In the making of a monk?

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Montie_Claunch

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I know that there are proboly diffrent standards for becoming a Monk (Jesuits I heard is real hard) but, I was wondering if there was any set standerd that all orders in which one becomes a Monk? i.e. like masters in Theology. And does anyone know where I can look up some of the orders and what they do and all that kind of fun stuff? Thanks and God bless.
 
Montie:

The monastic order I am most familiar with is the Benedictines. The follow what is called the Rule of St. Benedict. You can find it in most book stores or on-line at osb.org. The site has links to many of the Bendictine monasteries in the world. There is a search engine that will allow you find monstaries by various criterias. The main congregations for males in the US are the Americano-Casinensis (AmCas) and the Helveto-Americana (HelvAm).

Other orders that follow the Rule are the Cistercians and the Carthusians. Of the two, the Carthusians are the most strict with a vow of silence.

Another good sites for finding links to various orders is religiousministries.com/index.asp and rosmini.org/order/

PF
 
Montie, are you contemplating becoming a priest? or a religious? Would you like your name added to the perpetual prayer for priests…the link is in my signature and we pray for Vocations as as well…
 
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Shoshana:
Montie, are you contemplating becoming a priest? or a religious? Would you like your name added to the perpetual prayer for priests…the link is in my signature and we pray for Vocations as as well…
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Yes. I have been thinking on it. If you would pray over the issue I would be more gracious.
 
I am also discerning to be a monk. I am looking for a monastery of the Franciscan monks that is far from crowded places. i am looking for a monastery or friary that is silent.
 
Both your names, Mountie and Viktor, will be added to the list of prayer. in the link below in my signature…perpetually. Gob bless you both! 🙂
 
Just a quick note. Monks are members of a monastic order like the Benedictines.

Jesuits are not monks in the same sense. While they are religious brothers they are not considered monastics. Franscians are friars not monks.

For all religious orders have the same beginning steps.

First one enters into a time of postulancy (or pre-novitate). This typically lasts for a year where one lives in community with other postulants. This is followed by the novitate which lasts a year and a day. At the beginning of the novitate the novice is given the habit and lives a more intest community life while learning about the order, its history, and a more intense prayer life. This ends with the novice making simple vows.

What follows there, school or something else, depends on the order one joins.

For me, with the Carmelites, it will be a one to two year internship in one of the established ministries of the order and then off to the seminary.

We also finish our bachelors degrees during the pre-novitate so it could be longer than a year.

Feel free to email me if you wish as I have just entered the Carmelites this past January. If my experiences in my vocational discernment can be of any assistance I will gladly help out.
 
viktor aleksndr:
I am also discerning to be a monk. I am looking for a monastery of the Franciscan monks that is far from crowded places. i am looking for a monastery or friary that is silent.
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If silence in a community setting is your aim you may want to consider the Cistercians or as they are someimes better known the Trappists. For silence in a more private setting the Carthusian order.

Best wishes on your path.
 
I’m a little too old (by their terms, not mine) to consider a monastic vocation, but I do sort of follow along. The other day I happened upon the site of the Trappist abbey of blank blank in blank. For some reason, their website (the only one I’ve seen like this) talks a lot about the ritual by which a monk dies and is buried. The Trappists are Novus Ordinarians, which I do not necessarily consider a bad thing, but I was shocked that twice un that ritual they sing the ghastly pseudo-folk hymn “I Am the Bread of Life.” That they would not use a more traditional form of chant, even written to conform to the simplicity of a vernacular service (as happens in some other monasteries) simply shocked me. I noticed the same thing the one time I visited a Trappist abbey (a different one further to the East), where there celebration of the hours and the Mass was very beautifuly if very simple, but for some reason they folllowed this inane parish custom of singing that hideous Lucien Deiss thing “Keep in Mind” as the Mystery of Faith.

I am a purist. I admit that. I don’t expect every monastery in the Benedictine tradition to perform high Gregorian all the time with the Mass entirely in Latin. But I do expect some sense of taste and propriety to prevail, and not every little old favorite to be thrown in because Brother Exiguus, a novice, doesn’t think it’s a Mass wthout it and Abbot Sapiens doesn’t have enough sense just to veto the idea.
 
