7 ms·

Is there any possible modern approach to a traditional catholic monastery? I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sens

Is there any possible modern approach to a traditional catholic monastery? I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up with changes? They just accept the changes without adapting? Why?

incompatible 7y ago
We could try science / engineering monasteries as described by Neal Stephenson in Anathem?
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  If you go back to the earliest monasteries, it would be the Pythagoreans of southern Italy c.525BC. They conducted the first attested hypothesis-driven scientific experiments -- while pursuing a simple, spiritual and communal lifestyle. Josephus and Philo of Alexandria described the Essenes and Therapeuts as Pythagorean -- and those monastic groups are largely where Christian monasticism emerged from.
- dschuetz 7y ago
  That's an interesting idea. Definitely worth thinking about. An R&D monastery, where the inhabitants support each other by rotating duties and service for day-to-day life, with dedication to science, engineering and philosophy. Sounds great to me.
- rpmisms 7y ago
  That would almost be a regression, as for a long time, monasteries were the intellectual strongholds of the West.
- cat199 7y ago
  this is what the 'univerity' is or was intended to be, at its base. there is a reason universities have 'faculties' (e.g. 'faculties' of the 'body of knowledge') and that key persons are called 'deans'
  - incompatible 7y ago
    They would be somewhat different to a modern university. In the monastery, you don't get paid, you just get free accommodation and food (and presumably electricity, computer and Internet access, in the tech version). The monastery would perhaps also attempt to be self-sufficient as far as possible, by making its own food and electricity, perhaps taking in materials for recycling.
dagw 7y ago
They just accept the changes without adapting? Why? From a religious point of view, 'adapting' the core idea of what you believe to be Gods will might be seen as far worse than just quietly dying out with dignity.
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
factsaresacred 7y ago
> I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. Living a monastic life has never been appealing to the broad population. But to say that an ascetic life devoted to introspection doesn't 'make sense' is misguided. The modern world in predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness. Nothing could make less sense.
- ironic_ali 7y ago
  > predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness. > Nothing could make less sense. Speak for yourself...
- egjerlow 7y ago
  This. One of the core tasks of the contemplative lifestyle (which can certainly be practiced outside of monasteries) is to be awakened from all of the things we think we need and desire. These are usually the things that the (societally constructed) ego needs to feel secure and comfortable - hence so many contemplative traditions stress the importance of "dying to yourself". This is not 'negative' or even necessarily introverted - in fact, dealing with the insecurities that you have inherited from the expectations of the society around you can make you comfortable both alone and with people. There is no need to impress anyone; no need to feel insecure or alone; you're at peace with yourself and the world. The contemplative tradition has a lot to teach our world - no manner of scientific or technological progress is going to help us before we're comfortable with being ourselves.
- dschuetz 7y ago
  You misunderstood. It's not the idea of living in introspection that isn't making sense anymore. It's the traditions that I meant, the rigid traditions of serving god and faith inside a monastery. Those aren't making sense to the most people today. Because the have failed to adapt to a modern understanding of how the world/anything works.
scotty79 7y ago
> The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up with changes? Because the core idea is dumb, the change is that more people with more access to knowledge about the world realize that, and monasteries are adapting by dying out. Monasteries are basically communes. Great for people that have nothing, but more and more people actually have something even if it's "just" a smartphone.
hrktb 7y ago
Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite. It worked when praying for the world was largely accepted as having some effect. Nowadays thoughts and prayers doesn’t cut it for the general population. In a way high level research institutes could be seen as the new monastries, with people shutting down in buildings everyday, searching for new truths that could benefit mankind.
- masklinn 7y ago
  > Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite. Monasteries absolutely require participation in the group. Monks are not hermits, much of their activity is working for the monastery and interacting with other monks.
  - twic 7y ago
    But not interacting with people outside the monastery. Monks are sort of collectively introverted. Indeed, even within the monastery, interaction is often limited to the essential - consider rule of silence adhered to by some orders. hrktb is quite right about the general principle of monasticism. Here's the start of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on it [1]: "Monasticism or monachism, literally the act of "dwelling alone" (Greek monos, monazein, monachos), has come to denote the mode of life pertaining to persons living in seclusion from the world, under religious vows and subject to a fixed rule, as monks, friars, nuns, or in general as religious. The basic idea of monasticism in all its varieties is seclusion or withdrawal from the world or society." EDIT although in the entry on "monk" [2] there is considerably less certainty about the origin of the name and idea. Imagine your primary reference work being internally inconsistent like that! Can't imagine where these bible-bashers got that idea. [1] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10459a.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10459a.htm [2] http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/10487b.htm http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/10487b.htm
baud147258 7y ago
I think you're missing the point of why monasteries exist. The goal of a monastery is to provide a place where those who want to retreat from the world to spend their life praying; it's not for everyone. From my view point as a Catholic, the decline of monasteries is more linked to the decline of religion/religious practice than a matter of adaptation to the modern time: there's just less people who could be interested in such a life.
- ykevinator 7y ago
  Plus there is growing consensus that God cannot exist.
  - YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
    Why address such a comment to someone who has made clear they believe in the existence of God? There is no reason to provoke peoples' religious beliefs.
    - conjectures 7y ago
