Trappists/trappistines

[VeniteAdoremus]

Puella could totally beat me up She's strong. I can still outrun her now, but that'll probably change when she's doing all that physical labora while I'm stuck behind a desk or a lectern

And I would like to have it stated for all posterity that

[i]The Rule of St. Benedict should be required reading in every secondary school.[/i]

Seriously.

Saint Therese: I know of Thomas Merton, and I've been told that his earlier work is very good, but the later decidedly dodgy... I was going to wait until later in my formation to read dodgy stuff.

[toebat]

If you wish to see how the Trappistines live you can go to the website of Our Lady of the Mississippi Abbey. They have a DVD series along the lines of The Monastery from England. TLC filmed it, but it never aired. It is facinating, as it shows you their life from the inside out. They get up at 3:30 AM!!!
Merton is suggested reading if you are discerning with them. He's a tough read, but if you are serious about Cistercian contemplative life, he is one to look into. Well, that and the whole Monastic Wisdom series..
lol now, if I could only make a choice Dominican or Trappistine.....
Cheers.

Edited August 2, 2009 by toebat

[sistersintigo]

[quote name='Luigi' date='01 August 2009 - 12:58 AM' timestamp='1249102684' post='1937418']
I know in my soul that VeniteAdoremus was joking above (smile and nod, even if you weren't), and she herself probably knows the history of the Benedictines, Cistercians, and Trappists, but I include a brief and rather vague history here for some of the less widely read phatmass phamily. Ahem ... (clears throat and proceeds) ...

Around 450 AD, Benedict & Scholastica (biological brother & sister - twins, I believe) founded the Benedictine male & female branches. Fine - things went swimmingly for centuries, but then the order began to descend into decadence - too much land, money, & power, relaxation of practices & rules, secularization - all due to extremely complex social forces, etc.

Sts. Robert, Stephen, & Alberic, Benedictines in the monastery at Citeaux, reformed their monastery (plural?) to bring it back to the original Benedictine practices - I think this was about 1100, but if you want to be sure, look it up yourself.

(Citeaux is the French form of the place name; the Latin form led to the Order being called the Cistercians - hence O.Cist.).

But the Benedictine family, as it's now called, has always done good work, all three movements have had male & female monasteries, and the O.Cists & OCSOs get along quite well these days:The Trappists acknowledge that they are a flavor of Cistercians, which is why some of the Trappist monasteries refer to themselves as Cistercians on their websites; the Cistercian & Trappists collaborate on a journal of Cistercian Studies (articles from both branches get published, topics from both branches, in the libraries of both branches, etc);

it's not to be wondered at that they've needed some reforms - every six or seven hundred years isn't too bad a record. The miracle - and I mean that literally - in my humble opinion, is that they accomplished the needed reforms.

The test on the above material will be given during next Friday's class - please bring your own #2 pencils.
[/quote]

Just to make the history lesson even more involved,
go back to Robert, Stephen, and Alberic, Benedictine monks involved in the Cistercian (Citeaux) reform.
Robert is regularly referred to as St. Robert of Molesmes; the latter name refers to a different location, and a different abbey of monks. Not far from this latter abbey of Molesmes, there was a wilderness forest, uninhabited but with generous natural resources, the sort of place that Christian hermits find attractive. A small group of men from Rheims, which in that day was a European Catholic power center closely connected to and even rivalling Rome, had become so fed up with the corruption of the archbishop and the intrigue at the cathedral, that they resolved to retire into the wilderness together to praise God as hermits.
St Robert would shortly head out for Citeaux to participate in its reform of the Benedictine monastic life. Before taking off, however, he did whatever official, formal, and canonical acts needed to be done, so that the forest near Molesmes would be the province of the wanna-be hermits. They settled in and constructed a sort of "laura" so that their way of life could be truly eremetical/hermit-like, rather than cenobitic/community-of-monks.
Apparently the initial group of hermits struck a chord with other Catholics fed up with the decadence and corruption of the Church, and before you know it, the forest got a little crowded, with people showing up and joining in. The name of the actual forest area close to Molesmes, if I recall this right, was Seche Fontaine, which if my French is anywhere near accurate means Dried Up Fountain (Gee, how attractive).
Sometime while Robert of Molesmes was off participating in the Cistercian reform at Citeaux, the inevitable came to pass. Seche Fontaine literally had enough men to found a monastery. With one glorious exception, the men agreed to switch from hermit life to the cenobitic life of the monks living in community.
Years pass, Robert the Cistercian reformer returns to Molesmes/Seche-Fontaine, and a generation of devout Catholics begins to be called home to God. There was an ancient tradition of Eulogies when a prominent person died: scrolls would be passed about and sent around to those who had known the deceased, and they would inscribe upon the scroll a written memorial to the person. It is thought that Robert was still amongst the living when one such Eulogy sent scrolls to France, and he and his monks praised the deceased, in Latin, as their very good and true friend. The dead man, of course, was the original hermit, the only one who insisted, when things got crowded in the forest, that he came to be a hermit and a hermit he would remain, even if he had to relocate to someplace more savage and remote in order to continue as a hermit.
He went, of course, to the French Alps near Grenoble, to the Grande Chartreuse; and he was St. Bruno of Cologne, the founder of the Carthusian order.
Somebody else can tackle the subject of the reform by St Romuald and Camaldoli. Those were busy times....

