Pictured Etching of Christians burning Christians in the Reformation.
Merry Christmas to my separated brethren.
One of my best friends (who was also in the monastery with me) married after he left New Melleray. His wife had likewise been a novice in a Carmelite monastery. They had a beautiful “Sound of Music” type wedding, with a Bishop and everything, in the wonderful old German “Cathedral” - the Church of the Assumption, in St. Paul, Minnesota. (Actually, one day I was supposed to meet the woman he married and asked my friend to go meet her instead. Thank God he got married! It could have been me!)
Anyway, they found their way to the Bruderhof, an Anabaptist Christian group, obviously because of their love for community life. They once mentioned that there was nothing like this in the Catholic Church. They lived for a time with the Catholic Worker movement but felt families were not welcome so much. They found the Christian community they had been seeking, in and through the Bruderhof.
I came across the following by Malcom Muggeridge in regards the Bruderhof and found it very interesting.
Eberhard Arnold and the Bruderhof
By Malcolm Muggeridge (1983) [pictured]
One of the very pleasant happenings in Robertsbridge since my wife Kitty and I came to live there some twenty-five years ago has been the arrival of Bruderhof, the Society of Brothers. They took over what had been a tuberculosis sanatorium, Darvell Hall, no longer needed for lack of patients, and soon got it into shape to accommodate their community. There was to begin with a good deal of speculation about them among the villagers, and some standoffishness because they were strangers, quite a number of whom spoke with a strong American accent. Their good nature, their readiness to help in any way, their smiles and friendliness, soon overcame this, and they became, not just tolerated, but affectionately regarded.
Pictured, Eberhard Arnold
The Brothers, as we learned, along with their wives and children, came originally from Germany, where they belonged to a Christian movement under the auspices of Eberhard and Emmy Arnold, whose aim was to make possible living in community like the early Christians, self-supporting, holding their goods in common, each family having its own quarters wherein to bring up their children, but all worshiping and praying together. Eberhard’s writings very simply and beautifully describe this way of life, as it were, little oases of peace and love in a turbulent world.
Curiously enough, as a child I was confronted with a somewhat similar experiment in communal living. This was the Whiteway Colony, in the Cotswolds near Stroud, where some early Socialists, among them friends of my father, had banded together, bought some acres of land to cultivate, and set themselves to live together in a community in which money, marriage, and private property had been abolished. The adventure began with ceremonially burning the title deeds of their land and ended with establishing squatters’ rights to it. As for abolishing marriage – alas, they had not also abolished adultery, and much confusion and bitterness ensued. Money, likewise, though abolished, kept turning up and making mischief. The original inspiration of the colonists came from Tolstoy’s writings, which, with all their splendour, lacked the power of the Gospels to hold the enterprise together.
Again, when I was a newspaper correspondent in Washington, D.C., I came across the Mennonites, whom I greatly admired for their detachment from the standard American way of life and who had given the Brothers a helping hand when the exigencies of the 1939-1945 war made it necessary for them to cross the Atlantic. John Wesley noted down in his diary that when he converted someone, he became industrious, abstemious, and honest, and so was liable to become rich, whereupon all the work was to do again. The Mennonites, and also the Brothers, might well fit into this scenario, and so should watch out.
In the story of Christendom, the monastic orders have functioned as a sort of lightning conductor, preventing Christ’s Kingdom of love from being destroyed in the storms and earthquakes to which kingdoms of the world are subject in their pursuit of power, in their adoration of Vanity Fair and acceptance of Nietzsche’s pronouncement just before he finally went mad: “God is dead; long live Superman!”
What St. Francis was to the Franciscans and St. Benedict to the Benedictines, Eberhard Arnold was to the Bruderhof, showing them how they may live together, work together, marry and bring up their families together, thereby not separating themselves as drastically as the traditional monks and nuns did and do, but still living with and in Christ, still faithfully walking with God, rather than being caught up in the Gadarine rush in which the so-called free world seems to be bent. Their worst hazard, as it seems to me, is not that they might be lured away from their community, but that they might fall for the illusion that peace movements promote peace, or that some earthly fantasy like Socialism can enable us to live happily ever after; forgetful that our Lord rejected the Devil’s offer of the kingdoms of the world and chose rather to die on His Cross.
The children of Bruderhof give special delight; their eyes express the wonder of life rather than the fantasies of a TV screen, and their voices, when they sing, harmonize with the birds. In our village we rejoice that they should be with us.”
I enjoy referring to my friends as heretics and apostates - in jest - although I do wish they were in union with Rome. Despite my personal sentiments, I can not help but have a deep respect for their dedication and life long commitment - which seems to be far more Christian than my lifestyle. (My friends also have been known to sneak off to Mass. or visit an occasional monastery to pray before the Blessed Sacrament. One may be able to take the Catholic out of the Chuuch of Rome, but you just can’t take the Catholic out of the individual. For all of the riches of the Bruderhof, my friends miss the Eucharist. I love them and respect their good will, that is free to serve God according to their conscience. All of us are in the mysterious will of God, no matter where we are. I know uber Catholics will disagree with my statement however.)
As I write, I notice a Christmas card came today from my little heretics!
I’m so happy Catholics don’t burn or drown heretics any longer…and that protestants no longer do likewise either.
May the little Jesus unite us all once again.
