blue cloud abbey blue cloud abbey
Vol. 20 No.1 Marvin SD 57251 Winter 2009
AN ABBOT HAS BEEN ELECTED
On the morning of January 10, 2009, Father Denis Quinkert was chosen by the monks of Blue Cloud Abbey to be their fifth abbot. He had also been their third abbot, having held that position from 1986 until 1991. An oblate of our community, Pastor Mark Strobel, commented, “The abbey now has its own Grover Cleveland who was the 22nd and 25th President of the United States, and you’ve made modern monastic history.” This is true. No abbot who has been out of office for a period of time nowadays has ever been elected again. It has occurred among Benedictine women that former prioresses have been elected. With diminishing vocations in so many of our houses, this will perhaps become a more common practice among Benedictine men as well.
A year ago, Father Denis was named Prior of Blue Cloud Abbey as a replacement for Father Prior George Lyon who was critically ill. Upon Abbot Thomas Hillenbrand’s resignation on January l of this year, Prior Denis became administrator of the abbey until he was elected abbot.
Our former Abbot Thomas has dropped the use of the abbatial title and has gone back into rank at the place where he was before his election. For the next year, he will be on sabbatical. Part of the time will be spent with monks at St. Benedict’s Monastery in Australia. Upon his return to Blue Cloud, Father Thomas will no doubt go back to work in our carpenter shop.
Abbot Denis was born in New Albany, Indiana on July 7, 1936. He attended St. Placid Hall, a secondary school for brotherhood candidates at St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana. Upon graduating from there in 1954, he came to Blue Cloud Abbey, the St. Meinrad foundation that was then four years old. He professed vows in 1956. As a Benedictine Brother, Abbot Denis worked on the abbey farm, helped with the construction of the monastery and farm buildings, and was later assigned as a prefect at two of the schools our community staffed on Indian reservations. Several years later, he began studies for
the priesthood at Pope John XXIII Seminary in Weston, Massachusetts.
Abbot Denis Quinkert, OSB
As a priest of the community, Father Denis was pastor at Ft. Totten, North Dakota and at Wagner, Waubay, Grenville, and Milbank in South Dakota. He also served as a chaplain to the Benedictine Sisters of Sacred Heart Monastery and the students of Mount Marty College in Yankton, South Dakota.
Abbot Denis was expeditiously elected on the first ballot. There had been the possibility that we could have voted all day. Eleven monks in Guatemala were
also voting. Ten of them had sent their first ballots along with Father Prior Basil Dilger, the superior at Resurrection Priory. If there had been no election on the first ballot, the Guatemalans would have cast all further votes by e-mail. Father Bernardine Ness devised a system whereby each of them would use a numerical code in order to safeguard privacy.
Abbot Thomas Hillenbrand, OSB
Father Thomas had been our abbot for sixteen years. He was raised in Evansville, Indiana and studied at St. Meinrad’s Minor Seminary. Following his older brother, Father Xavier, to Blue Cloud Abbey, Father Thomas was professed in 1960 and was ordained in 1965. Father Xavier Hillenbrand was the prior of our foundation in Guatemala when he died there at the age of 43.
All of our abbots have been natives of Indiana. Although Blue Cloud monks come from other parts of the country, our leadership and membership have been sustained these many years by confreres who were previously associated either as monks or students at St. Meinrad’s Archabbey. Monastics speak of their motherhouse, meaning the founding monastery. Our mother has been especially good to us.
Father George Lyon, OSB
Father George died on September 3, 2008. He had been told near the end of the previous year that he would be here for Christmas but would probably not live to watch the Super Bowl. Father George lived almost long enough to view the World Series. Viewing sports on television had been one of his favorite pastimes. The other was playing golf.
He was born in 1924 at Loretto, Kentucky where his father operated a country general store. After attending high school and two years of college at St. Meinrad, he entered the novitiate there in 1944. Two of his classmates, Father Odo Gogel and Father Odilo Burkhardt, were also destined to become monks of Blue Cloud Abbey. They professed vows the following year. Father George was assigned to the South Dakota foundation following his ordination in 1950. After having worked on the construction of the monastery for a year, he went to St. Ann’s Mission on the Turtle Mountain Reservation in North Dakota. In 1958, he was assigned to St. Paul’s Mission on the Yankton Reservation in South Dakota. Eventually, he became
the superior at both of these missions. For a total of thirty years Father George worked among the Ojibwa and Dakota people. Besides serving the missions pastorally, he at various times was a dormitory prefect, a Latin teacher, basketball coach and school bus driver. Among the duties he filled at Blue Cloud Abbey were the positions of novice master, vocation director, farm manager, and prior.
Father George had a pleasant and calm disposition. His manner of dying did not differ from how he lived his life, patiently and with gratitude, especially to those who cared for him in his last days.
