New Skete Monasteries News

By Ida Williams, Director of Marketing and Communications To figure out the age of your dog, you multiply his or her age by seven.  My dog is 14 years old and this would make him 98 in human years.  His energy, attitude, and loyalty would make anyone question this mathematical equation.  Over the past six years, I have found myself trying to figure out the formula needed to determine the monastic age of the monks and nuns of New Skete.  I know the year each was born, but what is their true age?   Their energy, attitude, and loyalty* belie their birth certificates. Sister Patricia’s chronological age is 84, but what is her biological age?  She gets up early for prayers and worship, heads to the bakery to make cheesecakes, orders the ingredients for the bakery and prepares the bakery schedule, makes cheesecake deliveries, works in the gardens maintaining the flowers and fruit-bearing bushes and trees, keeps the plants in the nuns’ greenhous...

By Brother Christopher I have been a monk at New Skete for thirty-five years, and during that time I’ve observed a noteworthy transition in our culture’s attitudes to formal religious practice and affiliation. I cannot count how many times I’ve heard guests and visitors to our monastery say, “I’m spiritual, but I’m not religious. I just don’t find any meaning or value in going to church.” These are the “Nones,” those who answer Gallup polls saying, “Yes, I believe in God” but “No, I don’t attend any church.” They profess a vague, undefined set of beliefs that don’t demand any practical expression save trying to be a good person. Nones certainly don’t perceive any relationship between committed church membership and being good, so they often think, “Why bother? I can be just as good a person without the hassle of an hour and a half of boredom in church.” At a time when church attendance seems to be declining in all the “higher” Christian churches, what is glaringly obvious is an i...