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PAROCHIAL ASSISTANCE
ON THE GREAT PLAINS
Ever since the first Benedictine Monks arrived in the Dakotas
last century, we have made pastoral care of the region's Catholics a
priority. Because this region is lightly populated, pastoral
ministry has always involved a large amount of traveling.
Even before the foundation of Blue Cloud Abbey in 1950,
Benedictine monks were traveling to
churches throughout North
and South Dakota, as well as Minnesota.
In some cases monks have served as pastors, and may even live
away from the monastery. Right
now there are three monks of Blue Cloud serving as full time pastors:
Fr. Denis in Milbank, Fr. Ray for Big Stone City and Revillo, and Fr.
John in Wilmot.
More commonly, our priests visit parishes to substitute when
pastors take time off. Pastors shoulder
much responsibility in their parishes, and richly deserve some annual
vacation time. A pastor in the Dakotas will often have two or three
communities in his care. This is partly due to the scattered population
here, as well as the general shortage of priests. Through our
assistance, their parishes will have the services of a priest during the
pastor's time away. While
this does take a monk away from the abbey for a short time, we consider
it an important service to the local Church. (continued top right)
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About half a dozen of the abbey's priests take part in this
ministry. Speaking
for them as a group, we find this a very rewarding way of serving the
church. In thirteen years since ordination, I have had the chance to
visit over 30 different Catholic churches.
This has provided many priceless memories and valuable lessons.
What better way to discover the rich culture of our Church than to see
it in such a cross section? I
have been pleased to witness our Church's vitality in some rural towns
where family values have not been replaced by suburban sprawl.
Over the past decade Blue Cloud
has had to reduce the number of parishes we assist, because of our
limited manpower. The
coming years might even see further reductions in this area, and we
already get all the requests we can handle.
But we continue to help out at a good number of churches through
the entire plains region, as the map shows.
Our pastoral work has occasionally taken on more
specialized ministries. Over
the years Fr. Lawrence Kratz, Br. Paul Friedman, Fr. Odilo Burkhardt and
others have ministered to Hispanic Catholics in South Dakota. Although Hispanic communities make up only a small
percentage of the local population, the monks engaged in this ministry
have found it particularly rewarding.
The deep
traditions of faith, family and celebration in the Hispanic
culture have made a strong impression
on those who work with them.
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ABBEY
NEWS
Over the winter months, Abbot
Thomas, the junior monks, and associates have been refinishing the pews
from the Abbey church. Since we have thirty pews, each about eight feet
long, this job ran to a lot of man-hours.
We are happy to report that the last pew was refinished and
returned to place in plenty of time for our Easter liturgies.
Some community members have been away on extended assignments
recently. Fr. Larry
has been at Holy Spirit
Parish in Fargo, North Dakota, filling in as substitute pastor.
Fr. Stan has been serving as chaplain for the Benedictine Sisters
in Yankton, South Dakota. Fr.
Abbot Thomas has been staying with the Camaldolese Benedictine monks in
Big Sur, California during his sabbatical.
We rarely have so many out on extended assignments.
All three are expected back by the start of June.
Joe Holtzman has run Blue Cloud's print shop for several years,
and before that had worked at the mission in Marty, SD.
All of the mailings we
have been sending to our friends and donors were
produced right here on our in-house press. At the end of 1999, Joe
decided that it was time to retire. The newsletters since spring have
been done by outside printers. All
the monks would like to express our gratitude to Joe for his many years
of service. Replacing
him will be difficult, if not impossible. As much as we would like to keep our
own print
shop going,
economic factors
seem to
favor sending the work out instead.
The mild, dry weather of this past winter and spring made it
possible for the retreat center to keep running at full tilt.
In recent months we have hosted various groups including 12-step
programs, a group from the Benedictine forgiveness program, Catholic and
Protestant clergy groups, and a wide range of other retreats.
We also had our usual assortment of individual guests.