Hermano Jorge Valerio Ibarra Rodriguez
Another monk named George died near the end of last year. Brother Jorge died on All Souls Day at Resurrection Priory. He was the first to die among our Guatemalan confreres. Brother Jorge was born in
1936. His father was a lawyer and his mother belonged to a family of means. In his youth he had polio which accounted for his limping through the rest of life. Being struck down by a city bus also contributed to his disability. Brother Jorge’s brothers all achieved professional careers. After graduating from high school, he worked for the Asociacion Nacional de Café, an organization of Guatemalan coffee growers. His job was to deliver daily mail to everyone in the building and he liked stopping to chat with all the employees. Brother Jorge did this for twenty-seven years. While working there he once won an in-house Ping-Pong tournament and kept the gold medal among his memorabilia.
He learned about Resurrection Priory from a former member and went to look it over. In 1996, he professed vows. Brother Jorge had various jobs in the monastery including bell ringer, chronicler, housekeeper, and musician. Father Bernardine recalls that Brother Jorge “made up with rhythm what he lacked in singing. He enjoyed playing the castanets with choirs in churches everywhere.” He was friendly and had a sense of humor. It was easy for him to make friends and he had many outside the community. Father Prior Basil will always remember Brother Jorge as being very devout. “He was often praying before the Blessed Sacrament and at Our Lady’s altar, and he was the one who turned on the lights in the chapel every morning before the rest of the community arrived.”
For the past year, Brother Jorge suffered with Alzheimer’s. His behavior had to be closely monitored after he began cutting to shreds the daily newspaper and magazines in the community reading room. Now he is no longer compelled to do this and is at peace.
A Novice Makes Monastic Profession
Brother Bob Green professed temporary vows on September 14. He was born in Toledo, Ohio in 1953 and has lived in various parts of the United States. By profession he is an audio technician for concert performances and event productions. He has advised us regarding our sound system. After making profession, Brother Bob was named sacristan and has been beautifying the cloister by repainting rooms and putting new varnish on the doors. He also waters all the plants in the building.
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Winter has brought heavy snowfalls (3 feet by the middle of January), high winds (causing visibility hazards while driving), and subzero temperatures (down the road from us in Aberdeen it was 42 below one evening, and that was not taking into account the wind chill factor). Abbot Jerome Kodell from Subiaco Abbey in Arkansas directed our community retreat the first full week of January. He was able to get in and out of here on schedule. Abbot Peter Eberle, however, President of the Swiss-American Congregation of which we are a member abbey, presided at the abbatial election and had to spend two extra days here because of the weather before he could return to Mt. Angel Abbey in Oregon.
A Priest May Apply with Caution
In preparation for the election, we were informed that only a priest could be chosen abbot. St. Benedict, in his day, appeared reluctant to let priests into the monastery. Why? Perhaps his biographer provides a clue. It was a neighboring priest who had tried poisoning Benedict. When that assassination attempt was botched, Father Florentius sent seven naked women into the cloister to arouse the monks. Was Benedict fearful of some harm a priest might do to him and his monks? Was that the reason for Benedict’s reluctance to admit priests into the monastery?
No, not at all. He was only following the tradition of most previous monastic legislators. Monasticism was a lay movement in the beginning. Benedict himself was not a priest. If he were living today, he would not be eligible for the office of abbot. It was not until the ninth century that abbots were expected to be priests. Benedict, in chapter 62 of his Rule, says that a priest who is accepted into his monastery “must not make any exceptions for himself, but rather give everyone an example of humility.”
The Rule of the Master, an earlier monastic code with which Benedict was familiar, was far more stringent regarding priests. The Master gives no thought to letting priests make profession in the monastery. The Master and his monks must have gone to a nearby church for the Eucharist. But, should any priests wish to live in the monastery, he says they must be treated as outsiders. If they want the monastery to provide them with clothing and footwear, then they had better work for it. A priest who refuses do any work in the monastery will be shown to the door and sent back to his parish.
Although the Master permits a priest to impart blessings in the monastery, he must never offer Mass. Benedict permits a priest to do both. The Master will not sanction a priest’s holding any responsible jobs in the monastery. Benedict says assignments should be given him according to his abilities and not just because of his priesthood.
Of course the monastery in Benedict’s day needed a priest for the same reason one does today. The monastic community has to be served. The monks need the sacraments. This was the legitimate reason for Benedict’s having a monk ordained. There is a warning, however, for such a candidate in chapter 62 of the Rule of St. Benedict: “Just because he is a priest, he may not therefore forget the obedience and discipline of the rule, but must make more and more progress toward God.”
Throughout the Middle Ages there was an increase in the number of monks ordained to the priesthood. In time the ordained would far outnumber the non-ordained. Ordination of monks became an accepted fact, and so did the exercise of priestly ministry away from the monastery.
Abbot Denis began monastic life as a brother and became a priest twenty years later. And now he is once again our abbot. His is not the only comeback, however. Abbot Denis has appointed me prior, a position I had three abbots ago.
Brother Benet Tvedten, OSB