The St. Benedict Center, a Benedictine ecumenical community serving Madison for the past 40 years, has ended its ties to the Roman Catholic Church.
Sister Mary David Walgenbach, 67, prioress, says the center will now function purely as an ecumenical community under its new name, Holy Wisdom Monastery.
She said the Sisters of St. Benedict petitioned the Vatican for dispensation from their vows as a Catholic religious order and that request was granted. The order will now be called the "Benedictine Women of Madison" and will continue to follow, generally, the monastic rule of St. Benedict.
Bishop Robert Morlino, of the Madison Catholic Diocese, approved the changes but requested the monastery no longer have Roman Catholic Mass celebrated at the center and that blessed Communion wafers no longer be "reserved" in the chapel.
"Such experimental endeavors can bear great fruit for the church, such as the monastery at Taize (France)," Morlino said in a letter to diocesan priests dated June 26. "But there are very few other success stories worldwide, and thus our prayers and good wishes are all the more important."
Sister Mary David said there are a number of reasons for the change, one of which is the order started accepting Protestant members several years ago.
"We didn’t want our non-Catholic sisters to have second-class status," she said. The Rev. Lynn Smith, a Presbyterian clergywoman, took her final vows to become a member of the order in 2004.
Morlino said Roman Catholic adults are free to participate in activities at the center, but added "participation in such activities would not be suitable for Catholic school religion classes, parish religious education classes for young people through the completion of high school and certainly not for catechumens and candidates in RCIA (religious study) programs."
Young people, Morlino warned, need to be indoctrinated in the basics of the Catholic faith before participating in ecumenical activities.
St. Benedict Center has, for 40 years, been virtually synonymous with ecumenical activities in the Madison area.
The local chapter of the Sisters of St. Benedict was organized in 1901 in Sioux City, Iowa. Sisters moved to Madison in 1953 to begin a Catholic girls’ school. When the school closed in 1966, the center became an ecumenical retreat.
"The response to our offer of hospitality has been overwhelmingly abundant," Sister Mary David said in a letter to fellow sisters. "While the 40 years have occasionally felt like desert experiences, far greater is the joy. Formerly, Christians of various churches praying together seemed innovative; this practice is common today. We continue to know ourselves as Catholic, Lutheran, Episcopalian and Presbyterian. While these labels sometimes separate us, we also know our unity as Christians who live, pray and work together in our world."
Looks to be a good thing that they are no longer affiliated with the Church since their affiliation didn’t appear to be all that deep in the first place. Any group of nuns willing to not have Mass available or a tabernacle to pray before our Lord in the Eucharist have truly lost their way on the path of false ecumenism.
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Are we so sure that this group is heterodox? They seem to have done everything through the proper channels, and appear to resemble Taize in their efforts. I don’t see the prob.
Do they even consider the possibility that their protestant members might become Roman Catholic?
Or do they consider all who believe in Jesus Christ to be equally good christians?
It would be interesting to give them an “I believe” quiz on the Apostles Creed and see how much they accept.
They are very, very, very heterodox.
Example… in a conversation with an avowed practicioner of ‘wicca’ and self described ‘witch’ she assured me that she knew all about Catholicism because she was a ‘Benedictine oblate’ from her interaction with this place.
I was horrified. She said that even though she wasn’t Catholic and wasn’t baptised they welcomed her in order to encourage understanding and that she has every right to call herself a Benedictine Oblate.
So really, no great loss to the Church here.
Mary Martha:
If what you say is true (and I have no reason to doubt it), then it is indeed the Church’s loss that Catholics in good standing with their Church are allowed to have membership in this organization. The group also appears to have at lest tacit Church-endorsement, granted not as a formal religious order.
Question: is this the community that Kathleen Norris (“Cloister Walk,” “Amazing Grace”) is an oblate of?
Of course this is so typical of modern attitudes toward religion. Genuine, basic, Rock -solid TRUTH is regarded as expendable or non-existent. There’s your truth (Baptist), her truth (Episcopal), his truth (Methodist), and my truth (Catholic). If that is the case–the atheists are right–if there is no Truth, there is no God-
and these dilletantes of faith are just playing in a childish sandbox.
I am not quite sure what to make of Bishop Morlino–he seems rather lost himself in all of this silly syncretism. But these ladies are the equivalent of the Cheshire Cat–and with time, their place and purpose will vanish, leaving behind only the yellowing and dessicating pages of fatuous books written by souls who became lost within themselves.