      Surely because the thread is about people wondering, 'why are monasteries declining?' A substantial reduction in religious belief could explain away a large part of monastic decline.
      - baud147258 7y ago
        Yes and I addressed it in my comment: "the decline of religion/religious practice "
  - dr_dshiv 7y ago
    Can I try to convert you? Great! Thanks for your implied consent. Here goes: The "One" god of Christianity comes more from Neoplatonism than Judaism. The Neoplatonic Oneness, which was washed out in various times in Christian history, is fully commensurable with contemporary science. Oneness can be experienced as the common mystical experience of "we are all one, man!" But for Neoplatonists, it only made sense that the ineffable and impossible to fully understand "One" was the origin of the universe and the basis of divinity. This notion of Oneness is different from typical conceptions of the one god as a person. It is not. To understand true, original Christianity, one must reject the idea of personhood -- god isn't a person (and actually, neither are we--it's just a useful illusion) In a nutshell: in the beginning of time, there was the Oneness and the emanation from the Oneness, which was known as the Logos. It makes sense here to think big bang: the whole universe in a single point. But from there, the emanations, the logos built everything else. The emanations can return to the Oneness through the creation of new wholes and harmonies (think molecules, stars and solar systems -- onenesses made of parts). This wholeness/harmony is the source of divine goodness. Here's the Christian part: when a person believes in the Logos they have eternal life because they recognize that their life is part of the eternal Logos. That's what Christianity was to early church fathers like Origen or Clement. I forgot to mention -- Jesus was described as the incarnation of the logos. Fun fact: Logos is equivalent to "Dao" in Daoism. So, How'd I do? Are you more open now to the mysteries of Christianity?
coldtea 7y ago
>The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy (...) no matter what religion or philosophy No, the idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to God, and specifically the God of a specific religion.
- dschuetz 7y ago
  Well, there are Buddhist and Christian monasteries which I certainly know they exist. I'm sure that there are Muslim and Hindu monasteries also...
  - coldtea 7y ago
    We're talking about monasteries in Germany. And, even if there are Buddhist monasteries in Germany too, the article is not about them...
- Nasrudith 7y ago
  You are correct barring non-monotheism pendantry but there are multiple purposes including what was originally intended. Another purpose was to dump awkward heirs and spares in a primogeniture inheritance - certainly not an offically endorsed one - akin to a butcher's knife being meant for livestock and their products.
Nasrudith 7y ago
I suspect it is the regimentation which is what truly killed them when combined with less rigid constraints on thought. There is still a substansial minority who would happily dedicate themselves to introspection and contemplation but they would prefer a space to follow their own guideance. Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone? The rigid scheduling is an artifact of agrarianism in a quad-seasoned climate and the calender as it becomes essential to have the time aligned. Likewise in the past not being a farmer itself was essentially a luxury - prison without slavery was only affordable if you had a hostage whose ransom was worth far more. While before they may have been a refugee of sorts for those to devote themselves to study while being socially acceptable and self-supporting. The time for reforms was a century or more ago during industrialization - if they would want survival over purity having known the peril coming. Now I suspect the options are either accept their demise as inevitable but take all latecomers, half-hearted reforms which likely will fail to stop the death spiral or a "Neomonastic" which fundamentally be an imitation of the past by the present out of its context or contains a glimmer of the spirit - such as a collective living of Catholics who may or may not have children, which pools funds to maintain a working class standard of lifestyle but may make more as a result of being composed of mainly college educated professionals such as doctors. Theoretically there may be a Neomonastic sort of movement which emerges on its own in another sphere but if they didn't emerge on their own already why not?
- JamesSchriver 7y ago
  "Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone?" is a quite peculiar thing to say considering the state of affairs of today's world where there is literally very little left of chance anymore and you are not in control of your own life, ever increasingly with every passing day as the global ruling class cinches down on humanity more an more through technology, that makes everything more or less a foregone conclusion. What you may want to consider is the reason and fact that why, as the western culture has been infested with the religions and values and spiritual practices of mostly the far east while their take-over is celebrated and cheered on, their domestic equivalents in the monasteries and churches has been utterly vanquished and destroyed and polluted and salted to the point that people like you don't even have a rudimentary understanding for them. Today throngs of gullible women, predatory men, and xenophilic people in general pursue various forms of Hindu spiritual practices called Yoga, while Christian and even other pagan spiritual practices are denigrated and polluted and destroyed as the cultural genocide washes over the western world in an odd kind of suicidal mania. There is no reason why Monasteries could not have been elevated to a cult status like Shaolin Monks, or various Yogis, were it not for the relentless communist subversion tactics that both destroyed and infested the western world with relentless cultural pathogens to destroy the native cultures and elevate cultures that groom people to allegiance with their interests. So much has already been lost by various means to the point that people do not even have any sense whatsoever for the magnitude ... like having no idea just what was lost when the library of Alexandria was burned, even if we have a deep sense that literally centuries worth of knowledge and technologies that probably had to be reinvented decades if not centuries later were lost. In many ways, so humanity is losing massive amounts of knowledge and skill and spirituality through the abdication and abandonment of one's own culture, for a fraudulent propaganda tool farce version of another. It's sad actually, what is will be lost as this craze of communist washes over the western world that has been driving humanity forward for around 3,000+ years ... and doing so with nothing even remotely similar to a suitable replacement. I know that may not make sense to you, but the children of the heirs of what will be left of the western world will have to suffer for it regardless.

