What about the movement of lay associates and oblates?
Our abbey has almost 10 times more oblates than monks! But due to age, maybe about 30 or so are very active, the rest less so in inverse proportion to age. So the really active group is similar in numbers as the monks.
The problem arises when a monastery closes. One abbey of nuns has already closed and its last elderly surviving members moved to a Church care facility. Oblates are attached to a specific monastery, not the order as a whole. And like myself we become very attached to our monastics.
So if a monastery closes, the only real option is to transfer our oblation to another one. Easier said than done I livd in a country where the next nearest monastery of Benedictine men is 2500 km away!
Due to my involvement in the World Oblate Congress, I have some contacts though, in Italy, France and British Columbia. But I pray it never comes to that!
I’m not too worried yet about the order itself dying. There are pockets of growth in Africa, among others. At the Benedictine seat of the Abbot Primate, Sant’ Anselmo abbey in Rome which also is the Benedictine pontifical college, it used to be as short as 20 years ago a sea of white faces with the odd Asian or African. Now I’d say close to half are Asian or African. I’ve been going there annually since 2013, and it seems the proportion of non-European descent monks grows from year to year.
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