The Coffee Monks of Cody Wyoming

A Discalced Carmelite friar 

prepares to take his vows.

“They seem to be very good monks, but they aren’t Carmelites”  I was at a forum celebrating the fifth centenary of the birth of Saint Teresa of Avila when a member of the audience asked the panel of speakers about the “Mystic Monks” coffee producers of Cody Wyoming.   The speaker went on to explain: “Carmel is a family of religious friars, cloistered nuns, and various congregations of Third Order Sisters as well as affiliated laity that date back to the early 13^th century when Saint Albert of Jerusalem wrote a “Formula for Life” (Formula Vitae) for a small band of lay hermits who lived on Mount Carmel. Within a few years of their foundation, the lay hermits had become formal religious; their Formula Vitae, a religious Rule; and they themselves aggregated into the Mendicant Friars along with other Lay hermit groups such as today’s Franciscans and Augustinians.  For two and a half centuries there were only Carmelite men but then in the middle of the fifteenth century the Order began receiving women as nuns as well as Laity into a “Third Order.”  In the nineteenth century groups of apostolic women affiliated with one or the other branch of the Carmelite Order.   In the last decade of the sixteenth century the Order was split between the reform movement led by Saints Teresa and John of the Cross and the original branch of the Order.  The reformed group became known as the Discalced Carmelite Order, the original group is known simply as “The Carmelites.”  To  be a Carmelite, part of the Carmelite family, you must be affiliated to one of these two Pontifically recognized families, even if your group is not a Pontifical Right Community but a local diocesan community.  The monks in Cody are not affiliated with either group and are not recognized by the Carmelite family as authentic Carmelites.  But they do make great coffee none the less.”

I took the speaker’s suggestion and I called each of the Provincial Offices of both the Carmelite Order and the Order of Discalced Carmelites and each gave me the same response that the “Carmelite Monks” of Cody Wyoming are not affiliated in any way with the Carmelite Order or with the Discalced Carmelites.  One of the Provincial Offices gave me this description of the origins of the Monks:

“In the late 1980’s a diocesan priest with ties to the Discalced Carmelite Nuns of Lake Elmo MN wished to establish a community of Carmelite hermits.  The nuns gave him some land on which to build their hermitage and the good Father gathered his community.  Although they enjoyed the good will of the nuns they had no canonical ties to the larger Carmelite Order and their founder more or less pieced together what he thought Carmelite hermits should be, borrowing a lot of the customs from the nuns.  Their hope was to be received into the Discalced Carmelites but when they approached the Discalced Carmelite authorities in Rome they were rejected because while the Discalced Carmelites value the tradition of hermits they do not see it as a permanent vocation.  In the Discalced Carmelite Tradition, friars go to a hermitage for a period of between two and five years but then return to a more apostolic life.  Being turned down by the Discalced Carmelites, the founder approached the Carmelites who were more open to the idea of an eremitical life.  They were received into the Carmelite Order in the early 1990’s, but the subprior of the group was not happy with the proposed affiliation to the Carmelite Order and left with several of the brothers to form the Carmelite Monks.  They had never received a proper novitiate in the Carmelites before they left and their subsequent development indicates that while they know some of the “fluff” in the Carmelite Tradition, they miss the substance of Carmelite Life and Spirituality.”

I was referred to a Carmelite historian who for many years taught Carmelite history and spirituality and I asked him “If the original hermits on Mount Carmel were monks, why is it so impossible for these monks to be considered to be authentic Carmelites?”  The professor explained:

