Word: trappists
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Died. Thomas Merton, 53, Trappist monk and author eloquently concerned with man's spiritual and secular fulfillment (see RELIGION...
Proof of Utopia. Center is not content to be merely topical, but offers some intriguing glimpses into past and future. In the current issue, Trappist Monk Thomas Merton, author of The Seven Storey Mountain, writes about an early Mesoamerican civilization that survived from 1000 B.C. to A.D. 900 without a single war. So attuned to their environment were its members, so at peace with themselves, that they simply felt no need to fight, nor their neighbors to fight with them. Here, says Merton, was a Utopian existence that was not mere fantasy...
According to Vatican statistics issued last year, the Trappists and Carmelites alone experienced a drop of nearly 700 members in the preceding twelve months. In most U.S. Trappist monasteries, membership is down by some 50% from postwar peaks; the abbey in Piffard, N.Y., which once harbored 76 monks, has only 36 today. In France, the number of cloistered nuns has dropped in the past decade, forcing 47 convents to close...
...Trappist who carelessly lets words drop on other occasions is required to do penance by prostrating himself across the doorway of his abbey's refectory or sanctuary. As a substitute for the spoken word, a rudimentary sign language is the custom. For example, two fists struck against each other vertically means "work"; the index fingers and thumbs formed into a diamond signifies "bread." But in today's complex world, with Trappists operating farms and small industries, sign language is not enough. Says one Catholic prelate: "A few years ago we still used horses, but how is a monk...
Recently, Trappist abbots took up the issue in a meeting at Citeaux monastery in France, which is the order's headquarters (the order took the name Trappist from another monastery at La Trappe, France). After exhaustive debate-permitted at the abbots' policy meetings-they decided to relax the Trappists' rule of silence, a step allowed under the Second Vatican Council's decree authorizing Catholic orders to modernize their codes of behavior. The world's 80 Trappist monasteries (including twelve in the U.S.) are not about to turn into Towers of Babel; but Trappists henceforth will...