In medieval times, the monasteries were the center of culture. Wherever a monastery was built a town grew up around it. The monks provided the focus of faith, which always has practical implications that are seen in art, craftsmanship, education, and simple economic stability. Interestingly enough, Catholic families have already started to settle around the edge of Clear Creek Monastery. This is where they want to raise their children. It is the medieval model working perfectly, a place done right, right from the start. Chesterton predicted: “Whenever monks come back, marriages will come back.”
The monastery must be the center, not a satellite, in a thriving Catholic community. The Houston Catholic Worker house also does things right, but in a place where everything has gone wrong, because it went wrong almost from the start. The Zwicks are dealing with one soul at a time in a place where people are cold statistics. Their hospitality cannot solve the large problems that plague huge cities, but it can treat each of the problems that show up at their door each day. Their source of strength and love is their faith. Each house has a chapel. Jesus is always present, both in the souls of the poor and in the Blessed Sacrament.
This may be historically accurate for the spread of growth of monasticism in Western Europe, but if the monastery is to the center, has something gone wrong with the local Church (and the cathedral community)? Monasteries should be places of evangelical witness, but for it to replace the local Church (and its communities) as the center of a Christian community seems less than ideal.
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