{"id":3769,"date":"2004-05-20T17:04:07","date_gmt":"2004-05-21T00:04:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/?p=3769"},"modified":"2015-11-24T11:21:45","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T19:21:45","slug":"force-of-habit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/force-of-habit\/","title":{"rendered":"Force of Habit"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"200406_Rake)SJA\"<\/a>The bells have been ringing for thirty minutes, but it is the sound of a cane rattling through the empty, cavernous church that suggests prayer. It is held by an old man, his stooped body covered in the flowing black habit of a Benedictine monk. He enters from the sacristy, clicking, clacking, up a barely perceptible incline. When he reaches the altar, he pauses and bows, then turns to the left and clicks and clacks his way upward to a lonely seat in the dark wooden choir.<\/p>\n

View Article as PDF… Here<\/a><\/p>\n

The early morning light is meager, cast from a stained-glass skylight above, through clear windows that run the length of the nave, and from the massive stained glass abstraction that dominates the back of the church at St. John\u2019s Abbey. Other men in habits arrive, bow, and then take seats in the austere straight-backed choir slots. They arrange prayer books and hymnals on the stands in front of them and wait, casting their eyes on the simple wooden crucifix that hangs from the levitating white baldachin. At seven a.m. sharp, a white-haired monk rises from his seat in the choir. \u201cLord open my lips…\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd my mouth shall proclaim your praise,\u201d follow the accumulated voices of the Benedictine monks, a soft morning thunder rolling out from the choir over the empty pews.<\/p>\n

A single note echoes from the pipe organ. The monks on the choir\u2019s left side sing a verse from Psalms, their voices resonant and nearly undivided. After a pause, the monks on the right side sing a verse. The song continues, shifting back and forth across the choir in a sort of divine stereophonic effect, brothers singing to brothers singing, occasionally joining together on a verse, offering their voices to each other and to God.<\/p>\n

When the psalm ends, after the last organ note fades into an ethereal echo, there is a full minute of silence, a contemplation of the prayer just sung, the moment interrupted only by a sneeze, or the occasionally audible grumbling of a stomach. Then the psalms continue, the canticle comes, the responsorial rumbles. Morning Prayer lasts for roughly thirty minutes, depending on the day\u2019s demands, before the monks shuffle silently from the church.<\/p>\n

They walk from the sacristy into the cloister, and then turn right into a wide hallway with tile floors and mostly bare walls, passing a lounge where several copies of the day\u2019s Star Tribune have already been pulled apart. The procession continues, still silent, down a flight of stairs, into a darker hallway, past more lounges, past a massive floor-to-ceiling bulletin board covered with sign-up sheets for prayers, readings, haircuts, and kitchen duties, and then through two wooden doors into the abbey dining room. Pastel-colored religious paintings and stained-glass images of foliage hang from the wood-paneled walls. A beautifully carved wood podium stands ceremoniously in the middle of the space; a massive china cabinet dominates a far wall. Eggs, sausages and other dishes are served in chafing dishes on stout wooden tables. It is a very much an old room in style, and yet certain details\u2014the harsh lights, the plastic dishes and trays, the Wheaties and other boxed cereals\u2014suggest that practical updates and conveniences have been integrated. The brothers eat breakfast in silence.<\/p>\n

This has more or less been the morning routine since 1856, when a group of Benedictine monks from Pennsylvania arrived in St. Cloud to tend to the German Catholic population. In the 150 years since its establishment, St. John\u2019s Abbey, located on 2,500 acres in Collegeville, ninety miles north of the Twin Cities, has exerted a profound influence on both the Catholic Church and the history of Minnesota. The liturgical reform movement responsible for English and other non-Latin masses received some of its most influential and eloquent support from monks at St. John\u2019s, which is also home to a university and prep school. Minnesota Public Radio was launched within the Abbey\u2019s cloisters (and Garrison Keillor\u2019s first radio performances took place here). The abbey\u2019s Liturgical Press remains one of the most important religious publishing houses in the world, printing journals and books that continue to influence both the scholarly and popular understanding of religion and spirituality. The community has counted among its ranks prominent historians, theologians, liturgists, artists, and philosophers.<\/p>\n

