Trappists

The Trappists are a contemplative religious order of the Catholic Church. Contemplation refers to a life of withdrawal from worldly affairs, devoted to prayer and to fixing one's gaze upon God. The name comes from La Trappe Abbey in Normandy, France. In the Korean Catholic Church the order is usually called the "Trappist Order," and its official name is the Order of Cistercians of the Strict Observance. "Strict Observance" means keeping the rule rigorously.

Background

The Trappists trace their roots to the Cistercians, founded in 1098 at Cîteaux, France. The Cistercians began as an order seeking to keep the Rule of Saint Benedict strictly. Over time, however, their original rigor faded. In seventeenth-century France, abbeys could be held in commendam, a practice under which the office of abbot and its revenues were granted even to someone who did not live in the monastery. Under this practice, Armand-Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé became head of La Trappe Abbey in 1638 at the age of twelve.

Development

• Rancé's conversion and reform: Rancé later gave up his wealth and the privileges attached to his ecclesiastical benefices. He then entered the monastery, devoted himself to the spiritual life, and sought to restore the original discipline of the early Cistercians. He demanded rigor of both body and mind and regarded poverty as essential to the monastic life. Meals were vegetarian as a rule. In keeping with the Rule of Benedict, only the sick were permitted to eat meat, and the eating of meat by healthy monks was regarded as a sign of laxity.
• Conflict within the Cistercians: Opponents of the reform permitted meat on the grounds that the order needed to adapt to changed times. They regarded those who followed the strict observance as an overly zealous faction. The conflict between the two sides persisted for a long time.
• Papal intervention (1664–1666): As the dispute continued, Pope Alexander VII summoned representatives of both sides to Rome in 1664. Two years later he intervened in the dispute with the brief In suprema. The Trappists regard 1664 as their starting point. The Cistercians ultimately divided into two orders: the Cistercians of the Common Observance and the Cistercians of the Strict Observance.
• Shift of the center: La Trappe Abbey long served as the center of the Cistercians of the Strict Observance. It reportedly fulfilled that role until 1892, when Cîteaux Abbey regained its status as the motherhouse.

Results and Influence

Trappist life is built around communal prayer and the Liturgy of the Hours several times a day, manual labor, and spiritual reading. The Liturgy of the Hours is the public prayer of the Church offered at fixed times. The monks hold to the principle of self-sufficiency, providing for their own needs through their labor. The Catholic Times (Korea) reported that the order at one time had more than 3,000 members in some 80 monasteries worldwide.

In Korea, a monastery for men called Our Lady of the Korean Martyrs Trappist Monastery was established at Beobwon-ri in Gyeonggi Province. According to the Catholic Times, unlike other monasteries founded in Korea by foreign orders, this monastery had a Korean priest as its superior from the very beginning. The monks lived in complete enclosure, praying in the church seven times a day and working five hours a day. Because they shaved their heads and abstained from meat, their way of life was also said to resemble the practice of Buddhist monks.

Assessment

Within the Catholic Church, the Trappists are regarded as a reform movement that revived in the modern era the rigor of the monastic tradition of the medieval church. By contrast, opponents at the time of the reform criticized it as excessive asceticism, and this controversy led to the division of the order.

Protestantism ceased to maintain such orders after Martin Luther and other Reformers criticized monastic vows (perpetual vows) and the monastic system during the Reformation. Even so, Korean Protestants remain divided in their assessment of monastic spirituality, with its emphasis on silence, meditation, and labor. Some embrace it as a resource for spiritual formation, while others caution that it can lead believers away from a Bible-centered faith. This debate is treated in more detail in the article Contemplative Prayer.