Conversations in the Abbey profiles elder monks of Saint Meinrad Archabbey in southern Indiana. Eleven monks talk about their lives, prayer and work, and how they’ve changed over the decades. Other chapters tell of the abbey’s work over the years.
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Table of Contents
Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ii
Foreword by Archabbot Justin DuVall, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .iii
Preface . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .v
Acknowledgements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .ix
Part A: Reflections on Life, Work and Prayer from Youngest to Oldest
Chapter 1: Fr. Cyprian Davis, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Chapter 2: Fr. Columba Kelly, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Chapter 3: Br. Jerome Croteau, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Chapter 4: Br. Terence Griffin, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75
Chapter 5: Fr. Camillus Ellspermann, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Chapter 6: Fr. Simeon Daly, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
Chapter 7: Fr. Rupert Ostdick, OSB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Chapter 8: Br. Benedict Barthel, OSB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 175
Chapter 9: Fr. Eric Lies, OSB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Chapter 10: Fr. Abbot Bonaventure Knaebel, OSB . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 217
Chapter 11: Fr. Theodore Heck, OSB. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
Part B: Interweaving of the Monks’ Lives in Work of the Abbey
Chapter 12: Finances and Fund Raising: Support of
the Abbey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 265
Rupert Ostdick, OSB, Eric Lies, OSB, Daniel Schipp,
John Wilson, with Ruth C. Engs
Chapter 13: Abbey Press: Illumination of the Abbey . . . . . . . . . . . . . 297
Simeon Daly, OSB, Rupert Ostdick, OSB, Maurus Zoeller, OSB,
and Gerald Wilhite, with Ruth C. Engs
Chapter 14: Land: Sustenance of the Abbey . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 333
Ruth C. Engs
Appendix A: Recipe for Nonsense . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 368
Chapter One
Fr. Cyprian Davis, OSB
As a Benedictine monk of Saint Meinrad, Fr. Cyprian has several
major responsibilities: professor of Church history in the School of
Theology (1982-present), and the archivist for the Archabbey (1963-present),
the Swiss-American Congregation of Benedictines (1978-present),
and the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus.
Born September 9, 1930, in Washington, D.C., Fr. Cyprian made his
first profession as a monk August 1, 1951, his solemn profession August 1,
1954, and was ordained May 3, 1956. He graduated from Saint Meinrad
College (1954) and completed theological training at the School of
Theology. Fr. Cyprian received his STL in theology (1957) from Catholic
University of America, Washington, D.C., and the licentiate in historical
studies (1963) and doctorate in historical sciences (1977) from Catholic
University, Louvain, Belgium. He served as assistant spiritual director at
Saint Meinrad College (1965-67).
Fr. Cyprian has been awarded several honorary doctoral degrees for
his research and writings concerning black Catholics. He has numerous
publications including the popular History of Black Catholics in the United
States (1990) and was editor for To Prefer Nothing to Christ: Saint Meinrad
Archabbey, 1854-2004 (2004). During the Civil Rights era, he participated
in the March on Washington and the March in Selma, and was a founding
member of the National Black Catholic Clergy Caucus.
Fr. Cyprian was interviewed by Prof. Ruth C. Engs on November
14, 2005.
Childhood and Early Years as a Monk
Tell me about your family.
I was born Clarence William Davis, Jr. in Washington, D.C. in 1930.
My father was Clarence W. Davis, Sr. He was born in Hartford,
Connecticut, and was a professor, first at Howard University in
Washington, D.C., and then at the University of District of Columbia. My
father was a professor of health and physical education. My mother originally
was from Washington, D.C.; her name was Evelyn Jackson Davis.
She was a school teacher and taught physical education in the elementary
schools.
I had one sister; she is now deceased. Both my parents are deceased.
My sister’s name was Evelyn R. Davis Gardiner, then Evelyn Beckford.
Most of her life, she lived in California and was a school teacher in
Richmond, California, which is in the Bay Area.
How important was religion in your family as a child?
I am a convert to Catholicism; I became a Catholic when I was 15.
One of the reasons why I became a Catholic was that I was very much
impressed by the fact that the Catholic Church was the oldest Church,
and I loved to read history. I read all about the Middle Ages and
Catholicism, so I became a Catholic. My parents were not at all happy
about it in the beginning.
