THE PROBLEM WITH MONKS AND MONASTERIES, PART I: This one is probably not going to make the high priority list of the Google gods (nor the Yahoo gods, nor the Netscape Search gods, nor the AOL Search gods, etc.). But hey, the world has a lot of stuff that bores the heck out of most people, but someone had to care about it or else it wouldn’t be there to bore the rest of the crowd. So here’s my shout out on a real thriller …. the problem with monks and monasteries.

(No, this rant is not about the sexual abuse crisis within the priesthood. That seems to be a problem mostly for parish priests. Which is not to say that monks don’t have their sexual problems, or that some of the Benedictines who run high schools and colleges haven’t done some bad things with their students. But I have nothing to add to that topic, since thankfully I wasn’t a victim of it. I want to consider some of the overall problems with the idea of being a monk. So no, this ain’t about sex — although in a way it is. Sex is one topic you can never really get away from.)

I’m not much into religion these days but I’m still interested in monks and monasteries. I secretly hope that a religion will emerge someday that I can believe in and that believes in what I do. Monastic mysticism will hopefully be a part of that religion. Monks represent the quiet, introverted side of religion. They go about seeking a mystical oneness with God in a quiet and humble manner — in theory, anyway. Being a born introvert and a wanna-be mystic, that appeals to me. But as to there actually being monks and monasteries in this new religion, well…

Christian monks and monasteries go way back to the Third Century. The idea of heading out into the desert to live a life of prayer and silence didn’t exactly come from Jesus — he kept his desert retreat down to six weeks. Still, by the end of the Third Century, many Christians felt that isolation was a great way to follow Jesus. So, the idea took off — remember that Christian were still being persecuted by the Romans at that point, and the desert was perhaps a safer place to be. Not that monks and hermits were ever really mainstream — even at the peak of their popularity during the Middle Ages, monks were probably never more than 10% of the Christian population. So it was a fringe group, but a highly favored one. Monks took a vow to be unquestionably obedient to their abbots and to the church. Because of the sacrifices that monks made, i.e. no sex, no personal property, and no luxuries, the Pope and his bishops got to like them. Monks were seen as being the spiritual Marine Corps. Church leaders started saying that they were closer to God and to Heaven than the average village slob and wench who got married and raised kids.

If you studied the Middle Ages in any detail, you know that there were thousands of monasteries in Europe around Y1K, each with hundreds of monks in residence. Just about every river valley had one. Today, there are maybe a hundred or two in Europe (somewhat more if you count the Orthodox ones), perhaps another hundred or less in the USA, and maybe another hundred throughout the rest of the world. Each of them has perhaps 20 to 50 monks, mostly old men. And even that represents a revival; between 1750 and 1850, the monastic movement was thought to have been wiped out by the Reformation and the various revolutions going on in Europe.

So why was monasticism once such a hot ticket, and why did it die off in modern times? The answer to the second part is easy: sex. It just ain’t easy these days to live without it. When you’re fed properly, your body is programmed to reproduce; the urge is very strong. Back in the Middle Ages, people generally weren’t fed properly. Aside from sex, another issue is self-autonomy … who wants to be the servant of some sexually frustrated old abbot? Or even worse, some unfrustrated old abbot … (see, you just can’t get away from the topic of sex).

My hunch is that giving up sex and personal independence wasn’t such a crazy thing when you consider what the options were in the Middle Ages. Living on your own as a peasant with a plot of land or as a tradesman in some village, it wasn’t too hard to die young from some plague or some bandits or some invading army plundering the land. You really had to struggle to get through the winter; if you lived, you were going to be cold and miserable most of the time. By comparison, the monks didn’t have it so bad. Strangely enough, monasteries were one of the few “economic engines” of the Middle Ages. They were organized as miniature collectives with strong leadership such that they cleared land and farmed crops and practiced crafts more efficiently than anyone else. Many monasteries came to own a lot of land and became rich, despite their theoretical devotion to poverty. So, in return for a pledge to do as told and not to have sex (which wasn’t always enforced anyway), a monk had a lot more access to food, warmth, shelter and security than the average peasant.

But of course, times eventually changed. Along came the Renaissance and monasteries were no longer the only way to get rich. Also the Protestants came along and exposed the spiritual hypocrisy of wealthy and powerful monks. Then came the Enlightenment and its revolutions, and the monks were picked clean and told to go back to their native villages (if they weren’t beheaded or burnt at the stake).

And yet, monasticism somehow survived, although on a much smaller scale. Monasteries managed to take root within America after 1850. In the 1950s and 1960s, monasticism gained a popular spokesman, the writer Thomas Merton (a Trappist monk from Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky; Merton died in 1968). Merton’s books attracted a lot of men to the “holy life” of the cloister, and by 1960 monasteries seemed to be making a comeback. But along with Merton, the spiritual appeal of monasticism got swept away in the social turbulence of the late 60s. Today, most of the monasteries barely hold on. Few young men in the US or Europe want to give up so much in exchange for an ancient and uncertain path to inner fulfillment. (However, monasteries in Africa and South America are supposedly doing better — that’s not surprising, given that conditions in those places are often similar to Europe in the Middle Ages).

To be Continued … yawn.