Needed Apostolates

[Gabriela]

I've been thinking about this lately and the thread on new forms of consecrated life prompted me to post it. As always, I think we need to re-introduce the beguinage, but otherwise, I think we also need:

1. Both men and women religious whose apostolate is to foster love, appreciation, service, and stewardship of nature. I envision them living in a breathtakingly beautiful setting, having housing for year-round retreats, offering outdoor camps and whatnot, etc.

2. Both men and women religious who build a community integrated with laypeople who are single parents. Single mothers and their children could live near the monastery, so that the sisters could provide support to the mothers and the brothers could provide the children with father figures/positive male role models. Obviously there'd be some serious VIRTUS requirements here, but none that couldn't be surmounted with careful screening and training, I think. Perhaps the brothers could run a school solely for the children of single mothers. And single fathers could come, too, with the reverse relationships to serve them. All would benefit from the community, given that single parenthood is extremely stressful and isolating and those facts often drive good people—and good Catholics—to (illicit) remarriages.

What have y'all got?

[Luigi]

2 hours ago, Gabriela said:

1. Both men and women religious whose apostolate is to foster love, appreciation, service, and stewardship of nature. I envision them living in a breathtakingly beautiful setting, having housing for year-round retreats, offering outdoor camps and whatnot, etc.

I think a number of Trappist monasteries - both women's monasteries and men's monasteries - already fill this bill. And I can think of at least one Dominican monastery - the nuns in British Columbia - that already fills this bill.

Except for the outdoor camps. I don't think any of them do that. They have trails for hiking, but that's probably all.

[Pax17]

I love the idea of a nature apostolate.

[Nunsuch]

For the first category, many congregations of women are already involved. See Sarah Taylor's book, "Green Sisters," for some examples. For contemplative nuns, you may also want to look into the former Passionsts who started a new foundation in Vermont: http://www.greenmountainmonastery.org/

 

[Luigi]

A few years ago - maybe more than a few? - I posted about an order I'd like to see formed, St. Joseph's Brothers (St. Joe's Bros). 

Men in annual vows, similar to the Daughters of Charity. They live in community, attend daily Mass together, and pray the rosary together daily, but they don't pray the divine office. They work. At construction trades - carpenters, electricians, painters, plasterers, plumbers. Their apostolate is two-fold:

1. Provide no-or-low cost maintenance to parishes and convents in poor neighborhoods; 

2. Buy and rehab existing houses in poor neighborhoods, then sell them to poor families on a cost-plus basis (cost of purchase & materials, plus some money for them to live on, but well below market prices). Families who want to buy such a house would be able to reduce the cost through sweat equity - one or more family member working with the brothers  reduces the purchase price. 

Benefits: 

1. Men have the opportunity to try out religious life; they can stay for their whole lives, or serve as little as a year - kind of like a Catholic Vista. It'd be perfect for a gap year, or post-graduation but pre-career.  

2. If they don't have construction trade skills when they enter, they'll have them when they leave, so they could earn a living for themselves, so it'd be good for right-out-of-high-school guys who aren't sure if they want to go to college, or who don't know what they want to do with their lives. Some might join for the short term but stay for the long term. 

3. Parishes and convents would benefit, and the Church's presence in poor neighborhoods might be a little stronger. Poor families would benefit. Family members who choose to put in the sweat equity would also develop skills necessary for maintaining their home (This is a glaring problem I've seen personally in government-sponsored home ownership programs - folks buy a house, but often with no knowledge of how to maintain it, no skills, and no tools.). Cities would benefit. The brothers could do some evangelization of the people they work with in rehabbing the houses. 

 

[NadaTeTurbe]

12 hours ago, Gabriela said:

1. Both men and women religious whose apostolate is to foster love, appreciation, service, and stewardship of nature. I envision them living in a breathtakingly beautiful setting, having housing for year-round retreats, offering outdoor camps and whatnot, etc.

 

You're thinking about cistercian  

Notre dame de Bonneval abbaye (France). Breathtaking, retreat, and welcome scout for camp. 

http://www.abbaye-bonneval.com/frame_new/abbaye/vues.php

And I'm not joking, it is part of cistercian spirituality to choose a beautiful place to built monastery. The tradition says that St Bernard de Clairvaux had a special love for mountians and valley. 

