ST. BENEDICT PARISH PLEDGE: The Parish of St. Benedict at Subiaco has been integrally tied to our Abbey since 1878 when Fr. Wolfgang Schlumpf arrived from Indiana and celebrated the first Mass as the Prior of this new Arkansas monastic foundation. Only a few short months later the Parish and Abbey would also found a co-educational parochial school where classes were held for the German speaking children (St. Benedict Parochial School would exist until its closure in 1991). Over the years, the Parish has continued to mainly use the Church of the Abbey as their main place to worship. In turn, the Abbot has always made available to the Bishop the assignment of a monastic priest as the Pastor of St. Benedict Parish in Subiaco. Today the Parish maintains its own separate religious education center, parish offices, social hall, rectory, and a daily mass chapel. Still, for their main services (Masses, Confirmations, Baptisms, etc.) they continue to use the much larger Abbey Church. Just to show their incredible historical commitment to this Abbey/Parish relationship, we can venture back in time to December of 1927 when a fire destroyed over three quarters of the Abbey… which included our Church where monks and parishioners worshipped. As the Abbey began to envision a rebuilding effort of both the Monastery and new Church, it would be the parishioners of St. Benedict’s Parish that would step forward in 1928 and make a pledge of $40,000 dollars!
Using the US Inflation Calculator, we find that this pledge in today’s dollars would be equivalent to
$624,687.72… a simply amazing pledge for a small little rural parish! Fast forward to 1959 when the Abbey Church was finally being completed and we see that the initial pledge of $40,000 in 1928 had then gone up to $75,000. The parish was able to complete their goal by committing $50,000 in CASH, turning over the old parochial school building valued at around $14,000 (located then in what is now the parking lot west of the Performing Arts Center), and providing a few other small gifts. St. Benedict Parish truly merited the idiomatic phrase: “The Parish that punched above it’s weight!” Today the Parish numbers just over 200 families and has our monastic priest Fr. Mark Stengel assigned as it’s Pastor. The Parish and Abbey have been joined at the hip since 1878, and we hope to continue to be so until Christ's return! A note of thanks to Fr. Jerome as our Archivist who uncovered from our archives the original pledge back in 1928. UIOGD!