“The hermits on Mount Carmel weren’t monks.  There never have been “monks” in the Carmelite tradition.  There were two types of hermits in the 12^th and 13^th centuries.  There were monastic hermits such as the Camaldolese or the Carthusians or even individual monks in cenobitic abbeys who had permission to live as hermits on the monastic grounds or one of the abbey’s granges.  And there were lay hermits who were men who consecrated themselves to live without personal property and support themselves by manual labor and alms.  They also dedicated themselves to live without corporate wealth and shunned big monasteries and the sort of institutions the monks had for support.  Lay hermits tended to live in smaller groups, often attached to an insignificant church which other priests did not want.  Their convents (they called their houses “convents” or friaries or priories and avoided the word “monastery” to describe their home) were functional but very simple compared to the great monastic abbeys.  The lay hermits gave themselves to prayer and to a limited apostolate of what we would call today “street-corner preaching” as well as work with lepers and others on the margins of society.  The hermits on Mount Carmel were of this lay hermit sort, not of the monastic model.  Other religious orders today who have their origins in the lay hermit movement are the Franciscans and Augustinians.  The Monks at Cody seem to have adopted the Monastic Model, notably the Carthusian idea of a large Church surrounded by a cloister containing the “hermit houses” or multi-room cells of the Carthusian or Camaldolese or Vallambrosian models.  This is totally foreign to the Carmelite tradition which both on Mount Carmel and in the Teresian Reform avoided display in favor of a simplicity that testified to the corporate poverty of the Mendicant movement.”

“Another difference—and an essential one—is that Carmelite men were never enclosed or “cloistered.”  Carmelite nuns are traditionally enclosed because at the time the first houses of Carmelite women were established, it was canon law for all religious women in vows to be cloistered.  I always tell the nuns when I am doing workshops that they are cloistered not because they are Carmelites, but because they are women.  To “cloister” the men is a bit of an historical anachronism, a sign that these fellows in Cody are “making it up as they go along.”  They have this romanticized version of the Carmel and its heritage that is more Sir Walter Scott’s novels than Saint Albert’s Rule.  I am not saying that they aren’t good men or that they don’t make great coffee or even that they are good monks: but they aren’t Carmelites.  They don’t understand the heritage.”

Another idiosyncrasy that was pointed out is that while the Carmelite Monks claim to be attached to the Discalced Carmelite Tradition, they use—without any canonical authority—the post-Tridentine version of the Carmelite Rite.  The Discalced Carmelites, from the time of their separation from the Carmelite Order, renounced the distinctive Carmelite Rite for the Roman Rite as found in the 1570 Missal of Pius V. While some Carmelite friars have been given permission to use the old Rite, this authorization has not been extended to the Discalced Carmelites since it never was part of their heritage.  The Local Bishop can, of course, give any priest authorization for the 1570 Roman Missal, and indeed according to some interpretations of Summorum Pontificum, such permission is not even needed.  Permission to use the medieval or Tridentine versions of the specific religious orders is restricted to members of those Orders and so is not available to the Monks at Cody since they are not recognized as members of the Carmelite Order. 

“What the Monks seem to have grabbed at are the particular customs of the Order in the sixteenth century—things like having a skull on the tables in the refectory to remind us of our mortality, or the use of the ‘discipline’ (the scourge or small whip used on penitential days for self-flagellation).  They like customs such as ‘kneeling out’ when late for choir or refectory or the monastic tonsure or the Solemn Salve Regina on Saturday evenings.  There is nothing wrong with much of this stuff, but it isn’t at the heart of Carmel.  The Cody monastery is more about playing at Religious Life than the serious spiritual heritage of Carmel.”

What is going on here is what is going on in much of the Church where neo-traditionalism has set in.  there is an attempt to refashion the present into an idealized and romanticized version of the past.  It reduces the Church to an ecclesiastical Colonial Williamsburg rather than a community of Disciples with the Divine Mission of heralding the Kingdom of God. It betrays a lack of historical knowledge and an ability to critically evaluate the data of the past in determining the present and charting the future. It is no way for our Church to go.  It is not what Pope Francis is about and it isn’t even an authentic interpretation of the agenda that Pope Benedict had for the Church.   But the boys in Cody do make great coffee.  Ya gotta give ‘em that. 

Let's Hear It For The Ladies cont.

