Monk Profiles: The men of Huntsville, Utah’s Holy Trinity Abbey

By Michael Patrick O’Brien–

James Fox, the longtime abbot of Kentucky’s Gethsemani Abbey, visited the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville, Utah many times. Gethsemani monks started Holy Trinity seventy-five years ago in July 1947. A man of great humility, Father James expected his monks to be “unknown, unheralded, and unsung.” As a result, one could argue that the former “Father Immediate” of the Huntsville monastery might not sanction this article profiling the men who persevered there as monks.

Yet, perhaps even the good abbot would forgive such a profile given the poignant insight of Kathleen Norris, an award-winning poet, author, and spiritual memoirist. In The Cloister Walk, a bestselling exploration of monasticism, Norris wrote, “In any traditional society, stories are where the life is, where those in the present maintain continuity with those in the past. In monastic tradition, from the fourth century desert on, it is the stories that pass from monk to monk, long before they’re written down, that have helped preserve the values, and the good humor, that lives on in the monastic charism.”

Monks and monasteries leave an indelible imprint on their neighboring communities. In his book Monastic Practices, Utah monk Father Charles Cummings wrote, “In our contemporary age of fast-moving, fragmented, driven, overstimulated, pleasure-and-profit seekers, the witness of a stable, peaceful monastic community is likely to attract visitors who find themselves by pausing for a time to share the monastic tranquility and prayerfulness. When they leave, they may carry with them a resolution to live a more God-centered life themselves. In this way, the monastery gradually has a stabilizing influence on the surrounding society, like leaven in the dough that permeates and transform everything that comes into contact with it.”

No one owns the Utah monks, yet everyone they met has a claim to them. Because the Trappist monks loved so many people, and because the Huntsville monastery added such undeniable and significant value to so many lives, I think that on the 75^th anniversary of the Utah foundation, even Dom James Fox would allow and encourage us to ask and answer the question: Who are the men of Holy Trinity Abbey?

Famous Kentucky Trappist monk and writer Thomas Merton provides some of the early answers to this question. He recorded several relevant thoughts and observations about the Utah monastery in his many books, articles, and journal entries. From inside the walls of Gethsemani Abbey, Merton watched with interest as the Utah abbey took shape. In his 1948 autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, Merton wrote that when he arrived at Gethsemani, it was “seething with an energy and growth it had not known for ninety years.” He noted that “by the time this [his book] is printed, there will have been another Cistercian monastery in Utah.” In a list describing work done by the Gethsemani monks, Merton noted, “Another [monk] is making plans for the new Monastery in Utah.”

Merton also gives us many details about the westward odyssey in a 1947 Commonweal magazine article and later in his book The Waters of Siloe. The article, titled “The Trappists Go to Utah,” includes one of my favorite physical descriptions of the place I call my second boyhood home. Merton wrote, “The monks have settled in a wild, lonely spot. To the east of them is nothing but a wilderness without roads or farms. It is a paradise for hunters who, in the past, made the monks’ ranch their base, and worked eastward from there. Deer come down to drink at one of the two plentiful springs on the Trappists’ ranch, and about the only sound you hear in the valley is the howling of coyotes on the mountain side. At least, that was all you heard until the Cistercians set up their bell and began to ring it for Office and Mass.”

Perhaps Merton wanted to come to Utah too, with the July 1947 founders, but he never made it here. Many of his Trappist contemporaries did. In his journals (later published as 1941-1952: Entering the Silence – Becoming a Monk & Writer), Merton described the Utah pioneer monks this way: “Most of the best ones went…so many that were close to me….”

Fascinating as they are, Merton’s general insights do not fully answer the question: Who are the men of Holy Trinity Abbey? Thus, for many years I’ve gathered additional tidbits of information to learn more about each of the individual Utah monks. My sources include books, old newspaper articles, genealogy research, obituaries, conversations with surviving monks, the memories of other persons, and my own personal recollections.

During its seven-decade history, hundreds of men spent time considering a vocation at Holy Trinity Abbey. It would be impossible to chronicle all such lives. Thus, this article focuses only on those who came, who stayed, and who left only because—as the Trappists like to say—they “graduated to Heaven” or because the monastery closed in 2017. And it is important to note that there certainly is much more to tell about each of these good men than what I reveal here.

In honor of the 75^th anniversary of its foundation, these are the men of Holy Trinity Abbey.

The Utah Monks in Heaven

Joseph Francis Szwagdys, aka Brother Tescelin

(6 Aug 1905 – 18 May 1955)

Brother Tescelin was born and baptized in Brooklyn, New York. He entered Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky in 1931 and made his final profession as a monk there in 1937. His religious name comes from a Burgundian knight also called Tescelin, the father of one of the greatest Cistercian monks—St. Bernard of Clairvaux. Brother Tescelin was one of the founders of the Utah monastery and one of its first cooks. His fellow Trappists loved his thick Brooklyn accent. In the 1940s and 1950s, the monks rarely spoke to each other verbally, but they could talk at certain meetings held to clear the air about interpersonal grievances within the community. At one such meeting, Brother Tescelin complained about a fellow monk who often did not arrive to his assigned job on time. Brother Tescelin explained, “He’s always late for woik.” Although they seriously considered their fellow monk’s concern, the Utah Trappists always smiled slightly whenever Brother Tescelin raised this issue. Thereafter, when they could speak and discuss their own jobs, the monks often also said “woik” instead of “werk” in an affectionate nod to their Brooklyn-born brother. Brother Tescelin was the first Trappist planted in the quaint and lovely Holy Trinity Abbey cemetery.