incompatible 7y ago

We could try science / engineering monasteries as described by Neal Stephenson in Anathem?

dr_dshiv 7y ago
If you go back to the earliest monasteries, it would be the Pythagoreans of southern Italy c.525BC. They conducted the first attested hypothesis-driven scientific experiments -- while pursuing a simple, spiritual and communal lifestyle. Josephus and Philo of Alexandria described the Essenes and Therapeuts as Pythagorean -- and those monastic groups are largely where Christian monasticism emerged from.
dschuetz 7y ago
That's an interesting idea. Definitely worth thinking about. An R&D monastery, where the inhabitants support each other by rotating duties and service for day-to-day life, with dedication to science, engineering and philosophy. Sounds great to me.
rpmisms 7y ago
That would almost be a regression, as for a long time, monasteries were the intellectual strongholds of the West.
cat199 7y ago
this is what the 'univerity' is or was intended to be, at its base. there is a reason universities have 'faculties' (e.g. 'faculties' of the 'body of knowledge') and that key persons are called 'deans'
- incompatible 7y ago
  They would be somewhat different to a modern university. In the monastery, you don't get paid, you just get free accommodation and food (and presumably electricity, computer and Internet access, in the tech version). The monastery would perhaps also attempt to be self-sufficient as far as possible, by making its own food and electricity, perhaps taking in materials for recycling.

dagw 7y ago

They just accept the changes without adapting? Why? From a religious point of view, 'adapting' the core idea of what you believe to be Gods will might be seen as far worse than just quietly dying out with dignity.

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

factsaresacred 7y ago

> I think, they are dying out, because of their rigid traditions which rarely make sense in our modern world anymore. Living a monastic life has never been appealing to the broad population. But to say that an ascetic life devoted to introspection doesn't 'make sense' is misguided. The modern world in predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness. Nothing could make less sense.