Nevertheless, St. John\u2019s Abbey is undergoing the most dramatic changes in its history. For decades, it was the world\u2019s largest Benedictine monastery, with more than four hundred monks living there at its peak in 1963. Today, it has 175, and their average age is sixty-five. The abbey\u2019s traditional role as a provider of parish priests to Minnesota\u2019s churches has become largely obsolete, its monks neither youthful enough nor sufficient in numbers to do the job. The large central Minnesota farm families that once provided the abbey with its most plentiful source of novitiates have been lost to changing rural demographics, leaving the abbey to compete with the temptations of big cities and non-religious careers. Most serious, the sexual-abuse scandals that erupted in America\u2019s parishes also shook St. John\u2019s, altering its culture, its image, and its relationship to Minnesota. Yet even through its darkest hour, the abbey has continued to find novices and retain members, who in turn find relevance in a Minnesota prayer community based on the writings of a sixth-century monk.\u201cWe read that monks should not drink wine at all, but since the monks of our day cannot be convinced of this, let us at least agree to drink moderately, and not to the point of excess.<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2014Rule of St. Benedict 40:6<\/p>\n

Born around the year 480 in Norcia, a village in Italy\u2019s Umbria province, the young Benedict rejected the noble Roman lifestyle of his family, retreating instead to a cave for a hermit\u2019s life of prayer. Yet the cave could not shelter him from those impressed by his holy example. Among the visitors were monks from a nearby monastery in need of a new abbot. Benedict tried to refuse the job, warning them that his strict approach to monasticism would not harmonize with theirs. It was an accurate prophecy. As the new abbot, Benedict \u201cwatched carefully over the religious spirit of his monks and would not tolerate any of their previous disobedience,\u201d recounts his hagiographer. The monks chafed at this rigidity and, shortly after installing Benedict as their abbot, tried to kill him. With the help of a minor miracle, Benedict survived the attempt on his life. His Rule, a diminutive book of less than a hundred pages in English translation, bears the hard lessons of that experience.<\/p>\n

The Benedictine abbot, for example, is a model of managerial flexibility, expected to delegate and consult even though he is \u201cbelieved to hold the place of Christ in the monastery.\u201d Like it or not, he must call together the entire community for counsel when \u201canything important is to be done in the monastery.\u201d A monk\u2019s most human needs are also recognized explicitly. So, in order to satisfy all appetites, the Rule requires a choice of hot entrees at meals. For comfort\u2019s sake, evening prayers in the summer are interrupted to \u201cgive the monks opportunity to care for nature\u2019s needs.\u201d As for the liturgy, Benedict urges \u201cthat if anyone finds this distribution of psalms unsatisfactory, he should arrange whatever he judges better.\u201d<\/p>\n

Still, for all of its humane flexibility, the Rule has its rules, and they can be specific: Monks are to sleep in dorms lit by a single lantern that burns all night; they are to sleep in their habits, girded with belts (\u201cbut they should remove their knives, lest they accidentally cut themselves in their sleep\u201d). Most important, the Rule sets out a particular cycle of prayer\u2014or divine office\u2014requiring eight communal sessions per day. Yet St. John\u2019s, like other American Benedictine monasteries, has consolidated the cycle. According to Father Columba Stewart, a monk at St. John\u2019s and an internationally renowned historian of monasticism, \u201cvirtually nobody follows the Rule exactly.\u201d Other departures include private rooms for monks, and the absence of lanterns. Thus, the Benedictines at St. John\u2019s have been accused of worldliness\u2014continuing a tradition nearly as old as the Benedictine order itself. Indeed, the Cistercian order was created to reform the Benedictines, and the Trappists were formed to reform the Cistercians. In both reformed orders, life is far more regimented, prayer is more frequent, and silence is more common.<\/p>\n

Timothy Kelly, the seventy-year-old abbot president of the organization representing the twenty-one North American Benedictine monasteries, has no patience for worldly criticisms. \u201cWe apply the Rule to what is practical today,\u201d he says, reflecting on his eight years as abbot of St. John\u2019s. \u201cSomeone asking, \u2018Would Jesus have had a computer?\u2019 is just silly. This whole idea of flight from the world is not found in Benedictine life.\u201d<\/p>\n

