A Nine-Century Tradition Hangs On--Just Barely--in Oregon

When Father Richard Layton struggles to live with the 900-year-old Trappist ideal of obedience, silence and prayer, he finds a bit of inspiration outside the chapel in 12 graves marked by simple white crosses.

“These are the ones who stuck it out,” said Layton, part of a small order here that lives by the rules of monastic life set down in the Middle Ages.

Deep in the rolling hills of Oregon’s wine country, at the Our Lady of Guadalupe Trappist Monastery, white-robed monks still toil by day, sing the vespers at night and close themselves off from the outside world.

“If you want to pray, if you want to move into a special kind of sense of the divine, this is it,” said Brother Patrick Corkrean, who entered the order 17 years ago after earning his master’s degree in economics.

They are formally known as the Cistercians of the Strict Observance, after a group that split from the Benedictines and founded an abbey in 1098 in Citeaux, France. Their popular name, the Trappists, comes from the abbey in La Trappe, France, where 17th century Abbot Armond-Jean Le Bouthillier de Rance restored the rules of silence, prayer, manual labor and seclusion.

For all the staying power of the order, few feel called to this life nowadays, and each monk regularly wrestles with the question of whether this is the life God wants for him.

There are 4,000 monks at 96 monasteries around the world. Unlike other orders, the Trappists have nuns as well--3,000 of them at 66 separate monasteries, and a planned 67th in Norway, an offshoot of a thriving institution in Dubuque, Iowa.

But times are far different from the boom that followed World War II, when thousands of veterans inspired by Thomas Merton’s best-selling autobiography, “The Seven Storey Mountain,” began looking for more out of life in the simplicity of the monastery.

To make more room, 16 monks left a monastery in Rhode Island in 1948 to establish Our Lady of Guadalupe on a dude ranch in Pecos, N.M. They had grown to 60 in 1955 when they left New Mexico for Oregon in search of better farmland.

Now there are just 35, with an average age of 70. Not all stuck it out to be buried here. Some, including a former abbot who married and reared a family, followed their spiritual journeys outside the cloister. Only two novices are currently working toward final vows, and one of them is 64 years old.

“They’re not committed anymore,” said Father Dismass Gannon, who entered straight out of high school and has stayed 55 years. “There are too many options out there. They can’t make up their mind.”

Of the four novices who entered with Brother Patrick in 1981, he alone remains.

“What is helping me to stay is this interest in contemplative prayer,” he said. “There’s a rhythm that agrees with me. The abbot said to me, ‘It is not why you came that counts. It is why you are staying.’ The life sifts us. It sifts our motives. Jesus has got to be the focus. In the end, he is all that I have.”

The boom of veterans was smaller after the Korean War, and smaller still after Vietnam.

“There are bells instead of whistles, but it is still very much, ‘Fall in, keep your mouth shut, soldier, peel the potatoes,’ ” said Brother Mark Filut, who served in the Army after the Korean War and now oversees meditation sessions.

To earn the $370,000 a year it takes to keep everyone fed, the monks gave up farming. Instead, they sell fruitcake by mail order; bind periodicals for colleges, law schools and the Oregon Supreme Court; warehouse wine for neighboring wineries; and manage 900 acres of second-growth forest.

Sitting at a computerized cover printer in the bookbindery, Father Casey Bailey recalls the admonishment he received from the novice director upon leaving the Jesuits to join the Trappists.

“I told him I liked philosophy,” he said, a beatific smile lighting his blond beard. “He said, ‘There is more here than sitting and saying prayers. There is work to be done.’ ”

Turning work into prayer is a challenge in the noise of the bookbindery. A photograph of a cliffside monastery in Greece taped to a shelf serves as a reminder of their real work.

“I know I’ve lost the contemplative thing when I get angry at people for not producing enough,” said Father Richard. “We have to get so many books out a week. How to make that contemplative is a real chore.”

The outside world also rears its head in the form of visitors, who are drawn to the few sparsely furnished guest rooms here to relax, get away from it all and live the monk’s life, if only for a few days.

Jane Wilson, a retired welfare supervisor from Vancouver, Wash., visits the monastery to feel the power of so much prayer and the comfort of the routine. She believes that the prayers of members of her home church are answered just by bringing them here written on a piece of paper.

“I’m not even Catholic,” Wilson said. “I just love to be there with the monks.

“It’s like a soap opera. You come back months later and the same things are going on. People say, ‘What do they do? What are they for?’ It is just that fact that they are here, taking care of this for the rest of us.”

But life inside the cloister has seen its share of upheavals since the late 1960s, when the Roman Catholic Church remade itself.

In the old days, monks communicated in sign language to maintain the silence for contemplation. Now they speak to each other, though silence is still highly valued.

The gauze-covered grille in chapel separating the public from the monks has come down. In the refectory, monks go through a cafeteria line rather than being served at table.

Mail used to be delivered just four times a year, and reading was restricted to religious works. Now monks can check out Business Week from the periodical room, watch occasional movies on a television in the lower scriptorium, or listen to CDs on headphones in the music room.

Rather than drawing more monks, these liberalizations have driven some out. But no one is looking for ways to attract new monks.

“What is meant to be is meant to be,” said Father Richard. “We shouldn’t feel we have to stay in existence. We don’t want to ruin the lifestyle just to preserve the order.”

The leaders of the Trappists don’t worry about the future, said Abbot Peter McCarthy.

“We will be 900 years old this year,” he said. “During those 900 years, there have been thin seasons and fat seasons. I’m a believer that we have gone through a thin season and are coming out the other side.”