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Trappist Brother Jonah Pociadlo prepares to pour Spencer ale (CNS) Two members spent six months learning the art in BelgiumA Trappist brewery has opened for the first time in the United States.The new brew, Spencer Trappist Ale, is made at St Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts, by Cistercian, or Trappist, monks who wear the distinctive black and white habit.Brother Jonah Pociadlo told Catholic News Service: “It’s got a wonderful smell to it. I hesitate to describe it, because it’s something I think is pretty subjective. But I can almost taste it without it even touching my lips.”The association requires...

In Sauk County, there’s a convent, Valley of our Lady Monastery that is inhabited by 18 Cistercian nuns. These nuns take a vow of silence, with their main occupation being the making the communion wafers. I am not making this up, the website couldn’t be better: http://www.nunocist.org/page2.html. The majority of these nuns stay at the Monastery their entire life…living the simplest of simple lives. Every election the Town of Sumpter Clerk, Donna Ziegler, drops off 18 ballots so the nuns can vote. She later picks them up, prior to the election in a single, large, sealed envelope—not opening the large...

88 Monks, average age 47: "It is above all the Liturgy in the Gregorian Choir as well as our loyalty to the Pope and the Church's teachings", said P Karl Wallner. Vienna (kath.net/Cross Press) IN the Cistercian Monastery of Heiligenkreuz in the Vienna Wood, the number of Monks has risen to 88, which means a doubling in the last year, and the highest manpower in its almost 900 year history. The average age of the Monks is 47 years. "Such a wave of young people who want to participate in our life hasn't happened since the Middle Ages,' exclaimed P....

PRAIRIE DU SAC, Wis. — Abigail Berg acknowledged God’s undeniable call to religious life in the first week of her freshman year at The Catholic University of America.She stuck it out for two more years — and went through four majors — until she quit school and tried her vocation as a Cistercian nun at Valley of Our Lady Monastery, located on 112 acres in Prairie du Sac, outside of Madison, Wis. “It’s clear that all my life I felt a call to investigate religious life; I just had to trust God was speaking to me out of my deepest...

It isn't every day that a group of Catholic monks find themselves on the pop charts. Yet that's what happened to the monks of Stift Heiligenkreuz, a 12th-century Cistercian monastery near Vienna.... After its European release in May, "Chant: Music for the Soul" became the top classical album in Britain before crossing over to the pop charts, at one point outselling recordings by Madonna and Amy Winehouse.... ...The record company had wanted to capitalize on the growing sales of chant music — which were due in part to the popularity of the video game Halo, which uses chantlike melodies in...

In case you're keen for my $.02, I've previously stated that Fulton Sheen stands as the greatest American Catholic of all time. In terms of impact, none other before or since comes close. First on radio and then on television, over many Sunday and Tuesday nights, Sheen's panache, wit and humanity singlehandedly dismantled what remained of the Establishment myths of Catholic immigrants keen to establish Roman domination of the halls of power. Having captivated the popular imagination, he moved the church into the vanguard of the American mainstream. Barely three decades after Al Smith's faith kept him from the...

Last Testament of Victim Prior Blesses Murderers TIBHIRINE, Algeria, MARCH 28, 2006 (Zenit.org).- A friend of the prior of the Trappist monks of Tibhirine is trying to stir interest in the spiritual legacy of those men who were murdered a decade ago. On the night of March 26-27, 1996, some 20 gunmen invaded the Monastery of Notre Dame of Atlas in Tibhirine and kidnapped its seven Trappist monks, of French nationality. A month later, Djamel Zitouni, leader of the Armed Islamic Groups, claimed responsibility for the kidnappings and proposed an exchange of prisoners to France. The following month, a second...