Why?
My mother was a Presbyterian, although her father had been born a
Catholic. One of the areas where blacks are traditionally Catholic is
southern Maryland, because of the Jesuits’ slave holding. His family was
originally from southern Maryland, and so my mother was baptized a
Catholic, but when my grandfather left the Church, my mother grew up
as a Presbyterian. My uncle, her brother, was about 11 years old when
they broke with the Catholic Church, but he remained a Catholic. He was
the one who took me to Mass for the first time.
My father considered himself to be what, at that time, was called a
Congregationalist. He became a Baptist at the behest of his mother. When
I was growing up, my parents hardly ever went to church. My mother
became a Catholic when I entered the monastery, and she became a very,
very devout Catholic.
Tell me about your early schooling.
It was a time of racial segregation. All the schools I went to were public
schools in Washington, D.C., and they were schools of all black students.
I graduated from high school in 1948 and during that summer
came out here for a visit. After I graduated from high school, I went one
year to Catholic University in Washington, D.C.
What influenced you to become a monk?
I had read about monks in history and I was very much interested in
becoming a monk. I used to go out to the English Benedictine monastery,
which at that time was St. Anselm’s Priory. A friend of mine said, “Why
don’t you write to various religious orders? They will send you all kinds
of material.” I thought that would be a good idea, so I did. One of the
places I sent for information was to a Benedictine abbey. My friend said,
“Well, you’d better explain to them that you are black.” This was in the
1940s, and it was still a period of racial segregation. Many religious
orders did not accept blacks, just like many of the dioceses didn’t accept
black priests.
I did explain in my letter that I was a Negro—in those days we were
Negroes—but that I very much wanted to be Benedictine. I got an
answer back and it said, “That’s a very nice idea.” But at that time, I was
not yet baptized. They encouraged me to be baptized, but said, “The best
thing to do is to join the Josephites.” The Josephites were a religious community
that worked for the evangelization of blacks. It was obvious they
did not want to accept someone who was black. This was very ironic, in
one sense, because I knew that, historically, this community had had
some Negroes as monks. Their response made me so angry and I said, “I
will never be Benedictine.”
Then why did you come to Saint Meinrad, a Benedictine community?
At home in Washington, I had gotten to know a woman quite well
who was a professor at Catholic University. She had a student who was
from Saint Meinrad. He was always telling her what a wonderful place it
was. One day she asked him, “Would they accept a Negro at Saint
Meinrad?” He wasn’t sure, but said he wanted to meet me. I met him
and he began to talk to me about going to Saint Meinrad. He spoke about
the fact that, if you wanted liturgy, this was the place to come for it.
Later, when I started to talk about coming to Saint Meinrad, I was told by
one friend that I shouldn’t even think about it because Saint Meinrad is
in southern Indiana and they would never accept blacks.
The monk who had invited me out here was Fr. Gerard Ellspermann,
who was a doctoral candidate at Catholic University. I persuaded my
parents to let me come here for a visit. I think my father was very leery
about this, as southern Indiana was the South. It had its Jim Crow laws,
except that they were never publicized. They didn’t have signs; you had
to know where you could go and where you couldn’t go. But it was
decided that I could come out here for a visit. I came by train to
Louisville. It was one of the first places I ever saw “colored” and “white”
reading rooms.
Fr. Kiefer, whom I knew as a seminarian at Theological College at
Catholic University, met me in Louisville. He said he would need to
make a retreat at West Baden, which at that time was a Jesuit seminary.
He was going to bring me to Saint Meinrad on Sunday evening and then
pick me up at the end of the week. I got here, but I was very unhappy.
The atmosphere of the place just weighed me down; I wanted to leave.
I really wanted to leave, but it wasn’t possible because he was gone for
the week.
However, by the end of the week, I had made many friends. The
monks had been so kind; it was really wonderful and I was determined
to come back here. What was interesting was that there were already two
black brothers here. Neither one of them stayed, but they were here at
that time. When I was ready to leave, the abbot, Ignatius Esser, came
over and said to me, “Are we going to see you again?” I said, “I would
like to come back.” By doing that, of course, the abbot was indicating
that this place was not closed to someone coming in who was black.
