MONKS WHO RARELY SPEAK.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XV, Issue XX, 16 November 1895, Page 628

MONKS WHO RARELY SPEAK.

Catholic Trappist Community to Live on Long Island. European disturbances are forcing many religious communities to seek homes in America, and the Trappists of Italy are the latest to arrive. They are about to found a house in the Brooklyn diocese under the direction of the Rev. Edmund Obrecbt and with the approval of Bishop McDonnell. For the past year the former has been the guest of the Drumgoole Mission in Lafayette Place, while arranging the details of the new establishment. The generosity of a New Yorker now living on Long Island, Bernard Earle, has enabled the Trappist father to begin the work at his convenience. Mr Earle gave a house and twenty seven acres of land at a place near Hicksville, known as Round Swamp, which is of a character to provide the monks with an opportunity to show their skill io improving land. It was an ordinary farm, and the house an ordinary tarm building. The monks wi 1 use the house as a monastery, after making such alterations as are needful. Besides following their own rule, they will keep a home for aged and infirm priests and a place of retreat for those who desire to spend a longer or shorter time apart from the world. This house will be supplied with members from the Trappist monastery in Rome, known as the Tre Fontana, where the monks turned a sw amp into a habitable locality by planting groves of the eucalyp'us tree, from which they make a medicine efficacious in malarial fevers. The Trappists have been slow to settle in other countries of late years outside of Euro) e. They have a monastery in Dubuque founded by Irishmen from the Irish Mount Melleray, and the second in Kentucky founded by German monks. The severity of their rule has usually confined them to a moderate climate, but a few years ago the French Trappists started a monastery in the province of Quebec, and secured dispensations from some features of their rule. In spite of the climate they have managed to get along, and will probably remain in Canada. The principal features of their rule are perpetual silence unless in necessity, and then only is speech permitted in the presence of the Abbot ; four hours of field work and four of prayer each day ; six hours of sleep ; study or indoor labour four hours; one ineal a day at which meat is not allowed, and no fires in the monastery except for cooking The monks sleep on a .nattrass, without covering, never takeoff their habits except to take baths. In Canada, however, they are allowed to use fires and to eat a slight breakfast on account of the severe winters. The sick may use meat. With all this strictness they do not want for members, and their average term of years is higher than that of other communities.—New York ‘Tribune.’