\u201cMonks are just a joke,\u201d\u009d sighs Father Stephen. \u201cIn the modern mind, it\u2019s just fat friars in brown habits with white cords around their waists.\u201d\u009d There\u2019s some truth in the words of this slim Benedictine, who is sporting a white habit and brown leather belt. We don\u2019t notice the jeans peeping out from underneath until he points them out, but they are the kind of trivial curiosity some secular visitors focus on when they come to the Subiaco Benedictine monastery of Prinknash Abbey, deep in the rolling green countryside of Gloucestershire. Yet in recent years, the comedy element has begun to subside and the outside world has started taking monasticism seriously again.<\/p>\n
Organised religion has lost its central place in most European countries, but it has not necessarily been replaced by atheism. The confused majority is \u201cspiritual but not religious\u201d\u009d, hungry for alternatives to the perceived materialism of modern life. \u201cThe more we\u2019re distracted by stuff,\u201d\u009d suggests Father Stephen, \u201cthe more we\u2019re also attracted by what we\u2019re missing.\u201d\u009d<\/p>\n
Read it all<\/a> [or if that link causes difficulty, please try there<\/a>].<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cMonks are just a joke,\u201d\u009d sighs Father Stephen. \u201cIn the modern mind, it\u2019s just fat friars in brown habits with white cords around their waists.\u201d\u009d There\u2019s some truth in the words of this slim Benedictine, who is sporting a white…<\/span><\/p>\n