What was your family’s reaction when you told them you were considering
becoming a monk?
My folks were not happy about me coming here, as they thought that
I should finish college. They wanted me to, at least, get a bachelor’s
degree because I’d gotten a scholarship. I did enter as a freshman at
Catholic University in the fall of 1948. But this was also the time of the
Korean War. My parents were very conscious of the fact that, although I
would probably get a deferment, nevertheless, it was the Korean War.
Most people don’t realize that it was a very terrible war. Because of the
war, I think they probably felt they might as well just let me come here. I
stayed one year at Catholic University and then I entered what was then
called the Minor Seminary in the fall of 1949; the following year, I
entered the monastery.
Did your parents visit?
My mother came for my novitiate investiture and she was very, very
happy. She really liked Saint Meinrad; and my father actually did, too.
Abbot Ignatius was extremely kind to my parents. It’s thanks to him, I’m
sure, that I was accepted at Saint Meinrad. As I have mentioned, other
religious orders and other Benedictine houses did not accept blacks at
that time. That says a lot about him, which people don’t always recognize.
When the two black men who came before me did not stay, and
then I did stay, I think I was a phenomenon, as many people probably
thought I would not stay.
At that time, Saint Meinrad was in a Southern culture. There were
certainly a lot of interesting ideas people had about blacks. African-
Americans today would say that it was slightly racist. I would say, however,
“There’s no need to go into all that.” It was nothing official and it
was certainly not on the part of the superiors.
Who was your novice master?
Meinrad Hoffman. He was a dear man, but he was very austere and
certainly believed in humility. The only way you are going to have
humility is to have humiliations. He kept insisting that I did not have the
kind of spirit I should have, that I didn’t like to work and things like
that. But in the end, I did persevere and he was very happy. We certainly
parted friends. He was very much impressed by my mother and was
extremely kind to her. I graduated from the college in 1954. Interestingly
enough, when the time came for me to be ordained, it was decided that I
would prepare to teach.
How did you feel about that?
I was very, very happy. I was to go into history and this is what I
wanted to do. In 1956, I was the first black ever to be ordained a monk
here at Saint Meinrad. I was sent to Catholic University in Washington,
D.C., in the fall to get an STL [Licentiate in Sacred Theology]. At that
time, the Theology Department here was affiliated with Catholic
University. We spent our last two semesters there. I passed the examinations—
which was an oral and a written examination—and received an
STL. I was very happy at Catholic University; it worked out very well.
I came home in 1957 and I taught Western Civilization for one year in
the college.
Discuss the earlier organization of daily life, the horarium. How did it differ
compared to today?
When I entered the monastery
in 1950, we were still under the old
horarium. We would have the full
office with Matins and Lauds,
which were always said together,
at four o’clock in the morning.
Then Prime, Terce, Sext, None,
Vespers and Compline, plus the
conventual Mass. Of course, if you
were a priest, you said your own
private Mass. If you were a cleric,
you might be called to serve a private
Mass. It was a very busy day
from a liturgical point of view.
These things changed. First of
all, there was a change in the daily
Office at the time of the Second
Vatican Council. In fact, before
Vatican II, the office of Prime had been suppressed. After Vatican II, we
only had one midday office and not the three hours of Terce, Sext and
None. Compline [in the evening] was said privately.
What expectations did you have of being a monk and have they, by and large,
been fulfilled?
In terms of my life, looking back on it, my own concept of being a
Benedictine monk is that a Benedictine should be a scholar. I don’t think
Fr. Cyprian, as a young monk.
I’m a scholar; I don’t know if I belong in their league. But when you talk
about what a monk does, there is the Benedictine tradition of scholarship.
Part of ora et labora [prayer and work] for the scholar is just that.
Scholarship is toil and it is of value and I think I’m part of that tradition.
I’m very happy that I had that opportunity at Saint Meinrad and I also
think that I have made a contribution to the history of the Catholic
Church in this country.
Work
Tell me more about your work career.
I was assigned to go to Europe, to Louvain, and it was exactly what I
wanted and had hoped for. I was the first monk from Saint Meinrad who
went to Louvain. Up to that time, if monks were sent abroad, most of the
time they went to Rome. When I went to Louvain, I stayed in the Abbey,
which at that time was the Abbey of Mont-César. The Flemish form of
the monastery is Keizersberg, but at that time, this monastery was
French-speaking. My going to Louvain was, of course, a turning point in
my life.
