Are there Catholic communities with a lifestyle similar to the Amish

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I have several Plain Catholic friends…they don’t live in a community though.
In 2006 Yahweh called me to go Plain as well. Been Plain ever since. Not only in my dress, but in my home, mannerisms, worldly goods, etc. Of course I do have the Internet, that’s about the only luxurious item in this house and we have to have it since hubby is a computer animator.

After being away from Catholicism for 15 years, I am coming back home…and I will remain Plain. That won’t change. It’s a calling for some. Yahweh called me. It comes from the heart. I answered. 🙂

Must go visit that Madonna House. There is a Quaker retreat center somewhere in the US…I can’t remember now and it’s been awhile since I’ve been to the website.
 
VeiledCatholic said:
I have several Plain Catholic friends…they don’t live in a community though.
In 2006 Yahweh called me to go Plain as well. Been Plain ever since. Not only in my dress, but in my home, mannerisms, worldly goods, etc. Of course I do have the Internet, that’s about the only luxurious item in this house and we have to have it since hubby is a computer animator.

After being away from Catholicism for 15 years, I am coming back home…and I will remain Plain. That won’t change. It’s a calling for some. Yahweh called me. It comes from the heart. I answered. 🙂

Must go visit that Madonna House. There is a Quaker retreat center somewhere in the US…I can’t remember now and it’s been awhile since I’ve been to the website.
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Welcome back home, Veiled Catholic. You are clearly called to the Plain Catholic life and just wanted to let you know you aren’t alone in this special charism.
 
I love the idea of a catholic village for families to live in but I don’t know of any. Hopefully some day someone will form an ecovillage that is Catholic faith based and in a cooler climate than overheated Texas, maybe Colorado. Yeah, definitely Colorado!
 
The closest to a Catholic community would probably be Ave Maria, FL – they do have to allow non-Catholics in the town but with the Catholic college being the center I doubt too many non-Catholics go there. The home prices were a bit high but I’m sure they have come down a bit over the years. The thought of a complete Catholic community is great. I’d like think I could be Plain Catholic - might be hard to give up a bit of technology but as I get older I have no problem “forgetting” my cell phone at home. 🙂
 
Megan7 said:
Awesome thread!👍
Thanks for the links!😃
I love the Amish as well! They are very kind, down to earth people!👍
I wish I could move to an area with lots of Amish in town!

Blessings,
Pax,
Megan:highprayer:
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I like Amish too,but you might want to google Amish puppy mills. Just fyi.
 
Just thought I’d bump this to see if there’s any new developments or new members with info. I’ve come across Plain Catholics before too, and my impression was that it was more of an online community, but IRL adjustments to individual lifestyles.

Dh and I have started thinking about such a community but really want to make sure it has a Catholic undertone. I’ve done several retreats, the latest in a Catholic convent, and I loved being surrounded with all those Catholics. But we have a baby on the way and two dogs that are part of the family, so we’re looking for something that welcomes families. Also, our main concern/motivating factor is income. We’d like to live in an environment where the work we do is intricately related to our lives, and not separated by a commute and a set of values that are not conducive to family life.

I’ve thought about becoming a Secular Franciscan, but this is similar in spirit to the Plain Catholics, where the adjustments are made individually, without a lived-in community or an income tied to the movement.

What sticks with me from what has been said on this thread so far is that what I’m looking for is a lifestyle that is self-sustaining, which generally would require farm living. Are there alternatives to this?
 
I’ve come across Plain Catholics before too, and my impression was that it was more of an online community
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Before the computer we kept in touch via mail for 100 years. We are individual families who are Catholic in missionary activity in rural areas of the world. We are community in the sense that we belong to the Roman Catholic Faith.
What sticks with me from what has been said on this thread so far is that what I’m looking for is a lifestyle that is self-sustaining, which generally would require farm living. Are there alternatives to this?
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To be fully Plain Catholic is to live a homestead life with farming as partial or fully self-sustaining income. There are those who are in process to becoming Plain with a future goal of eventually living the homestead life, however they are in process, not completely Plain in their Catholic charism. Our charism is part of the back to the land movement inspired by the writings of Fr. Vincent McNabb, OP and some of his predecessors.
 
Thanks for the clarifications! I’m stumbling with words as I try to figure things out, so I’m glad you set me straight 🙂
 
Establishing a Catholic Village or settlement of some kind.

I don’t exactly know much about it, but it seems interesting, this whole idea seems very cool, i hope more people do this sort of thing, if someone could raise enough money, the area near clear creek monastery in hulbert ok (My grandpa was born and raised in hulbert) would be great for something like this.
 
There is a Mennonite (not Amish) community in the next county to the North from me. You see them once in a while at the market. They use an early form of German and form a pretty much closed to outsiders community.

Since they are farmers they drive huge mega pick up trucks from necessity. So these at least drive cars.

The women you recognize instantly. They all wear long black home made dresses with veils.

The men fit into the community, they wear boots and hats just like other men wear in the area.

