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previous: Chapter 20 This webpage reproduces a chapter of Arms and the Monk! The Trappist Saga in Mid‑America by M. M. Hoffman published by Wm. C. Brown Company Dubuque, Iowa, 1952 The text is in the public domain. This page has been carefully proofread and I believe it to be free of errors. If you find a mistake though, please let me know!

 p213  XXI

Historical Sidelights

1. Monastery Retreats

The impetus given the spiritual retreat movement by the erection of the guest and retreat house at New Melleray Abbey and described in the later chapters of this volume continues to this day. The schedule for retreats for groups of laymen for the first half of the year 1952 is herewith given, and it may be pointed out that it included not only parish groups from Iowa, Wisconsin and Illinois, but other particular groups: the Newman Club, University of Wisconsin, Madison; the Phi Kappa Fraternity, Iowa State College, Ames, Iowa; Chevrolet Motor Division of Milwaukee and Iowa; the Dubuque Business and Professional Men's group. The schedule follows:

2. St. Philomena and New Melleray

The enthusiasm for the cult of the St. Philomena devotions which prevailed in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century was carried from Europe to Iowa by two of the founders of New Melleray monastery, Bishop Mathias Loras of Dubuque and Father James Myles O'Gorman, superior of the monastery from 1849 to 1850 and prior from 1857 to 1859. Bishop Loras' sister, a nun of the Visitation Convent in Condrieu, France, his oldest living sister, and his "Maraineº et seconde Mère," as she signed herself, bore the name of Soeur Philomene. One of the parishes he organized near Dubuque at Asbury he named St. Philomena's.

Prior James O'Gorman encouraged the devotion in his cloister and when he went to Omaha as bishop of the Nebraska vicariate, he named his first cathedral St. Philomena's, and this parish still flourishes today. That the cult of the "saintly Princess" continued from his time on is proven by the profusion of pictures and prayer leaflets left in the various books of the brothers who passed away. During the gloomy days of the threatened bankruptcy of New Melleray in the 1880s novenas of masses in honor of St. Philomena were said and the happy escape from ultimate extinction was frequently attributed to her intercession. From 1903 on Father John Burns was the leader of the devotees of St. Philomena, and on his death his mantle fell on the shoulders of Brother Timothy Westemeyer whose family gave several members to New Melleray, among them Abbot Bruno Ryan. Due to Brother Timothy's zealous activities, especially in recent years, this devotion has spread from the monastery to many other localities. Only since November of 1947 this Trappist brother has sent devotional articles to every state of the Union, as well as to  p215 Guam and Alaska, Canada, Ireland, Italy, West and South Africa and to India.

These articles include nine thousand copies of the booklet, "Saint Philomena, the Wonderworker," seventeen thousand medals, approximately fifteen thousand cords, two thousand six hundred pictures, about forty-five thousand prayer leaflets, and nine hundred third class relics.

In March of 1952 Father W. H. Dunphy, the Command Chaplain of the Royal Canadian Air Force, wrote a letter to the abbey how he, through the influence of Brother Timothy, has spread the devotion to St. Philomena not only among his fellow chaplains but among the airmen, airwomen, their dependents and all others entrusted to his care. In April Bishop John Collins of Monrovia, capital of Liberia, West Africa, wrote: "May God bless and reward you and the Client of Saint Philomena who defrayed the expense of sending this last box of articles."

3. A Prophecy of World War III?

Among the priests of New Melleray Abbey who enlisted in the army to serve as chaplains in World War II was Father Gregory Kennedy. In a letter in the abbey archives received from Father Kennedy from Seoul, Korea, and written on March 8, 1948, is a rather remarkable passage: "It is nearly two years since I arrived in Korea, the land of missionaries and martyrs. It is a very troubled place and it has accurately been called 'the powder‑keg of the world — a place that can easily explode and plunge the whole world into the agony of World War III.' I see daily the terrible struggle between Communism and the forces of Christ — and the holy monks at New Melleray should use every means of their prayerful lives to halt the inroads of this dreadful enemy." — This was written well over two years before the North Korean aggression across the 38th parallel in the summer of 1950.