ironic_ali 7y ago
> predominately a sedentary lifestyle spent between a cube and a couch, interspersed with frenzies of gluttony, consumption and mindless distraction to stave off feeling of emptiness. > Nothing could make less sense. Speak for yourself...
egjerlow 7y ago
This. One of the core tasks of the contemplative lifestyle (which can certainly be practiced outside of monasteries) is to be awakened from all of the things we think we need and desire. These are usually the things that the (societally constructed) ego needs to feel secure and comfortable - hence so many contemplative traditions stress the importance of "dying to yourself". This is not 'negative' or even necessarily introverted - in fact, dealing with the insecurities that you have inherited from the expectations of the society around you can make you comfortable both alone and with people. There is no need to impress anyone; no need to feel insecure or alone; you're at peace with yourself and the world. The contemplative tradition has a lot to teach our world - no manner of scientific or technological progress is going to help us before we're comfortable with being ourselves.
dschuetz 7y ago
You misunderstood. It's not the idea of living in introspection that isn't making sense anymore. It's the traditions that I meant, the rigid traditions of serving god and faith inside a monastery. Those aren't making sense to the most people today. Because the have failed to adapt to a modern understanding of how the world/anything works.

scotty79 7y ago

> The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy, and serving the monastery with its inhabitants, no matter what religion or philosophy. Why are they having so much trouble to keep up with changes? Because the core idea is dumb, the change is that more people with more access to knowledge about the world realize that, and monasteries are adapting by dying out. Monasteries are basically communes. Great for people that have nothing, but more and more people actually have something even if it's "just" a smartphone.

hrktb 7y ago

Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite. It worked when praying for the world was largely accepted as having some effect. Nowadays thoughts and prayers doesn’t cut it for the general population. In a way high level research institutes could be seen as the new monastries, with people shutting down in buildings everyday, searching for new truths that could benefit mankind.

masklinn 7y ago
> Our western societies fundamentally value extroversion, exchanging with the world and participate in the group. A monastry is the opposite. Monasteries absolutely require participation in the group. Monks are not hermits, much of their activity is working for the monastery and interacting with other monks.
- twic 7y ago
  But not interacting with people outside the monastery. Monks are sort of collectively introverted. Indeed, even within the monastery, interaction is often limited to the essential - consider rule of silence adhered to by some orders. hrktb is quite right about the general principle of monasticism. Here's the start of the Catholic Encyclopedia's article on it [1]: "Monasticism or monachism, literally the act of "dwelling alone" (Greek monos, monazein, monachos), has come to denote the mode of life pertaining to persons living in seclusion from the world, under religious vows and subject to a fixed rule, as monks, friars, nuns, or in general as religious. The basic idea of monasticism in all its varieties is seclusion or withdrawal from the world or society." EDIT although in the entry on "monk" [2] there is considerably less certainty about the origin of the name and idea. Imagine your primary reference work being internally inconsistent like that! Can't imagine where these bible-bashers got that idea. [1] http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10459a.htm http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/10459a.htm [2] http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/10487b.htm http://catholicencyclopedia.newadvent.com/cathen/10487b.htm

baud147258 7y ago

I think you're missing the point of why monasteries exist. The goal of a monastery is to provide a place where those who want to retreat from the world to spend their life praying; it's not for everyone. From my view point as a Catholic, the decline of monasteries is more linked to the decline of religion/religious practice than a matter of adaptation to the modern time: there's just less people who could be interested in such a life.

ykevinator 7y ago
Plus there is growing consensus that God cannot exist.
- YeGoblynQueenne 7y ago
  Why address such a comment to someone who has made clear they believe in the existence of God? There is no reason to provoke peoples' religious beliefs.
  - conjectures 7y ago
    Surely because the thread is about people wondering, 'why are monasteries declining?' A substantial reduction in religious belief could explain away a large part of monastic decline.
    - baud147258 7y ago
      Yes and I addressed it in my comment: "the decline of religion/religious practice "
- dr_dshiv 7y ago
  Can I try to convert you? Great! Thanks for your implied consent. Here goes: The "One" god of Christianity comes more from Neoplatonism than Judaism. The Neoplatonic Oneness, which was washed out in various times in Christian history, is fully commensurable with contemporary science. Oneness can be experienced as the common mystical experience of "we are all one, man!" But for Neoplatonists, it only made sense that the ineffable and impossible to fully understand "One" was the origin of the universe and the basis of divinity. This notion of Oneness is different from typical conceptions of the one god as a person. It is not. To understand true, original Christianity, one must reject the idea of personhood -- god isn't a person (and actually, neither are we--it's just a useful illusion) In a nutshell: in the beginning of time, there was the Oneness and the emanation from the Oneness, which was known as the Logos. It makes sense here to think big bang: the whole universe in a single point. But from there, the emanations, the logos built everything else. The emanations can return to the Oneness through the creation of new wholes and harmonies (think molecules, stars and solar systems -- onenesses made of parts). This wholeness/harmony is the source of divine goodness. Here's the Christian part: when a person believes in the Logos they have eternal life because they recognize that their life is part of the eternal Logos. That's what Christianity was to early church fathers like Origen or Clement. I forgot to mention -- Jesus was described as the incarnation of the logos. Fun fact: Logos is equivalent to "Dao" in Daoism. So, How'd I do? Are you more open now to the mysteries of Christianity?