Instead, what is found is the ordinary and the routine, performed and lived in moderation and community. At St. John\u2019s, prayer occurs each weekday at seven a.m., noon, and seven p.m. A mass is held at five p.m. During the day, some members take the time to engage in lectio divina\u2014holy reading\u2014a practice recommended by Benedict whereby a monk spends a portion of the day in deep, prayerful reading of a text. In between, some work at jobs in and out of St. John\u2019s University and prep school (unless they are retired); others attend universities elsewhere or serve in positions around the country and the globe. No matter where they might be living, all monks remain connected to their home community at St. John\u2019s by order, communication, and love; they return when called by their abbot, upon retirement, or when the difficulty of being away from home simply draws them back. Obviously, a layman outside of the abbey can live with many of these trappings. But doing so within a community, led by an abbot, is what makes monastic life distinctive.<\/p>\n

Abbot John Klassen has a wood-paneled office with large windows that look out on the gardens surrounding the abbey\u2019s church. A visitor will most often find him working at his desk, his lanky, six-foot body bent in a tight angle as he concentrates. Once interrupted, however, he unwinds and relaxes to the point where his adjustable chair threatens to tumble backwards. The Rule devotes a considerable amount of space to detailing the abbot\u2019s responsibilities. None is more chilling than the blunt reminder that \u201cWhatever the number of brothers he has in his care, let him realize that on Judgment Day he will surely have to submit a reckoning to the Lord for all their souls\u2014and his own as well.\u201d When I asked Abbot John whether, in fact, he believed that he had that awesome responsibility, he answered, \u201cThere\u2019s no ducking it.\u201d He leans forward when he speaks, his voice deep and full of wide central-Minnesota vowels, his manner one of pure enthusiasm. Father J.P. Earls, Abbot John\u2019s freshman English teacher, says, \u201cI wouldn\u2019t have picked him as a future abbot. He always struck me as just a big German farm kid.\u201d But the truth is that Abbot John, at fifty-five, is an intellectually intense man, an organic chemist with a Ph.D., and a teacher of renown. Elected by his brothers in 2000, his gregariousness and honesty have not only guided the monastery through difficult times, but also caused concern that he will be tapped for a leadership position outside of St. John\u2019s Abbey.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou do it in fear and trembling,\u201d Abbot John says of his job. \u201cBut you do it in faith as well.\u201d He presides over a complicated and unruly place. \u201cYou are an order without order,\u201d was one of the more notorious complaints leveled at the abbey in its history. Yet St. John\u2019s is not unique in frustrating traditional church authority. Like most monastic orders, it does not answer to the traditional diocesan church hierarchy except in particular circumstances, the most important being liturgy. It is, in fact, outside of that hierarchy, and instead answers to federations and authorities in Rome.<\/p>\n

\u201cAt one time we were a monastery that took in students,\u201d explains one of the monks. \u201cNow we are an abbey in a university.\u201d St. John\u2019s, in fact, is the largest private university in Minnesota, an operating division of the Order of St. Benedict, Inc., run by the abbot\u2014legally, the university\u2019s CEO. In a sense, the university and prep school are mature family businesses in which members of the abbey own an interest and work, some as academics, and some as support staff. However, the abbot\u2019s worldly enterprises don\u2019t end there. They also include the Liturgical Press publishing house; a sustainably managed forest that feeds the abbey\u2019s carpentry shop; a bakery that produces thousands of loaves of branded St. John\u2019s bread per week; and the demands of a rapidly aging population of monks. \u201cAt the end of the day, you turn it over to God and say, \u2018It\u2019s yours for the next seven hours,\u2019\u201d sighs St. John\u2019s implacable abbot.<\/p>\n

Father Columba Stewart is forty-six years old and wears faded black jeans and a faded purple sweatshirt torn at the collarbone. His manner is intellectually confident, but softened by an easy smile and a knack for patient explanation. He looks and acts like the academic he is\u2014a well-regarded historian\u2014but he is first and foremost a member of the St. John\u2019s community, and he speaks of it in the same way a man would speak of a stable marriage. \u201cLike any intimate relationship, it changes you. It forces you to ground yourself,\u201d he says, relaxing in a chair in the abbot\u2019s lounge, a small window-lit room that contains books, a medieval image of Benedict and his sister Scholastica silk-screened onto the wall, and a cookie jar. \u201cI\u2019ve never thought of it as giving something up. I\u2019ve always thought of it as gaining.\u201d Stewart\u2019s is a uniquely contemporary approach to entering monastic life, based on a choice that he made after having already begun a career while a graduate student at Yale. \u201cI\u2019d met some monks from St. John\u2019s,\u201d he says by way of explanation, with a simple shrug.<\/p>\n

