c. 1999 Religion News Service

NEWARK, N.J. _ In the dining hall of Newark Abbey, black-clad monks eat their meals in silence at simple wood tables while a member of their community reads from the 1,500-year-old rule of St. Benedict.

By day, most of these men teach at St. Benedict’s Preparatory School, the comeback institution that rose from the ashes of the Newark riots. The school, with its 560 students, is the bustling side of monastic life.

Unseen by motorists who pass along busy Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard is the other life, led by men in full-length habits behind the abbey’s thick brick walls. Shielded are the quiet garden and peaceful halls, the large wooden inner door with its carved plea for “silence.”

The prayerful, communal lifestyle of the monks has survived for centuries and has shaped the prep school for decades, but in recent years the monks have begun to voice concern about the future. Back in the 1950s, when it wasn’t unusual for former students to take their vows, there were 120 monks in the community. Today, 18 men live in Newark Abbey, and only one is under the age of 40.

“I think we have to look very much at the demise of monasteries,” conceded Abbott Melvin Valvano, a 1956 graduate of St. Benedict’s who was elected to lead the community in 1973. “Many (abbeys) are doing this kind of soul-searching, because of our age and health. It would not happen in five or 10 years here, but perhaps it could in 20 years.”

Concerned by the drought of young men electing to become monks, the community began a concerted recruiting effort three years ago. The monks formed a committee, started a well-attended lecture program and began hosting free retreats where like-minded individuals could experience the monastic lifestyle for a long weekend. The community created a Web site and began talking with an alumnus who is an advertising executive about an updated campaign.

The Rev. Augustine Curley, at 43 one of the youngest members of the community, is the most recent St. Benedict’s student to take his vows. He began his monastic life in 1982.

“I realize some people think this is an insane life,” Curley, the community’s vocation director, said. “But a lot of times the life inside here seems more sane than the rat race. In a sense, it’s a lot easier. We don’t get woken up at night with crying babies.”

The number of Catholic priests and nuns in America has been falling dramatically since the 1970s. For religious-order priests, the number peaked at 22,265 in 1975. It stood at 15,925 last year.

Experts say the reasons are myriad, including smaller Catholic families, increased opportunities for American youth, and resistance to celibacy. The church hierarchy argues that a key reason Catholic youths aren’t pursuing a religious life is they aren’t being invited. It has begun urging more aggressive recruitment.

Curley, who would have graduated from the prep school had it not closed for a year in 1972, said he was attracted by the communal prayer, the solitude and the intense search for spirituality.

By secular standards, the lifestyle is dramatically ordered. The monks eat, pray and work together on a strict schedule, falling silent after 9 p.m. and arising for 6:15 a.m. prayers. There are no televisions in their living quarters.

Drawing no salary _ any honorariums or other outside income go to the community treasury _ they must ask permission for basic purchases, even a night out at the movies. They need to borrow one of the community cars if business takes them outside the city.

Many of the simple rules date back to St. Benedict of Nursia, considered the father of monasticism in Western Europe. Growing up in a wealthy family as the Roman Empire was disintegrating in the late fifth century, Benedict sought the solitude of a cave in his 20s, emerging to run an abbey and pen his now-famous “Rule for Monks,” which stresses moderation and silence.

The Benedictines are one of the church’s worldwide religious orders, and Newark Abbey is connected to a subgroup called the American-Cassinese Congregation. It boast 21 abbeys with 1,108 monks, and Valvano is its president.

Because they take a vow of “stability of place,” monks are not transferred around the world or to other parts of the country, unlike members of some religious orders, and the 12-acre complex here is expected to be their home for life.

Monks say the deep spiritual life so many Americans seem to crave is the intangible benefit of monastic life.

“The whole point of our work is hidden,” said the Rev. Albert Holtz, a monk who teaches French at St. Benedict’s. “We are all about seeking the Lord by living together, but this is never the side that gets splashed on TV.”

Still, the monks have not been any more successful at persuading students to join their ranks.

The student body packs the older of two gymnasiums for morning prayers and announcements, a daily ritual. Recently, Valvano addressed the convocation on the need to attract boys to the religious life, raising the possibility that one day the community could die out.

According to one student, heads were bowed low by the end of the talk.

“We felt bad for them,” said David Moyston, a 17-year-old senior from Newark who has been at the school for four years and is the captain of its highly ranked fencing team. “I think it’s great that they ask, just like you ask the next class to come forward in sports. But I just don’t feel called to do the work.”

Wesley Tagoe, a 16-year-old junior who helps manage the student maintenance company at the school, said students have noticed the increased push by the monks.

“They’ve really been driving it home,” Tagoe said. “For most kids, it goes in one ear and out the other. It could stick in your head sooner or later. For me, I may not be disciplined enough.”

Other students said they want to marry and have children. Only one student interviewed, 14-year-old John Garner of Newark, said he felt a “yearning” for the monastic life. Garner, too, has thoughts of raising a family, but he said he has resigned himself to letting God make the decision.

Valvano said the absence of new recruits from within the ranks puzzles and troubles his fellow monks.

“It’s especially painful and confusing to the great monks working in the school,” he said. “They say, `Wait a minute: I don’t attract one guy every five years to try it?’

“I think a question like `What’s wrong?’ rings in the hearts and minds of the monks and is a source of pain, confusion and disappointment. It is to me.”

Valvano said the community is particularly anxious about attracting a boy from among the African-American or Latino students, who account for 85 percent of the student body. Old yearbooks dating back to World War II show an all-white, all-Catholic student body, and all the monks but one elderly man are white.

The Rev. Boniface Treanor, a 1947 graduate, has seen numerous changes in his four decades as a monk. He remembers a time in Benedictine circles when listening to the radio was considered a “silly and pernicious habit.” Today all the monks own radios.

Treanor said the complexity of American society distracts too many students today from hearing their call.

“You worry about it,” he said about the shortage of recruits. “You wonder what God is saying to the community, the church and the world. You wonder what you can do about it.”

DEA END CHAMBERS