Monday, December 12, 2005
NEW STYLE OF MONASTERY--FOR MEN AND WOMEN
Richard Owen reports via a link at New Oxford Review:
A mixed convent and monastery could offer a solution to the declining number of faithful joining religious orders in the Roman Catholic Church
AS THE Vatican frets that men and women are no longer prepared to devote their life to God in the monasteries and convents of the Catholic church, one religious order believes that it has found the answer.
In the heart of Rome, the Franciscan Fraternity of Bethany has quietly opened the first convento misto, where men and women who take religious orders can choose to live under the same roof.
Unlike nuns and friars in traditional convents and monasteries, the Bethany brethren take meals together and hold joint prayer sessions every day.
They engage in discussions on the issues of the day and share the daily chores, such as tending the gardens that provide much of their fresh food.
Housed in a modern complex in the district of Giustiniana on the Via Cassia, the monks and nuns live in separate cells in the same wing, with the men on the top floor and the women on the floor below. The cells all have ensuite bathrooms.
Pope Benedict XVI has shut the door firmly on any prospect of allowing priests to marry. Brother Paolo, the Father Superior at the Fraternity of Bethany, said that he believed mixed communities offered “the way forward”, and would attract men and women to the religious life at a time when Church vocations were in decline.
Men and women together create “powerful positive energy”, he said. “This is an important development which is being asssessed by the Church. It could be the beginning of something much bigger. We hope it will grow.”
Continue reading...
I have only one question--have they started constructing the nursery yet?