Ven.Anne of Saint Bartholomew

who resisted outside control by

the Cardinal Berulle over the

Discalced Carmelite nuns in 17th

century France

Yesterday I wrote about women religious who resisted the efforts of bishops to exercise control over them and their congregations.  We looked at such outstanding figures as Saint Mary MacKillop, Mary Ward, Margaret Anna Cuscack, and Saint Teresa of Avila.   There are also stories of women who lost the battle—often to the detriment of their congregations. 

      Pierre de Bèrulle is a figure in Church history who, for the most part, I have always admired.  He was ardent for the reform of the Church of France in the early seventeenth century. You see, for a variety of reasons more political than religious, France had not yet accepted the Decrees of the Council of Trent (that only happened in 1615—some 53 years after the Council concluded) and there were a lot of leading French Catholics who saw the great need for reform.  Many of these devout Catholics (actually they were known as the parti dévot) gathered in the home of the wealthy French widow,  Madame Barbe Acarie to discuss plans for reform.  (Francis de Sales, Bennet Canfield, Jean Jacques Olier, and others were all regulars at the Salon Acarie.)  Bérulle understood that the key to reform of the Church was reform of the clergy and religious.  Olier established the Society of Saint Sulpice to prepare candidates for the secular priesthood.  John Eudes established the Congregation of the Blessed Sacrament as well as the Sisters of Our Lady of Charity of the Refuge.  Bérulle himself established the French Oratory.  He also invited the two closest companions of Saint Teresa of Avila, Anna of Jesus and Anna of Saint Bartholomew, to come to France and established the Discalced Carmelite nuns.  It was a worthy cause, but as soon as French nuns were professed, Bérulle sent the Spanish Madres packing.   Like Teresa, they did not want the nuns to be subject to external authority and Bérulle wanted them to be under his thumb, er “guidance.”  The Spanish daughters of Teresa went up to the Netherlands where they established the Carmels from which are descended the majority of American monasteries of Carmelite nuns.  The French nuns buckled under and there has long been an argument among Discalced Carmelites whether the French Carmels preserved the heritage of Teresa or not, whether they are authentically “Teresian” or are they “Bérullian.”

     Here in America the disputes over the independence of the religious Sisters has also been a battle.  Bishop John Carroll persuaded the widowed convert, Elizabeth Ann Seton to establish the American Sisters of Charity modeled on the French Institute founded by Vincent de Paul and Louise de Marillac, but Carroll, a very busy man, gave Mother Seton a pretty free hand in her enterprise.  In 1817, just a few years before her death, Mother Seton sent three Sisters from Emmitsburg up to New York City.  When John Hughes became Bishop of New York, one of his first acts was to demand that the New York Charities be withdrawn from the jurisdiction of the Emmitsburg Sisters and placed under his jurisdiction.  He named his sister, Mother Angela Hughes, as the second Mother General of the New York Sisters.  Again, John Hughes is another figure whom I have always admired, but he had a tremendous psychological need for control that went far beyond the Sisters of Charity in his diocese.  His entire style as bishop was “one man rule”—sound familiar?

      Hughes was not exceptional in this matter.  Many religious congregations—both those founded in the United States  (The Charities, the various Newman Communities of Franciscans, the IHMs) as well as those coming from other countries (the Sisters of Mercy) met with demands from American bishops that they sever their ties outside the diocese and place themselves under the jurisdiction of the local bishop.  For the sake of the work that needed to be done for the immigrants, for the poor, for women, or orphans, the nuns acceded to these demands for control.  Other congregations such as the School Sisters of Notre Dame successfully resisted.   The Benedictines were always particularly successful in resisting Episcopal control—but their monastic roots gave them strong precedence on which to stand.  Today’s nuns are well and wise to insist on their autonomy and self-governance.  But a lot of the men just don’t get it—the world has changed.  Collaborative models work in our contemporary world, hierarchical models are as archaic as the Mastodon.  Of course, the danger that both bishops and Rome fear is that if the nuns can take responsibility for their own decision making, will others in the Church see possibilities for collaborative rather than hierarchal models of authority?  Why is always about power and never about the Gospel?