***

Antonius Maria Josephus Lans, aka Father Maurice Lans

(5 May 1887 – 19 Aug 1955)

Father Maurice Lans was from Holland and came to the United States at age 21. He worked as a landscaper in Southern California before he became a monk at Kentucky’s Gethsemani Abbey, where he was ordained as a priest in 1925. Along with Gethsemani Abbot Frederic Dunne, Father Maurice led the pioneer monks to Utah in 1947. A travel journal of one of the monks indicates that Father Maurice stayed up for all of one night during the long train trip west “looking out the window, and enjoying the beautiful moonlight reflected in the rivers and streams.” He served as the first abbot of the Huntsville monastery. Shortly after the monks arrived in Utah, a large crowd visited the abbey during an open house picnic held on July 13. A monk’s journal reports this event as follows: “Rev. Father Mauritius went out to greet them. He said that they were just bubbling over with joy and enthusiasm because we were here. Two ladies came up to Rev. Father and before he knew what they wanted they took him one by each arm and said ‘Look up’. Someone took their picture. Rev. Father, wiping his brow, moaned, ‘If that ever gets published…’” Fr. Maurice planned to replace the Quonset hut temporary monastery quarters he built in 1948 with a more permanent and much more splendid structure, consisting of granite or red sandstone quarried from a canyon on their property. He released beautiful architectural drawings of the project in 1952. The huge stone structure was designed in a twelfth-century, French Gothic, medieval style, with 90,000 square feet of space and topped off by a 232-foot bell tower. The Ogden Standard-Examiner described the proposed new monastery as a “Giant Edifice.” Plans called for it to sit on a nearby “hilltop that commands a vast view of the valley and the mountains.” However, due to costs and other concerns—and Father Maurice’s untimely death in 1955—the grand edifice was never built. (Adapted excerpts from Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Victor John Barry, aka Brother Henry

(13 Jan 1908 – 4 July 1962)

Brother Henry was born in Toronto, Canada. He joined Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky in 1939 and helped start the Utah monastery in 1947. He made his final profession as a monk there in 1951. A few years later on July 4th, he was killed by a dairy bull on the abbey grounds. To this day, exactly how or what happened is a mystery, one that Brother Henry took to his grave. The bull’s fate, however, is well known. The monks sold the beast to the slaughterhouse. Local Sheriff Deputy Halvor Bailey—Ogden Valley’s version of John Wayne—agreed to ship it there in his cattle truck. Halvor’s oldest son Brad helped, and vividly recalls the trip: “It was a big bull. It was vicious. We got in the truck to leave the monastery and started off that dirt road there past the monastery cemetery and all of a sudden the horn, one of the horns of that bull come crashing through the back window of that truck. He knocked the window out. He was trying to get at us in the cab of the truck. I was afraid.” (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Michael Francis Carney, aka Brother Matthew

(25 Dec. 1892 – 12 Aug. 1962)

Brother Matthew was born in Long Port, Ireland. He originally was a Franciscan brother in New York, but in 1932 joined Kentucky’s Gethsemani Abbey. He helped start the Utah monastery in July 1947. During a picnic open house, early visitors to the place wanted to see some monks, and so Brother Matthew obliged. As one other brother reported in an early abbey journal, “Brother Matthew came over and told five or six of us to promenade in front of the monastery. Monks or monkeys, monastery or zoo, some of us have thought. But the good people didn’t have that attitude. They just were in love with Trappists and wanted to see the objects of their affection.” Brother Matthew was in charge of the chickens and hogs. Brother Matthew also worked as the Utah monastery gatekeeper. In this role, he met many visitors and even started getting fan mail from a certain Catholic demographic. One day, however, there were no letters for him. His reaction, communicated in the silent Trappist sign language to another monk, was: “I guess all the old ladies forgot about me!”

***

John Gabriel McQuiston, aka Father Bellarmine

(9 Jul 1904 – 27 Feb 1963)

Father Bellarmine, born in Frankfort, Indiana, was the second leader of the Utah abbey after founding abbot Maurice Lans died. He first entered the Jesuit order in 1922 and took final vows in 1934. He taught in several Ohio high schools. Father Bellarmine joined Kentucky’s Gethsemani Abbey in 1951, but later moved to the Utah monastery for health reasons. Upon his election as the Utah monastery’s leader, one of the Kentucky Trappists monks reportedly said, “He’s the best superior in the whole order.” Due to continued poor health, however, he served as Utah superior for only a short time.

***

John Patrick Kilawee, aka Father Yvo

(2 Feb 1922 – 18 Apr 1964)

Father Yvo, born in Brooklyn, was the oldest son of eleven children all descending from a grandfather born in Ireland. He served in the U.S. Air Force during World War II. He joined Gethsemani Abbey in 1946 and was sent to help start the Utah monastery a year later. He was professed as a monk in 1951 and ordained a priest in 1954. His younger brother Martin stayed at the Utah abbey for a time too in the 1950s, and his sister was a Franciscan nun in Wisconsin. Father Ivo taught theology/liturgy and French to the Utah monks and served as the monastery archivist. Father Yvo helped Father James Ryan make the initial monastery enclosure fence from cedar posts and also helped build the first abbey’s chicken coop. Given his youth and connection with the coop, he may be the anonymous monk Thomas Merton referred to in a favorite story about the Utah abbey from his book The Waters of Siloe. In one passage, Merton explained how the early Trappists dealt with the harsh Ogden Valley winter weather. Merton recounted this delicious tidbit: “One young monk, a lover of sleep and warmth, established himself in the hut which had been allotted to the little chicks and was kept at a constant temperature of eighty degrees.” Father Yvo’s early death at the age of 42 was caused by an accidental exposure to certain chemicals then used as part of the monastery’s farming operations.

***

William Pfeil, aka Brother Ferdinand

(10 Dec 1894 – 2 Aug 1973)

Brother Ferdinand Pfeil was born in December 1884 in Strasbourg, a European border city that sometimes has been part of France and sometimes Germany. He grew up in a nearby monastery and then came to the United States in 1921. He was naturalized as an American citizen in Hubertus, Wisconsin in 1926. He listed “lay brother” as the occupation on his naturalization papers. He lived and worked at the Holy Hill shrine and monastery of Mary, Help of Christians run by the Carmelite friars from Bavaria. He joined the Trappist Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky a few years later and took on the religious name “Brother Ferdinand.” In 1947, the Gethsemani abbot sent him and 3 dozen other monks to Utah to start the Huntsville monastery. In Utah, Brother Ferdinand was known for his skills as the resident monk tailor and bread maker, but also for mischief and getting into trouble. He liked to sneak off to distant parts of the monks’ ranch and slide down mud embankments into the irrigation canals. He played German folk songs on the harmonica. He often forgot to maintain monastic silence, and once broke this rule by calling his fellow monk and friend, Father Patrick Boyle, the “best little guy in the whole circus.” His last name “Pfeil” means “arrow” in English, so the Utah monks affectionately nicknamed him “Willie Arrow.” (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Edmund Joseph Ryan, aka Father James

(19 Jul 1895 – 20 Dec 1974)

Father James was born in Benedicta, Maine. He was a founder of the Utah monastery and served as a priest there. Before joining the abbey, he was a “Resurrectionist” priest, i.e. a member of the Congregation of the Resurrection, an order founded in France and devoted to the mission of providing and improving religious education. In addition to his priestly duties in Utah, he worked as a mechanic in the abbey’s garage for several years. Father James, with assistance from Father Yvo, helped make the initial monastery enclosure fence from cedar posts and helped build the first chicken coop. Eventually, poor health and a leg amputation caused him to engage in more sedentary activities.