In decades past, the abbey did not recruit so much as receive eager novitiates in their teens and twenties, who were often sent to St. John\u2019s Prep School by large farm families. The notion of \u201cmarriage\u201d to a prayer community\u2014especially as a choice to be made from among other careers or paths\u2014was foreign to most of them; the monastery was their sole option, arranged by their families.<\/p>\n

Father William Skudlarek, born in Holdingford, Minnesota (\u201cthe true Lake Wobegon\u201d), is a dashing sixty-five-year-old man of extraordinary erudition who looks like he should have a tan, but doesn\u2019t. One of eight farm children, Skudlarek arrived at St. John\u2019s Prep School at age twelve, spent two years at the university (before attending Catholic University in Washington, D.C., for a year), and entered the novitiate at nineteen. \u201cI ate better in Collegeville than I did on the farm,\u201d he says, laughing. \u201cAnd really, it\u2019s been a wonderful life. I\u2019ve experienced more than I could have ever predicted or expected in Holdingford.\u201d<\/p>\n

In forty-five years as a member of the community, Skudlarek has acquired two advanced degrees, lived for extended periods in France, Japan, and Brazil, served as a university professor, acquired a penchant for Zen, and become a fine cello player. Currently he leads an international organization devoted to promoting dialogues between monastics of different religious traditions; he also serves as a faculty resident at St. John\u2019s, where he has a two-room studio in a college dormitory. \u201cSomeone young can still come to the monastery and have a rich life like mine,\u201d he says on a Friday night, over the sound of speed metal shrieking from the room of one of his students. \u201cBut what\u2019s different are the early years. There just aren\u2019t the big classes of novitiates anymore. You\u2019re pretty much on your own.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturday morning, his habit whispers across the floor of a corridor on the second floor of the abbey\u2019s residence. He passes a lounge that once served as an overflow dormitory for young novitiates. \u201cThere used to be ninety of us in our twenties on this floor,\u201d he says, then turns right, into another lounge now dominated by a television. Passing through it into a long, empty room filled with tables and chairs, Skudlarek stops. \u201cThis is the old rec room. Used to be, we would line up outside for bridge in the evenings.\u201d He glances out the window at Lake Sagatagan, the silence of the room enveloping his warm voice.<\/p>\n

Father Skudlarek is old enough to have experienced life in the monastery before the reforms of Vatican II in the sixties. \u201cIt was much different, much more difficult,\u201d he recalls. It was also much more hierarchical. \u201cOh yes, novitiates used to serve monks at dinner. Tables were reserved by statio, as was one\u2019s place in the church.\u201d Nevertheless, Skudlarek looks back upon those days with a tolerant smile, his real interest being the possibilities that monastic life offered, and continues to offer. \u201cI love community life,\u201d he says. \u201cI really do.\u201d<\/p>\n

For many senior monks, the lure of monasticism is not so easily discerned. Sitting in the abbot\u2019s lounge, his legs crossed, Father Simeon Thole is sixty-nine, but looks twenty years younger. It\u2019s easy to tell from his long, austere face that he smiles rarely, yet his hands are so soft that his tight handshake seems loose. Among his brothers, Thole has a formidable intellectual reputation, as well as a conservative one. \u201cIn the tradition of Christian asceticism, I probably had it too easy,\u201d he says. Still, he admits that his life\u2014like Skudlarek\u2019s, a life that started on the farm\u2014was enriched beyond reasonable expectation by monasticism. \u201cA lot of things happened to me that wouldn\u2019t have happened if I hadn\u2019t joined.\u201d Over the years, Thole has been a preacher, a teacher, and a chaplain to a convent. \u201cI would never say I was unhappy. I had a rich, satisfactory life.\u201d He begins to laugh. \u201cMaybe I had low expectations.\u201d<\/p>\n