Springtime again brings the annual chore of planting the garden. Br. Chris will be in charge with help from our juniors
and associates. After a dry winter, the spring rains finally arrived so
we hope for a good vegetable crop.
Fr. Matthew
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OUR
50th ANNIVERSARY
Blue Cloud was officially raised
to the status of an abbey in 1950, which makes this Jubilee 2000 year
even more
special for
us. In the year of
1876 Benedictine monks came to Dakota Territory and at the request of
Sitting Bull, at Standing Rock Reservation, set up the first of several
schools. The
Benedictines continued in this apostolate for
decades. Eventually the
monks of St. Meinrad Archabbey decided that a new monastery in the
Dakotas would serve as a central base for these efforts.
This led to the foundation of Blue Cloud as
an independent abbey, fifty years ago.
When guests see our handsome sandstone buildings today, the story
of how the monks themselves did most of the construction often surprises
them.
In 1966
there evolved
from the
mission
schools the
American Indian
Culture Research
Center at Blue Cloud Abbey. The
principal purpose of the Center is to inform the general public of the
world view, the philosophy of life, and spiritual insight of Native
American Peoples. There are
nearly three hundred distinct American Indian Nations in the present
United States. Each has its
own language and history, its own sacred places and rituals.
The Benedictine monks eventually withdrew from working
on the Indian missions. A variety of factors contributed to this:
declining numbers of monks, desire for self-determination among the
native American tribes, and a greater focus on monastic community life
as opposed to external apostolate.
Yet through the AICRC, Blue Cloud continues its legacy of
apostolic work with Native Americans to the present day.
We presently serve the Church and
the region in a variety of other ministries, including our retreat
center, farm, and vestment business.
With God's blessing we hope to continue our service well into the
new millennium.
It seems fitting therefore, that we should take time to
celebrate this Jubilee with our friends, benefactors and fellow
ministers. During the
weekend of August 26 and 27, we will host a celebration for all our lay
friends and their families. Activities
will start with Eucharist at 10 am, followed by lunch and jubilee
programs. Clergy and
religious will have their own special day to celebrate on Tuesday,
August 29. Invitations for both groups should be arriving
very soon. Those seeking
more information should contact the abbey at their convenience.
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THE
CHALLENGE OF CELIBACY IN MODERN CULTURE
By Fr. Matthew
Most people having any familiarity with monastic life know that
monks take a vow of celibacy and therefore never marry.
I can only speculate about how many laity understand the reasons
behind the Christian tradition of celibacy, but I suspect it is a
somewhat lower number. The
vow of
celibacy shares
a certain
mysterious quality with the vow of poverty as discussed
last issue:
both vows
involve a
choice to give up a
natural human good. A man who becomes a monk chooses to deprive himself
of the good things that come with both marriage and private property.
So we
should not
be too
surprised if
people
hold some misunderstandings about both of these vows.
Since the human drive to reproduce is so fundamental to life, celibacy
may be the more misunderstood of the two. Add to this the relatively strange
ideas about sexuality so common in our culture, and we may wonder that anyone in
America understands celibacy at all! You have probably heard before that
vocations to the religious life and priesthood are in short supply these days.
I suggest a different view: the fact that the Church has any
vocations at all today shows that a
Catholic culture still exists, strong enough to occasionally overcome the
secular society that surrounds it.
Christian celibacy is based on traditions from two
sections of
the New Testament. One is Matthew 19.12, where Jesus speaks of those "who
have freely renounced sex for the sake of God's reign".
The other section is the seventh
chapter of St. Paul's first letter to the Corinthians.
The words of Jesus describe a total giving of self to God, and St. Paul
echoes this idea, "The unmarried man is busy with the Lord's affairs. . .
but the married man is busy with this world's demands and occupied with pleasing
his wife". (1 Cor. 7.32-33)
St. Paul focuses more on the practical side of celibacy; it gives freedom
to serve the Church. But the
spiritual dimension is actually more important than the practical.
