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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 13th
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 12th and 13th
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.
