Monastic Laundry

"All too often, a kind of workaholism takes over and makes of religious life a series of tasks to be performed and duties to be undertaken." -Br. Robert C. Berger, FSC (a teacher of mine at Manhattan College), in the Spring 1994 Review for Religious 5/2/94 Dear Diary,      I have been living at Chaminade High School for 10 months and three days. Does it feel like it's been 10 months and three days? Yes, but I now realize that though it is a short period of time, I'm thankful for every minute of it--both good and bad. John reminded me today to keep my head on straight and don't go to extremes--between cynicism and over pietistical bullshit. He was straight with me and I thanked him for it. It is but another thing for me to keep in mind and remember always.       Organization is something I need right now. With tests coming, I have to buckle down and get to work. With God's love and help, which I know I have, I'll do great on my tests and I'...

If I could sneak back into the monastery for just one more hour, there is no other hour in time I'd rather choose than the Easter Vigil service at Chaminade High School. Forty-four men processing single file through the monastery lit only by candles? It gave me chills every time! I was only a monk for four years of my life, but the environment and the people I lived with changed me forever (and for the better) . Even so, my time there was cut short in a most unnatural, very unkind and thoroughly unhappy way. I was robbed of all sense of normal closure by being defrocked without warning one day, so now I'm-- Well, I'm like a ghost: part of me is still there, and always will be. Of all the weeks on the liturgical calendar, Holy Week sits high atop my list of personal favorites. Today I reminisce on some of the traditions I recall and loved most. While some have changed since I left, others surely remain. Standing at the entrance to the chapel at the Easter Vigil service. From...

I was only "Brother Sean" for a red hair over four years, so while priests and religious who give their whole lives to similar missions may be smug to my perspective, it really comes down to this: you can kick the boy out of the monastery, but you can't kick the monastery out of the boy. Who I am is forever changed because of those four years, and more succinctly, because of who I chose to become in all the years since. March 31, 1994 Dear Brother George Edward,      Throughout the past nine months, I have had the opportunity of forming many friendships; friendships with my Brothers, friendship with God, and friendship with myself.   I am very grateful for the blessings that I have received and for the opportunity to grow more fully in the life of Jesus Christ.   Though I have had some stumbling blocks along the way, I have learned to see them as stepping stones on the sometimes bumpy path of religious life.      I...

 [Housekeeping note: no post here next week. Check back again on Wednesday, November 11th.] By this point of my life, 18 years old, I knew. I knew the one thing I started dreading in 7th grade and began to slightly accept by 9th grade was not ever going away. I knew I wasn't into girls. The thing is (don't laugh), by choosing to live a life of chastity, I honestly thought about it more in terms of giving up the females I wasn't into rather than the males I was into. A life with no heterosexual love? Pfft. I can do that. I know this seems illogical, but doing anything with another guy was an impossibility anyway, as far as I was concerned. This was the early 90s, and things were extremely different (and much more difficult) back then. As a thoroughly naive teenager who up until that point assumed his homosexual leanings would either disappear on their own or at least agree to stay bottled up inside him forever and ever, the stubborn yearnings of my libido genuinely took m...

Okay. So put yourself in my shiny black shoes for a moment here. You're only 18 years old, and you've made what we can all agree is a monumental decision about the rest of your life, a commitment that means giving up almost everything you knew before in service to the church you love. You've learned about the place you now live and you've met all the men with whom you'll be sharing coffee every day for the rest of your life, you've gotten used to the schedule and accepted the realities of poverty, chastity, and obedience too, at least in so much as you can understand them all at this point in time. And then, very slowly, things start to change. It's now the fall of 1993, and you've started school at Manhattan College in the Bronx. You and four other young brothers drive up there each day after morning prayer, mass, and breakfast with the community. School runs from roughly 9 AM until after 4, when you all meet at the red caravan in the parking lot for ...

