The monks of St Madeleine's Abbey (of Le Barroux in France) parted company with Archbishop Lefebvre over his decision to consecrate bishops with the approval of the Holy See. 30 Giorni correspondent Stephano Paci outlines the history of this increasingly significant project in the renewal of the religious life and interviews (Reform the Reform! Dom Gerard Speaks) its Abbot and founder, Dom Gerard Calvet.

THE MIDDLE AGES live here and the average age of the 55 monks who pray and work in the monastery of Sainte Madeleine in Province in France is just 30. Their abbey in Romanesque style is built of large chunks of white stone amid the lush green of the surrounding fields. 

Like its monks, the monastery itself is young, too, for its first stone was laid in 1980. But the liturgy it celebrates is very old indeed and the monastic rule is the rule of St Benedict established 1,500 years ago. The monks wake at three in the morning for Matins. Morning prayer is at six followed by Prime at 7.45 and Terce at 9.30. Then comes a two-hour Gregorian Mass. Sext is at midday, None at two in the afternoon, Vespers at 5.30 and Compline at 7.45 a quarter of an hour before bed-time. And, as Benedict would have wished it, the monks are either praying or working in total silence lest they disturb the prayers of their heart with vain words. If two monks meet in the cloister, they greet each other with a nod of the head. If they are working together, they communicate by means of basic gestures. Meals, too, which are served in the refectory, are eaten in silence while one monk reads spiritual passages from the pulpit. It is not the life of mortification it appears to be. For, the most commonly used word in the monks' vocabulary - after their abbot allowed them to break the rule on silence temporarily when 30 DAYS came to visit - is "joy". 

Brother Benoit, 25, is tall and blond with a degree in architecture. He entered the monastery two years ago. "I had the impression that only the monastic life would have made me happy. And the joy I feel proves I wasn't wrong. Our whole lives are reserved for God, from the moment we get up to the moment we go to bed. We are His even as we sleep", he said. Another novice, 27-year-old Louis-Marie, said: "I passed by here by chance one day and it was as if I had been struck by lightning. I came back as a postulant two weeks later. Now, I've been here for nearly three years. To an outsider it might seem that our life is hard but it isn't. The discipline governing us is a human kind of discipline, like a family. There's nothing artificial about it. If there were, no one would last long and the gladness that is born of it is the best witness to the truth of that".

Some time ago, the monks were given another reason to be glad. In a recent interview Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, said: "I see that there is a new joy being born in the abbey of Le Barroux in France - the joy of truly belonging to the Catholic Church". Indeed, because this mountain-top monastery in a remote part of southern France has a very special history. And for the past few years it has been at the center of a bitter ecclesial debate despite its reserve - ever since it broke its bonds of esteem and friendship with traditionalist Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre and refused to follow him as he headed towards the division that lacerated the Catholic Church. 

Constructing an abbey in the 20th century is not an easy task but is a story worth the telling.

Dom Gerard Calvet came to Provence on August 24, 1970. Waiting for him was a tiny abandoned Romanesque chapel at Bedoin. As the post-Conciliar tempest raged, his superior allowed him to go back in time and embrace the essentials of Benedict's rule: prayer, silence, manual work, Latin liturgy. A few days later, on August 27, his first disciple arrived unexpectedly. He was Dominique and just 20 years old. There was no room for him at Bedoin but Dominique insisted on staying. 

After him, others came, attracted by the beauty of the liturgy and the mystical, fascinating personality combined with an acute sense of the faith of Dom Gerard. By the following year, there were 11 monks chanting the morning prayers of the Lord in the tiny Romanesque chapel. Monastic life was becoming organised and Rome was asked to approve the new institute. The Congregation for Religious encouraged them to continue. 

The monastery's attachment to pre-Conciliar rites naturally impressed Archbishop Lefebvre who in France had become the great defender of the Mass of St Pius V. On July 25, 1974 Lefebvre, Archbishop of Econe, came in person to Bedoin and conferred minor orders on those first monks, who were about to become priests. 

Although Lefebvre had still not been suspended a divinis, French clergy were suspicious of him. So Dom Gerard's superior decided to close the new monastery. Dom Gerard rushed to Rome in a vain attempt to find a solution. Nevertheless, he decided to continue with the monastery experience he had begun with his monks and his "resistance" compounded with that of Archbishop Lefebvre's. 

Meanwhile, the community grew and grew, the beauty of its ancient rites and the monks' warmth drawing thousands of visitors. It was decided to build an abbey near the village of Le Barroux in the diocese of Avignon. Land was bought on September 20, 1978 and two years later work began on the Monastery of Sainte Madeleine. 

The monastery, however, drew back from the Lefebvrist position when Dom Gerard opposed the archbishop's decision to consecrate four bishops on June 30, 1988 without the Pope's authorisation. In doing so, Dom Gerard had to face the consequences. The monastic foundation he began in Brazil rebelled and dramatically so. 

"It was traumatic", said one of the monks of Le Barroux. "Our Brazilian confreres called the police to lead Dom Gerard away when he went there to explain why he was abandoning Lefebvre. They protested that a 'stranger' had charged into their monastery and they asked the police to remove him. It was a case of the sons he had educated in the faith rejecting their father. Even today Dom Gerard doesn't like talking about it". 