***

John Thomas Murphy, aka Father Denis

(8 Dec 1896 – 3 Aug 1982)

Father Denis Murphy looked like a cookie jar version of a monk—short, stout, and stern. If monks were Disney dwarves, people would have called him Grumpy, based on his serious demeanor and apparent scowl when he entered the church. Appearances, however, are deceiving.

Rather than stern or grumpy, Father Denis was a soulful, gregarious, and affable Irish teddy bear. Many mistook his stern face as he entered the church for what really was a face deeply focused in prayer and contemplation. He was born in New Jersey in 1896 and served in the military during World War I. He worked as an office boy for the great inventor, Thomas Edison. He was a monk at Gethsemani Abbey and helped found Holy Trinity Abbey in 1947. In Utah, he was the Trappist secretary, bookkeeper, and treasurer. For many years, he handled the monastery’s money. When people visited him in the monastery business office, he sometimes joked about setting money aside for himself in a Swiss bank account. Of course, like all other Trappists, he gave such things up for a life devoted to God and his brothers, something he considered a much better investment anyway. (Adapted excerpts from Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Michael Flaherty, aka Brother Norbert and Brother Michael

(6 Apr 1906 – 7 Jul 1986)

Brother Michael is the “mural monk” on the east side of the restored monastery barn. He was born in Pennsylvania, served in the Merchant Marines, and was kin to a famous Pittsburgh Mayor Pete Flaherty. Brother Michael took his final vows in Huntsville in 1951 (originally as “Brother Norbert”), one of the first Catholic monks to do so in the Beehive State. Brother Michael was a quiet cook and humble laborer. According to his brother monks, he preferred to be a behind-the-scenes kind of guy. From his newly-painted portrait vantage point on the old abbey barn, Brother Michael has a direct line of vision to his own simple gravesite in the monks’ quaint cemetery.

***

Joseph Siler, aka Father Jerome

(19 Mar 1901 – 25 Dec 1987)

Father Jerome, whose mother was born in Ireland, grew up in Philadelphia and served as an English Army chaplain during World War II. He lived and studied in Jerusalem, Egypt, and Northern Africa for many years before joining Gethsemani Abbey and then coming to Huntsville to help found the Trappist abbey there. He was a scholar and the abbey’s longtime librarian. In his later years, because of serious eye problems, he wore thick glasses and often walked in a tentative manner, but there was nothing uncertain about his sweet and gentle nature. Demonstrating the utterly charming simplicity of a monk, he was known to write friends in the springtime about important developments at the Utah monastery, including reporting excitedly that his “real good news is our lilac is now full of buds.” (Adapted excerpts from Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Joseph Dusbabek, aka Father Joachim and Father Virgil

(10 Jan 1921 – 7 May 1989)

Originally from Minnesota, Father Virgil became a professed Trappist monk at the Utah abbey in April 1956. He also was a civil engineer, and put those skills to great use in many building projects at the monastery’s 1,800 acre farming and ranching facility. He also designed, planned, and directed an extensive renovation of the monastery church. He played the violin, including many times at liturgies in the simple but lovely Quonset hut church he had helped remodel.

***

Carlos Philip Castro, aka Brother Benedict

(23 Aug 1912 – 21 Feb 1991)

Brother Benedict was a large, strong, and quiet man from Watsonville, California. His parents were immigrant farmers from Mexico. Brother Benedict was among the first men to join the Utah Abbey after Kentucky monks established it. He started as a novice in August 1947 and took his final vows in Huntsville in 1953. An unconfirmed fact from the monastery grapevine is that he was given the name “Benedict” because he had been involved in U.S. Army operations that drove German troops out of Monte Cassino, the Italian monastery founded by St. Benedict in the year 529. St. Benedict wrote the rules under which the Utah Trappists lived and organized their monastic lives. Brother Benedict came to Utah after three years in the U.S. Army and after enduring six months of suffering, starvation, and other deplorable conditions in a German prisoner of war camp in Czechoslovakia. Perhaps harkening back to his family legacy, Brother Benedict finally found peace in Huntsville by working on the abbey farm, driving the monastery tractor, and praying in the serene mountain setting of the Ogden Valley.

***

Edward Joseph Marek, aka Father Andrew

(6 Jun 1919 – 31 Dec 1991)

Father Andrew was born in Chicago in 1919. He was a middle child in a large family born to Polish Catholic immigrants. The family spoke Polish at home. His father worked as a laborer in a factory. At age 21, the soon-to-be-a-monk displayed some keen skills with numbers while working for the Northern Trust Company, a financial services organization on LaSalle Street in the downtown Chicago business district. A few years later, he decided to devote his considerable accounting acumen to a much different type of operation when he joined Holy Trinity Abbey shortly after the monastery opened in 1947. By the time the Utah abbey closed in 2017, the investments started by Father Andrew supported many charitable causes and other monasteries. His brother was a Holy Cross monk at Notre Dame in Indiana. Father Andrew, an avid runner, collapsed and died while jogging just outside the abbey gates on December 31, 1991. Father Andrew’s friend and fellow monk Father David Altman, who took over management of the abbey’s finances, later said that it was just like a good accountant to wrap everything up on the last day of the year. (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Edward Eick, aka Brother Edward

(19 Dec 1915 – 11 Jul 1992)

Brother Edward Eick from Corning, New York, served in the U.S. Army from 1942 to 1945. He ably performed many jobs at the Utah Abbey, including as guest master and as procurator—the director or “house manager” over all the monastery’s external and internal business and work operations. He also helped launch a writing career in the 1970s with the gift of an old abbey Smith Corona typewriter—the very first typewriter owned by Monastery Mornings author Michael Patrick O’Brien.

***

Charles Francis Ortiz, aka Father Cornelius

(8 Nov 1921 – 15 Nov 1992)

Father Cornelius was born in Albuquerque, New Mexico. He joined Holy Trinity Abbey in Huntsville and was ordained a priest there. He suffered from several health problems, which kept him away from the monastery for some long periods of time. He eventually was able to rejoin the Utah abbey and died there at age 71.

