Sisters of Bethlehem

[mariepaix]

Just a few thoughts.....I was with the sisters for some years and can attest that I witnessed many things that Fabio wrote about in his dossier.  Unless one lives inside of a community one doesn't truly know what goes on. How can you as an outsider know of the sisters' 'fidelity' to their vocation?   Yes, I know the sisters appear as 'angels' to outsiders and it's hard to have our image of them shattered. 

 I don't think it's fair to  label those who have left as 'disappointed dropouts'....the testimonies I've read seem quite accurate.  ... the suicide of the Polish sister as well as covering it up was the most disturbing and shocking of all for me since I knew many of the Polish sisters and they all appeared to have such strong faith.  Lord have mercy! 

There are some serious problems in this Community that need to be addressed and corrected. 

 

[josephine]

There was a woman from my country who left this order after +10 years. She had a certain mystical experience and after that turned all vaguely sorta new age spiritual and although she was very very positive about the order and her experiences there in general, there were a lot of stuff in the files that she describes as well. 

Some examples:

- the lack of possibilty to speak to an outside confessor. The sisters have an older sister who is supposed to be their spiritual guide. One can easily see how this might have started as a good idea (something with eastern monasticm! Someone who understands community life!) but can quickly end very very badly: (internal/external forum, lack of access to the sacrament of confession)

- weird new age practises. At one time the woman was refused to see a doctor. In the files there are also a couple of testimonies of people who were not allowed to see doctors but were taken to shady people instead.

- the lack of a healthy diet. The woman described how she had certain vitamin and iron deficiencies. She was also encouraged to fast extensively.

I really hope that Rome clears this up!

I mean, the idea of Bethlehem is definetly very beautiful and i believe that even in communities of good people, very unhealthy patterns can exist. That is why it is so important that these testimonies are taken seriously and investigated, so that problems can be addressed and corrected.

 

[Gabriela]

8 hours ago, genesisweavers said:

One thing that struck me about the translation of Katherine H is out of 100 pages the only things that were shared was a list of 13 very negative and pergorative traits about this Monastic Family.  And in the last paragraph she said - in a statement issued by a priest - that particular priest is the Prior General of the Bethlehem Monks.  The entire thing reminds me of the 'fair' reporting we often see on TV - for instance in the Presential (Circus) election that we have in our faces every day.  

I have quite a bit of experience with the Monastic Family of Bethlehem and I can honestly say I have never seen a trace of anything that appears on the list of 13 found in this forum.  I have visited their monasteries in Europe and I lived at the Monastery in NY for five years.  I know the families of many Sisters, the benefactors, the many retreatants who come every year (at least), priests and religious from other congregations and the Sisters themselves.  There is no evidence at all of any type of mitigations of religious decorum or any falsification of who they are.  

 

In the secular world we see so many damaged people who suffer from broken marriages, abuse, overwork and multiple stresses.  It shows up in the behavior even if we don't know the cause of it.  With the Sisters I have never seen any behavioral signs of living in a dysfunctional or pretentious community.  Each Sister radiates kindness, serenity, a maximum of charity, and fidelity to her vocation - yes really! 

 

This morning I read the homily of Abbot Peter McCarthy given at the first profession of vows of Bro Scott - a member of the Abbey of our Lady of Guadalupe.  Fr Abbot addresses his words to the new Brother:  To be blunt you are throwing your lot with a herd of lost sheep! Our only hope - is our belief - in Jesus' own words - that He Himself is the Shepherd of the Lost Shepherd. 

And earlier in the homily Fr Abbot uses the words of Jesus:  For whoever wishes to save his life will lose it.  But whoever loses his life for my sake will find it."  

 

I don't pretend to understand any of this - Some very big questions still remain in own head - like:  Why are the Sisters who for me are the best people I ever met under attack from disappointed drop outs? What is our fascination with these discrutled ones? Why do some go to a Monastery and find peace, harmony, and love and others can't wait to leave.  

 

When Regina Laudis was going through their dark night the Abbess at the time - Mother Benedict said:  If anyone wants to know who we are they should come here and see for themselves.  

 

After all, Jesus Himself was really only understood by a very few - there were others who wanted to kill him - and they did.  

 

May you be blessed 

Your brother 

John McHale

John, we've had this conversation before. You didn't live inside the community. Your experience of the sisters is very different from those who did. The "biased reporting" you mention is natural, because katherineH's quote is from a document that contains ONLY complaints about the order. So it's not like katherineH is biasing the translation. Anyway, what we're talking about here are the concerns people have, not the wonderful things about the MFB—which of course there are.

