"We built our web site for two reasons," says Brother Mary Aquinas of New Mexico's Monastery of Christ in the Desert. "First, we needed to find a good, creative and human work for our brothers, which could make use of all of their talents. And second, we wanted to be able to share with the friends of the monastery a little bit about monastic life and spirituality and about our own monastery. " Located about 75 miles north of Santa Fe, the monastery is home to some two dozen Benedictine monks. They have been active on the Web for the past 18 months, offering a site containing a rich mix of information about the lives and traditions of Benedictine monks, featuring hand-painted illustrations. Besides offering an introduction to the Catholic church, the site serves as a recruiting tool, presenting a how-to (and why-to) guide on becoming a Benedictine monk.
Interspersed are the more mundane pages of monastery news (which is unfortunately out of date -- the latest news, from October 11, leaves the reader hanging without knowing, for example, whether construction on the new cells for the brothers will be completed in a timely fashion) and a gift shop that lets you order books, icons and rosaries.
Perhaps most importantly for the monks, the site represents an unprecedented chance to interact with the outside world while remaining secluded. "We get an extraordinary number of hits for a little monastery -- at one point I think we were getting 10,000 hits an hour -- which means that a large number of people are able to learn about and experience a bit of our monastic life without actually disturbing us," notes Brother Aquinas. "If that many people paid physical visits to the monastery, our life would be destroyed."
-- Reported by David S. Jackson