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I was looking for a movie called “Into Great Silence” that is a movie about some kind of monastery, where there are still monks whodoes live a speechless live in every 6 days of the week.
This monastery I was looking for I was able to find a bit later and is called Grance Charteuse but anyways just by accident I came across to an youtube movie video presenting the life of some Roman Catholic Cathursian Monastery located in the heart somewhere in Italia.

The movie was quite an interesting one for me to see because I was not having any idea about the Roman Catholic monastic life;

Just as I expected the severity of the monastery life in the Roman Catholics monastery is a way less than the one in our Orthodox monasteries.
The monks life there looks a bit artificial from what I’ve seen and monks try to live in confort which in direct contradiction to the teaching of the holy fathers, who said that those who is living in confort is not a real monk.

Some of the Holy fathers in our Orthodox Church, many of whom by the way are also holy fathers in the Roman Catholic Church has said that even strive for confort kills the monk and makes the monk idle sluggish in both his physical appearance and in his spiritual life and also kills the monks spiritual fruits.

The veneration of to the patron saint of the monaster was quite strange to me. Of course I realize that as an Orthodox Christian my expectations are for a bit more raw, since the Orthodox Christinity is quite more hard and I would say real one than the Roman Catholicism.

Anyhow the videos were a good learning point for me on how Roman Catholicism’s monastic life goes so I decided to share it here on my blog with the hope that somebody with profound interest into Religion and Christianity might benefit of it, so enjoy:

What is really striking me is the monks dress, they’re dressed in white!
One major difference I’ve noticed between this Cathusian Roman catholic monks order and our Orthodox monks is they wear white and our monks in the Orthodox Church wear always black dress.
Another difference between the Roman Catholic Monks and our Orthodox ones is the dress hoods, the orthodox monks had a simple hat instead of a hood.
Also the altar in the Roman Catholics is open where everybody could gaze straightly to the Holy Throne where the bloodless sacrificied is offered by the priest, whether in our Orthodox temples the Altar is enclosed by altar walls and there is a curtain which is being pulled on and off throughout the Orthodox Holy Litirgy.
Apart from that I should admin the nature nearby the monastery is really amazing!

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Tags: Visiting a Roman Catholic Cathusian monastery movie

This entry was posted on Sunday, December 5th, 2010 at 2:49 pm and is filed under Christianity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.