It isn't really fair or charitable to suggest that, because from the outside you saw nothing wrong, the Vatican and a bunch of the people who lived in the community must be biased or in error. If Rome is investigating, something's up. And given the specific concerns that people have expressed, I don't think it's wise to tell people in this particular case that they should go to the community to see for themselves. One of the biggest problems with the MFB is their lack of transparency. You can't see for yourself because they will not show you the problems. I wasted over a year with them before I finally realized that. A lot of women waste much more than that.

I'm very glad that you had such a wonderful experience with the sisters, and I know it must be very painful for you to hear people say these things about them. Of course many of the individual sisters are wonderful people. Surely most of them have the best of intentions. The problem isn't with the individual sisters, but with the community, on the organizational level. So while I understand that you want to defend them, maybe you could refrain from suggesting that there's nothing wrong with the MFB at all and instead speak from the concrete experience that you had, for example, by telling people their grounds are a wonderful place to make a retreat (on the outside), or that their artwork is gorgeous and worth buying, or that their liturgy is beautiful and prayerful and uplifting, or that Sister So-and-So once did such-and-such, etc. You must know from your time in the VS that many of the discerners in here are very impressionable, so it's probably not good to where the Vatican is .

[beatitude]

On a related note, I was in an abusive situation (not a religious community - my abuser was a close friend) for a few years. For most of that time no one had any clue what was happening to me, even though I was clinically depressed, often anxious, and struggling with my eating. I had a reputation for always being cheerful and optimistic and having a lively sense of humour. I had a responsible interesting job and was respected in my parish community. My closest friends would have vouched for everything being perfect in my world. Meanwhile I would sometimes go to bed half-crushed under the weight of what was happening and fantasise about dying in the night. That was how I cheered myself up - I wasn't suicidal, as I never actively wanted to harm myself, but the thought of not being around any more was a bedtime comfort.

The point: a person or a community can look as though they're flourishing, even to people who are close. It doesn't mean that nothing is wrong.

[genesisweavers]

Dear Friends - I wanted to write to you yesterday but unfortunately I didn't find the time in yesterday's happenings. I was eager to get a word off to you because I realized that my words were hitting on some wounds of those who were reading them. And unfortunately the texts that started this whole conversation were hitting on some wounds of my own. Just today some of those sore spots came into my consciousness and I thought I might share a little bit of that with you - not by way of an excuse but simply a hope that you will all understand.

I straddle the two generations of pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II. Even though I was excited and welcoming to some of what the Council brought to the church I was also grieved by some of what we lost. So when I discovered Bethlehem I felt such a rapport with the atmosphere and environment with the monastery. I think what appealed to me the most was probably a balance that I felt there that restored for me a greater sense of belonging to something I believed in. And I do get the idea of being on the outside looking in. Just to take all of this out of the specific realm of Bethlehem - when I visited the Maronite Monks in Massachusetts the one thing that spoke to me the most of their authenticity was - each monk spends two hours a day in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The same thinking can be applied to the Bethlehem. And this is the path to my conclusion - anyone who spends two hour each day in silent adoration of our Lord in the Eucharist has got to be on the right track. And so with the Monastic Sisters - anyone who can live in silence and solitude etc. I always said - there can't be any fakers in a Charterhouse. And the Carthusians themselves have a rather graphic saying - if a monk is unfaithful to his vocation to life in the cell - the cell will vomit him out.

Unfortunately the history of religious life is filled with all kinds of stories of abuse and wrong thinking. In the first post on this topic I quoted the Abbot of Guadalupe Abbey. In a sermon he gave on the first profession of Bro Scott recently Fr Abbot uses the Gospel of St Matthew as the source for his remarks. One of the Gospel stories was the woman cured of the hemorrhage. "She was made whole". Fr Abbot asks "how we long to be made whole; to collect all the missing pieces of our lives...to get my act together. But Jesus is telling us - we cannot make ourselves whole - we cannot get our act together - by ourselves. Jesus comes to save that which is lost. He goes to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. If you find yourself feeling lost - not whole - Jesus is searching for you!"

 

[Quasar]

43 minutes ago, genesisweavers said:

Fr Abbot asks "how we long to be made whole; to collect all the missing pieces of our lives...to get my act together. But Jesus is telling us - we cannot make ourselves whole - we cannot get our act together - by ourselves. Jesus comes to save that which is lost. He goes to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. If you find yourself feeling lost - not whole - Jesus is searching for you!"

 

So true and so beautiful!

[Gabriela]

6 hours ago, genesisweavers said:

Dear Friends - I wanted to write to you yesterday but unfortunately I didn't find the time in yesterday's happenings. I was eager to get a word off to you because I realized that my words were hitting on some wounds of those who were reading them. And unfortunately the texts that started this whole conversation were hitting on some wounds of my own. Just today some of those sore spots came into my consciousness and I thought I might share a little bit of that with you - not by way of an excuse but simply a hope that you will all understand.