***

Thomas Porter, aka Father Thomas Aquinas

(9 Mar 1914 – 15 Oct 1997)

Fr. Thomas Aquinas Porter from Cincinnati, Ohio, was a man of many talents. He started as a Dominican priest before he joined the Trappist order. He was an accomplished scholar and served as one of Thomas Merton’s official editors or Cistercian censors. In the 1960s, he served as a temporary superior at Holy Cross Abbey in Berryville, Virginia. He filled in as chaplain at Holy Cross Hospital in Salt Lake City in the 1970s until a new chaplain was assigned. He studied canon law in Rome. He also locked the monastery doors at the end of the evening chant, called compline. He had a kind face, salt and pepper hair, a pleasant demeanor, and a quick, loud, infectious laugh. Father Thomas also was close friends with and spiritual advisor to Father Charles Cummins, a beloved priest who has served the Ogden Catholic community for many years.

***

David Kinney, aka Father David

(24 Sep 1908 – 17 Aug 1999)

Father David Kinney was born in Colorado and started his vocation as a Diocesan priest in Phoenix, Arizona. He arrived at Holy Trinity in 1949, shortly after it opened. Father David once described the purpose of the monastery to a news reporter, “We’re here to pray. We’re praying for the world and all the conditions in it. We’re asking God to take care of it. Peace, peace, peace. It’s a calling. That’s what a vocation is, a contemplative life devoted completely to God. It kind of helps, doesn’t it, to know we are all up here praying for you?”

***

Mieczyslaw (Milton) Anthony Ptasienski, aka Brother Boniface

(19 Feb 1918 – 8 Feb 2006)

Brother Boniface was the son of Polish immigrant laborers. He grew up in the Bronx and in New Jersey. He attended Catholic schools in New York and New Jersey, where he played for the basketball team that won both the New Jersey State championship and the Catholic League championship. After graduating in 1937, he enrolled in the Jesuit-run Fordham University and earned a chemistry degree. In college, he joined the ROTC program and later served in the U.S. Army for four years, earning the rank of Staff Sergeant as a photo-interpreter and linguist. The Army paid for him to attend Harvard University to learn Russian (he already was fluent in Polish), a skill that he later used in military intelligence operations. With his training, he worked with generals in charge of famous battles like the 1944-45 Battle of the Bulge. He earned two bronze stars serving in Europe during the most intensive and climactic years of World War II. As was true for many other young men of his era, what Milton saw in war, during the final years of Hitler’s now-devastated Europe, set him on an intensive search for peace, a quest to answer what he described as “this deep call in my heart of work and prayer.” Answering this call, he soon arrived at Gethsemani Abbey, wearing his Army uniform, and entered the Cistercian order. Just a few years later, while still a novice, he was one of the youngest of the three-dozen monks sent west on a train to start a new monastery in Utah. In 1951, four years after he arrived out West, Milton, known now as Brother Boniface, made his final vows and promised to stay at Holy Trinity Abbey for the rest of his life. He did, and viewed his promise as significant. He once told a news reporter about a visitor who had arrived at the abbey thinking the monks were “weak men hiding from society,” but left the place admiring “the manliness of their commitment.” He worked in the abbey bookstore and managed the monastery chicken operations for many years. He was famous for writing beautiful poetic letters to his friends, for example this one: “Let Your God Love You. Be Silent. Be Still. Alone. Empty before your God. Say nothing. Ask nothing. Be silent. Be still. Let your God look upon you. That is all. God knows. God understands. God loves you with an enormous love. God only wants to look upon you with love. Quiet. Still. Be. Let your God love you.” (Adapted excerpts from Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Eugene Hanratty, aka Father Brendan

(1 Jul 1913 – 16 May 2007)

Father Brendan was born in 1913 in Crossmaglen, County Armagh, now in Northern Ireland but then part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. At age 16 in 1929, along with his older sister Mary Frances, he emigrated to the United States and settled in San Francisco. Mary worked as a maid and Father Brendan studied and became a qualified optician, grinding and polishing lenses in a California factory. At age 27, eight months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Army drafted him. World War II changed his life forever. A Hanratty family ancestry message board cites to a “yellowed clipping from a Crossmaglen newspaper” reporting how he was part of “the fierce fighting which took place against the Japanese” in Guadalcanal, Mindanao, and The Philippines. Father Brendan “emerged unwounded but was so dismayed with the needless loss of life in that particularly bloody conflict that he immediately joined the Trappist Order.” Father Brendan served as the monks’ infirmary director, as the abbey’s bread maker, and as prior (second-in-command after the abbot). He was a thin gentle man with a gray goatee who spoke with a soft Irish brogue. (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Paul Gottemoller, aka Father Bartholomew

(16 Nov 1914 – 7 Oct 2007)

Father Bartholomew was one of the original monks who came to Utah from Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky. Born in Indianapolis in 1914, Father Bartholomew joined the Kentucky monastery in 1934, and was ordained to the Catholic priesthood in 1942. He was the original Utah monastery honey monk. Father Bartholomew not only cared for the Abbey’s bees, he also developed a sophisticated technology for processing the honey and producing the containers in which it was sold. Although often stung (including once inside his nose), he was a big fan of the hive dwellers, once saying, “It’s amazing what bees can do,” and calling them, “a revelation of God.” Father Bartholomew also was a famous and prolific writer of scholarly books and articles on theology and spirituality. One of his published books, called Words of Love, painstakingly compiled and shared the words of Jesus to three 20th century mystic nuns who lived in Jerusalem, Italy, and France. A friend also told me he had served as a mentor of Thomas Merton at Gethsemani Abbey, but that in writings he was identified him as “Father Nathaniel” to preserve his privacy. Father Bartholomew also was a talented plumber and when he died in November 2007, the Intermountain Catholic reported that these particular skills “were especially appreciated by his brothers in the monastery.” (Adapted excerpts from Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Louis Matthews Shea, aka Father Baldwin

(2 Jan 1928 – 30 Nov 2009)

Father Baldwin was a thin, reserved, quiet, scholarly monk born in Decatur, Illinois in 1928. His brother was a parish priest in Illinois, but Father Baldwin took a more contemplative path and joined Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky in 1945. In July 1947, he was sent west to help start the new Utah monastery and, in 1953, he was one of the first priests ordained there. He served for several years as the monastery librarian and as secretary to the abbot. In his later years, he wore thick dark glasses because of a vision problem resulting from a brain tumor. There was no standard Trappist format for chants at the time, and so each monastery developed its own. Father Baldwin—along with another monk named Father Alan and a Benedictine nun and music expert—converted and translated the Latin psalms that were sung when Father Baldwin started at the Huntsville monastery into the memorable English songs that the public heard chanted a cappella so often during visits to the Utah abbey.

