just as we do any significant ecclesiastical documents --- not least as we do with the Sacred Scriptures themselves.

Not a Hermeneutics of Continuity or Discontinuity but one of Reform:

Your own either/or approach to reading these documents, it seems to me, is precisely what Francis was setting aside in his interview. What Benedict XVI himself spoke of as well as these two rather divisive alternatives was a hermeneutic of reform. It is a hermeneutic which is continuous with the deepest and truest impulses and Tradition of the Church but which allows for the change Vatican II called for in so many ways and which the Gospel will always make necessary and empower. It is a hermeneutic which calls the Church to "ressourcement" (return to the sources) and "aggiornamento" (updating in dialogue with the contemporary world) at the same time, just as the Council did. This polarity of Gospel (or sources) and contemporary situation is always what draws the Church forward allowing both newness and faithfulness to the past.

With regard to the accusation that some don't want "the whole Council" I would argue that is not precisely true. Often what some seem to want when they focus on the matters your mentioned is the Council of the minority bent on the post-Tridentine status quo, and what others want is the Council of the majority which desired real reform --- the Reform Council John called for. Some try to diminish the authority of the Council by calling it "merely pastoral" and decrying the fact that it created no new dogmas and was not framed in dogmatic terms. Others recognize that pastoral impulses and needs are more demanding than any dogmatic statement, but also that Vatican II is the highest level of teaching in the Church. PERIOD. One cannot want or work for both of these approaches at the same time.

In the issue you raise re Gregorian Chant and Latin, the simple fact is the Council's emphasis on full, active, and conscious participation of the entire People of God in the liturgy trumps continued use of Latin by clerics and choirs any day. The Council called for parts of the liturgy in the vernacular and quickly found that translation of the whole liturgy into the vernacular was preferable precisely because of the Council's higher aim of full and conscious participation by the WHOLE People of God as well as because of its stress on the universal call to holiness and a rejection of clericalism. Not only is it the case that very few in the Church ever sang Gregorian chant and were made auditors at Mass through its exclusive usage by choirs and clerics, but merely reading the liturgy from a page of translation (for those who acually did so!), much less reciting Latin syllables (not words and certainly not thoughts!) in a rushed, mush-mouth approach (which is what some clergy certainly did) is NOT full, active, and conscious participation in it.

The main point however, is that Vatican II, which is authoritative Church teaching, led in certain directions and created certain overarching trajectories which are identifiable and must guide our reform of the Church and our ministry in and to the world. The Church Fathers did not always foresee these, nor could they have. Pursuing the aims and values of the Council may well have unintended consequences which no one truly or completely anticipated. Liturgy in the vernacular and the demand for full, active, and conscious participation led further than people supposed they might. Calling for the renewal of religious life in light of the charism and spirit of the institute's founders along with the mandate to simplify habits was another area in which this occurred. The brakes which the minority tried to put on some things were insufficient to stop the momentum of the Spirit or the larger aims of the Council. Were mistakes made and missteps taken in implementing Vatican II? Undoubtedly. But when Francis speaks of desiring a Church that allows for accidents rather than one which is closed in on itself and grows sick because of this, this is one of the risks he is speaking of.

Getting on With it:

 So how, indeed, do we get on with it? In fact, Vatican II gave us a good deal to implement. Francis has mentioned several of them and also pointed to a couple we have gotten no where at all on yet. We begin, however, with a clear admission to ourselves and others that the Church is ALWAYS in need of reform, and the post-Tridentine Church undoubtedly had strayed far from its evangelical and spiritual roots. We reject the Church of Constantine and accept that this is to be the Church of Christ, not a Church of worldly power and prestige, but a Church living from and mediating the love and mercy of God to all, a humble Church which spends herself for others and only lives from the continually renewing Spirit of God. We accept in a whole-hearted way that Vatican II is the teaching of the Church, not grudgingly, not looking in small-minded ways for tensions and ambiguities which are of relatively less import than the Council's surpassing aims and trajectories and that can become excuses for refusing, even subtly, to accept the Council. We accept as our own call to mission that "openness to modernity is our obligation" as Francis has affirmed --- not to proselytize but to evangelize!!

For most in the Church this will require renewing our sense of what Vatican II was, what it said and why. It will require renewed study of the documents from a historical and critical perspective. There will be a need for lectures and workshops and study sessions in parishes. It will mean reading up on the work being done today by ecclesiologists like O"Malley, Faggioli, Sullivan, Orsy, and Gaillardetz among others. Pastors will need to be able to provide a way for folks to share a sense of the conciliar background that has made Francis the Pope he is. During this 50th anniversary year it really is time for a fresh commitment to Vatican II --- something which will be very much harder for those disillusioned by the past years of some curial attempts to move back behind it or for those who have built their lives on resisting it whether overtly or covertly by the "ideologization" of the Liturgy, and taking refuge in a "hermeneutic of continuity" which denied VII brought ANYTHING really new. Francis has called the Church to LIVE Vatican II out, but that will assuredly also entail resources allowing folks to identify and reclaim once again the very real SPIRIT of Vatican II as a source of vision and empowerment.