coldtea 7y ago

>The idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to introspection and philosophy (...) no matter what religion or philosophy No, the idea of a monastery is to dedicate yourself completely to God, and specifically the God of a specific religion.

dschuetz 7y ago
Well, there are Buddhist and Christian monasteries which I certainly know they exist. I'm sure that there are Muslim and Hindu monasteries also...
- coldtea 7y ago
  We're talking about monasteries in Germany. And, even if there are Buddhist monasteries in Germany too, the article is not about them...
Nasrudith 7y ago
You are correct barring non-monotheism pendantry but there are multiple purposes including what was originally intended. Another purpose was to dump awkward heirs and spares in a primogeniture inheritance - certainly not an offically endorsed one - akin to a butcher's knife being meant for livestock and their products.

Nasrudith 7y ago

I suspect it is the regimentation which is what truly killed them when combined with less rigid constraints on thought. There is still a substansial minority who would happily dedicate themselves to introspection and contemplation but they would prefer a space to follow their own guideance. Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone? The rigid scheduling is an artifact of agrarianism in a quad-seasoned climate and the calender as it becomes essential to have the time aligned. Likewise in the past not being a farmer itself was essentially a luxury - prison without slavery was only affordable if you had a hostage whose ransom was worth far more. While before they may have been a refugee of sorts for those to devote themselves to study while being socially acceptable and self-supporting. The time for reforms was a century or more ago during industrialization - if they would want survival over purity having known the peril coming. Now I suspect the options are either accept their demise as inevitable but take all latecomers, half-hearted reforms which likely will fail to stop the death spiral or a "Neomonastic" which fundamentally be an imitation of the past by the present out of its context or contains a glimmer of the spirit - such as a collective living of Catholics who may or may not have children, which pools funds to maintain a working class standard of lifestyle but may make more as a result of being composed of mainly college educated professionals such as doctors. Theoretically there may be a Neomonastic sort of movement which emerges on its own in another sphere but if they didn't emerge on their own already why not?

JamesSchriver 7y ago
"Why bother with a life of thinking if the conclusions are already foregone?" is a quite peculiar thing to say considering the state of affairs of today's world where there is literally very little left of chance anymore and you are not in control of your own life, ever increasingly with every passing day as the global ruling class cinches down on humanity more an more through technology, that makes everything more or less a foregone conclusion. What you may want to consider is the reason and fact that why, as the western culture has been infested with the religions and values and spiritual practices of mostly the far east while their take-over is celebrated and cheered on, their domestic equivalents in the monasteries and churches has been utterly vanquished and destroyed and polluted and salted to the point that people like you don't even have a rudimentary understanding for them. Today throngs of gullible women, predatory men, and xenophilic people in general pursue various forms of Hindu spiritual practices called Yoga, while Christian and even other pagan spiritual practices are denigrated and polluted and destroyed as the cultural genocide washes over the western world in an odd kind of suicidal mania. There is no reason why Monasteries could not have been elevated to a cult status like Shaolin Monks, or various Yogis, were it not for the relentless communist subversion tactics that both destroyed and infested the western world with relentless cultural pathogens to destroy the native cultures and elevate cultures that groom people to allegiance with their interests. So much has already been lost by various means to the point that people do not even have any sense whatsoever for the magnitude ... like having no idea just what was lost when the library of Alexandria was burned, even if we have a deep sense that literally centuries worth of knowledge and technologies that probably had to be reinvented decades if not centuries later were lost. In many ways, so humanity is losing massive amounts of knowledge and skill and spirituality through the abdication and abandonment of one's own culture, for a fraudulent propaganda tool farce version of another. It's sad actually, what is will be lost as this craze of communist washes over the western world that has been driving humanity forward for around 3,000+ years ... and doing so with nothing even remotely similar to a suitable replacement. I know that may not make sense to you, but the children of the heirs of what will be left of the western world will have to suffer for it regardless.