***

Richard Leo McHale, aka Brother Felix

(4 June 1916 – 12 Mar 2010)

Brother Felix was born in 1916 in Syracuse, New York but grew up in Geneva, New York, on the tip of Seneca Lake. His mother died in 1918 during the Spanish flu epidemic. He had a difficult childhood, but one full of love. His grandmother Hannah Sweeney, from Galway, Ireland, serenaded him in Gaelic with old Irish songs. His aunt Mary McHale, who never married, doted on him as if he was her own boy. The future monk was a good athlete (especially in baseball) and a strapping young man over six feet tall, although a bout with polio left him partially paralyzed in his face. At age 17, he started working for the Civilian Conservation Corps and thereafter he labored as an essential war time worker for the American Can machine manufacturing plant in Geneva, New York and for Bell Aircraft near Buffalo. In 1944, he made his way to Kentucky’s Abbey of the Gethsemani, took the religious name “Felix,” and started his life as a monk. He traveled by rail to Utah in 1947 as one of three dozen other men to help found the Ogden Valley monastery. He made his solemn vows there in 1949 and was in charge of monastery business and farm operations. The abbey purchased a horse named “Smoky” for Brother Felix to ride while performing his various duties in the late 1940s. He planted, grew, and ate many potatoes on the monks’ farm. As the monk who worked most frequently outside the abbey to sell the monastery’s products, Brother Felix knew almost everyone in Huntsville and the surrounding communities. He liked to sign Irish songs to them, although often a bit off-key. A fellow Trappist once joked that if Brother Felix had not been a monk, he would have been elected Huntsville’s mayor. (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

John Joseph Spillane, aka Father Emmanuel

(16 Nov 1916 – 1 May 2010)

Father Emmanuel, also known as Father Manny, arrived at the monastery early in 1950 after serving as a priest in the Archdiocese of Los Angeles, California. He was born in New York City, with ancestors from County Cork in Ireland, but grew up in Southern California as one of two sons of a family of actors. He dabbled in the theater himself for a few years before he decided to become a priest. At age 33, after working as a parish priest for five years, he decided to join the Utah monastery. His choice generated headlines in both the Los Angeles Times and the Ogden Standard-Examiner, which described him as a “Hollywood priest.” He told reporters, “I feel that I can do more through a life of penance and prayer than I have done in the outside world.” The Utah monks elected him as their abbot in 1956 at age thirty-nine and he served in that role for about twenty-six years. He was a big and solid man, also a former football player, and larger than life. He had a shiny bald head, a round face, solid jaw, warm personality, deep voice, and a loud laugh. Father Manny liked to tell people he was related to the famous crime novelist Mickey Spillane. He managed simultaneously to exude a deep and traditional monastic spirituality and a sort of California cool. He likely is one of the few superiors of a religious order who managed to stay in office both before and after the many dramatic changes that came with the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s. It was amazing and startling to see a man so easily and comfortably walk in two different realms, the world of traditional, even ancient, monasticism and the more modern universe of the twentieth century. He could stand in the sunshine wearing aviator sunglasses while playing a tambourine at a folk mass and later walk with quiet dignity and propriety into the simple beauty of the abbey’s chapel and chant ancient songs in the Gregorian style. Speaking to his fellow monks at Mass, Father Manny would expound on Christian scriptures, but then also remind them that a Hindu leader from India named Mahatma Gandhi had once accurately remarked that more persons would be Christian if more Christians were Christ-like. His favorite poem explained how balloons belonged in church. Immediately after his burial, attendees released 93 helium balloons into the air in gratitude for his long, productive, and soulful life. (Adapted excerpts from Monastery Mornings (Paraclete Press 2021) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Joseph Louis Schroer, aka Father Joseph and Brother Theophilus

(19 Aug 1918 – 22 Jul 2010)

Father Joseph was in 1918 in Nashville, Tennessee. His father managed an oil pipeline and was not around much, and so his mother, a devoted Catholic, took care of Joseph and his five siblings. The family moved to Louisville, Kentucky when Joseph was just a young boy. The blonde hair blue eyed Joseph was bright and good with his hands. A skilled machinist and electrician, he worked in the tobacco industry and then started repairing adding machines, typewriters, and early-stage computers at companies like Burroughs and IBM. Hearing a call to a vocation beyond the business world, however, in 1943 he joined the Abbey of Gethsemani Trappist monastery in nearby Bardstown, Kentucky, taking the religious name of “Brother Theophilus.” In 1947, Abbot Frederic Dunne picked Brother Theophilus to help establish the new Utah monastic foundation. Brother Theophilus got right to work establishing electric connections for the half dozen or so wooden structures that served as the initial monastery buildings. He also continued his academic studies and just before Christmas in 1952, was ordained a priest at the monks’ new chapel. Later he took back his baptismal name and was known thereafter as Father Joseph. During his many years at the Huntsville abbey, Father Joseph worked as farm manager and helped start the monks’ dairy operations. He was known for his tender loving care of the dairy herd. He named all his cows. He also was known for helping many struggling young men find their footing in life by working with him in the dairy. Working outside and on the land suited him. While other American monasteries searched for the right means to support themselves, Father Joseph worked diligently to preserve the Utah abbey’s farming and animal operations, one of the last Trappist monasteries to focus on agriculture. Yet, he also recognized technology could help achieve balance, saying “machinery means much less handwork and more opportunity for a contemplative life.” (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Norbert Marr Schweiger, aka Brother Bonaventure

(25 Feb 1931 – 11 Dec 2013)

Born in Osage, Iowa, Brother Bonaventure was an engineer, a trained culinary chef, and a skilled mechanic. He served in the Korean War. Before joining the Utah monastery in 1973, he was part of another Trappist monastery in Missouri. He managed the Huntsville abbey’s heating system and for a time was farm manager too. He was full of cheer and energy. His Utah brothers also knew him as the monk who could fix anything. During the last few years of his life, when his health failed, he was known for trying to fix things with devoted prayer.

***

Carl L. Holton, aka Brother Carl

(11 Nov 1925 – 13 May 2014)

Brother Carl was born in St. Louis, Missouri. He joined the Utah abbey in the early 1970s, left for a time, and came back. He had a degree in forestry and a beautiful singing voice. He cooked many meals for monks and guests and helped in the monastery farming and range operations. He could be seen every summer in his favorite activity, astride a tractor, harvesting crops.