[Gabriela]

11 hours ago, Luigi said:

A few years ago - maybe more than a few? - I posted about an order I'd like to see formed, St. Joseph's Brothers (St. Joe's Bros). 

Men in annual vows, similar to the Daughters of Charity. They live in community, attend daily Mass together, and pray the rosary together daily, but they don't pray the divine office. They work. At construction trades - carpenters, electricians, painters, plasterers, plumbers. Their apostolate is two-fold:

1. Provide no-or-low cost maintenance to parishes and convents in poor neighborhoods; 

2. Buy and rehab existing houses in poor neighborhoods, then sell them to poor families on a cost-plus basis (cost of purchase & materials, plus some money for them to live on, but well below market prices). Families who want to buy such a house would be able to reduce the cost through sweat equity - one or more family member working with the brothers  reduces the purchase price. 

Benefits: 

1. Men have the opportunity to try out religious life; they can stay for their whole lives, or serve as little as a year - kind of like a Catholic Vista. It'd be perfect for a gap year, or post-graduation but pre-career.  

2. If they don't have construction trade skills when they enter, they'll have them when they leave, so they could earn a living for themselves, so it'd be good for right-out-of-high-school guys who aren't sure if they want to go to college, or who don't know what they want to do with their lives. Some might join for the short term but stay for the long term. 

3. Parishes and convents would benefit, and the Church's presence in poor neighborhoods might be a little stronger. Poor families would benefit. Family members who choose to put in the sweat equity would also develop skills necessary for maintaining their home (This is a glaring problem I've seen personally in government-sponsored home ownership programs - folks buy a house, but often with no knowledge of how to maintain it, no skills, and no tools.). Cities would benefit. The brothers could do some evangelization of the people they work with in rehabbing the houses. 

 

That's an outstanding idea for an apostolate. Someone should really start that.

You, maybe?  

 

10 hours ago, NadaTeTurbe said:

You're thinking about cistercian  

Notre dame de Bonneval abbaye (France). Breathtaking, retreat, and welcome scout for camp. 

http://www.abbaye-bonneval.com/frame_new/abbaye/vues.php

And I'm not joking, it is part of cistercian spirituality to choose a beautiful place to built monastery. The tradition says that St Bernard de Clairvaux had a special love for mountians and valley. 

Yeah, but it's not the center of their life. I just went on retreat with some Cistercians and they really don't talk about nature much, or make that a central feature of their interactions with visitors. I agree they have outstanding aesthetic sense (their architecture is my favorite type), but really their apostolate is prayer, and nothing else. (Except for the active ones who teach, of course.)

[Luigi]

"

On 6/16/2016 at 0:17 PM, Gabriela said:

I've been thinking about this lately and the thread on new forms of consecrated life prompted me to post it. As always, I think we need to re-introduce the beguinage, but otherwise, I think we also need:

1. Both men and women religious whose apostolate is to foster love, appreciation, service, and stewardship of nature. I envision them living in a breathtakingly beautiful setting, having housing for year-round retreats, offering outdoor camps and whatnot, etc.

The US-Canada Religious of the Sacred Heart (rscj) run a farm, Sprout Creek Farm. One of the goals is to teach care of the earth. 

https://sproutcreekfarm.org/about?has_js=1&_ga=GA1.2.1978683456.1464882474&_gat=1

[Gabriela]

9 hours ago, Luigi said:

"

The US-Canada Religious of the Sacred Heart (rscj) run a farm, Sprout Creek Farm. One of the goals is to teach care of the earth. 

https://sproutcreekfarm.org/about?has_js=1&_ga=GA1.2.1978683456.1464882474&_gat=1

Are you sure that's RSCJ? From the website you'd never know it's connected with a religious community...

?

[Feankie]

If you go to their blog, their is a post about the passing of their executive director, Sister ? (I think it was Georgie something or another)

[Luigi]

45 minutes ago, Gabriela said:

Are you sure that's RSCJ? From the website you'd never know it's connected with a religious community...

?

The executive director that Francis Clare mentioned was Georgie Blaeser, rscj. Her work on the farm was described in her obituary, but the link below provides more details.

https://rscj.org/georgie-blaeser-education-fund