At the same time we must move onto the specific elements mentioned by Francis and others. Among these, collegiality and the multiple levels of reform that requires, a non-political church with a preferential option for the poor,  meaningful roles for women in ministry and in the leadership of the Church, an end to clericalism, ecumenism as a way of living our faith, an approach to morality which is rooted in the mercy and love of God before it is anything else, and an approach to truth which sees it as a Divine gift to be discovered and celebrated WITH others rather than a weapon to be wielded against them. As, and only as we remove the beam from our own ecclesiastical eye and exorcise the demons from our own house, we will be able to minister effectively to the world. We will set aside the "culture wars" and transcend them in the Gospel we proclaim with integrity in season and out. Some will listen, others will not, but we will be a Pilgrim People which trusts that God's mercy is stronger even than death and that the love of God is the ONLY thing which has ever overcome sin and lead to true reconciliation. Idealistic? You better believe it! Demanding? More so than any form of "battle" we might engage in in more typically worldly terms!

I hope this is helpful, at least as a start.

Vatican II is irreversible!!! GET ON WITH IT!!

If I had to say what it was about Francis' interview in Thinking Faith (or America) that was so stunning to me, what made it so completely overwhelming, I would point to all the individual points he made which reflected the clear and unambiguous influence of Vatican II. When I look back over my own reading of those 12,000 words I see someone stumbling upon piece after piece of the Pope's comments as though she had discovered a treasure only to find that there was another treasure further on, and yet again after that. It took me two days to read the entire interview and when I finished it I was both energized and exhausted with joy and gratitude and hope.

But eventually I would need to point to one piece of the interview which was stupefying to me (it transcends and unites all the other stunning moments!), namely, what Pope Francis said clearly and unambiguously about Vatican II and the whole "hermeneutics of rupture (or discontinuity) vs continuity" business. In one single sentence Francis told the entire Church that, the hermeneutics of rupture and continuity aside, (especially to the degree they are played off against one another and become dominant and divisive), Vatican II and its way of approaching reality in light of the Gospel (and vice versa) is irreversible so (he strongly implied) GET ON WITH IT!

Here is the passage with the critical sentence emphasized. [[Vatican II was a rereading of the Gospel in light of contemporary culture, " says the pope. "Vatican II produced a renewal movement that simply comes from the same Gospel. Its fruits are enormous. Just recall the liturgy. The work of liturgical reform has been a service to the people as a re-reading of the Gospel from a concrete historical situation. Yes, there are hermeneutics of continuity and discontinuity, but one thing is clear, the dynamic of reading the Gospel, actualizing its message for today --- which was typical of Vatican II --- is absolutely irreversible.]]

To a certain extent casting the story of the inter-pretation of Vatican II into that of continuity vs discon-tinuity or rupture has been a red herring since no competent theologian ever interpreted Vatican II as a rupture with the Church's Tradition. Instead they recognized that it involved reNEWing of the Church in terms of a deeper continuity --- that of the Gospel from which the Church's life stems and by which it is nourished and ordered.

Renewing the Church in terms of the Gospel did indeed make all things new, but at the same time there was a profound continuity preserved and fostered. No progressive theologian spoke of Vatican II as ONLY a rupture with Tradition, but they certainly looked carefully at that which was truly new, as well as sometimes contrary to accretions to and distortions of Tradition. Over time those alarmed with the momentum Vatican II had in parishes, dioceses, and lives everywhere stressed the continuity of Vatican II with the Tradition --- and over stressed it so that again and again what we heard was "nothing new" happened at Vatican II, or, "one cannot speak of a Spirit of Vatican II; one can only read the documents of Vatican II literally in a way which precludes any discontinuity with the Church's Tradition." Anything new was seen as a betrayal of the Tradition while Tradition came to be identified with the merely old. Newness was identified with simple novelty (neos, new in time) and Tradition with that which was incapable of genuine newness (kainotes, qualitatively new). Notes From Stillsong Hermitage: New because Eternal, Notes From Stillsong: Always Beginners.

