This may be a bit broad, but is it possible for a Southern Baptist to become a Christian monk or nun without converting to another denomination?
I guess what I’m really asking is are there “accepted” non-denominational orders out there that I can’t find on Wiki that aren’t necessarily considered fringe groups by mainstream Protestants? I’m pretty certain there are no Southern Baptist monasteries or nunneries, at least I can’t google any.
I presume if a Protestant converted to a Catholic or Orthodox denomination and showed good faith by studying up on the particulars of same for a while (in addition to other stuff no doubt), that would be kosher for acceptance into a traditional order, but here I’m wondering about orders that don’t require conversion.
Not to hijack my own post, but does anyone know what the opportunities for advancement are for a johnny-come-lately who in middle age converts to Catholicism? Are they hampered in any way in becoming clergy since they weren’t “born” into the denomination? Any converts ever get to be a bishop or cardinal?
I can’t answer anything about non-denominational monastaries or convents, but I can tell you that I had both a priest and a nun in high school who had converted to Catholicism as adults.
Monastic orders are a specifically Catholic phenomenon. In the East, monks are simply laymen who have taken solemn vows to live a monastic life. The earliest monastics were simply people who went off into the wilderness to contemplate God without the distraction of the world, and communal monastic living was a later innovation for people who couldn’t hack it alone.
If a Southern Baptist went off to live in a hut in the woods, and meditate on God 24/7, I don’t think any reasonable person, Catholic, Orthodox, or Protestant, would have a problem describing such a person as a monk.
Oh, and John Henry Cardinal Newman was an adult convert to Catholicism, and there are several Orthodox bishops who were adult converts.
Being a member of the episcopacy shouldn’t be looked on as an “advancement”, though. Bishops aren’t necessarily better or more advanced in the faith than priests or laymen; they are (in theory) merely men whom the Church has determined would be of greater use to the Church in an episcopal role than as a priest or layman.
Certainly in the Western tradition, monks and nuns generally live in community, and most of the monastic rules are drawn up to be lived in community. An indivdual acting in isolation, therefore, could only live a Western monastic rule in a limited or partial way, and I think it would be misleading to describe them as a monk or nun without qualifying the description to point this out. Hermit or anchorite might be a more appropriate term.
I would have thought, but I could easily be wrong, that community was a signficant element of the Eastern monastic tradition also. Even monks who live singly, as hermits, do so in the context of being spiritually united with, and spiritually supported by, other monks who are living similar lives. But I defer to yBeayf’s superior knowledge here.
I suspect that the closest you could get might be to join some branch of Buddhism. They might let you stay Baptist.
Part of the problem with a “non-denominational order” is the very nature of orders–a group of people who have renounced most worldly things for a common spiritual purpose. (Let’s leave the Third Order of St. Francis out of the discussion regarding renunciation of the world.) Since spirituality, prayer, and liturgy are generally linked pretty closely, a group that followed the liturgy of one denomination would be potentially off-putting to members with separate traditions.
Having said that, I will acknowledge that there is a group associated with the “Ecumenical Catholic Church” that follows the discipline of St. Benedict. Their liturgy follows Catholic practices (although I am pretty sure that they are (no longer) associated with the Catholic Church), but they claim to be open to any who wish to join them.
As presented, this seems a bit confusing. It is certainly fair to say that religious orders are a Western phenomenon (whether monastic or otherwise), but the earliest monastic communities are described in Egypt, Palestine, and Syria and St. Basil is sometimes considered the “father of monasticism.” There is a long tradition of communal monastic life in the Eastern churches, although they have not generated the “orders” such as the Benedictines, Franciscans, Dominicans, etc.
It is a significant part, but is considered lesser than the solitary life. There are two ranks to Eastern monasticism – the small schema and the great schema. All professed monks receive the small schema, but only those advanced in years and living a mostly solitary life receive the great schema.
Right, right. My point was not that Eastern monks don’t usually live in communities, but that there are no orders of monasticism, but just monasteries populated by monks. (Does such a thing exist in Roman Catholicism? Are there monasteries that are just monasteries, and not affiliated with an order?)
Not that I am aware. I didn’t think your post was in error, only that it might be confusing to someone who was unaware of the distinction you were making.
From a semantic (not theological) perspective, there is already enough confusion because the word monastic has been defined in some dictionaries as relating to a religious community, thus ignoring both anchorites and (what in the West would most often be called) either oblates or members of Third Orders depending on their lifestyle.
Actually no. There are Orthodox, Episcopalean/Anglican, and even Lutheran monastics as are commonly understood . The last is more rare, but they’re definitely out there.
Forgot about the Anglicans and Lutherans – they might have orders of monastics as well. But Orthodox definitely do not – there are just plain monastics, following various typika depending on monastery.
In Catholicism, there are also hermitic orders, whose members live a life of prayer and seclusion. Most are members of a holy order, but are not always so IIRC.
There certainly used to be, in Ireland. The Irish monastic tradition was quite distinct from the tradition on mainland Europe, with monks grouped around a leader but in a considerably looser organisation than would be found in mainland Europe, and with no formal orders or rules, and no formal or institutional links between different monasteries.
Over time this tradition was supplanted by the more mainstream tradition as religious orders founded monasteries in Ireland, or as existing monasteries decided to adopt one of the continental rules and affiliate with a religious order. But some monasteries of the older type survived until the seventeenth century - the last of then, I think, were sacked and supressed by Oliver Cromwell.