The Maryland Catholic Tradition: Ahead of its Time

Bishop John Carroll

I have made several entries on the style of Catholicism in colonial and early Republican Maryland and how much it has in common with modern Catholic practice.  Churches were plain and without much decoration—the Cathedral in Baltimore not even having statues.  While the Mass was in Latin (despite Bishop Carroll’s desire for it to be in the vernacular), Carroll and other clergy had translated much of the sacramental ritual from Latin into English.  Despite Roman prohibitions on ecumenism, American Catholics were used to cooperating with their Protestant countrymen and even worshipping with them on occasion. Churches usually had lay trustees—something that would cause Carroll and other bishops enough headaches that they would eventually do away with them.  (Bishop John England of Charleston, on the other hand, wrote a Constitution for his diocese and had an annual convention of lay and clergy to help in the decision making.)  Carroll had been elected bishop by the clergy and he hoped that Rome would permit future bishops to be elected as well.  (Rome did not permit.)  Carroll and other clergy routinely wore lay clothing, albeit in dark colors, while on the street.  When Carroll brought the first religious women to the United States—four Carmelite cloistered nuns from the Netherlands (three of whom were Maryland natives) they arrived in secular dress and resumed their habit only when they were ensconced in their monastery at Port Tobacco.  Several years later when he asked Elizabeth Ann Seton, a widowed convert from Episcopalianism, to organize an American religious sisterhood based on Vincent dePaul’s Daughters of Charity, it was decided that they would wear the plain black dress and bonnet of widows rather than the cornettes of their French counterparts or the more traditional wimple and veil of nuns.    Carroll, his priests, and the American faithful had no qualms of “fitting in”—indeed that was their goal.  They saw no reason why they had to stand aside from their countrymen believing that Americanism and Catholicism were perfectly compatible. The Catholic faith was to be packaged in American homespun rather than European brocade. 
     Maryland Catholics would never have worked their way into the untenable position of the Leesburg Knights of Columbus who insisted on a religious display on the Courthouse lawn only to find that their campaign opened the door to atheist displays that mocked not only Catholicism but faith itself.  In Carroll’s day Catholicism was known for what it stood for; today Catholicism is too often better known for what it is against.  Evangelism doesn’t work when the message is what we are against.  