The  deepest problem here was that when Tradition was looked at in this way proclamation of the Gospel and the implementation of Vatican II was crippled and the Gospel's  power to address and continually remake reality in a way consonant with the ever-new and eternal life of God was blocked.  However, this approach also produced unnecessary division. Catholics who desired to throw the baby out with the bathwater, so to speak, were always really relatively few in  number, but were insultingly portrayed as though they reflected the unCatholic and destructive agenda of progressive theologians; this in turn made it difficult for these professionals to speak of the work of the Holy Spirit in our world (much less in the Council) if that required or led to anything new at all.  Meanwhile, those who reacted to this cartoon version of things and who embraced the idea of continuity without ANY discontinuity were hardened in their embrace of the past (not of Tradition itself which is a living reality) as norm of all truth. Both positions are heretical; both caricature Vatican II and what was achieved (and attempted) there. Both prevent God from drawing us into the absolute future of his life where all is truly new.

It is this entire situation that Francis has addressed with his statement quoted above. Here Francis affirms the existence of the hermeneutic of continuity and discontinuity (extremists do exist on either side of the interpretative divide and too, substantive conversations over difficult points of interpretation must continue to take place) but he says very clearly that the basic reform nature of the Council was rooted in the Gospel and he clearly affirmed we need to continue to hear the Gospel in terms of the contemporary situation. This essential focus and momentum of the Council is irreversible. It is the teaching of the Church, indeed the highest teaching of the Church binding Popes and People, and we must act in light of it.

At any number of points in this interview Francis helps the Church to move beyond division, pettiness, and ideology so that the Gospel of God's mercy can be proclaimed. More, again and again he turns to the Gospel to overcome (and to demand we ourselves overcome) the division, pettiness, and ideological impulses that taint our faith and lead us to neglect the real struggles of our time. But it seems to me that it is here in his comments on Vatican II that these marching orders are most far-reaching and  are most profoundly articulated. Many people have been waiting "for the other shoe to drop" and for Francis to show us who he REALLY is --- thinking that would be a doctrinal hardliner who belonged in the CDF rather than the seat of chief shepherd. Well, in this interview I think the other shoe HAS dropped and what we have been shown is a man who is the one we have seen right along since his election as Bishop of Rome.

Already we are hearing traditionalists denying anything new is coming out of Rome these days. "What NEW tone?" says one online commentator. "A new tone? REALLY?" says another. (The more honest tradionalists are decrying Francis as a liberal traitor. Some are asking (seriously) if the Pope is Catholic or if the Church will be standing at the end of his papacy.)  On the other side of the extremist spectrum we have folks suggesting anything goes, Church dogma and sexual morality will fundamentally change or be jettisoned. In truth what Francis has done is more radical than either of these extremes for it transcends and corrects them in light of the Gospel of God in Christ. He speaks continually of the Good news of God's love and justice-making mercy, which, as I said in Religious are Prophets, MAKES ALL THINGS NEW.

But for theologians long-hampered by some of the hierarchy's resistance to the idea of anything new being introduced by Vatican II, by the effective invalidation of the term "the Spirit of Vatican II", and disheartened by apparent sustained attempts to roll VII back to Trent by folks within the highest levels of the Church, Francis' affirmation is a staggeringly clear and unambiguous commission to renew their work with the vigor of their theological youth and the shrewdness and wisdom of their current experience and age. For the rest of the Church it signals a call to revisit and reclaim the hope, enthusiasm, and promise occasioned by the Council 50 years ago while we all work towards the day VII is fully received by the Church. Vatican II and its way of approaching reality in light of the Gospel and all that demands is irreversible. We must GET ON WITH IT!

Agafia: Hermit in the Taifa (Siberia)

Occasionally one will find (or be sent) videos of hermits who have lived in very much more difficult situations than us urban hermits --- like this one. Personally, I love the way Agafia Lykov's day begins with prayer and is punctuated with song (prayer) throughout. She is a few year older than I am but I recognize the rhythm of her life in the Taifa even in my own more comfortable one. Her feet are roughly shod and then wrapped in cloth; her hands are dirty and scared from work and struggle and her face is wrinkled from weather and time, but I especially love her eyes and smile which are both full of mirth and joy. One poignant piece of her story was the way in which part of her family died within weeks of each other. Geologists came to visit at one point and three of the children came down with an infection and died. Her mother's story is even more moving (you can watch the video for that)!

Today Agafia is sure that if she went to live in the nearest city (days away and really only accessible by canoe except in Winter and by helicopter when the weather is good), she would die. Her story reminds me of the one I heard while on retreat last month, the story on which the book,  Island of the Blue Dolphin is based. After 18 years stranded and abandoned on an island off the coast of Santa Barbara an Indian woman was brought to the Old Mission. She died within two months of causes similar to those that took Agafia's siblings.

Some contemporary hermits (meaning here more than diocesan hermits) strike me as eccentric or even a little crazy. Agafia does not. She has been sheltered and her and her life is very demanding, but she is joyful, brave, generous, and above all faithful to God. At one point, laughing a little at herself and also perhaps a little pleased, she shows off and pins on a medal which she explains was given to her for kindness and faith. For me she epitomizes the kind of personal transparency solitude produces and treats as a goal. She lives the silence of solitude and will probably die one day doing so.