4. Burials at New Melleray

What is of bizarre interest even to Catholics is the method of burials of the Trappist monks. The fact that they are buried in their monastic habits instead of in coffins brings at first a recoiling impact of distaste and aversion to those accustomed to the un‑Christian world's policy of gliding over and softening what should be to us the wholesome lesson of the shock of death. Yet, this interring of the monk in the earth from which he sprang is as logical as it is touching.  p216 From the Histoire de Notre Dame de la Grande Trappe (Bordeaux, 1903), the following beautiful description is taken:

Which means — that amidst the tolling of the abbey bells and the pious recitation of the prayers of the brothers, the grave is blessed and the body is sprinkled with holy water and the fragrant clouds from the burning incense are wafted over it.

 p217  This pious practice continues for a month. And during this month — the Tricenary it is called — masses, prayers and good work are offered up in behalf of the deceased.

5. List of Abbots, Priors and Superiors at New Melleray

(Researches of Bro. Timothy Westemeyer, O. C. S. O.)

6. Statistical Personnel of New Melleray

When the Iowa Trappist foundation was commenced by Dom Bruno Fitzpatrick in July of 1849 its member­ship consisted of two priests and four lay brothers. Toward the end of that year, despite the tragedy on the Mississippi which took the lives of six of the monks, the number rose to six choir brothers of whom four were priests, and eleven laborers. The following numbers are taken from the records in the stated years:

7. "Westward Does the Star of Empire . . ."

Bishop Mathias Loras of Iowa, encouraged and pleased by the lives of the Cistercians whom he had helped to establish on the banks of the Mississippi, sought in the middle 1850s to bring their monastic cousins, the Benedictines, into his diocese also. One Benedictine house had been commenced as far west as Indiana — at St. Meinrad's — in 1854, and another near what is now Collegeville, Minnesota, in 1856.

The correspondence in connection with this effort between Dr. Loras and the celebrated Archabbot Boniface Wimmer of St. Vincent's Archabbey in Pennsylvania, found in the Dubuque archdiocesan archives, is both edifying and amusing. Much as he admired the archabbot and the Benedictines, Bishop Loras was such an advocate of Temperance — spelled with a capital T — as this historical study  p221 has already shown when speaking of the bishop's relations with Father Mathews, the giant apostle of Temperance, that he hesitated about an outright invitation because he feared the introduction of a monastic brewery in his diocese. The Bavarian monks of various orders were famous for their brews of beer in Munich, and the phantom of a possible Benedictine brewery proved too much for Loras — really somewhat of a Prohibitionist at heart — and he withheld the invitation.

This did not hinder the penetration of various other parts of the West by the Benedictine monks. Even today's press relates how these followers of the Rule of St. Benedict, commonly known as the "black monks," have now established an abbey high in the Coteau hills of northeastern South Dakota. A •576‑acre farm is being transformed into a monastic setting, and from now on will serve as headquarters for the Benedictine missions to the Indians. Hitherto, the administration of these missions was handled at the founding abbey, St. Meinrad's of Indiana. For more than seventy years these monks have labored among the Indian tribes of the Dakotas.

8. Formal Visitors at New Melleray

In general, all Cistercian monasteries are visited by their Father Immediate or his delegate, unless the Abbot General has already visited them. It is chiefly on the Visitation, properly made, that the preservation of regular discipline depends. Here is the list of Formal or Regular Visitors to New Melleray during its centuried existence taken from the Visitation Cards; the Visitation Cards are letters, sometimes lengthy, written by the Visitors containing solicitous paternal admonitions which are to be read on the ember days of the four seasons of the year until the next Visitation:

9. Coat of Arms of
The Right Reverend Abbot Eugene, O. C. S. O.
Our Lady of New Melleray Abbey
(For those who understand heraldry)

Blazon

Impaled Arms. Dexter: Per fess dancetté, azure and argent, in chief a cross bottony rayonnant or, between four mullets of the second, in base on a bar wavy of the first three fleur-de‑lis of the second (Abbey of Our Lady of New Melleray). Sinister: Ermine, three bars gules, over all an eagle rising or, on the breast an inescutcheon azure charged with a crescent argent and a chief per pale of the first and of the last, on a chief azure, semé-de‑lis of the third an inescutcheon bendy of six or and azure within a bordure gules (Abbot Eugene).

The Martin family of Ireland has a coat of arms consisting of an ermine field bearing three red bars.

The motto of Abbot Eugene, emblazoned at the base of his impaled arms, "Nihil amori Christi praeponere" is translated, "To prefer nothing to the love of Christ," and is taken from the Rule of St. Benedict, Chap. IV, "The Instruments of Good Works," Instrument No. 21.

10. Conditions for Admission to the Cistercian Order

11. A Monk's Will

Written by Abbot Bruno of New Melleray not long before he died in 1944, with the request that the document not be opened until after his death.

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