***

Edward J. Stazinski, aka Brother Mark

(11 Jun 1919 – 11 Jun 2014)

Brother Mark, from Gary, Indiana, served in the Navy in a torpedo squadron during World War II. When the Navy discharged him, he decided to become a monk and joined the Utah abbey in November 1955. A close friend once said, “I think the war really changed him, and really made him go into the monastery. He saw so much killing and so much tragedy.” He was soft-spoken, but known for a kind and pleasant demeanor. Brother Mark was an accomplished carpenter and skilled cook, and also helped prepare new monks for life in the abbey. He built a one room stone and wood hermitage on a foothill behind the monastery, where he spent many hours in prayer and contemplation. He also helped build and install a large statue of St. Francis of Assisi at the monastery’s large A-frame hermitage.

***

John Joseph Peczuh, aka Brother John

(4 Oct 1929 – 15 Dec 2016)

Brother John was born in Kenilworth, Utah (near Price) to a family of immigrants. John, the oldest of seven siblings, attended Carbon County schools, and took classes at Carbon College (now known as the College of Eastern Utah). He also served in the U.S. Army during some of the most difficult years of the Korean War. John was skilled at and earned a certificate in carpentry. He probably could have made a good living plying that trade for the many industries in his home county, but his heart took him in a different direction. He was attracted to the monastery in Northern Utah, and not just for spiritual reasons. He wanted to be a farmer too. John entered the Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity in May 1955. He took simple vows in 1958 and lived the rest of his life there as an oblate. In addition to helping with the farm work, Brother John was assigned to the laundry, a job he did for many decades. He diligently collected all the monk robes each week, washed them, and then returned them to his fellow Trappists. Brother John also delivered monastery bread and eggs to customers throughout Northern Utah, and drove his fellow Trappists to doctor visits, the airport, or on errands. In the early 1970’s, he even went to Mexico to help establish a branch monastery. He is the only native Utah monk to both join and stay at Holy Trinity Abbey. 

***

Ivan Harold Flaherty, aka Father Malachy

(1924 – 19 Apr 2018)

Father Malachy, one of the founders of Utah’s Holy Trinity Abbey, grew up on a family farm on a place called Irish Ridge in rural Nelson County, Kentucky. Educated in a Bardstown Catholic school, at age 19 he entered nearby Abbey of Gethsemani in 1943 after reading a book about another Kentucky monk. He lived the life of a Trappist monk for the next 75 years. In 1947, he and three dozen other Gethsemani monks departed to found Holy Trinity in Huntsville, Utah. He made his solemn profession there in 1949 and then was ordained a priest in 1960. His peers elected him as the community’s abbot from 1983 to 1995. He was beloved as a community leader and spiritual advisor. He was known for having planted many of the trees on the monastery grounds, including his own small forest to the southeast, designed to dry out a small marsh on the abbey’s property.

***

Clarence Prinster, aka Brother Nicholas

(17 Feb 1927 – 18 Jun 2018)

Brother Nicholas was born in 1927 in the middle of a large Catholic clan from Grand Junction, Colorado. His family owned and operated grocery stores. In 1949, after a stint in the Navy and a few years of pre-med studies, he decided not to be a doctor and to forego the family business. Instead, he joined a new Trappist monastery just built in rural Huntsville, Utah. He took the religious name “Brother Nicholas,” but everyone knew him as Brother Nick. Although Brother Nick liked to say that if anyone ever wrote a book about him they’d call it The Unlikely Monk, he took to monastic life quite well. He had a down-to-earth way of explaining monastic life. Once, when asked what he did when he woke up at 3:15 a.m. each day like the other monks, he said: “Well, for the first ten years, you just try to stay awake!” For many years, he managed the monastery’s extensive cattle and farm operations. Although living a contemplative life, he was a very busy, tough, and hard-working man. This rugged rancher, however, also had a keen and subtle eye for beauty. He once said, “The beautiful is what makes life’s journey not just of heartaches and pain, but of hope, of love” and a journey where “our sadness is turned to joy.” Brother Nick also liked to build wooden clocks. One of his grandfather clocks stood just outside the monastic library main door and kept the community on schedule. Eventually, the Trappist monk made at least one clock for each Prinster sibling, and then some for his many nieces and nephews and their families too. It was his way to avoid what he called the “only two profound tragedies in any life—not to love and not to tell those we love that we love them.” Over the course of seven decades, he ran out of family members to whom he could give the gift of time. Thus, he started crafting and giving that gift to friends and neighbors too, both in the Ogden Valley and elsewhere. Each clock included a small brass plaque with at least this inscription: “Made by Brother Nicholas Holy Trinity Abbey.” A close friend estimates that there are as many as 100 Nick clocks keeping time all over the country. In October 1972, Mother (and now Saint) Teresa of Calcutta came to the Utah monastery to visit her friend Brother Nick, who had worked with her in India for a few years. Brother Nick wrote eulogies for all his family members when they passed away, and included profound observations within each eulogy. He once wrote, “It’s not a simple thing to be a human being. We all have many persons inside of us. Who is the real person? They all are.” Addressing the difficulty of life, he also wrote: “We are all of us broken. We live by mending, and the glue that we are mended with is the grace of God, and what is the grace of God but love?” (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

David McManus, aka Brother David

(27 Sep 1935 – 26 Oct 2019)

A California native, Brother David McManus was the last man to enter and stay for life at the monastery, the final novice who persevered to become a professed Utah Trappist monk. Brother David had served in the military, worked as an auditor, and raised his own family before joining the Cistercians. During his life outside the monastery, he acquired valuable computer skills. After one of the Huntsville abbots appointed Brother David as the new librarian, he and some volunteers began to blend the longstanding traditions of the monastery library with the technology of the 21st century. They brought computers into the cloister, put their book catalogue online, added e-books and other electronic resources to the monastic collection, and introduced the monks to the internet. Brother David’s computer savvy helped digitize other activities and operations at the monastery, and facilitated creation of a Holy Trinity Abbey website. (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Francis Joseph Hohl, aka Father Alan

(28 Jan 1926 – 16 Dec 2021)

Father Alan, from Rib Lake, Wisconsin, joined the Navy at the end of WWII and flew air patrols over the Aleutian Islands for two years. He lived in Navy Quonset huts in Alaska, and afterwards was drawn to the Quonset hut monastery that the Trappists erected in Huntsville in 1948. He developed and managed the abbey’s extensive irrigation operations, built a barn from leftover pallet wood, led the monks in chant as cantor, and also took care of sick monks in the infirmary. He loved to putter around and patch up the simple Quonset hut building where he lived and prayed. Father Alan was terribly sad when the monastery closed in 2017. Yet, instead of wallowing in his despair, he raved about the small Salt Lake City retirement apartment where he lived out his final five years. He thought it was like a palace. One time he pointed to his refrigerator and excitedly told a friend, “It always has a beer in it!” The old monk somehow managed to find happiness where he was, instead of despairing about where his happiness once had been.

