Abbot Philip Anderson: “Liturgical tradition is the trasmission of prayers and rites of the Church from the Last Supper until this day”
Aurelio Porfiri
Dom Philip Anderson is the abbot of Our Lady of Clear Creek, a Benedictine Abbey in Hulbert, Oklahoma, United States. I talk with him about tradition.
For people who do not know your monastic community, can you give us some background?
“Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey is a Benedictine community belonging to the Solesmes Congregation. It was founded in 1999 from the Abbey of Our Lady of Fontgombault in France and is located in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. Having been erected as a simple priory in 2000, Clear Creek became an abbey in 2010. The community currently counts 61 members.
Like the other monasteries of the Solesmes Congregation, Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey, having devoted itself from the outset wholly to the service of God in the hidden life, is to be counted among the institutes entirely ordered towards contemplation. By virtue of their vocation, the monks devote themselves to God alone in silence and in solitude, in constant prayer, and willing penance.
There is a certain story about the origins of our monastic community. In the 1970s, at the University of Kansas, three professors inaugurated a Great Books program (Pearson Integrated Humanities Program) with a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities. Through their study of Western Civilization, a number of these students became interested in monastic life and found their way to Notre-Dame de Fontgombault Abbey in France. Some entered the novitiate, hoping to be part of a new monastic foundation in America someday. Beginning in 1991, Dom Antoine Forgeot, abbot of Notre-Dame de Fontgombault Abbey began to make exploratory trips to the United States, accompanied by Dom Francis Bethel. After visiting many sites in several states and after many hesitations, a property was found in 1998, in the diocese of Tulsa, Oklahoma. And here we are!”
Who joins your Monastery?
“We accept Catholic men, usually between 18 and 35 years of age. Most of them come from the United States, but several of our founding members are French or Canadian. We also have monks from Wales, Spain, Australia, and New Zealand. Some are from families that have been attending the Traditional Latin Mass, but others were raised in parishes having the post-conciliar liturgy.”
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