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jbuck919:
I’m a little too old (by their terms, not mine) to consider a monastic vocation, but I do sort of follow along. The other day I happened upon the site of the Trappist abbey of blank blank in blank. For some reason, their website (the only one I’ve seen like this) talks a lot about the ritual by which a monk dies and is buried. The Trappists are Novus Ordinarians, which I do not necessarily consider a bad thing, but I was shocked that twice un that ritual they sing the ghastly pseudo-folk hymn “I Am the Bread of Life.” That they would not use a more traditional form of chant, even written to conform to the simplicity of a vernacular service (as happens in some other monasteries) simply shocked me. I noticed the same thing the one time I visited a Trappist abbey (a different one further to the East), where there celebration of the hours and the Mass was very beautifuly if very simple, but for some reason they folllowed this inane parish custom of singing that hideous Lucien Deiss thing “Keep in Mind” as the Mystery of Faith.

I am a purist. I admit that. I don’t expect every monastery in the Benedictine tradition to perform high Gregorian all the time with the Mass entirely in Latin. But I do expect some sense of taste and propriety to prevail, and not every little old favorite to be thrown in because Brother Exiguus, a novice, doesn’t think it’s a Mass wthout it and Abbot Sapiens doesn’t have enough sense just to veto the idea.
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One thing I’ve noticed about the Trappists, at least at a certain abbey, is that they are heavily influenced by the writngs of one of their brothers, since passed away, Thomas Merton. Now I enjoyed Mertons writings, and generally found them to be orthodox and faith centered. Towards the end though, he veered a long way off from orthodoxy, probably in the best Vatican II tradition of embracing the new, and became positively new age in a lot of his thinking and his writings. His embrace of Buddism was of particulary concern. Unfortunately a lot of his feelings and ideas are still supported by his order. At least at his home abbey…
 
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palmas85:
One thing I’ve noticed about the Trappists, at least at a certain abbey, is that they are heavily influenced by the writngs of one of their brothers, since passed away, Thomas Merton. Now I enjoyed Mertons writings, and generally found them to be orthodox and faith centered. Towards the end though, he veered a long way off from orthodoxy, probably in the best Vatican II tradition of embracing the new, and became positively new age in a lot of his thinking and his writings. His embrace of Buddism was of particulary concern. Unfortunately a lot of his feelings and ideas are still supported by his order. At least at his home abbey…
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I’ve read (very) extensively both works about and by Merton. A case could be made to support what you contend, and I’m not completely sure you’re entirely off the mark. However, there is another take.

Merton was completely orthodox. He broached a dialogue with the Buddhists because he saw a commonality of contemplativeness and general spirituality there. I don’t think he himself knew where it would go but he did not believe it would go nowhere. It would no more have occurred to him to accept the essential Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation than it would have occurred to him to accept that the moon is made of green cheese. He was an extraordinarily cultured and committed Catholic.

The stodgy wing, if I may call if that, of the Traditional movement dislikes Merton because he did buy into the Novus Ordo, but one has to remember that he objected to the throwing out of the baby with the bathwater as strenuously as anyone who did not in fact become schismatic because of the abandonment of, for instance, things like the Latin Psalter, which he called himself “demented enough to love.” The monks who were his colleagues, who unlike the Solesmes congregation of Benedictines, were not specialists in the ancient and highly demanding tradition of Gregorian Chant, had to spend many hours (at least on special occasions) preparing even adequate performances of the chant, which most of them, as relatively uneducated men in those days, still did not understand very well, pronouncing the Latin phonetically and badly at that. This detracted from their contemplative life, as did the noise of the farm equipment, which Merton also railed against (Trappist monasteries have generally since ceased to try to be modern farmers). The simplicity of the very modified chant used by many monasteries today would probably have pleased him, but somehow, though of course I cannot be sure, I doubt that compromise with Philistine and non-liturgical parish practice would have.
 
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jbuck919:
I’ve read (very) extensively both works about and by Merton. A case could be made to support what you contend, and I’m not completely sure you’re entirely off the mark. However, there is another take.

Merton was completely orthodox. He broached a dialogue with the Buddhists because he saw a commonality of contemplativeness and general spirituality there. I don’t think he himself knew where it would go but he did not believe it would go nowhere. It would no more have occurred to him to accept the essential Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation than it would have occurred to him to accept that the moon is made of green cheese. He was an extraordinarily cultured and committed Catholic.

The stodgy wing, if I may call if that, of the Traditional movement dislikes Merton because he did buy into the Novus Ordo, but one has to remember that he objected to the throwing out of the baby with the bathwater as strenuously as anyone who did not in fact become schismatic because of the abandonment of, for instance, things like the Latin Psalter, which he called himself “demented enough to love.” The monks who were his colleagues, who unlike the Solesmes congregation of Benedictines, were not specialists in the ancient and highly demanding tradition of Gregorian Chant, had to spend many hours (at least on special occasions) preparing even adequate performances of the chant, which most of them, as relatively uneducated men in those days, still did not understand very well, pronouncing the Latin phonetically and badly at that. This detracted from their contemplative life, as did the noise of the farm equipment, which Merton also railed against (Trappist monasteries have generally since ceased to try to be modern farmers). The simplicity of the very modified chant used by many monasteries today would probably have pleased him, but somehow, though of course I cannot be sure, I doubt that compromise with Philistine and non-liturgical parish practice would have.
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I’ve enjoyed Mertons writings ever since I was young, way back then. I just about wore out my copy of Seven Story Mountain, which to me was one of the most complete and thorough discussions of conversion that I’ve ever seen.

