Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky...A source of hope for those who believe the church can never recover from the present troubles

from patheos.com by Pat McNamara

In 1948, the book world's surprise hit was The Seven Storey Mountain, the autobiography of a Trappist monk named Thomas Merton. That year also marked the centennial of his monastery, Our Lady of Gethsemani Abbey. Over the next few years, Merton's writings would attract unprecedented numbers of applicants to the monastery. As the year closed, Merton praised "the great sea of graces that was flowing down on Gethsemani."

But during the abbey's early years, its survival seemed doubtful. Lack of funds and vocations, natural disasters and scandals threatened to end America's first Trappist experiment. (The first three abbots all resigned.) Merton himself notes, "The devil . . . has spent a hundred years trying to interfere with Gethsemani—and in the early days the battle was not altogether to his disadvantage."


The Trappists are a branch of the Cistercian monks, a centuries old order. Over time, some Cistercians felt the order's rule was being inadequately observed. Beginning in 1664, Normandy's La Trappe Abbey hosted a reform movement. (The Trappists' official title is "Cistercians of the Strict Observance.") The monastic day, beginning at 2 a.m. and finishing at 7 p.m., consisted of prayer, reading, and labor. Silence was part of the daily regime, and they developed their own sign language.

As the French Revolution targeted the Church, many Trappists left the country. Some tried to make a fresh start in America, but for several reasons (mostly financial) they didn't get far. In the 1840s, however, Trappists at France's Melleray Abbey decided to try again. They purchased a piece of property in Kentucky for five thousand dollars from a group of nuns.

In November 1848, Father Eutropius Proust started off with forty-four monks. He envisioned them working in "the forests of North America, among the tigers and panthers and wolves of Kentucky." When they arrived, there were no tigers, but there were plenty of other challenges.

[...]

One hundred sixty three years after its founding, Gethsemani Abbey holds pride of place as Catholic America's flagship monastery. This makes it easy to overlook the fact that for many of those years, its existence was at best precarious. Its recovery from scandal, and its subsequent revitalization, should offer encouragement to those who ask whether the Church can recover from its present challenges. The Gethsemani story shows that the answer is a resounding "Yes."

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Dr. Pat McNamara is an alumnus of Catholic University of America. He is an author, lecturer, professor, promoter and lover of Catholic history; he blogs about American Catholic History at McNamara's Blog.