Thole arrived at St. John\u2019s when he was fourteen. \u201cI didn\u2019t own anything. I hadn\u2019t even finished my education,\u201d he recalls. \u201cNow young people have so many more choices, there are just so many more things that life supposedly has to offer.\u201d He pauses. \u201cThe modern monk has to keep on making up his mind, saying yes. The system doesn\u2019t pull him along anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n

On Saturdays, evening prayers are different from the rest of the week. Monks enter the church in pairs, stop at the altar, bow to the crucifix, then turn away from each other and take seats on opposite sides of the choir. As the first hymn is sung, a monk spoons incense into a bowl placed in front of the altar. It begins to burn and the smoke rises in a curl around the white crucifix. The monks, so accustomed to focusing on the crucifix during the silent interval between prayers, now trace the path of the smoke. As they sing to one another, and then to God, the smoke unfurls across the baldachin.<\/p>\n

The psalms and canticles continue and the smoke spreads through the church, defining the shafts of light cast from recessed bulbs in the ceiling. The voices in the choir seem more forceful than usual, perhaps inspired by the additional majesty conjured from light and smoke. Yet it is only at the end of the session, after Father Thole has read from the Bible, after psalms, canticles, hymns, and several intervals of silence, that the sweetness of the incense, having risen, descends on the monks.<\/p>\n

The monastery and the circus actually have quite a lot in common,\u201d explains Brother Paul-Vincent Niebauer, the fifty-two-year-old monk charged with bringing candidates into the community. \u201cBoth are counter-cultural,\u201d he says in his rich singer\u2019s voice. \u201cIn both, we depend upon each other. In both, we have to get along.\u201d He relaxes in a straight-backed chair in his office overlooking Lake Sagatagan, crossing his legs beneath his habit. \u201cAnd in both institutions, there is a defining issue. At the circus, it\u2019s the show. At the monastery, it\u2019s the mercy of God.\u201d Like many of St. John\u2019s monks, this self-described \u201cblack sheep\u201d from northern Wisconsin felt an early calling to the priesthood, but unlike the others, he delayed it \u201cbecause I yearned for the circus, still.\u201d And so, in 1974, Niebauer borrowed his brother\u2019s car and actually joined a circus. \u201cI did magic, fire-eating, puppets, snakes, clowning.\u201d Eventually, Niebauer became a ringmaster, and it was a good life. \u201cThen my fortieth birthday was coming around the hill,\u201d he recalls. \u201cAnd I spoke to a friend of mine, a Dominican monk, who suggested I go on a ten-day Trappist retreat.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s an identifiable pattern: Today, Niebauer himself receives an inquiry from an aspiring monk approximately every thirty-six hours; the seekers range \u201cfrom high school kids to the incarcerated.\u201d Those who appear serious and suitable, and who are between the ages of twenty-three and forty, are invited to spend short intervals over a period of two years visiting the abbey. \u201cIt\u2019s not for everybody,\u201d Niebauer cautions with a wry smile, but those who like the life apply for a three-month candidacy during which they live, work, and pray at the monastery. The abbey is as careful as many employers about who will be invited to spend his life in the community. Before the candidacy, aspiring monks submit to state and federal background checks and a credit check. During the candidacy their physical and psychological health is evaluated. Those who pass the checks, complete the candidacy, and wish to continue apply for a one-year novitiate. It has become a select group: The 2003 \u201cclass\u201d comprised two men.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re not looking for spiritual giants,\u201d Niebauer says. \u201cIn fact, they may not do well here.\u201d Instead, he emphasizes the need for a good sense of humor and some fairly significant life experience. \u201cI want them to have fallen in love at least once,\u201d he says. \u201cBecause if you haven\u2019t fallen in love, you will. And if you\u2019ve never been through that, it\u2019s going to be rough on you… and us, your brothers.\u201d<\/p>\n

