Traditional Carmelites Need Your Help

I don't often post appeals, but as a Traditionalist and a Carmelite Tertiary, this is a cause close to my heart. If you can, please join me in contributing.

From One Peter Five

By the Community of Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Carmelite

Our Traditional Carmelite religious community has new updates to share with our benefactors and supporters all over the world as we continue our Traditional Carmelite Monastery building project in High Springs, Florida.

During the first year of our building project in 2024, which we established as a 501c3 nonprofit called “Habit Forming Sisters Corporation”, we have successfully completed minor construction of a driveway, fencing, and the clearing of three acres of land for future construction.

With the help of our engineering team at G2ET Consultants, our community developed a preliminary drawing as a basis for our vision of our future monastery.

Our hope for the future Our Lady Co-Redemptrix Carmelite Monastery includes:

• A Dormitory wing of 13 cells for 13 nuns
• A self-sustaining garden on our 10 acres of land to include vegetables, a fruit orchard, raising chickens, housing bee hives, and perhaps a cow and/or a goat.
• A Latin Mass chapel dedicated to Our Lady of Sorrows daily celebration of the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass open to the public. (We pray the 1962 Divine Office and the 1962 version of the Latin Mass.)
• A modest rectory for a chaplain and/or visiting priests.

We secured the architectural services of Baker Architects for the production of the Master Site Plan and Schematic Plans for our future monastery. During the end of 2024, we received several proposals from high quality architectural firms, all of whom were superior in their expertise and expression of their Catholic faith. After much discernment, we selected Baker Architects because with their very innovative design approach, using interactive computer modeling, we will be able to save design costs through the draft, review and drawing preparation processes.

Baker Architects have included a reference for the budget for their initial design work with us, which is now proceeding. Estimated total cost for the architectural services was $26,000. (The budget reference below was provided by Baker Architects.)

Part of our initial design project with Baker Architects will be to have a construction estimate established (which is currently in the works).

Everything extra to what we paid Baker Architects for their services ($26,000) is being saved up for future construction. We prayerful encourage you to donate to our building development project so that we can build as soon as possible, God-willing.

As of April 2025, Baker Architects has produced new Full Architectural Renderings for our future monastery and we have posted them on our website.

Our hopeful Community includes a several Carmelite Nuns (both fully professed and those in novitiate) who live as hermits, as well as a handful of young women and women with belated-vocations who have expressed great interested in joining the monastery once it is built. Everyone contributes through prayers (some try to donate from their own savings as well!) and spreading the word in their own way to help build up our future community in the hope of living one day under one roof, united in prayer for the greater glory of God. Our monastery will be able to support a community of thirteen nuns.

We are not under the modern and liberal Cor Orans Federated Carmelite Order. Our Sisters and those who hope to make vows in our future Community promise chastity, poverty, and obedience to the Rule of Carmel and the Teresian Constitutions within our autonomous Carmel. We are in no way related to or affiliated with the new progressive ideas (dare we say, woke?) that are eroding the Order that Holy Mother Saint Teresa of Avila founded. Our Community seeks to follow the Way of Perfection that Holy Mother established under obedience to Almighty God who entrusted her with this mission.

We are also not affiliated with a local diocese as we are an autonomous monastery, as Holy Mother Saint Teresa desired. We are not priests and therefore do not have any faculties that require governance by a diocese. Our hope is especially to safekeep the Traditional Latin Mass after Pope Francis promulgated the controversial motu proprio Traditionis Custodes, which abrogated the universal permission granted by Pope Benedict XVI’s Summorum Pontificum.

We are simply women religious who pray under the authority established by Saint Teresa in the Rule of Carmel and her own handwritten Constitutions. Also, Canon 215 of the Code of Canon Law best explains that in this way a group of thirteen vowed women religious can pray for Pope Leo XIV, the bishops in union with the Holy Magisterium of the Holy Roman Catholic Church, and the world. (A detailed explanation of Canon 215 is outlined in the OnePeterFive article entitled “Religious Life: Operation Survival.”)

Anyhow, our community is not and will never be affiliated or associated with schismatic or sedevacantist groups (Period!). We are simply Carmelite Nuns and Carmelite vocations who are praying for Holy Mother Church and for the salvation of souls. We have discerned that the best thing to do when monasteries are being closed down worldwide, is to open a new one. All this for the greater glory of God and in honor of Our Lady Mary Co-Redemptrix!

In the meantime as we pray, hope, and build, some of our Community also contribute to the building project through the sale of handmade rosaries, crochet Carmelite Nun dolls (see our order form on our website), scapulars, and more handmade crafts on our online shop.

Our fundraising for our Community will be on-going to sustain the Life of the Community even after our monastery is built. Funds needed to erect our Monastery is dependent on the future costs of the material and of the man-power. We are adamant about and determined to: Pay-as-we-go. No Bank Loans! To date, we have accomplished just that (YAY!).

Every project that we begin for the building of our monastery is posted onto our website (Events Page) with the total costs and dates of completion, so our donors can see exactly where and how their contributions are being used.

Every project completed on our Website in 2024 & early 2025 has been paid in full, thanks to the good graces of Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ through the Immaculate Heart of Mary, as well as because of our generous benefactors and supporters. We continue to save and secure all donations received for future construction. Until then, we continue to save, save, save! Deo gratias!

Online donations can continue to be made to our building project through Zeffy or PayPal.

We are a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, so all donations made to us are tax-deductible, and donors can request a tax letter by messaging us on our website’s contact page.

For Mailing in Donations our address is:

Habit Forming Sisters Corporation
PO Box 564
Richmond Hill, GA 31324
https://habitformingsisters.wixsite.com/buildingproject

We are so grateful to our benefactors and supports worldwide for their contributions in prayer and in donations. We will continue to keep everyone remembered in our life of prayer, especially in our daily Rosaries.

Jesus and Mary love you!