A monk is celibate simply to imitate Christ, and keep his focus on the
world beyond.
Because it is such a radically spiritual calling, celibacy has never been
a general requirement for all Christians. Only those who dedicate their lives to
ministry need choose it. Yet for
the Church to have an adequate supply of priests and religious, celibacy must be
understood and appreciated in the Church at large.
Christians will only choose a celibate life if they see it as something
of special value. This implies an understanding of sex as something good, but
not necessarily the highest good. And
this is precisely where the modern problem arises.
Two factors unique to modern America
(perhaps Western culture in general) have combined to create a society
that is saturated and obsessed with sex. "Sex-crazed"
is not too strong a description. These
two factors are the so-called "media culture", and modern methods of
artificial birth control. These two
technologies have removed human sexuality from its traditional context of
marriage and family, and put it
into surroundings that are
largely synthetic.
Just as the chemicals in modern narcotics are derived from less potent
natural sources, modern technology has distilled a drug out of sex. Consider the
average young American male. How much sexually-oriented material has
he seen just by watching television or popular Hollywood movies?
Compare this to |
(continued from left column)
how different attitudes were less than one hundred years ago and it should not
surprise us if vows of celibacy are seriously misunderstood.
But it is precisely when
celibacy is least popular that it
becomes most important! In a culture
like ours, monks give witness to values that much of the society has forgotten.
Any time a society neglects moral values, that society hurts itself and
the people who compose it. We are
all too familiar with the litany of human suffering caused by modern sexual
attitudes; high divorce rates and emotionally damaged children, multimillion
dollar abuse lawsuits, pornography, exploitation, venereal disease, abortions.
People often complain about the declining morality of the world; what
they usually mean is sexual morality
in particular. (Someone could argue
that in non-sexual matters, modern morals are holding steady or even
improving!)
So is celibacy in danger, just when society needs it most? That may be
overstating the problem. There is a
positive side; the Church still has a strong enough identity in many areas to
attract vocations. It happens when
the Church witnesses a set of values that secular society does not
offer. This demands
strong leaders who
have confidence in
the Church and the values it holds. Strong
men of God make no apology for celibacy. Rather
they ask society to apologize for the sexual crimes it has encouraged.
I find the newest generation of bishops refreshing in this respect.
The Church has been hamstrung to some degree in the
debate over sexual morals by a generation of leaders, now entering retirement,
who saw too late the disordered state of modern sexuality.
Ironically, certain older people who grew to maturity in saner times seem
to be unaware how widespread sexual problems are.
Some of this dates from attitudes around the time of the Second Vatican
Council, when twenty years of harmonious
relations between Church and state had created a naive optimism about human
nature. Many Church leaders bought into an overly positive view of society and
human freedom. These were the
bishops and religious superiors who seemed to look the other way
while abusive situations led their flocks into disaster.
If the past thirty years have taught us anything, it is that human sexuality
falls under the power of sin as much as any other part of human nature.
Greater freedom leaves greater room for abuse, especially
with an
instinctive drive like sex.
There are monks who, while they would not be caught dead with hard-core
pornography, fill their lives with
a steady diet of Hollywood films that encourage the same disordered views. As a
social commentator once said, "The real
pornography is not in the
pictures, it's in the articles." This
strikes me as wise advice. (Although
a monk hearing it added, "And
how does he know that?") Pornography is only the tip of the iceberg.
The real problem lies in attitudes that separate human sexuality from
God's life-giving plan. These attitudes are all around us, and far too many
people who call themselves Christian have reached an apathetic peace with
them.
Monastic vocations can arise and grow in the next
generation, but only if we work aggressively to overcome bad cultural
influences. Monastic superiors need to understand that younger members have
climbed a steeper mountain to appreciate celibacy, simply because of the times
they were born into. The
entire monastery must be a place where celibacy is supported through the smaller
virtues of modesty and temperance. In
practice, this can be as simple as not putting our vows on hold when we sit down
to watch television.
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