This is part 1 of 4. The other parts should come up as you finish each one but if not check out You Tube for Surviving in the Siberian Wildreness for 70 years.

Francis: "Religious Men and Women are Prophets . . .Prophecy may imply making waves"

There is a new interview with Pope Francis and MUCH of it is incredibly important, inspiring and needing discussion. (Actually as a whole it is incredibly significant but it is also composed of many important subpoints.) One small passage has to do with religious life explicitly and I want it post it here because it so completely comports with what the Sisters of the LCWR have been saying right along. It seems undoubted that Francis and the LCWR are on the same page here.


[[“Religious men and women are prophets,” says the pope. “They are those who have chosen a following of Jesus that imitates his life in obedience to the Father, poverty, community life and chastity. In this sense, the vows cannot end up being caricatures; otherwise, for example, community life becomes hell, and chastity becomes a way of life for unfruitful bachelors. The vow of chastity must be a vow of fruitfulness. In the church, the religious are called to be prophets in particular by demonstrating how Jesus lived on this earth, and to proclaim how the kingdom of God will be in its perfection. A religious must never give up prophecy. This does not mean opposing the hierarchical part of the church, although the prophetic function and the hierarchical structure do not coincide. I am talking about a proposal that is always positive, but it should not cause timidity. Let us think about what so many great saints, monks and religious men and women have done, from St. Anthony the Abbot onward. Being prophets may sometimes imply making waves. I do not know how to put it.... Prophecy makes noise, uproar, some say ‘a mess.’ But in reality, the charism of religious people is like yeast: prophecy announces the spirit of the Gospel.”]]

I encourage all readers to check out the interview. It can be found at: http://www.thinkingfaith.org/articles/20130919_1.pdf . It is also available on Amazon for Kindle under the title A Big Heart Open to God (it may also be available in a hard copy; I am not sure of that). The cost of the Kindle version is about $3.00.

I am hoping to write about other parts of it as soon as I have had time to digest them. Let me just say that I am more excited now than I was in the first days of Francis' papacy and more sure than ever that Vatican II and the Holy Spirit are alive and well in our Church; because of this I am also more confident that the Council will be fully received in time. There is so much in what Francis has had to say here that is surprisingly wonderful and an answer to prayers which leaves me feeling a bit overwhelmed by it all.

Francis' tone is honest, humble, transparent, and also very frank. It is not merely the way he says things, but the substance of what he believes about the universal call to holiness, about the holiness of ordinary life, the need for homilies in touch with the faith and hungers of the people, a synodal structure in church governance, the need for increased subsidiarity and his criticism of a process that has Rome as the center of  fielding denunciations for heterodoxy (which should be handled on the local level), a clarity on the role of the curia, and above all, that everything the church says or does should first of all proclaim the good news of a Merciful God in Christ --- all of this is straight out of Vatican II; it therefore is in continuity with and represents the best of the entire Catholic Tradition. All of this, in other words, reflects the heart and mind of a Jesuit who shepherds (and desires to Shepherd) a post VII Church which lives from and in light of the Gospel which makes ALL THINGS NEW (including the Church's own Tradition!).

Hermitages Again: Thomas Merton's Hermitage

Recently (02. Sept.2013) I was asked about hermitages, what features a hermitage should include, what one should think about in setting one up, and so forth. I answered the first of these questions mainly on the basis of my own experience. I thought it might be interesting to show a video of Thomas Merton's hermitage. One Buddhist hermit whose blog I read occasionally also showed this and commented that he was surprised to find the hermitage is comprised of four rooms with a dozen pans for cooking, etc.



As a postscript, I should note that much of the music accompanying this video is done by Dom Cyprian Consiglio, OSB Cam, the new Prior of the Camaldolese.

Why isn't your Vocation Selfishness Personified?

[[Dear Sr Laurel, I have long thought the hermit vocation is a selfish one. I have read blogs by so-called hermits and they seem to be completely self-centered --- I am not speaking of yours here, but if you google "hermit blogs" or "Catholic hermit" blogs you will find blogs by "hermits" whose entire focus is on how much they suffer and their own growth in holiness. It's all "me, me, me." You claim that the vocation is essentially one of love, but how do hermits really love others if they are living in solitude? You also claim that your vocation is a gift of the Holy Spirit, but isn't this just a way of excusing selfishness? Anyone can say they are doing something because of "love" but the proof of that is in the pudding, as the saying goes. How does the church figure out whether someone is saying they are called to this as a way of loving others instead of just being selfish? It seems like a really easy lie to tell yourself and your diocese.]] (Redacted to shorten email)

