Here’s the Way to Save La Grande Trappe Monastery from Closing

Mr Horvat has a simple solution to the looming closure of La Grande Trappe and other dying monasteries: return to the traditions of your founders!

From Crisis

By John Horvat II

The Vikings once raided and plundered medieval monasteries for their riches, but no plot to destroy them holds a candle to self-inflicted destruction wrought by modernism.

The Vikings frequently sacked monasteries across Europe since they were isolated, poorly defended, and held vast wealth, artifacts, and livestock. With prayer and penance, the monks eventually prevailed and converted the Vikings.

Today, something different is happening. A new round of sacking is taking place. However, no Vikings or barbarians are despoiling the convents and abbeys. The monks and nuns themselves are, perhaps unwittingly, the agents of their self-destruction.

The Devastation of Modern Spirituality

It is easy to trace the origins of this new enemy. Modern spiritualities introduced after the Second Vatican Council attacked traditional forms of worship, hollowed out everything of substance, and left countless communities devastated. Viking theologians tore down everything in their paths.

Like a Viking lightning raid, old monastic traditions were overturned. Schedules, fasts, and prayer vigils were abandoned. Churches were gutted of their old adornments, “wreckovated” in a manner far more thorough than the ignorant barbarians. Social justice causes replaced the focus on prayer and penance.

Aging monks and nuns are now left with places made for once flourishing establishments, with no one to replace them. One by one, communities are falling apart, and their properties are put to other purposes. In France, two monasteries or convents close each month.

Aging monks and nuns are now left with places made for once flourishing establishments, with no one to replace them….In France, two monasteries or convents close each month.Tweet This

The Demise of La Grande Trappe

The seriousness of this crisis was recently made dramatically clear when the monks of La Trappe Abbey in Normandy announced that they may leave their monastery in 2028. The shock was so great that Pope Leo XIV held  a confidential meeting with its abbot immediately after the announcement.

This Cistercian abbey is not just any abbey. It is a storied monastery that has housed monks for 900 years. It is known as “La Grande Trappe,” since it was the place where Abbot Armand de Rancé carried out the Trappist reform of the Cistercian order in 1662. As a result, all Reformed Cistercians are informally known as Trappists.

The Trappist community, after “following a long discernment,” decided that the lack of vocations and the heavy burden of maintaining the property made it consider leaving the site in 2028. They propose to walk away, as barely twenty aging monks live where once a hundred flourished.

A Long History

This is not the first time that La Trappe has faced an existential crisis. The abbey was founded in the 12th century, around 1122, in honor of the granddaughter of William the Conqueror. It survived wars and plagues, the French Revolution, and everything that the devil could throw at it. The abbey was even closed for a while and given up for lost. However, fervent abbots and monks always saved it from destruction.

Its story is inspiring.

During the Middle Ages, La Trappe united itself to St. Bernard’s Cistercian Order of Cîteaux. It was part of a vast network of abbeys associated with Cîteaux that flourished in a golden age of great fervor and holiness.

In the 15th century, however, things changed. The abbey was prey to English troops during the wars between France and England. Thus, it suffered greatly due to its location near the scene of so much strife.

In the 16th century, the abbey was held in commendam, meaning it was considered vacant and administered by another person—one not living in it but benefiting from its revenues. The abuse of this canonical state often led to mismanagement of properties like La Trappe, where the monks barely survived.

With the coming of the French Revolution, the government expelled the monks and confiscated their abbey in 1792. Some eighty monks accepted the inevitable by moving to other accommodations or returning to the world. Their names are lost in history.

However, Abbot Augustin de Lestrange, with 24 other monks, went into exile at La Valsainte in Fribourg, Switzerland, where they resolved to observe the exact and literal observance of the Rule of St. Benedict and the usages of Cîteaux. Despite the desperate conditions of this exile, they overcame all obstacles because they were consumed with the love of God and the Cross.

With Valsainte as its base, the community attracted so many monks that the abbot sent some out to found other establishments in Spain, England, Belgium, and Piedmont.   

Everything finally changed for the better when Abbot Armand de Rancé initiated a reform of the abbey by returning to the austerity and purity of a rule of silence, prayer, manual labor, and seclusion from the world.

An Incredible Odyssey

When the anti-Catholic French revolutionaries invaded Switzerland in 1798, they expelled the Trappists. Thus began an incredible odyssey in which the monks roamed the globe in search of a permanent home. The trek took them to America, Germany, and even Russia. Amid the incredible suffering and hardship of their wanderings, their numbers grew all the while.

Indeed, in 1813, the Trappist abbot purchased the land on Fifth Avenue where St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York City now sits from the Jesuits to create a school and orphanage. Their stay was cut short by the fall of Napoleon, which allowed the now-augmented group of monks to return to France, only to find their beloved La Trappe in ruins.

The monks rebuilt the abbey atop the old one. By the time of the abbot’s death in 1827, 700 monks had joined the roving and now restabilized order. This new reform, as it was called, soon led to the establishment of 20 monasteries in the United States, Canada, Syria, and other places.

As long as the monks maintained their fervor, penances, silence, and fasts, they prospered. The more difficult the life, the more the monasteries were filled. As long as they were focused on a love for God and the Blessed Mother, there was no problem of recruitment.

Tragic Ending

The final chapter in this long saga is the post-1960s reform that modified the fast, simplified the rule, and suppressed the perpetual silence. The reforms, notes the Encyclopedia Britannica, “placed greater emphasis on individuality, [and] has resulted in diversity among the various Trappist monasteries, whereas previously all abbeys observed a uniform set of rules and traditions.”

Here entered the “new barbarian” spiritualties and novelties with their Viking theologians, who overturned everything and wrought great havoc. Whereas the roving monks of strict observance attracted hundreds, the postmodern monks of “diversity” saw hundreds flee the cloister. The noise that invaded the silence kept out recruits searching for sublime truth.

The lesson of this story is very clear. If the monks of La Grande Trappe wish to see their abbey revived, there is no need for “long discernment.” They must embrace their tradition in all its awesome and splendorous rigor, as they did before. What will attract the young Gen Zers, now converting, will be an appeal to the sublimity of religious life, not an “emphasis on individuality.”

It is time to expel the barbarian spiritualities with their Viking theologians that sack the abbeys—and so many parishes. Above all, it is time to return to the all-consuming love of God and the Blessed Mother that makes all things possible.

Pictured: Abbot Armand Jean le Bouthillier de Rancé, OCSO, Founder of the Trappists