1. This is not the group of which Kathleen Norris is an oblate. That is a men’s monastery in the Dakotas.
2. Really, must everything on this blog (or at least in the comments) be a slam against someone or group? I mean, are you folks joyful about anything other than the pride of being right?
3. I actually do remember when this group was starting up a few years ago, and although this may be a “taize experiment” that didn’t work, I knew some of the women who initially wanted to try this, and the idea was to pray in unity and recognize difference–a prayerful extension of the ecumenical movement. Really, folks, there are WORSE things one can do with one’s life.
I wonder about the issue of the alienation of Church property. While the legal title is no doubt held by the (former) sister, doesn’t the property still belong to the Church? How can it be alienated to an ecumenical group?
at least they’re honest by removing themselves from the Church. Let’s pray that all (Catholic and non-Catholic) find their way home back to Rome one day.
Really, must everything on this blog (or at least in the comments) be a slam against someone or group? I mean, are you folks joyful about anything other than the pride of being right?
Ah, the shaming tactic. I wondered how long it would take for this tired old horse to be trotted out. I have to say, though, trying to connect it with one of the seven deadlies is a nice touch – not particularly original, mind you, but deftly done.
The Catholic members of the monastery have not left the Church; they have left a canonical association, with the approval of Rome and their local bishop. Who here is prepared to tell another person how she must live her life?
Many Benedictine monasteries have non-Catholic oblates. That sounds weird, admittedly, but the mere fact that my idea of what an “oblate” is isn’t the Benedictine idea doesn’t make the Benedictine idea wrong. If anything, it should make me question my own idea.
All that said, Bishop Morlino’s estimate of the odds and call for prayers sound pretty much on target.
I think they should drop the name “Benedictine” too, since they are clearly not. Saint Benedict talks about obedience to the Church. You can’t be Benedictine and not be Catholic.
Saint Benedict tore down a pagan temple when he set up his monastery on Monte Cassino. Ironically, these women tear down their Tabernacle to become pagan again. Just plain sad.
Not a big problem. In fifty years, they’ll all be dead, and in thirty, we’ll have purchased their properties from them as their remnants move into smaller and smaller residences. Same as it ever was…
They are NOT “blessed Communion wafers” they are the Body, Blood, Soul, and Divinity of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
At least they are not callint it “Her Holy Wisdom Monastery”
Not yet, anyway. They’re probably just waiting for the chance…..
Well, we’ve been warned:
“It is the same with all the modern attempts at Syncretism. They are never able to make something larger than the Creed without leaving something out. I do not mean leaving out something divine but something human; the flag or the inn or the boy’s tale of battle or the hedge at the end of the field. The Theosophists build a pantheon; but it is only a pantheon for pantheists. They call a Parliament of Religions as a reunion of all the peoples; but it is only a reunion of all the prigs. Yet exactly such a pantheon had been set up two thousand years before by the shores of the Mediterranean; and Christians were invited to set up the image of Jesus side by side with the image of Jupiter, of Mithras, of Osiris, of Atys, or of Ammon. It was the refusal of the Christians that was the turning-point of history. If the Christians had accepted, they and the whole world would have certainly, in a grotesque but exact metaphor, gone to pot. They would all have been boiled down to one lukewarm liquid in that great pot of cosmopolitan corruption in which all the other myths and mysteries were already melting. It was an awful and an appalling escape. Nobody understands the nature of the Church, or the ringing note of the creed descending from antiquity, who does not realise that the whole world once very nearly died of broadmindedness and the brotherhood of all religions.”
[GKC The Everlasting Man CW2:310]
Are they related to these heretics?
White Robed Monks
…who believe this nonsense:
Axioms A
Read all of the axioms. They’re like Cliff Notes for relativism.
Thanks for the quote DoctorThursday. Indeed, the greatest doctors of the Church have had little tolerance for heresy.
If only early Christians had been more committed to ecumenism, and had shown tolerance to Emperor worship, they might not have been persecuted! But then, they wouldn’t have been Christian, would they?
Consanescerion, those “monks” aren’t about relativism. They’re neo-Gnostics. (And bad spellers: they call Christ the “Logus”!) I hate when they try to pass themselves off as Catholics.
As for the no-longer Catholic Benedictines, I see by some of their statements that they’re not really embracing differences but tossing their uniqueness out. I mean, being a “Benedictine oblate” is supposed to mean something other than belonging to a prayer club, isn’t it?
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