SPENCER (MA)
Bangor Daily News
By Scott Malone, Reuters
Posted July 24, 2014
SPENCER, Massachusetts — Tucked off a two-lane highway in a hilly, wooded section of central Massachusetts, a group of Roman Catholic monks has embraced a centuries-old tradition they hope can sustain their aging members in a world of rapidly rising health costs.
The 60 monks of St. Joseph’s Abbey still rise at 3 a.m. for prayers and pass most of their days in silence. But when it is time for work, a handful head down to the monastery’s new brewery, the first outside Europe to produce certified Trappist Ale.
The venture has proven to be less labor-intensive than the monks’ other businesses, making religious vestments and fruit preserves. More importantly, they believe it can generate enough money to sustain a community of men with an average age of 70, who spend about a third of their budget on health care.
“We’re trying to reinvent our economy,” said Father Isaac Keeley on a recent tour of the abbey’s low-slung stone buildings and starkly modern 30,000-square-foot brewery, nestled in a wooded property some 60 miles west of Boston. …
Supporting an aging clergy is a challenge faced across the Catholic church in the United States. While monasteries and similar religious orders operate outside the structure of local parishes and dioceses, many of which have paid heavy costs to settle claims of sexual abuse by priests, their members also are aging.
The Retirement Fund for the Religious, a Catholic group that acts as a last-gasp source of funding for retired monks, nuns and other members of religious orders, supports 34,243 religious people over the age of 70. It forecast that by 2023, there would be four times as many retired members of such orders as those who are still working.
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