[Saint Therese]

I think the orginal thread is over six months old.

[IgnatiusofLoyola]

This silly thread about warring orders reminds me of the only Catholic joke I know:

A Benedictine and a Dominican were arguing about which order God liked better. They finally decided to let God decide the argument, and wrote a note to God, and burned it. They knelt to pray and after awhile, a note fluttered down from above the altar.

The note read:

I love all my children equally.

God, S.J.

[sistersintigo]

Sibling rivalry, it seems, is more what has hijacked this thread than order vs. order. The remark that the thread is older, certainly applies to the sibling rivalry bit. I do hope that the discerner who started the thread, sincerely asking about Cistercians and Trappists, got some help.
After all these centuries of revolution, war, and Vatican Councils, it is interesting today to see orders reaching out amicably to each other. Amongst the prolific writings of Trappist monk Thomas Merton is a Latin-to-English translation from Carthusian founder St. Bruno himself. It is not unusual for Carthusian communities uprooted and displaced by war to end up living in monasteries built by some other order. One good example is the French nuns who moved into a Cistercian French abbey at Nonenque, which is now a Chartreuse/charterhouse dedicated to Notre Dame du Precieux Sang. The Spanish foundation of Carthusian nuns, nearing its fiftieth anniversary, occupies a venerable and ancient Cistercian abbey in Valencian Spain, an area where Catalan and Basque as well as Castilian Spain is spoken. On the other hand, the ancient Charterhouse/"cartuja" of El Paular, in Madrid, is now the home of a Benedictine abbey whose very scholarly abbot, Dom Ildefonso M Gomez OSB, specializes in studies of...you guessed it...the Carthusian order.
Seriously, should I maybe start a fresh new sibling-rivalry warring-order -free thread about Cistercians of the Strict Observance?

[cmaD2006]

[quote name='sistersintigo' date='22 March 2010 - 06:35 PM' timestamp='1269293736' post='2077936']
Sibling rivalry, it seems, is more what has hijacked this thread than order vs. order. The remark that the thread is older, certainly applies to the sibling rivalry bit. I do hope that the discerner who started the thread, sincerely asking about Cistercians and Trappists, got some help.
After all these centuries of revolution, war, and Vatican Councils, it is interesting today to see orders reaching out amicably to each other. Amongst the prolific writings of Trappist monk Thomas Merton is a Latin-to-English translation from Carthusian founder St. Bruno himself. It is not unusual for Carthusian communities uprooted and displaced by war to end up living in monasteries built by some other order. One good example is the French nuns who moved into a Cistercian French abbey at Nonenque, which is now a Chartreuse/charterhouse dedicated to Notre Dame du Precieux Sang. The Spanish foundation of Carthusian nuns, nearing its fiftieth anniversary, occupies a venerable and ancient Cistercian abbey in Valencian Spain, an area where Catalan and Basque as well as Castilian Spain is spoken. On the other hand, the ancient Charterhouse/"cartuja" of El Paular, in Madrid, is now the home of a Benedictine abbey whose very scholarly abbot, Dom Ildefonso M Gomez OSB, specializes in studies of...you guessed it...the Carthusian order.
Seriously, should I maybe start a fresh new sibling-rivalry warring-order -free thread about Cistercians of the Strict Observance?
[/quote]

By all means feel free to start a new thread ... I don't know if you saw the thread that was opened a few weeks ago (see http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=103476&st=0 ) but opening a thread that is old gets to be a bit annoying; it can lead to going back and forth on an issue without realizing the original posting date.

You can always put a link in the new thread refering to the old.

Edited March 22, 2010 by cmariadiaz

[IgnatiusofLoyola]

[quote name='cmariadiaz' date='22 March 2010 - 06:23 PM' timestamp='1269296614' post='2077962']
By all means feel free to start a new thread ... I don't know if you saw the thread that was opened a few weeks ago (see [url="http://www.phatmass.com/phorum/index.php?showtopic=103476&st=0"]http://www.phatmass....pic=103476&st=0[/url] ) but opening a thread that is old gets to be a bit annoying; it can lead to going back and forth on an issue without realizing the original posting date.

You can always put a link in the new thread refering to the old.
[/quote]

What?!!! I finally find an appropriate occasion to tell my stupid (and very old) Catholic joke--the only one I know, and you're going to stop the thread? Hmph. LOL

[Maximilianus]

The Trappist monastery here in GA is the [url="http://www.trappist.net/"]Monastery of the Holy Spirit[/url]. The founding monks came from Gethsemani in KY.
They sustain themselves by selling stained glass, bonzai trees, burial plots, media, confections and by holing retreats...no beer though.

[brightsadness]

[quote name='Maximilianus' date='23 March 2010 - 12:22 AM' timestamp='1269328954' post='2078226']
The Trappist monastery here in GA is the [url="http://www.trappist.net/"]Monastery of the Holy Spirit[/url]. The founding monks came from Gethsemani in KY.
They sustain themselves by selling stained glass, bonzai trees, burial plots, media, confections and by holing retreats...no beer though.



[/quote]

I have a stained glass piece, given by my Aunt, done by Fr. Philip Dehner, OCSO, RIP of that monastery.