***

Leander Edward Dosch, aka Father Leander

(1 Feb 1925 – 2 Jan 2022)

(Note: Buried at Mount Calvary Catholic cemetery in Salt Lake City.)

Father Leander was born in Canada and lived on a farm near Anaheim, Saskatchewan. After high school he entered the Benedictine Novitiate at St Peter’s at Muenster, Saskatchewan and 12 years later he was sent to St John’s Abbey in Collegeville, Minnesota where he completed his theological studies in 5 years rather than 6 years as WWII precipitated year-round schooling in the monastery. Father Leander was ordained as a Benedictine priest on June 3, 1950. He taught and assisted with parish and hospital work. In 1968 he joined a mission team in Maceio, Brazil where he worked among the poorest of the poor for 3 years. Throughout his priesthood vocation, Father Leander had felt the pull of a stricter monastic life. After completing a month-long retreat at Holy Trinity Abbey, in August 1975 at the age of 50 years he joined the Cistercian community. Having grown up on a farm, he loved the rural atmosphere. There he served as Novice Master for 10 years. On June 11, 1995 he was elected abbot at age 70 and served as abbot for the next 5 years. At the age of 90 years, Father Leander made the decision to retire from monastic life. He moved into a 2-bedroom apartment at St Joseph’s Villa in Salt Lake City where he lived independently and loved his privacy. Being computer literate, he maintained a Facebook page where he continued to evangelize – ever the educator.

***

John Patrick Boyle, aka Father Patrick

(8 Apr. 1928 – 13 Aug. 2022)

Both of Father Patrick’s parents were born in Ireland. He was their second son—John Patrick Boyle born in 1928—a diminutive but determined boy. At age 11, he knew two things with great certainty: he loved to play baseball (whenever possible at second base) and one day he would be a Catholic priest. During World War II, he joined St. Louis Preparatory Seminary to start his studies. In 1949, he drove west with a priest and some fellow seminarians and the group stopped in Utah. They toured Salt Lake City and swam/floated in the Great Salt Lake. And fortuitously, they also drove 50 miles north, to the brand new Trappist monastery in Huntsville. 

The 21-year-old John Patrick fell in love with the simple Quonset hut buildings of the Abbey of Our Lady of the Holy Trinity. He wrote to the founding abbot, Father Maurice Lans, asked to join the order and the abbot wrote back with an invitation. In the summer of 1950, John Patrick checked out of the seminary, packed his bags, and bought a train ticket west. Before he left town, however, the second baseman went to the local ballpark to watch his beloved St. Louis Cardinals play one more time. He saw Stan Musial hit a home run and then caught his train to Utah.

John Patrick arrived in Ogden on August 15, 1950. He walked over to St. Joseph’s Catholic Church and asked if someone could help him get to Huntsville. A young seminarian drove him there. Since the time of that 1950 trip west, he spent over 70 years as the monk so many people recognize as Father Patrick. Many people knew him as the kind and peaceful monk they chatted with during a visit to the abbey gift shop. They remember his jokes. (“What’s the difference between a monkey and a monk? A monkey has a tail!”) They remember his keen insight about the incarnation. (“When you walked into the room, Christ came through the door!”) And they remember him blessing them, regardless of their religion, before they departed.

Father Patrick loved working in the gift shop, but he also loved his many years of mowing the lawn, cleaning the dairy barn, and helping his friend Father Joseph with the dairy calves. He said it all was a blessing and a prayer: “you don’t have to be on your knees to pray.” For seven decades he practiced what he calls “the sacrament of the now moment,” living in millions of different monastic moments, but each one moment at a time. Father Patrick retired to St. Joseph’s Villa in Salt Lake City when the Utah abbey closed in 2017. With a trip to Heaven always on his mind, the sweet old monk told everyone within earshot, “My bags are packed!” 

***

James Bernas, aka Father Casimir

(18 Jan. 1930 – 9 Aug. 2024)

Father Casimir was born in Chicago to a Polish immigrant family, traveled with his military family during his youth, and eventually attended high school in Portland, Oregon. He joined the Huntsville, Utah monastery in 1949 at age 19, after a year at the University of Notre Dame. With the support of the monastery’s abbot, he studied to be a priest and received a licentiate (master’s degree) in Theology from the Angelicum University in Rome in 1959, and then a licentiate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in Rome in 1961. Finally, he earned a doctorate in Sacred Scripture from the Pontifical Biblical Institute in 1975. 

He wrote his doctorate dissertation about the Jewish festival of Yom Kippur (the Day of Atonement) in New Testament times. It involved a study not only of scripture, but all the Jewish writings of the period and for centuries afterward, of spirituality, and of liturgy. Besides penning some articles for biblical reviews and for The New Catholic Encyclopedia, he mainly wrote book reviews, hundreds of them over the past half century. They were published in such journals as The Catholic Biblical Quarterly, The Journal of Biblical Literature, and others. 

Besides writing and teaching, Father Casimir did just about every kind of work one can find in a monastery including cooking, cleaning, remodeling rooms, and farm work. An accomplished photographer, he took some wonderful photos of the beautiful abbey grounds. Father Casimir also served as business manager of the monastery for several years.

The Utah monks chose him as their abbot in August 2001. The abbey had hired architects to design and work on a new monastery building. Unlike traditional monasteries built in a quadrangle, the planned new Huntsville facility was to be open linearly “to a glorious view of the Wasatch Mountains from the church, welcome center, and every room.”  The monks hoped to break ground in the Spring of 2002, and so Father Casimir energetically promoted the plan. The abbot hired fundraisers and spoke to several church, community, and business groups (such as the Rotary Club). Unfortunately, the timing for raising funds—just after the 9/11 tragedy—worked against the monks and they never built the proposed new building. In September 2007, Father Casimir retired as abbot and returned to his work as a scholar. When the Utah abbey closed in 2017, he moved to St. Joseph’s Villa retirement home in Salt Lake City where he lived until his passing.