If after a year both the novice and the abbey choose to continue the process, the novice takes first vows and begins a three-to-eight-year period as a junior monk, at the end of which the community votes on his acceptance. The next and final step is solemn vows that commit the monk to a life in the community. Only forty percent of candidates end up taking solemn vows. When asked why the others don\u2019t make it, Niebauer smiles. \u201cYeah. Self-knowledge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two floors above Niebauer\u2019s office are the living quarters of Brother Matthew Luft, which look like those of any Midwestern graduate student. Currently pursuing an MA in Liturgical Studies in St. John\u2019s School of Theology, Luft is a boyishly handsome thirty-one. He is a junior monk. His single high-ceilinged room is dominated by overstuffed bookcases (containing, among many other volumes, several Anne Rice novels, Catcher in the Rye, and The Wookie Cookie Cookbook). There\u2019s also a single bed and a computer with a flat-panel monitor. On the whiteboard posted next to his door is written, \u201cHave you prayed today? Have you done lectio?\u201d Cardboard boxes are stacked on top of his wardrobe, as if waiting for the end of the school year. Luft, dressed collegiately in topsiders, faded jeans, and a black T-shirt, grabs an empty box with an Old Dutch potato chip logo on it. \u201cThis is the box,\u201d he smiles. \u201cI\u2019ve packed it before. But I\u2019ve never moved it.\u201d Father Skudlarek, standing beside him, asks to hold the box and chuckles at the younger monk, for whom he\u2014and the other brothers of St. John\u2019s\u2014has obvious affection. \u201cIt is true, though. You are always free to leave, and that\u2019s important to remember.\u201d Luft adds, \u201cI met a sister recently who\u2019s spent forty-five years in her community and she told me that every day she prays for strength to continue her vocation.\u201d He sighs. \u201cAnd that was just so great to hear.\u201d<\/p>\n

On April 27 the monks of St. John\u2019s voted to admit Brother Matthew as a permanent member. On July 11, he will take solemn vows in the abbey church. It is a radical lifestyle choice, and yet, prior to entering St. John\u2019s, Luft lived a life much like his generational peers, for whom the vast majority a monastic vocation would seem as alien as entering a retirement home. \u201cI consider myself a part of the Star Wars generation,\u201d he says, pointing to one of several R2-D2 models on a shelf, positioned between family photos and Byzantine icons. \u201cIt\u2019s about the battle between good and evil, that we each have a dark and light side. In Jedi, Luke had to come to terms with himself. That\u2019s one of my operating stories.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luft, a Des Moines native, came to St. John\u2019s as a college student. \u201cLast year I received a Christmas card from my college girlfriend and her husband,\u201d he smiles. \u201cThat was weird. I thought, man, I\u2019m thirty years old. There was this realization that she was the last person that I would know.\u201d According to Luft, the two-year relationship ended amicably with both parties headed in different career directions. She was interested in management and corporate life; he in teaching and the seminary. There wasn\u2019t much middle ground.<\/p>\n

However, before entering St. John\u2019s, Luft would first spend an extended period in Arizona, teaching third-graders. \u201cI had my own apartment, a car, a salary, insurance,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI belonged to a church, but something was missing. I would go home at night, and nobody was there.\u201d He began his candidacy in 2000, \u201cfeeling that I could get through it. It\u2019s a summer, there\u2019s a light at the end of the tunnel,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then you discover that you like this.\u201d<\/p>\n

Luft describes the brothers of the abbey as his family. \u201cI wouldn\u2019t necessarily choose all these guys. You\u2019ve got your \u2018Uncle Joes\u2019 at the Thanksgiving table,\u201d he laughs. \u201cBut Thanksgiving is one of the best times at the abbey. You sit around and talk about all the characters. It\u2019s family.\u201d<\/p>\n

Like any family, the brothers of St. John\u2019s have dealt with tragedy. In 2002, the abbey acknowledged that over the past forty years, twelve members of the monastic community, including a former abbot, had been accused of sexually abusing children and vulnerable adults. Unlike other segments of the American Church, St. John\u2019s came to a fast settlement of the claims against it, cooperated with all law enforcement, and followed the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops in removing the accused from active ministry. Abbot John, elected on the verge of the crisis, has been widely praised for his willingness to meet victims of the abuse \u201cand listen to their voices.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet as the scandal progressed, there was still the question of what to do with accused members of the community who wanted to remain at St. John\u2019s. \u201cPeople were saying, \u2018You\u2019ve got to throw these guys out,\u201d Abbot John recalls. \u201cBut we felt that we needed to find meaningful work and lives for those who wanted to stay.\u201d So monks or priests who chose to remain were placed on restriction in the abbey, prohibited from associating with staff and students of the university and prep school, and prevented from using almost all public facilities at St. John\u2019s.<\/p>\n