You know, these are terrific questions. They are really excellent because they go to the heart of the matter of discerning, choosing, and living this life well; they also reprise a position that even a few great Church Fathers have held. Sometimes it is monastics more generally that are accused of selfishness. It is all that "fuga mundi" (flee the world) stuff (which is entirely valid and laudable when understood properly) coupled with a theology of consecrated life that strongly disparaged lay and secular vocations. We, as the People of God, are still outgrowing a lot of that but have begun making serious inroads thanks to Vatican II's emphasis on the universal call to holiness. Progress here is also due to the fact that we are becoming more sensitized to the place of active ministry in our world as well as to the importance of secularity and mission. Even so, we also are coming to a greater awareness that being has priority over doing, that mission depends upon the impulse and assistance of the missionary God empowering us, and that loving others is not possible unless we have been loved ourselves. This means there will always be a place for contemplative and even eremitical vocations which witness to this foundational relationship and need.

I have seen at least some of the blogs you seem to be speaking of and there is no doubt that if one is looking for self-centeredness one can find it by googling the terms you have cited. I have written about such supposedly "eremitical" lives in the past along with posts on hermit stereotypes and misunderstandings, inadequate reasons for seeking to live an eremitical life, the counter cultural nature of the vocation --- especially in a world which is strongly individualistic and even narcissistic, as well as on the charism of the vocation which presents genuine solitude as a form of communion which represents the redemption of individualism, isolation, and alienation. Recently I read an article called " The Urban Hermit Abnormal Personality" which takes some of what you have noted and a lot of what I have written against and identified it with the "urban hermit personality" in today's society. (To be honest, it is not clear the author is actually referring to urban diocesan hermits at all in this piece. While he might well think of these as selfishness personified AND institutionalized, he may merely have been giving a colorful name to misanthropes, and walking wounded who choose to live as isolated loners.)

The problem is that some "hermits" provide grist for this author's mill and, because they are truly seeking to validate as well as excuse their own self-centeredness, they do the vocation no favors when they write about being or becoming a hermit. (N.B., validation goes beyond excusing self-centeredness and is therefore more problematical.) So how is my vocation (both my own vocation and the vocation more generally) one which is founded on love then? How can a vocation which is more about being than doing really be loving in the way we usually associate with the lives of Religious? These are the ways I would restate your question, "How do hermits really love others?" and the approaches I would like to use to begin to respond to it.

Rooted in a Necessary Selfishness:

First of all, my vocation is grounded in the love of God. God has called me to it, that call has been validated and in fact mediated to me by the Church and I trust it. This means that I trust it is not merely selfishness masquerading as something worthy, much less something Divine or sacred. For me this is a piece of things I had not really appreciated sufficiently until after perpetual eremitical profession when several concerns and sources of anxiety dropped away. It is part of the freedom I experienced and have spoken about when I described not having to worry any longer about whether I was really called to something else, or whether I should be conforming my life to the expectations and norms of the world around me --- including the world of apostolic or ministerial Religious and the church more generally. Further, God continues to call me in this way on a daily basis and my own engagement with God in prayer and everyday living attests to growth in this love.

It is this growth which points to a necessary and entirely graced "selfishness" in answering any call. I have responded to God and done so out of love for God and his People but there is no doubt that I have also found this the means to personal healing and growth in human wholeness and holiness. I continue responding to God day by day. You see, my own life was once dominated by chronic illness. I have done a lot in spite of it (education, work, ministry) but even so most of the time achievements were hard-won things and often the illness itself "won out." As a result I was once simply unable to serve in the way I felt called to serve, whether that was directly because of the illness or because of the human brokenness, limitations, and incapacity which accompanied it. More fundamentally, my illness prevented me from being the human being I felt called to be, from relating to others or loving in the ways I thought (knew) I should love; it was a dominating, sometimes all-consuming reality and it crippled me on every level. Not least it prevented me from truly loving myself, and therefore, from effectively loving anyone else in the radical way Christ calls us each to do. It is at this point that eremitical life enters the picture and becomes important.

The first time I read canon 603 I realized that if this really pointed to a vital form of Christian life it could well provide the context for a life in which illness was deprived of its power to disrupt, dominate, and even define me. In other words it could provide a context in which every aspect of my life could make sense and thus become fruitful in some yet-to-be-defined sense. There is a selfishness involved here, a fundamental concern with the sense of one's own life, yes; it is a necessary form of selfishness which requires we love ourselves (and I mean truly love ourselves!!) in order that we may love our neighbors AS ourselves. In other words, I had to find a way to live a responsive and covenantal life with God in which God's grace could actually triumph over powers of darkness and death as they manifested themselves in my own life and heart. I had to find a way to deprive illness of its power to dominate and define, its ability to foster self-hatred in me. Solitary eremitical life provides the God-given context and means for that for me. In answering any divine call this particular form of "selfishness" will be present, and I would argue it must if we are to love others as we are truly called to do. This "truly loving oneself" is the necessary and graced form of selfishness on which the Great Commandment is based.