These Mennonites have an interesting history. They were driven from Germany to Russia and after the revolution to Mexico, and then to Western Texas.

I would like to get to know them, but with the difference in language it’s almost impossible.
 
Wasn’t there a guy named Francis that tried something like that a few years back?
 
ATeutonicKnight said:
I, like many other people, I’m fascinated with the Amish. I think they’re very awesome people, and their only down-turn is that they’re not Catholic. Are there any Catholic communities like the Amish? I’m very interested in joining a culture like theirs, but it seems the only way is to convert, which, being raised a cradle Catholic and having been bathed with traditional Catholicism since I can remember, I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon.

:knight1:
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I think that the closest you could come to this would be monasteries. I may not be saying this right but I think the idea is that lay people are by in large expected to be out in the world living the life Christ called them to live. The Amish have withdrawn from the world. I don’t believe that this is what lay Catholics are expected to do.

We are to live in the world not of the world. We are to live as examples of Christ’s love in society at large.
 
HelenRose said:
I think that the closest you could come to this would be monasteries. I may not be saying this right but I think the idea is that lay people are by in large expected to be out in the world living the life Christ called them to live. The Amish have withdrawn from the world. I don’t believe that this is what lay Catholics are expected to do.

We are to live in the world not of the world. We are to live as examples of Christ’s love in society at large.
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I can remember when the only people who ever saw the Amish were those who lived near them, and those who drove through their communities while on a vacation.

But now, in this day and age, because of the internet and other media, the Amish are very visible to the world. Just this week those two precious little Amish girls were kidnapped from their family’s roadside stand, and within a few hours, almost everyone in the U.S. knew about it, and we knew when the little girls were returned to their families and sadly, what happened to the two little girls.

Also, the phenomenon of the “Amish romance novels” has made everyday life among the Amish very familiar to many women.

So in a way, they are more watched than many other Christians. I’m not sure what they think of that. I’m not sure that they really mean to “withdraw,” like the cloistered religious. I think they have merely chosen to live a “different” lifestyle than most people, but they still have interactions with non-Amish.

We have a very small community of Amish living fairly near us. Their horses are so beautiful that even a person like me, who doesn’t know horses well, will slow down and gaze at them. My dad (RIP), who was a farmer himself, told me that the Amish will wake up and go take care of their horses before they take care of themselves. My dad knew them and liked them all, although he said they were shrewd bargainers.
 
I think that for many people, what would be difficult about living this kind of “old-fashioned” lifestyle is that we simply don’t have the skills to maintain life.

I can’t garden–pretty much everything green that I touch shrivels up and dies!

I can’t preserve and can food.

etc. My list of homemaking skills is pretty low.

And the only way that my husband and I know how to make a living is doing our careers which are very much in public (he’s in computers, I’m in the hospital).

Also, the land to do all this “simple living” is really expensive. So unless you already live in the country and have some acreage, I’m not sure how well most of us would do.

It’s kind of like “Gilligan’s Island”–no phone, no lights, no motorcars, not a single luxury–as primitive as can be!

It would be an interested reality show for television. Much more interesting than Honey Boo Boo (is she still on?).
 
Cat said:
I can remember when the only people who ever saw the Amish were those who lived near them, and those who drove through their communities while on a vacation.

But now, in this day and age, because of the internet and other media, the Amish are very visible to the world. Just this week those two precious little Amish girls were kidnapped from their family’s roadside stand, and within a few hours, almost everyone in the U.S. knew about it, and we knew when the little girls were returned to their families and sadly, what happened to the two little girls.

Also, the phenomenon of the “Amish romance novels” has made everyday life among the Amish very familiar to many women.

So in a way, they are more watched than many other Christians. I’m not sure what they think of that. I’m not sure that they really mean to “withdraw,” like the cloistered religious. I think they have merely chosen to live a “different” lifestyle than most people, but they still have interactions with non-Amish.

We have a very small community of Amish living fairly near us. Their horses are so beautiful that even a person like me, who doesn’t know horses well, will slow down and gaze at them. My dad (RIP), who was a farmer himself, told me that the Amish will wake up and go take care of their horses before they take care of themselves. My dad knew them and liked them all, although he said they were shrewd bargainers.
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I hope that they can continue to live in peace. I hope that my statement did not convey that I have anything other than respect for their way of life. My point is simply that the Amish have a different purpose and goal in mind than that the Catholic Church. One is to live out of the world and the other to live in but not of the world. Think of it as a calling. No single calling is superior to another.

Catholics have different callings. A man may be called to the priesthood, to be a brother of a religious order, a husband or single lay person. Women may be called to be a sister working in the world as a nurse, doctor, teacher or withdraw from the world as a nun in a cloister or maybe a woman is called to live as a wife and mother, or live as a devout single person giving her special gifts for the Church.

Many lay Catholics are called to live in the business world and through their faithfulness bring the concepts of honesty and integrity to a place where such concepts are often neglected.

If a number of Catholic lay people receive a calling to live as the Amish, then this will happen. It will become another form of the many ways Catholics are called to give service to God and bring much needed love to the world.
 
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