By Erik Eckholm
Richardton, North Dakota
First appeared in the New York Times.
The lowing of cattle seemed a perfect prelude to the chants and hymns that followed at evening prayers, an unlikely pairing of soothing sounds that the monks of Assumption Abbey say they will miss.
For 51 years, Brother Placid Gross has tended the 1,900-acre ranch that has helped to define this Benedictine monastery in the crumpled hills of western North Dakota, providing only modest income, perhaps, but a rich connection to the earth as the monks go about their days of prayer and humble work.
But at 76, this wrangler-monk can no longer do the strenuous work required by a herd of 155 black angus cows, 155 calves and 8 bulls. Even with the help of a few colleagues, he cannot manage the cycles of baling hay in summer, nurturing cows through bitter winters, birthing and sometimes bottle-feeding calves in frigid early spring, and repairing fences and rounding up the herd, which is done these days on a small all-terrain vehicle rather than a horse.
Younger monks are scarce anyway, and none feel this calling. “They’re not cattlemen,” Brother Placid says. “They’re more interested in the intellectual stuff.” Hiring outsiders to do the work would be prohibitively expensive and out of synchrony with the “work and pray” mandate of the Benedictine order.
So this fall, the abbey will sell off not only calves, as it has every year for decades, but the entire herd. Some of the alfalfa fields and the rolling pastures — shades of green in this wet summer and scented with sage — will be rented out to neighbors.
“It’s so good to have the animals here, to see cows when you look out the window or go for a walk,” said Brother Placid, who is still sorting out the profound change looming for the monastery and, most of all, for himself. “I’ll miss it a lot,” he said, “but I know that there comes a time in life when you have to retire.”
But the shortage of young ranch hands reflects a far deeper threat, a lack of new recruits into the order. Currently, 28 monks are in residence, of a total of 57 who are affiliated with the abbey, a mix of ordained priests and brothers. Thirteen are out working as parish priests or in convents or schools. The others, mainly Colombians, are running an affiliated monastery and school in Bogotá that hopes one day to operate on its own.
The last new American monk was accepted in 2002, and nine have died since then. “It’s frightening,” Father Brian Wangler, the abbot, said of the downward trend. “But what it challenges is one’s faith. Who’s in charge here? Is God in charge or are we?” He said that six men joined the abbey from 1997 to 2002, most of them presenting themselves out of nowhere.
One of about 40 Benedictine monasteries in the United States, Assumption Abbey was established by Swiss monks in the 1890s, located near this rail-stop town because it was populated by Roman Catholic, German-speaking immigrants from Russia and Hungary. (Many of the monks, including Brother Placid, share that heritage.)
For decades, the abbey grew its own food and raised pigs, chickens and dairy cows for consumption and profit, but as these became unprofitable, beef ranching became the last vestige of a farming heritage. Brother Michael Taffe, 51, who earned a doctorate in psychology before becoming a monk at 40, said the loss of the cattle would cause “a grieving process.”
Brother Michael is in charge of recruitment efforts, which include visits to Catholic schools and advertisements in Catholic magazines. He said four men had seemed like potential candidates in recent years and came for trial stays, but decided the life was not for them.
Many of the monks entered in their teens or early 20s, in some cases after attending the boarding high school and two-year college the abbey ran until 1971, when the cost became prohibitive. In today’s world of vaster choices, the abbey would be wary of someone so young, Brother Michael said. Candidates must truly know, he said, that “this will make me whole.”
The order harks back to St. Benedict, who in the sixth century laid out rules for monasteries that would be apart from society but not cloistered, where monks would live communally, without personal property, sharing kitchen and cleaning duties and spending most of their time in prayer or work. Nuns also draw on the tradition, in Benedictine convents.
Once they join, monks are expected to spend the rest of their lives with the abbey. Each day, they attend prayer services at 6:20 a.m. and 11:40 a.m., Mass at 5 p.m. and vespers at 7 p.m., and spend more time in solitary prayer or study. Many wear street clothes during the day — Brother Placid wears blue jeans and a Western shirt — but all wear habits for the evening services.
Many also pursue special interests like gardening, tending bluebird houses, keeping bees or making scented soaps to sell to visitors.
It is a quiet life, but hardly a hair-shirt existence. Some monks watch the news or baseball in the evening. On Saturday nights they get popcorn, beer and a rented movie.
It is all in the service of God and, Father Wangler emphasized, of the broader community as well as the inner self. “This is a place where certain values, hopefully, will radiate out,” he said. “We hope people can realize the secret — there is a God, and it’s worth dedicating your life to God.”
Brother Placid, displaying the taciturn nature of the northern Plains, stumbled as he tried to explain why he joined the abbey at age 22. Growing up in a large North Dakota family, he had quit school after junior high and worked on his parents’ farm.
“There was no revelation,” he said after a long pause. “God has a plan for everybody, and I feel I’m serving God.”
He came alive when he drove a pickup out into the pastures, now teeming with grasshoppers, dragonflies and butterflies. Most of the cows were skittish at first, but he walked up to a friendly one, dubbed Agnes by one of the monks, and started scratching her back. “They like it when someone scratches their backs,” he said. “I’d like it, too.”
“They know far more than people think they know,” he said, describing how cows recognize their own calves in a crowd by sight, sound and smell. The loud bellowing, he said, carries secret messages.
For the first couple of decades, he wrangled cows while riding bareback because he never learned to use a saddle. More recently, he and another monk have herded the cattle using a noisy one-seat vehicle that does not slip through trees as easily as a horse, he said, “but doesn’t eat when it’s not being used.”
Yet the work remains grueling and physical, as became clear the other day when Brother Placid spotted three cows limping from foot rot, a bacterial disease that has afflicted the herd this year. It took two monks and a neighbor most of a hot, dusty afternoon to drive the herd back to the main corrals so the afflicted cows and their calves could be separated out for a few days. Stuffing cow-size sulfa pills down the throats of thrashing 1,300-pound animals, penned in a narrow metal chute, was a feat in itself.
This phase-out summer of ranching already feels strange, Brother Placid said, because for the first time they are not baling hay for the winter. And what comes next?
“I might have to clean the bathrooms,” he said with a smile. “You never get to retire in the monastery.”