ARCHIVES: MONASTIC COMMUNICATION

MONASTIC COMMUNICATION: In the earliest years of the founding of our Abbey in 1878, communication with our mother abbey (St. Meinrad in Indiana) and grandmother abbey (Maria Einsiedeln in Switzerland) was accomplished primarily through the mail (which took lots of time) or sending a telegram (much quicker but requiring travel to neighboring large cities to send it). Since the monks were out in rural Arkansas, modernizing our communication means was always a priority. In the 1920’s the monks were able to invest in short-wave radio that would prove vital to our missionary work in neighboring states. Fast forward to the 1960’s when we had priories in Nigeria and Belize and the short-wave proved an effective and quick means of communication. Communication with those priories was instant, versus the lengthy time to send mail or a telegram, or the costly means of international telephone calling. In recent years you could still see Br. Anselm’s short-wave radio antenna that would span from the monastery to the boiler chimney. Today, the monks still try to keep up-to-date in communication because our supporters, alumni, students, and partners are now stationed around the world. Fiber optic cable connections and teleconferencing have thankfully allowed our Academy to especially continue to operate right through the pandemic. To that end, today we communicate with our monks and supporters around the world by using postal mail, email, SMS texting, instant messaging through various apps, and video conferencing (Zoom, Google Meet, Skype, Facetime, etc). Here is a photo from our archives showing Fr. Gregory Kehres (1883-1962) next to our short-wave radio in the late 1920’s. Fr. Gregory attended St. Louis University, Notre Dame, and the University of Chicago where he pursued studies in science, chemistry, and physics before joining the faculty of our academy. Our monks were already teaching STEM in our Academy before it ever became popular. We monks continue to live out our ancient monasticism in a modern world by keep abrest of communication means just as we have done for 1,500 years... be it through parchment, codex, passenger pigeons, the printing press, telegrams, postal mail, telephone, short-wave, emails, or teleconferencing!  UIOGD!