The surviving Utah monks as of August 2024

David Altman, aka Father David

(still alive, in his 80s)

Father David was born in 1938 in Philadelphia to a Jewish family, studied accounting at Temple University, and eventually moved across country to Los Angeles, California where he worked as a government auditor. On his journey to joining the Catholic Church in 1959, he read Thomas Merton’s autobiography The Seven Storey Mountain, and was drawn to the monastic life. In 1966, he paid off his student debts and joined the Huntsville abbey. Father David started as Brother David, taking final vows in 1973. The young monk endured the joys and challenges of his new vocation with characteristic patience and wit. He has said that he made the transition from outside life to monastic life the same way that a flea eats an elephant—“one bite at a time.” He studied for the priesthood and was ordained at Holy Trinity Abbey on September 29, 1979. With his accounting background, he served as the monks’ treasurer for 25 years, and was the last elected abbot of the monastery in 2007. He has said, however, that One of his favorite jobs was driving the monastic business loop, sometimes delivering eggs, and collecting the mail each day. (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

The Utah monks who moved away because Holy Trinity Abbey closed

Charles Cummings, aka Father Charles

1940 – Jan 15, 2020

Father Charles was born in Ironwood, Michigan and entered Holy Trinity in 1960. He made his solemn profession in 1965 and was ordained a priest in 1971. Father Charles later also served as chaplain of Trappist-Cistercian nuns in Crozet, Virginia. He wrote several books and articles. One called Monastic Practices (Liturgical Press 2015) describes the spiritual practices of monks, including chant, ecology, community living, and manual labor. He also helped construct the abbey’s mountainside hermitage. Father Charles explained how when the work was done, he loved the fruits of his labors: “The view from the deck, watching the deer and sometimes the elk, the panorama of mountains and foothills, out of sight of the abbey, indoors the wood fire in the fireplace that provided warmth and some light and dancing flames.” One Utah Deseret News reporter, reflecting in 2017 about the closure of the Huntsville monastery, recalled an earlier conversation when Father Charles told him, “I’m glad there’s such a thing as monks. I’m no good at anything else.” Father Charles died and is buried at the Abbey of New Clairvaux in Vina, California, where he had planned to retire after Holy Trinity Abbey closed.

***

Charles Philip Anderson, aka Brother Cyril

22 Feb 1926 – 2 Feb 2018

Brother Cyril was born and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. During his senior year in high school he was drafted into the Marines and served in the Western Pacific. He was one of the few survivors of the Battle of Iwo Jima. At age 28, he joined Holy Trinity Abbey and made his solemn profession on August 15, 1957. During his monastic life he performed many chores at his abbey. In 1972, he helped in the foundation of the Trappistine Sisters in Santa Rita Abbey, Sonoita, Arizona. Then in the 1980’s he responded to a call for volunteers to help with the foundation of Butende Monastery in Uganda during the civil war. When Holy Trinity Abbey closed, Brother Cyril moved to Genesee Abbey in New York. He made his stability vow to Genesee on September 8, 2016.

***

David Baumbach, aka Brother Lawrence and Brother David

(still alive, at Genesee Abbey in New York)

Brother David, originally from Riverside, California, was born in 1947, the same year as the Utah monastery. He arrived at Holy Trinity Abbey in 1973, fresh off a seven-year stint in the U.S. Air Force. He took final vows as a monk in 1979. Although he transferred to the Trappist Abbey of the Genesee in New York in 2015, he is fondly remembered in Utah as fast-talking, creative, bespectacled, and kind. In 1985, Brother David assumed day-to-day management of the Utah monastery’s honey operations. Due to a health condition, Brother David could never sample the monks’ sweet product. That unfortunate impediment, however, did not stop the young monk from turning the business into a successful online mail order operation with a national and international following. For several years, a grocery chain even stocked the monks’ Trappist Creamed Honey on its store shelves. The monks’ honey business continued until late 2008 when the Trappists phased it out. Father Patrick Boyle from the monastery bookstore told disappointed visitors, “We did not run out of bees, we ran out of monks!” Brother David explained that financial success was not worth the cost. He told one news reporter, “We were selling so much honey we couldn’t keep up with it, and I realized we were becoming a three-ring circus. I said, ‘Stop right there. We’re here to serve God, not the Almighty dollar.’” He said he wanted the pressure off the monastery and to “get our priorities right.” (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

***

Brendan Freeman, aka Father Brendan

(still alive, at New Melleray Abbey in Iowa)

Originally from St. Louis, Father Brendan arrived at Holy Trinity in 2013 to help the monks contemplate the future in light of their advancing ages and the long drought of novices at Holy Trinity Abbey. Schoolmates and friends recall John Brendan Freeman as just a “regular guy” like them. The son of Irish immigrants, and the nephew of two Benedictine monks, in 1958 Brendan joined New Melleray Abbey at age 20. The stone Trappist monastery located in Dubuque, Iowa, was founded in 1849 by Irish monks from Mount Melleray Abbey in Cappoquin, County Waterford, Ireland. Father Brendan finished his priesthood studies in Iowa and was ordained there in 1969. By 1973, he also had earned a master’s degree in liturgical studies from Catholic University in Washington, D.C. and assumed various leadership roles at his Iowa monastery. In 1984, at age 45, his fellow Trappists elected Father Brendan as the new abbot of New Melleray Abbey. He held the top job for the next 29 years, guiding the Iowa monks through numerous difficult changes, including a transition from their traditional farm work to manufacturing wooden funeral caskets “crafted in the rural quiet of the monastery, by hands accustomed to prayer.” In 2010, Father Brendan published Come and See—the Monastic Way for Today, a book about monastery life that includes this wonderful passage: “There must be hundreds of Desert Fathers’ sayings that forbid us to judge our brother. The best way to do this is not by making a firm resolution not to so act, as if willpower alone could achieve this. The best way to keep from this vice of judging others harshly is to be acutely aware of our own failings and sins. Hold them like a sack in front of our face, not like a sack slung against our back. On our back, we might forget they are there. In front of our eyes, we cannot forget them.” (Adapted excerpts from In the Valley of Monks and Saints (publication pending) by Michael Patrick O’Brien.)

*Mike O’Brien (author website here: michaelpobrien.com) is a writer and attorney living in Salt Lake City, Utah. His book Monastery Mornings, about growing up with the monks at the old Trappist monastery in Huntsville, Utah, was published by Paraclete Press in August 2021.