A day in the life of a Trappist Monk
August 23, 2008
While looking into the diets of various religious communities (what you don’t do that to?), I stumbled upon this wonderful website: A Day in the Life of a Trappist Monk. It is loaded with wonderful photographs of the history of the monks of the Abbey of Our Lady of the Prairies. Beautiful pictures. Beautiful music. And beautiful faith. There is lots to look at. But its worth it.
Trappist Lay Brothers
August 26, 2008 at 11:23 pm
The old black and white photo represents the Trappist Order in it’s glory days, before the disaster of Vatican II. What these saccharine photos of monastic life fail to tell, is the collapse of the Trappist Order since Vatican II, brought about by discarding the Tridentine Latin Mass, Latin Gregorian Chant, monastic disipline, silence, Cistercian tradition, penances, and all the holy traditions and symobls that are associated with the Catholic Church and the Trappisy Order.
The Trappists had 5,000 monks before Vatican II. Today, they have less than 2,000. The average age is 75+. Nearly all Trappist houses in Europe are down to less than 20 monks each, all aged monks who can not function 100% nor maintain their monasteries.
Trappists have unfortunatly become at the vanguard of liturgical liberalism, dissent, and experimentation. They cling to inter-religious dialog and ecumenism. A Tibetan lama(monk) who is considered a divine “Oracle” (the famous Tibetan Oracle of Lhasa), visited the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky, and was given the abbot’s throne from which to conduct his lecture on Buddhist and tibetan traditions….all attended by the Trappist monks and a handful of radical liberal Catholics.
Though these pictures are sweet, and appear to represent holy men still adhering to Catholic and monastic traditions….do not be decieved.
With regards to the Trappists….nothing could be further from the truth!!!!!!
August 30, 2008 at 1:12 am
Hirotomi,
I appreciate your comment, but I am not sure how to respond. As far as I know, the Trappists are still in good standing with the Holy See.
I do not like the creep of Eastern religion into Catholicism, but I don’t like jumping on any hate bandwagon either.
Do you have any reference for the claims you make against the Trappists?
September 2, 2008 at 12:41 pm
Yes, apparently still in good standing with the Holy See:
http://www.monks.org/a_cardinal.html
I doubt that Arinze knew that just a couple of months earlier they hosted this nonsense:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPT6-JxUk0E
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbptUAsCPww
And last year, 2007, from their website:
http://www.monks.org/oracle.html
September 4, 2008 at 1:02 am
Sylvain,
Thank you for the links. I don’t know. The loosey goosey everybody hug “vibe” of the videos was a little strange, but I didn’t see anything anti-Catholic. It seems as though the goal wasn’t to water down Catholicism, but to take advantage of their interreligious dialog to promote environmentalism.
The photo at http://www.monks.org/oracle.html just looks like a simple interreligious meeting.
As far as I know, there is nothing anti-Catholic about environmentalism. Nor is there anything wrong with interreligious dialog. If there were problems with these two areas, the Vatican would not promote good stewardship nor would the Pope ever meet with leaders of other religions.