The Immaculate Conception

Mary and Jesus, from an altarpiece in

the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine

Florence, Italy

Well, triggered by the word “prevenient” in the new translation for the feast of the Immaculate Conception, we have been looking at original sin in order to better understand how the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception developed.  It is a fairly late doctrine and despite its being infallibly defined we will see that it cannot claim, at least historically, to have been part of the Tradition handed down from the Apostles.  
     As I mentioned in my previous post, while the idea of original sin can be traced back through Augustine to even earlier patristic sources, it is a theological concept that never developed in the Christian East and is unknown in Orthodox and Eastern Catholic sources.  Without a concept of original sin, there is no doctrine of the Immaculate Conception because the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception is that Mary was conceived in her mother’s womb without the original sin that has affected the rest of the human family.  Mary is unique in this regard.  The Church says that she was saved from original sin through the merits of the death and resurrection of her Divine son even though that passion, death, and resurrection had not yet taken place in time: hence “prevenient.”  Although the Eastern Churches did not celebrate Mary’s Immaculate Conception they did celebrate her conception, affixing the date  (originally) to December 9—nine months (minus one day) before the feast of her birth.  In the same way the Church celebrated the conception of her Son nine months before the Church celebrates his birth.  (March 25^th is nine months before December 25^th.)  These are the only two “conceptions” I know of being celebrated in the Church calendar.  The feast of Mary’s Conception originated in the Church of Syria (which included the Holy Land) in about the sixth century but soon was celebrated throughout Eastern Christianity. 
       How did the feast come to the West?  Scholars agree that it was the Normans who introduced the feast to the Western Church.  In the eleventh century Normans conquered Sicily and Southern Italy where the Church, at that time,  followed the Greek Rite rather than the Western Latin Rites.  It was probably at this time that the Normans became familiar with the feast of the Conception of Mary.  There was a problem though in the west.  Western theologians, including Augustine, saw that Mary was, like the rest of us, conceived in original sin.  How can we celebrate a sinful conception?  (Remember the East, not believing in original sin, saw no sin in the conception.)  Immediately a theological debate broke out.  Saint Bernard of Clairvaux, a great devotee of the Blessed Virgin insisted that she, like us, was conceived in original sin.  Saint Thomas would pick this up and affirm that Mary was conceived in sin.  The Franciscans and Carmelites however, came to Mary’s defense and insisted that she had been spared original sin in order to prepare her for being the Mother of Jesus.  The debate raged through the Middle Ages.  When Pope Sixtus IV put the feast of Mary’s Conception on the universal calendar in the fifteenth century it was simply called the Conception of the Virgin.  The Dominican Pope, Saint Pius V, in revising the Roman Calendar also simply called it “The Conception of the Virgin.”  In Franciscan and Carmelite Churches, and several dioceses, however, it was called “The Immaculate Conception.” 
       The doctrine remained an open question for centuries with Catholics free to believe that Mary suffered the consequences of original sin or that she had been preserved from it by a special dispensation of “prevenient” grace.  In much the same way, while Catholics today must believe that Mary was assumed body and soul at the end of her earthly life, we are free to believe that she died or that she did not die before her assumption.  The matter is undefined.  In regard to the Immaculate Conception,  however, Pope Pius IX closed the issue in 1854 by defining the doctrine that Mary was conceived without sin through a dispensation on the merits of her Son’s passion, death, and Resurrection.  Thus today this is a defined dogma for the Church, though the Eastern Churches—the various rites that comprise the Eastern Churches in union with Rome as well as the Orthodox Churches, sort of nod their heads in ambiguous assent and go on their way thinking that we westerners argue over the darnedest things.  And perhaps we do. 