Meanwhile, the construction of the monastery in France continued at a rapid pace. Fr Anselme, the 42-year-old Prior of the abbey, relates: 

"Over 20,000 friends of the monastery financed the building work. Small donations were enough from all of them in contrast to what many of the newspapers said. It is not true that we had the support either of industrialists or millionaires. Our supporters were ordinary people who wanted a house of prayer where love for the great tradition of the Church would reign". Building work went on skirting a thousand and one obstacles. 

"Sometimes", said Anselme, "I wouldn't have enough money to pay the labourers who worked with us on the building work. I would become very distressed but Dom Gerard always reassured me, saying that Providence would intervene just when we needed it most. And, in fact, it did. I always managed to pay the workers when pay-day came around". 

Ten years after the laying of the first stone, the Sainte Madeleine Monastery was completed. And it was a splendid construction indeed, in Romanesque-Provencal style, that became the monks' new home. On June 2 that year, the Holy See elevated the monastery to abbey status and on July 2, Cardinal Augustin Mayer blessed Dom Gerard as Abbot in a solemn ceremony. 

"You are already the father, teacher and pastor of your monks", the cardinal told him. "From now on you will be Christ's representative to a more intense degree, as abbot, blessed by the Church". 

Fr Germain, 39, who was one of Dom Gerard's first disciples in the adventure, recalls: 

"It is hard to describe the joy one feels at receiving full recognition and at belonging as a religious community within Mother Church, submitted to its law and encouraged by its blessing. This for us is not a restriction but grace and, at the same time, a source of certainty and a guarantee". 

As happened in abbeys in the Middle Ages, Le Barroux was soon to become the unconscious hub of numerous activities. Paris-born Alban de Mony at 25 is already a famous painter, who came to Le Barroux for an art course organised by the Atelier de la sainte Esperance - a school of sacred art set up close to the monastery. 

"It is an institute of a very high level", she said. "I came here to learn the fresco technique and I encountered the experience of a lifetime". Many lay groups use the monastery as a point of reference. They include over 200 Scouts of Saint Maurice, 300 "secular oblates", scores of young people who opt to live in St Benedict's climate of spirituality, a few hundred high school teenagers of the movement, "Jeunesse chretiente", and members of "Domus christiani". 

The "Domus christiani" movement is young but growing fast. Their small communities of up to ten people are nearly always made up of married couples with the desire to apply the Christian life in their family and social lives. There are already scores of these communities throughout France and new groups are forming in all the major towns and cities. The only rule Dom Gerard has established for his monks wishing to follow these experiences at close hand is that they do not distract them from the life of the monastery and monks cannot become leaders of the groups but must remain spiritual advisers only. 

"It would not be good for a monk to become too influential in the things of the world, even by means of a movement he is guiding", one of the monks explained. "Ours must always be a contemplative life primarily".

Also connected to the abbey at Le Barroux are 28 sisters of Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation, an experience begun in 1979 and transferred seven years ago to a convent about a mile away. But the abbey is also famous outside France and prospective postulants come knocking at its doors from all over the world. Edmond, 37, was an Anglican monk before coming to Le Barroux. 

"After long and painful searching, I realised that true authority lay with Peter's successor. And so I converted to Catholicism. I came here to Le Barroux because I was looking for somewhere where I could breathe the true faith of the Church. Nothing less would have done", said Edmond.

The most famous of all the Le Barroux monks' activities is the monastery's small print-works. Their posthumous publication of two short books by Msgr Klaus Gamber - La Reforme Liturgique en question and Tournes vers le Seigneur! raised a storm. The French Catholic daily La Croix alleged that the warm introduction to Gamber's first book by Cardinal Ratzinger had been "stolen" by the monks unknown to the cardinal prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith who was said not to hold the views on liturgy attributed to him. Cardinal Ratzinger had written: "The concrete result of liturgical reform was not re-animation but devastation". Ratzinger, of course, had authorised the publication of his text and to emphasise this he wrote another ex novo Introduction for Gamber's second book published by the monks. 

In the past ten years, "Sainte Madeleine Editions" have published many more books. One such is the traditional liturgical Missal - again with an Introduction by Cardinal Ratzinger - which has sold 20,000 copies. The most recent book is entitled Oui! Le Catechisme de l'Eglise catholique ... est catholique! The author, 32-year-old Philosophy professor Fr Gabriel, said: 

"I wrote it as a methodological, non- polemical answer to the main objections to the Catechism raised by progressives who called it 'a return to Mediaeval obscurantism'. The book was also designed as a response to Lefebvrists who said the Catechism was not an exposition of the Catholic faith". 

Although Fr Gabriel is the official author, the book is really the work of the whole monastery because every monk read the drafts as they were produced and added their own modifications. And while the tone of the book is rather moderate, it amounts to a devastating indictment of Lefebvrists, highlighting that not only have they not understood any of the Catechism but they often falsify the text in their criticism twisting it to prove their own theories. 

Who would ever have thought just a few years ago that the monks of Le Barroux, who had aroused Rome's suspicion, would have become the defenders of the Catechism of the Catholic Church from attacks left and right?

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