It was a controversial decision outside of the abbey, and an immensely difficult one to make within it. For Abbot John, keeping the accused monks in community was the deeply Christian and obvious choice. \u201cWe believe in conversion and redemption,\u201d he says, his hands spread wide. \u201cHow could we ever be faithful to the gospel, Christ\u2019s forgiveness, and the Rule if we don\u2019t follow through on that? Because the men themselves\u2014their sorrow and commitment to change was important and evident. They are part of our family.\u201d Within the abbey, monks acknowledge lingering anger and disappointment at the accused monks, yet they do not shun them. When I ask Brother Paul-Vincent about the scandal, he explains, \u201cIt\u2019s like dad\u2019s in jail. Am I mad at dad? You bet I am. Do I still love him? Yes.\u201d Niebauer briefly lowers his gaze. \u201cThey are still my brothers,\u201d he says in a softer tone. \u201cI took a vow to love them.\u201d<\/p>\n

Matthew Luft was a junior monk when the crisis erupted, and he admits that it gave him doubts. \u201cI asked myself, \u2018Do I want to be a part of this place?\u2019\u201d But ultimately the process of watching the community deal with the crisis\u2014the therapy sessions, the grieving, and the forgiveness\u2014strengthened his faith in the vocation. Today, his doubts are based on more prosaic concerns, and are not so different from his non-monastic peers who occasionally doubt their career choices. \u201cSome days I wake up and think it\u2019d be nice to go back to sleep and not go to prayer.\u201d He pauses. \u201cBut then I\u2019d go through the day feeling like I\u2019d missed something.\u201d<\/p>\n

Everybody always says they wish they had my job,\u201d says Father Timothy Backous, St. John\u2019s athletic director. \u201cExcept for the Benedictine part.\u201d He laughs, his eyes narrowing into a nearly wrinkle-free squint. He wears a polo shirt and neatly pressed khakis. The walls of his office, just down the hall from that of John Gagliardi, St. John\u2019s legendary football coach, are covered with photos of athletes, sporting events, and award certificates. Scattered among them are a simple wooden crucifix, icons, and a Ph.D. diploma in Moral Theology earned in Rome.<\/p>\n

Backous, who is known as \u201cTim-O\u201d to the brothers, did not intend to remain a monk when he entered in the mid-1970s. \u201cOne of the things that appealed to me about monastic life was that you could try it out for four years,\u201d he says. \u201cI thought it would be neat to tell people later in life that I\u2019d been a monk for a while.\u201d He smiles at the irony. \u201cThen I sort of fell in love with the community.\u201d<\/p>\n

The speakerphone on Backous\u2019s desk buzzes, and a secretary asks what should be done with seven thousand dollars left over from a prior year\u2019s budget. \u201cYou know, this is not my dream job,\u201d he says, waving at the office. \u201cMy dream is to get St. John\u2019s re-involved in the Twin Cities.\u201d And so, on the weekends, Backous says mass at inner-city churches in Minneapolis. \u201cMy dream is for us to find a place in Minneapolis where I could work in those parishes and where other monks could go.\u201d<\/p>\n

Backous\u2019s vision is not merely personal. It is actually a part of a larger discussion as to what, in fact, the role of the abbey will be in the coming years. Its original purpose\u2014filling central Minnesota churches with parish priests\u2014is no longer realistic in an era of declining monastic populations. So the abbey aims to take on projects and roles that emphasize its spiritual significance to the outside world. The drive to build a new guest wing (designed by the esteemed architect Tadao Ando), for example, is a project of the first priority, since hospitality is one of the key tenets of the Benedictine rule. Educating priests and nuns from the rapidly growing Chinese Catholic Church is another. \u201cWe can\u2019t do everything we used to do,\u201d says Abbot John after I mention Backous\u2019 vision to him. \u201cWe still imagine ourselves as a big monastery. We have to imagine ourselves as a smaller monastery. We don\u2019t have a class of monks coming up like we used to. Matthew Luft is on his own.\u201d For Abbot John, the future of the monastery is intimately tied up in its role as a spiritual institution. \u201cWhat\u2019s the relevance?\u201d he asks with characteristic enthusiasm. \u201cOur society and culture are so busy, so hyper-extended. So a monastery exists to pray, to have solitude and silence, and to serve as a witness that these things are an important part of the human experience.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sitting in the abbot\u2019s lounge, Father Stewart, the impassive monastic historian, smiles when asked about the future of the abbey. \u201cThe Benedictines are in it for the long haul,\u201d he says. Like his abbot in the office across the hall, Stewart recognizes the important symbolic role that the abbey plays, though he is careful to temper the enthusiasm with Benedictine humility. \u201cIt\u2019s not, \u2018Oh, look at this shining light on the hill,\u2019\u201d he says with a wave of his hand. \u201cIt\u2019s showing that this kind of life is a possibility.\u201d<\/p>\n