At that time, the University of Louvain was well known for the study
of history. They trained you to be a scholar and to teach. You were not
taught what to teach, but how to become a historian. It gave an orientation
to my whole life, in a sense, and I appreciated that.
Describe your experiences there.
I was at the University of Louvain just at the time when all the
changes in the Church occurred. I was there when John XXIII was elected
Pope. I arrived in the fall of 1958 just after the death of Pope Pius XII. I
think I was pretty naïve for the first year I was there. I never realized
what an extraordinary thing was going to happen. I learned a lot at the
University of Louvain. I learned how to speak French. I learned to be a
scholar and how to do research. I think the students with whom I studied
were, in many ways, extraordinary, too, because we worked together.
That was the best thing for me. Other classes were not that cooperative
with each other; but with these fellow students, I was able to accomplish
a lot because they were willing to sit down and explain to me what the
assignments were and how to do them.
I learned an immense amount, more than I even realized now looking
back at it, about an attitude toward scholarship. The man under whom I
wrote was one of the international scholars in medieval history. That was
my field, Medieval Church History. Now the extraordinary thing is that,
ultimately, it took me ten years to get the doctorate. I did not get it in one
fell swoop. I entered in 1958; by 1963, five years later, I had finished the
work for the licentiate in history. I got started with what was to be my
dissertation, which was to look at the familia at the Abbey of Cluny,
beginning 909 to about 1350. My whole idea was to look at all the members
of the community of Cluny who were not monks.
Who were not monks?
That’s right. In other words, “Who were the non-monks, the familia,
who belonged to the household?” At that time, I was interested in the
origin of the lay brothers. We realized that if one tried to find out how
the lay brothers originated in the evolution of monastic history, we
would need to look for members of the household who evolved into the
modern lay brothers.
I had a lot of help. The thing that impressed me so very much was
that these Benedictine scholars were willing to sit down and talk to you. I
met the men who were perhaps the last generation of real Benedictine
monastic scholars. I lived in the monastery where the abbot was Bernard
Capelle, a great liturgical historian, and also Bernard Botte, who was certainly
one of the great liturgical scholars—he wound up acting as one of
the periti [experts] at the Second Vatican Council. These were people who
were willing to talk with you. I learned a lot from them, very simple
men, you know, but really great scholars. That was good training for me,
just seeing how these men lived and talked, and how open they were.
They were not at all pompous in any way at all.
After you had finished your course work, what happened then?
I came back after five years without a doctorate, but with a licentiate,
back to Washington, D.C., in the summer of 1963. I was able to have
some vacation at home with my parents before I came out here to Saint
Meinrad. I came back in the full throes of the Civil Rights Movement. I
arrived in August at the time Martin Luther King had organized the
March on Washington. I took part in that march. That was certainly a historic
moment. I realize what a great opportunity it was for me to have
been present for that event.
What were some of your remembrances of the march?
I had always remained good friends with the monks of St. Anselm.
Years later, when I was a monk of Saint Meinrad, they would ask me if I
had been refused admission to their community. I told them I never got
to the point where I felt free enough to ask them if they would accept
me, a black man. They ran a school, which was very well known, very
good and definitely all white.
I felt they would probably say, “No, they would love to have me as a
member of the community, but, you know, things being what they are.”
So I never got to the point of asking them. Also, because I thought if they
refused me, I would feel that I couldn’t go back there and I still wanted
to go there for Vespers. So, at any rate, an interesting thing happened.
During the morning of the march, I went to Mass at St. Patrick’s Church
in downtown Washington. The abbot of St. Anselm was there with a lot
of monks. By that time, it was an abbey.
I remember also seeing Senator Ed Muskie. He ran for president. He
was from Maine and was Catholic. He was outside with the group of
people who were forming for the march at St. Patrick’s Church. It was
interesting. It was extraordinary. All kinds of people were there, people
whom I thought were never at all interested in the question of racial segregation.
So it was an extraordinary moment, an extraordinary moment.
When I got back here to Saint Meinrad, I began to teach.
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