I think that Mertons interest in Buddism, came about primarily due to a malaise that set in, maybe a mid life crisis of sorts. He was often at odds with the Order as it kept him writing instead of the contemplation that he yearned for more than anything else. While I agree that he was orthodox to the end, I think he found, something lacking in those last years and thought that perhaps he could find it there.

The way he died was a terrible tragedy. Few people have spiritual insight and the love of the church that he did.

I don’t know if you’ve read this before, it comes from his book, Thoughts in Solitude
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My Lord God, I have no idea where I am going. I do not see the road ahead of me. I cannot know for certain where it will end. Nor do I really know myself and the fact that I think I am following your will, does not actually mean that I am doing so. But I believe that the desire to please you does in fact please you. And I hope that I have that desir in all that I am doing. I hope that i will never do anything apart from that desire. And I know that if I do this you wil lead me by the right road though I may know nothing about it. Therefore i will trust you always, though I may seem to be lost and in the shadow of death, I will not fear, for you are ever with me , and you will never leave me to face my perils alone.**
 
Thank you this thread on Thomas Merton. Did you know he said th at if he had written “Seven Storey Mountain” later, he would not have written it as he did? He rejected it. I honestly feel that he was not a true contemplative. Communication meant too much to him for him to be silent. I say this as a contemplative religious who is living as a hermit. Who also tends sometimes to communicate too much…and who also has been urged to write many times. Thankfully for now I am being allowed to decide that for myself, and the “anonymous” form it will take. Had he been a hermit, nothing would have stopped him from fulfilling that calling; believe me on that. Writing turns the mind outwards, simply. He knew what being a hermit was and meant; he just could not live it. Very few can.
Yes he needed time alone, as many religious do.
But he was a supreme communcator.
A priest spoke tellingly here of the conflict that exists in relgious life between solitude ( the hermit) and community. Merton’s life is a prime example of this.
The Buddhism goes too deep in him; have you read the “Asian Journals”? It becomes total. No longer Christ-centred. Some have said that he was taken when he was as he would have gone on to do a great deal of harm to the Church else. Seeing the changes and influences on his old monastery?
Again, thank you for this thread.
 
Benedictine Monasteries, which includes Trappists, Cistercians etc. that are branches of the Benedictine tradition, are independent. The daugher houses have a relationship with a motherhouse, but the abbot or abbess in each monastery decides the policies. You can go to 10 different monasteries and while they all abide by the rule, they may interepret it very differently, and you will see practices ranging from extremely liberal to the point of dissent, to extremely orthodox. Don’t make a judgement about Benedictines, Trappists etc. in general based on what you observe about one location.

In any case this discussion is a side issue to OP and I don’t think is helping to answer his question, which a previous poster did quite well. someone interested in a certain religious order should contact the director of vocations of that order. A visit will be arranged usually for a week or weekend to help him see what the way of life entails, and to explain details about formation, the charism of the order and practical considerations. If you don’t know how to contact a specific order, call the director of vocations for your diocese, they will know.
 
i believe that monks means people living in the monastery and living a contemplative life… There are Franciscans that can be called monks but they are mostly called friars. They live most of their life inside the monastery. Friars means brothers eh? Their order is called Order of Friars Minor in English but in latin Ordo Fratrum Minorum which simply means Order of lesser Brothers. So there is no way that a Franciscan can never be called a monk.
 
viktor aleksndr:
i believe that monks means people living in the monastery and living a contemplative life… There are Franciscans that can be called monks but they are mostly called friars. They live most of their life inside the monastery. Friars means brothers eh? Their order is called Order of Friars Minor in English but in latin Ordo Fratrum Minorum which simply means Order of lesser Brothers. So there is no way that a Franciscan can never be called a monk.
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A monk is a monastic living in a cloister.

A friar is part of a mendicant order, of which the Franciscans are. They are actives.

While there may be cloistered male Franciscans, that is not a normal thing and I bet it would be a very modern reform group that is doing so.

Just as we Carmelites are a mendicant order though we do have a group of hermits. But then the Carmelites did start out as hermits, it was not until the 1200’s that we became part of the mendicant movement.
 
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