One of the great mysteries of monastic life is its ability to confer youth upon its practitioners. At St. John\u2019s, most brothers appear ten to twenty years younger than their ages recorded in the abbey\u2019s register. Yet as the aged know, youth is not only a matter of appearances. At the abbey, careers often remain active, fruitful, and vital into the eighth decade of life.<\/p>\n

Opinions vary as to the reasons for this phenomenon. Some cite the stress-free routine of monastic life, its lack of mortgage payments, car payments, and job pressures. Yet others, particularly brothers who have academic careers, scoff at the notion that a cycle of prayer and meals is enough to keep life stress-free. While many brothers cite the lack of family pressures, it\u2019s just as easy to find those who reject that explanation and note that cohabiting with roughly two hundred \u201cguys\u201d can be rough.<\/p>\n

Late on a Saturday afternoon, Father Angelo Zankl, the abbey\u2019s oldest member, is seated in his wheelchair in the retirement wing, home to twenty members of the community. His 103-year-old face is thin, but his wide eyes are clear and bright, and his delicate, almost feminine lips are raised in a perpetual smile. He is good-humored, whip-smart, and not shy about teasing Father Skudlarek, who sits beside him, or the two nurses at the reception desk. Nevertheless, Father Zankl is a private man, and he is unwilling to comment for publication on the circumstances of his life at St. John\u2019s. It can only be noted that he arrived at the abbey at age eleven in a horse and buggy, and that he spent most of his monastic career ministering to a Duluth parish.<\/p>\n

\u201cAngelo,\u201d Father Skudlarek prods him. \u201cWhy is it that everyone remains so young at the abbey?\u201d<\/p>\n

Father Zankl glances at the younger, sixty-five-year-old monk with a dismissive, nearly contemptuous glare. \u201cThey\u2019re awfully slow bringing me my food this afternoon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cSlow, are they?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s right,\u201d Father Zankl says, his tone flat enough to suggest that he is only half joking.<\/p>\n

Father Skudlarek gently pats Father Zankl\u2019s bony hands. \u201cBut why is it that monks live so long at St. John\u2019s?\u201d<\/p>\n

Father Zankl sighs impatiently.<\/p>\n

He opens his mouth, closes it, then smiles. \u201cWhy do they live so long?\u201d He asks, raising his hands slightly. \u201cDon\u2019t ask me.\u201d<\/p>\n

Father Skudlarek bursts out laughing and places one hand on his brother\u2019s shoulder, lovingly assuring him, \u201cLunch is on the way, Angelo. Don\u2019t worry about a thing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Force of Habit
\nThe Rake
\nby Adam Minter
\nSource:\u00a0http:\/\/archives.secretsofthecity.com\/magazine\/reporting\/rakish-angle\/force-habit<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The bells have been ringing for thirty minutes, but it is the sound of a cane rattling through the empty, cavernous church that suggests prayer. It is held by an old man, his stooped body covered in the flowing black … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[289,94,286,170,247,6,288,21,287,140,23,68],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3769","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-angelo-zankl","category-columba-stewart","category-garrison-keillor","category-j-p-earls","category-john-gagliardi","category-john-klassen","category-matthew-luft","category-paul-vincent-niebauer","category-simeon-thole","category-tim-backous","category-timothy-kelly","category-william-skudlarek","wp-image-borders"],"views":1611,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3769"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9322,"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3769\/revisions\/9322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3769"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3769"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.behindthepinecurtain.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3769"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}