The Primacy of Being over Doing:

I think this points to a certain primacy of being over doing. We really must be persons who love ourselves in the power of God's love if we are to love others as God calls us to do. Of course we cannot omit the whole "going out and doing" dimension, but what I have found is that if  we touch others FROM a place of essential solitude (which means from a place of  personal communion with God) our very lives will be ministerial --- whether or not we are otherwise engaged in apostolic or ministerial activity. In other words what we do must and can only truly be a reflection of who we are; activity must and can only flow from contemplation; being must have priority so that it may define and guide whatever it is we do. More, it must be our primary ministry. This may sound counter cultural or contrary to the emphasis of so much  which is prevalent in our church and world today --- and it is! But it is also valid and an important lesson or witness our world and our Church needs.

Both our Church and our world often seem to preference doing over being, so much so that folks are out doing (teaching, ministering, etc) in all kinds of ways long before they have achieved the degree of human wholeness and wisdom necessary for that. (The stereotype of the psychologically wounded or crippled psychiatrist is a good symbol of this. So, unfortunately, is the image of the predatory priest turned loose to minister again because of a dearth of priests. So, for instance, is the glut of self-help books on the market offering instant wisdom and expertise for the price of a paperback, the "advanced degrees" which can be purchased for a couple of hundred dollars, or the prevalence of cheating and plagiarism in today's world!) While to some extent we all learn by doing, and while we all need to be interns and novices at various stages in our lives, my point is we tend to preference doing over being in ways which can be destructive.

But if the priority of being over doing is a profound truth which is in danger of being lost sight of today it is the very thing hermits and other contemplatives remind our church and world of --- and doing so is a profound act of love which, potentially at least, may leave no one untouched. For solitary hermits in particular, I think we witness to the profound sense life makes in communion with God, even when that life cannot issue in active ministry to others. For this reason I have written a lot in this blog about the witness we give to the chronically ill, the isolated elderly, the bereaved, and even to prisoners. I have spoken of it as the unique charism or gift quality of the hermit's life. As I have also noted here, all of these persons are marginalized, not least by the fact that they cannot measure the value and fruitfulness of their lives in the terms so prevalent today. They cannot compete in terms of productivity or various kinds of achievement (academic, political, etc). They cannot be terrific consumers or measure their lives in economic terms; often they require the assistance of others and government subsidies and aid even to live. But the hermit, and indeed all contemplatives say that such lives are infinitely valuable nonetheless.

And yet it is the Gospel message that we are justified (made right and truly human as part of a covenant relationship with God) through the gratuitous grace of God, not through any works of our own. By extension that message is also the message that our lives are of infinite worth simply because we are who we are, not because of what we do. Hermits proclaim that message with their lives in a unity of being and doing. I don't mean to suggest that others do not  act out of such a unity; I know they do. However, for hermits, our only role in the church is to be ourselves in God alone --- no one else. (It is this reason failing as a hermit is so easy, and trying to live as one is so risky. It is this reason mediocrity is so easy. Hermits do not tend to have active ministries they can use to distract from who they are first of all. They cannot use the roles they fill to soften the fact that they are not really WHO God has called them to be.) Who they ARE in God IS their ministry, and the fact that this happens by the grace of God in the silence of solitude IS their message. They can fall back on nothing else. (This too is one reason hermits are not called to active ministry and must be careful in even the limited amount in which they might engage. Their vocation really is to BE themselves in God alone. Their primary (or only) ministry really is in being and in calling folks to the primacy of being, not in doing.)

How does the Church Discern authentic vocations?

There is one main way the Church discerns the difference between inauthentic and authentic vocations. She demands that authentic vocations are vocations of love which contribute to the salvation of the world and praise and glorify God (make God manifest). One way of doing this is to look at the place of God in the hermit's life and discourse. While some self-proclaimed hermits do write about "Me, me, me" so that even their writing about spirituality becomes only secondarily about God, the genuine article makes it clear that they are who they are and do what they do only because of God.

So, for instance, if chronic illness is a piece of the hermit's life it is no longer the dominant or overarching theme; instead, what God has done (or does day by day!) in their lives both in spite of and with the illness will be the dominant theme. As a person matures even the illness may be seen as a genuine grace --- not articulated in some pious pretense of medieval mystical misery, but in the sense that this has brought the person to God and allowed God both a unique entry into her life and the achievement of a unique voice which will be mediated to others through both strength and weakness. That life then becomes "a silent preaching of the Lord" --- just as the CCC refers to in par 921. In other words, what God's grace makes possible in terms of human wholeness and holiness is their main focus and the key in which all else is set. The person becomes something very much greater and more articulate than a cry of anguish; she becomes instead an expression of the Gospel and an embodied reflection of God's own Logos. None of this means that the person cannot occasionally talk about themselves or their illness, sinfulness, brokennesses, etc, but it does mean that doing so occurs mainly in order to illustrate the grace of God's love and in contrast to the wholeness that grace has achieved in the person's life.

