Podcasts, Painting, and Beer
My friend and former student, Katie Warner, just did a focus on lay Catholics who are helping to revive Catholic culture. See the article here. I’m glad that Katie included my book, The Beer Option,...
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Beer Review: Tynt Meadow English Trappist
The Beer Option–the use of beer for evangelization and cultural renewal–continues to unfold. In particular, the footprint of Trappist beers, the flagship line of monastic brews, has grown throughout...
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Brewing Monks: A List of the World’s Monastic Beers
Monks created brewing as we know it, with the first large scale breweries in Europe and many advances to brewing techniques and technology. There were thousands of brewing monasteries, but then...
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Monasticism in Ireland: Old, New, and Renewed
The early Middle Ages rightly can be called the Age of the Monks and the title fits in Ireland even more than anywhere else. Ancient Ireland did not have cities and, with its tribal organization, the...
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Beer, Saints, and Song: Drinking and Temperance in Ireland
This is the last of my posts reflecting on the Beauty of Faith Pilgrimage to Ireland. As author of The Beer Option, which presents the Catholic way to drink as rooted in feasting, fasting, and...
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Cluny: The Lost Capital of Medieval Culture
Wine, Romanesque architecture, and the monastic life, all reached their high point in the Middle Ages, tucked away in the province of Burgundy. You may not have heard of Cluny, but, from its humble...
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The Spirituality and Mission of a Benedictine Oblate
St. Benedict, detail from Fra Angelico’s “Crucifixion with Saints,” 1444 “Listen, my son, to the teaching of the Master,” Benedict exhorts his monks in the opening line of his Rule. Benedictine monks...
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Modern Benedictine Saints in the Making
Poussin, “St Frances of Rome” 1657 My last post focused on saints who converted from Protestantism. This post looks at another angle on the saints, modern saints from the Benedictine tradition....
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The End of the Beer Option? Thoughts on the Closure of Spencer Trappist Brewery
Many of us were excited for the first American Trappist brewery back in 2014 at St. Joseph’s Abbey in Spencer, Massachusetts. I was inspired to write The Beer Option: Brewing a Catholic Culture...
View ArticleBenedictine Byzantium?
I have two great spiritual loves that, on the surface, may not seem compatible: Byzantine liturgy and Benedictine monasticism. When you look deeply, however, surprising connections emerge between...
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