I straddle the two generations of pre-Vatican II and post-Vatican II. Even though I was excited and welcoming to some of what the Council brought to the church I was also grieved by some of what we lost. So when I discovered Bethlehem I felt such a rapport with the atmosphere and environment with the monastery. I think what appealed to me the most was probably a balance that I felt there that restored for me a greater sense of belonging to something I believed in. And I do get the idea of being on the outside looking in. Just to take all of this out of the specific realm of Bethlehem - when I visited the Maronite Monks in Massachusetts the one thing that spoke to me the most of their authenticity was - each monk spends two hours a day in the adoration of the Blessed Sacrament. The same thinking can be applied to the Bethlehem. And this is the path to my conclusion - anyone who spends two hour each day in silent adoration of our Lord in the Eucharist has got to be on the right track. And so with the Monastic Sisters - anyone who can live in silence and solitude etc. I always said - there can't be any fakers in a Charterhouse. And the Carthusians themselves have a rather graphic saying - if a monk is unfaithful to his vocation to life in the cell - the cell will vomit him out.

Unfortunately the history of religious life is filled with all kinds of stories of abuse and wrong thinking. In the first post on this topic I quoted the Abbot of Guadalupe Abbey. In a sermon he gave on the first profession of Bro Scott recently Fr Abbot uses the Gospel of St Matthew as the source for his remarks. One of the Gospel stories was the woman cured of the hemorrhage. "She was made whole". Fr Abbot asks "how we long to be made whole; to collect all the missing pieces of our lives...to get my act together. But Jesus is telling us - we cannot make ourselves whole - we cannot get our act together - by ourselves. Jesus comes to save that which is lost. He goes to the lost sheep of the House of Israel. If you find yourself feeling lost - not whole - Jesus is searching for you!"

 

Thank you for sharing that with us, John. It took humility and I think we all understand you a bit better now because of it! 

[genesisweavers]

Thanks Gabriela +...I will go to the monastery in Livingston Manor tomorrow for the day.  Prayers for all my Phamily...

your brother

[Yaakov]

Our religious vocation is first and foremost to follow the Christ. The community is but a vehicle. In the monastic setting we do this as a group of friends, that after many years become family. Some of our fellow monks will become our closest soul mates because xe are on the same journey and undergo the same ups and downs along this particular journey.

Let's get real for a moment here: loving each other, encouraging each other, noticing when someone is down or tired or under the weather...here lies true monastic love. We travel and support each other every day little by little.

I don 't think hours and hours of adoration or prayers or fasting until one can barely stand up are psychologically balanced practices. Talking, encouraging, listening , is. More worrying is why?

Isn"t there a tinge of spiritual pride in all of this?

Seeking the beautiful in the other is a far more demanding and humbling affair.

The more we continue in this life the more we should become like the Christ in his overwhelming avalabilty to others in a simple and nature way.Loving your fellow monks(nuns) in all their frailties and trying to build ourselves up ito walk confidently in firm biblicall truth is our day to day sacrifice.

I seem to sense in some of the comments a tendancy to measure by the world's standards. The more one fasts the better. The more one prays the better. Almost to the detrement of the unique make up of every monk or nun.

For those special godly people who tried the life but chose otherwise, please realise how special you are in God's eyes and that the passage in the monastic life is only one way to live out an apostolic and holy devout life. I am convinced and humbled by the fact that many families living in difficult evonomic and emotional situations live out a witness a thoysand times greater than my own.

For those who have left this life wounded, humiliated, wounded and broken and feel lost as to theiir place in the world.

1. You are cheished by your creator just as you are.

2. Give yourself a lot of time to heal

3.Find someone you trust to open up to who is dependable

4. Learn to love yourself again. The way God made you with your talents, gifts , smile,charisma. These are all unique to you.

Al blessings in the only person worth following, The Christ

[mariepaix]

Finally the Prioress of Bethlehem has issued an apology for the wounds and deep  trauma caused by the dysfunctionality of Bethlehem and the many cultish elements they  employ.  https://english.bethleem.org/annonces/20210104_press_release.php

They have also set up a listening cell that will listen to the testimony of ex-sisters of Bethlehem.  You can email the cell and they will contact you.  If you are from another country you can set up a zoom meeting.  If you were a member of this community do not hesitate to contact the listening cell.  There is much that needs to be changed in this Order and many sisters who remain there suffer greatly. 

There is also a forum for ex sisters that you can request to join that is very helpful.https://english.bethleem.org/annonces/20210104_press_release.php

Please beware of recommending anyone to this Order or sending anyone to Sr. Amena in Livingston Manor.