A Peculiar Devotion and Hanging Out With Saints

Christos Acheiropoietos--the "Christ 

Not Made by Human Hands"--a Icon

from Novograd (Russia) c. 1100.  The 

Tradition of the Holy Face of Christ is

common in both Eastern and Western 

Christianity and goes far back into the

History of the Church 

My research into the Saint Vincent de Paul Society led me in a direction in which I am surprised to have found myself interested and that is the Cult of the Holy Face.  This refers not to a group of brainwashed people but to a particular devotion; in Catholic terminology “cult” refers to worship or to a particular devotion and this devotion is to the image of the face of the suffering Christ.  The connection with the Saint Vincent de Paul Society is through a man named Leo (or Leon) DuPont.  Leo DuPont (1797-1876) was the son of a wealthy French nobleman who had fled the French Revolution with his family and had come to Martinique.  DuPont was educated in Martinique and the United States before going to Paris to study law.  While in Paris he chose one day to go on an excursion rather than attend Mass for the Holy Day of the Ascension.  The penance given him was to perform some good works.  It was a wise confessor who had him aid the poor rather than simply recite some hail marys and our fathers because he found some satisfaction in aiding the poor and he continued to perform small acts of kindness and generosity towards the less fortunate.  These good works in turn set him on a path of a deepening spirituality as he matured in the balance of prayer and works of charity.  He began to associate with a circle of French working with the poor including Madeline Sophie Barat, the foundress of the Religious of the Sacred Heart (The Madames).
     Finishing his law degree he returned to Martinique and after giving up thought of becoming a priest, married.  The marriage was brief—his wife, Caroline, died after the birth of their daughter, an only child.  DuPont returned to France with his daughter and widowed mother and settled in Tours where he established a successful law practice.  It was here that he joined the Saint Vincent dePaul Society—the link by which I found out about him and his devotion.  DuPont assisted Jeanne Jugan, the foundress of the Little Sisters of the Poor, in establishing a residence in Tours to take care of the sick poor.  This guy really liked to hang out with saints.  In addition to Madeline Sophie Barat and Jeanne Jugan, both now canonized, his circle of friends and associates included Jean-Marie Vianney (the Curé of Ars), and Peter Julian Eymard.  Of course all these people were priests and religious so they eventually got canonized whereas DuPont, a layman, still awaits recognition.  O well, it just shows to go ya’ that sometimes the least are still least in the kingdom of heaven; but history isn’t over yet, so perhaps Leo will get his halo someday too.  But back to the story.
     DuPont, all this time practicing law and making money—which he kept giving away to charities—also hung out at the Carmel of Tours where a nun, Sister Marie de Saint Pierre, was reported having visions encouraging devotion to the “Holy Face of Jesus”—the image of the face of Christ suffering on his way to the Cross.  This image is most often connected to an image of Christ left imprinted on the veil with which Saint Veronica allegedly wiped the face of Jesus on his way to Calvary.     DuPont really got into this devotion.  He hung a picture of the face of Christ in his dining room where he prayed for hours each day and where he kept a candle constantly burning.  In addition to his many works on behalf of the poor, DuPont encouraged others to join him in devotion of the Face of the Suffering Christ. 
      Now for the personal side of this story and why I became fascinated by it.  Two reasons.  About twelve years ago the relics of Saint Thérèse of Lisieux, a nineteenth century French Carmelite nun who is a very popular Catholic saint, were brought to the United States.   Thérèse’s name in religion was Thérèse of the Child Jesus and the Holy Face and she had a great devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.  Indeed in her monastery in Normandy, there was a picture of the face of the suffering Christ which she loved very dearly and  before which she would meditate on the sufferings of Christ.  After her death, the nuns gave the picture to Pope Leo XIII who had just recently (1895) approved devotion to the Holy Face of Jesus.  Well, you know the last thing a pope needs is more art, especially some rather mediocre (at best) engraving and so Leo regifted it (my friends criticize me for regifting but hey, look people like Leo XIII did it all the time) to a parish in southern Maryland that was the first (and I believe only) Church in the United States dedicated to the Holy Face.  When the relics of Saint Thérèse were brought to the Carmelite Monastery at Port Tobacco, the parish sent the painting there on loan, reuniting Thérèse (or what is left of her) with her beloved picture.  I have always liked Thérèse because she was devout but not pious and appreciated the sort of irony about things religious that I have always liked.  Of course, that makes her devotion to this particular picture somewhat hard to explain.  But let us move on.xxxI also knew another Carmelite, an Italian Friar, Father Riccardo Palazzi.  He was a very talented graphic artist and somewhat of a bon-vivant (which is why we were friends, both of us appreciating good food and good wine and lots of laughter) until he was struck with Guillain–Barré syndrome.  A misdiagnosis and alcoholic anesthesiologist left him quadriplegic.   Undaunted by tragedy he learned how to operate his computer via a breath-controlled mouse and resumed his work.  His bon-vivant days were over,  however, and he attained a rather remarkable perspicacity for one who in his halcyon years had been somewhat shallow. Shortly before he died he gave a remarkable talk at a conference for people who, like himself, were suffering from great disabilities.  It was a meditation on the suffering of Christ and how in the suffering face of Jesus can be seen the suffering faces of the millions who stumble beneath the weight of the cross in their own lives. It was a profound meditation.  I wish it were translated into English.  And this is what gives devotions, authentic devotions, crediblity. =
     For too many people they have, or claim to have great devotion to the Eucharist or to Our Lady or to some mystery of the faith and they wrap themselves up in a cocoon of piety and sweet dedication.  But authentic devotion always—ALWAYS—brings us to see Christ in the least of his sisters and brothers and to move us to works of charity.  Prayer that ends before the tabernacle or crucifix is no more than a form of idolatry.  Leo DuPont is the example of a Christian who knows that the Love for Christ must resolve itself in the hands on action for the least of his sisters and brothers.  I have to see if I can find a decent icon of the Holy Face and a candle to burn before it.