Thus, I would suggest that it is really not all that easy to lie about this matter. It is true that one can cover misery and brokenness with all kinds of pious platitudes, but the real person always shines through. More, the real God shines through in a compelling way when the hermit is authentic. The blogs you refer to affirm this in a kind of via negativa. Even for hermits in the early stages of grappling with this vocation and their own growth in it what comes through is their hope, their hunger to respond generously and wholeheartedly, their desire to give God free reign to work in their lives as God will. There will be some sense that this is primarily and sincerely done for God and those precious to God. Dioceses that take time to really listen to the candidate and get to know them will see clearly who has priority in their lives, even when the healing is partial or the grip of illness is still quite strong. On the other hand, I would agree with you that it is much easier to lie to oneself and I would note that this is one (but only one) of the reasons dioceses turn away FAR more applicants than they accept or eventually admit to temporary much less perpetual profession.

In my own experience dioceses usually look carefully at who the person is in light of their life of the silence of solitude. If they see increased growth in human maturity, wholeness, and holiness, if they see a greater capacity to love themselves and others, then they have reason to believe that the person is truly called by God to this. If they do not see this, or if the person seems to become more miserable or eccentric while living in this way, more isolated and alienated, or if they become more and more strident and bitter about not being admitted to vows, more critical of the vocation itself, etc, then the diocese is probably justified in their decision not to profess or even to admit them to serious discernment --- at least for the time being.

The Bottom Line in Discerning Eremitical Vocations:

At bottom there will always be questions of love: Is the person motivated by love? Does she love God and seek to respond wholeheartedly to God's love? Does she show signs of truly loving herself because of what she has experienced of God's love (especially) in solitude? Does she understand that simply living her life alone with God with the graced (in-Spired) integrity she is called to is an act of profound love the world desperately needs? And, finally, does she undertake (or desire to undertake) and embrace the WHOLE of this life, its discipline, monotony or tedium, sacrifices and rewards, occasional desolations and enormous consolations,  because she recognizes the gift (charism) it is not only to herself, but to the church, and to the world? Does she do so, in other words, on their behalf as well as on her own, and maybe better said, does she do so for them because that truly fulfills her as well? Again then, contrary to your own opinion I would argue that it is pretty difficult to fake convincing answers to these questions, especially as a vocation matures. A diocese whose vocational personnel are careful and discerning will recognize a life in which God (love-in-act) is glorified (made manifest), just as they will recognize its opposite.

By the way, this is a piece of why such vocations must be mutually discerned and why the Church reserves the term Catholic hermit for someone living the life in her name.  Hermits and other contemplatives tend to speak of themselves as living at the heart of the Church. This saying has a number of levels or dimensions but above all it means that the hermit represents a vocation to love which both precedes and grounds all apostolic activity. The journeying in the wilderness and the battling with demons a hermit does is mainly the sojourn she undertakes deep into her own heart and the heart of God so that love may truly predominate in all things. When I speak of taking on the rights and obligations of the eremitical life as a diocesan hermit I am speaking in large part of assuming the burdens and joy of these "bottom line" questions and this pilgrim role in a conscious and public way in the name of the Church and her Gospel.

It is only with the Heart that One sees Rightly

In one of the best selling books of all time, The Little Prince, there is a dialogue between a fox and the Little Prince. It occurs over a period of time. The Fox begins by explaining about what it means to be "tamed,"  and he notes that it involves forming ties with others. He begs the Prince to "tame him" and over time (the prince agrees to "waste time" in this way!) the Little Prince does so while the Fox allows himself to be tamed; in other words the Prince works to become the Fox's friend and the Fox becomes his. As a result the most mundane parts of reality are also transformed. Golden fields of wheat which hold no interest for the Fox ordinarily (he eats only chickens!) now remind the Fox of his friend's golden hair and occasion joy. When the time comes for the Little Prince to leave the Fox is sad, and then he gives the Little Prince his most precious secret, a secret he says most men have forgotten: [[It is only with the heart that one sees rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye.]]

In last Friday's Gospel story Jesus knows that there is more than one way of "seeing" and he equates one of these with a destructive blindness which will lead everyone into the pit together. He warns that an untrained person is apt to harm someone and needs to get proper training before trying to act as a teacher. And he reminds us via this story that we ourselves are often afflicted with a beam in our own eye but that we are equally often one who blindly criticizes and offers to extract a splinter from another's eye. We hear one of Jesus' most damning judgments as he says: "You hypocrite! Remove the wooden beam from your own eye first; then you will see clearly to remove the splinter from in your brother's eye!"