This blog has been on hiatus since March, but I'm delighted to relaunch it here with the below reflections from my first year as Brother Sean. One quick clarification before I go on. Because I only lived in a monastery for four years, and because I am no longer a practicing Catholic, it's entirely possible there are people out there who see me as using the church to boost my résumé and my ego. This is a completely fair but untrue assertion. I celebrate my four years as a monk because my time and experience there hurt me so very deeply. While this may sound like a completely illogical and contradictory statement, the truth is simply this: I learned and grew as both a human and a soul more in those four years than in any other four years before or since, and though some of it was quite painful--unnecessarily so--I am extremely grateful for all the good that came of it, and the good people I got to know and live with as well! If anyone out there thinks I'm just puffing myself ...

I first walked the hallowed halls of Chaminade High School on a tour while I was still in the eighth grade. I wasn't sure where I wanted to go to high school at that point, only that Catholic school seemed a certainty. I remember the day I received my acceptance letter to Chaminade though, as the prestigious high school was at the very top of my list, not least of all because my closest friends from grade school were already committed to going there. As I discussed in a previous blog , my time as a student at Chaminade was sadly short-lived, as I failed out at the end of my very first year there (failing is anything below 75, so a 73, a 74, and a Fail in my Pass/Fail music course sealed my fate). Though they allowed me to take two summer school courses at the school that summer, I eventually had to say goodbye to the place forever –or so I thought. Just three years later, now a graduate of Kellenberg High School in Uniondale (run by the same religious order), I was back again...

It's time I broach a touchy subject here, one that could make at least some of you practically swell with shock. Blogging is quite masturbatory by nature, as all you're doing week in and week out is focusing on yourself, so it can be quite challenging at times not pausing to stroke your ego now and then anyway. Even so, I pray you won't think me a jerk, and please allow me this one week to share some hard truths from the dark corners of my room in the monastery. I'm not sure how else to paint the picture for you except this... Even though I lived in a modern-day monastery more often referred to as the brothers house, this was still very much a holy place as far as I was concerned, so committing any kind of unholy act there was just the furthest thing from my mind, especially in my first two months there. Despite this, I was soon enough faced with what I can only describe as a medical situation. I foolishly assumed when I gave my life over to God and put on m...

Get yourself a trade, our elders used to say. Education can only get you so far. You need to have practical real-world skills too, if only as a backup plan. Our parents and grandparents learned this lesson for themselves, and that's why they kept repeating it over and over again in our youth. Learn how to fix people's pipes, they'd say, tune up their cars, cook their meals, get their power on, or even mend their shirts–just find work you can do well, and then stick to it. In the months after I joined the monastery, I was immersed in a litany of cool jobs I never in a million years thought I'd learn how to do. And while I can't honestly say I've retained all the info I learned back then, I'm grateful for all I have remembered ever since. I learned how to paint rooms, lay carpet, re-tile bathrooms, install hand dryers, sew vestments, set up wood and kindling for a fire, decorate rooms, run electrical lines for new classrooms and chapels, drive a stick shi...

I went through a lot of needless crap in my years as Brother Sean, but none of my worst moments there were ever the fault of my fellow young brothers. We were caught up in that crazy life together, after all, and just trying to do our best under some very difficult circumstances. Though our individual friendships sometimes strained, the bonds that united us were so much stronger than any differences in opinion, and I'm forever grateful for the many good times we shared back then. Before I joined the Marianist community in Mineola (pronounced Mini-oh-luh), the brothers' recent track record for new recruits wasn't very strong. There were a bunch of brothers who'd graduated high school in the 70s and 80s, and one two years ahead of us who graduated in 1991. Four of us joined my year, 1993, another joined two years later, and one joined three years after us. Of the seven who joined between 1991 and 1996, only one is still there. I may be mistaken, but I don't ...

Okay. So before we go any further, I think it'd be helpful at this early stage of the blog if I first explained to you exactly what a brother is. This should serve as a helpful primer going forward. Basically, a Roman Catholic brother is a man who dedicates his life to God, lives in a community with other men (usually called a monastery or a brothers' house), and who takes the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Some orders require other vows or promises, but these are the basic but challenging few. The easiest way to understand this kind of a calling is to look at the life of a nun. A nun, or a sister, is very much the same as a brother or a monk, except they are women who live in a convent. Their vows are usually the same, their lives are often the same too, and they choose different ministries depending on their religious order (teaching, working with the poor and homeless, or serving in various other church ministries). Nuns wear a religious habit, which as yo...