Jesus clearly understands several things; he knows what the fox reminds us most "men have forgotten": First, that seeing rightly (compassion) is something we do with our hearts and this requires a kind of training. It is the kind of training one does when, over time, one helps (trains) a child to grow in a certain way. It takes years to "train" a child's ability to stand upright, to help them become persons who love themselves and others, who are capable of giving themselves to the world in a way which makes it better, richer, more holy. It takes years to help a child become responsible for their own hearts as we ourselves are called to be responsible for our own hearts Our hearts are, as I have said here a number of times, the places where we meet and respond to God, but they are also those places within us where obstacles to this meeting reside; for this reason they need to be "trained" (formed, healed, nurtured, strengthened, aided) to see rightly. The responsibility for forming our hearts, for taming them (what Christians call growing in holiness), is a lifelong process of being made capable of compassionate seeing.

Secondly then, he knew that the way our attention is avidly drawn to the splinter in another's eye SHOULD lead us to suspect the beam in our own; that is, we should suspect the real obstacles to accurate vision, to compassion, exist in our own hearts. They represent ways of seeing we have made our own whether they have come from our culture, from peer pressure, from our own needs, successes or failures, from the hurts of childhood, or wherever. Because of this I think Jesus understood very well that we ordinarily operate from habitual ways of seeing and behaving which are less than Christian; we operate from characteristic attitudes of the false self that serve as lenses which distort our own vision and prevent us from seeing rightly or compassionately with the heart. In terms of the Gospel, and the story of the Little Prince, they are the lenses which prevent us from making neighbors of those we meet or know, the lenses which prevent us from loving others, from letting others "tame us," and therefore from becoming friends.

 Two pieces of monastic truth:

Monastic life encapsulated Jesus' teaching in a number of ways, but there are two pieces which are especially important here. The first is the monastic teaching on what are called "the passions."  The passions are obstacles to humility, that is, they are barriers to recognizing and celebrating the truth about who we are in regard to God and others. Thus they are also obstacles to compassion, to seeing others with the same kind of loving truthfulness. They are most often the beams in our own eyes and hearts which cause us to overreact to the splinters in our brother's or sister's eyes. They are the symptoms of woundedness and disease in our own hearts which cause us to project onto others and fail to love them as we ought and as they deserve. As Roberta Bondi reminds us, "a passion has as its chief characteristics perversion of vision and the destruction of love." (To Love as God Loves)

Common passions we are all too familiar with include perfectionism, a kind of habitual irritation with someone or some situation, anger, envy, depression, apathy or sloth, gluttony (which often has more to do, Bondi points out, with requiring novelty than it does with eating), irritable or anxious restlessness, impatience, selfishness, etc. In each, if we consider their effects, we will notice these habitual ways of relating to ourselves and our world cause us to see reality in a distorted way (this is one of the reasons we think of seeing reality through the green haze of envy, or the red film of anger, or the black wall of depression, and so forth). Further, they get in the way of being open to or nurturing the truth of others --- that is, they are obstacles to love.

Similarly they are destructive of sight and love because they cause us to project onto others our own flawed expectations, values, failings and woundedness.  We know this by its psychological term: Projection. It is a serious disease Jesus apparently understood well, a result of our own brokenness and sinfulness, and it assures not only that the person being projected onto CANNOT be heard or seen for who they are, but also that the one doing the projecting becomes more and more locked into their own blindness and inability to love the other as neighbor. The wisdom of Jesus' admonition, "Remove the beam from your own eye before you attempt to remove the splinter from your brother's" as well as the appropriateness of his anger in calling others on their hypocrisy is profound.

The second piece of monastic wisdom here we should remember, and one which is closely related to the importance of dealing with our passions has to do with the nature of really seeing another truly. In our own time we are very used to acting as though we only know someone really well when we see their flaws. We approach people and things "critically," searching out their failings and weaknesses and when we have discovered them, we believe we have discovered their deepest truth. How often have we heard someone say something like: "I thought I knew him, but the other day, he acted to betray me. Now I really know who he is!"

But monastic wisdom is just the opposite of this notion of knowing. It is strikingly countercultural and counterintuitive. In monastic life we only really know someone when we see them as God sees them: precious, sacred, whole, and beautiful. We only see them rightly when we look past the flaws to the deep or true person at the core. We only see them truly when we see them with the eyes and humility of love. As we were reminded by Saint-Exupery and as tomorrow's Gospel implies strongly, "It is only with the heart that one sees rightly," --- and only once we have removed those distorting lenses monks call passions, that is, only once we have removed the beams from our own eyes will we be able to do this!