St. Thomas the Apostle Newsletter

Rebuilding too prohibitive

The Order of the Holy Cross has decided to sell the Santa Barbara property where the Mount Calvary Retreat House and Monastery was located, Prior Nicholas Radelmiller said July 14. "We met at our annual meeting of the entire order in New York in the middle of June and discussed all of this extensively," Radelmiller said in a July 14 telephone call from St. Mary's Retreat House. The brothers have resided there since a 2008 fire destroyed the 20,000 square-foot Spanish colonial-style Benedictine monastery complex.

Attempting to rebuild the monastery, established in 1947 and located on a ridge above Santa Barbara with a sweeping view of the Pacific Ocean, at today's costs was prohibitive, he added. At the time of the fire, Radelmiller estimated the loss of buildings and property in the millions of dollars.

Also influencing the decision was the order's static growth. "We are not sure that we're going to have enough people in the order in ten years to manage a house here," he said. While new people are joining the order, it is "not quite at the rate we would hope," he said. "We're not dying, but we're not growing."

Five monks continue the Benedictine order's ministry of hospitality at the St. Mary's Retreat House, said Radelmiller. There are about 40 brothers in the entire order, founded in 1884, in four houses in the United States, Canada, and South Africa.

Radelmiller said the order has spent "quite a lot of time thinking about what to do. It's not easy," he added. "Everyone, including ourselves, has got a lot of emotional history with the property and it's very hard to let it go. But it seems really to me the only thing we can do."

The fire was a major shock "and we were quite disorganized for awhile, getting ourselves oriented" to the loss of all personal possessions as well as the retreat center itself, except for a few small paintings and other items.

Sister Abigail, who managed St. Mary's Retreat House at the time of the fire and "very, very generously" invited the brothers to stay there, has rejoined the Sisterhood of the Holy Nativity in Ripon, Wisconsin, he added.

Meanwhile the brothers are managing St. Mary's Retreat House for the nuns, and "our guest ministry is moving right along," he said.

He said that OHC inherited St. Mary's guests and retained their own, and that their rhythm of life continues, praying the daily office, meals, quiet time and offering a ministry of hospitality to guests in search of spiritual sustenance.

"We've learned a lot about how to live with less than we had," he said. "A lot of those things we thought were important perhaps are not as important, so we're fine."

He said the order has received "an enormous amount of favorable comment thus far" about the decision to sell the property. "People realize it's a hard decision but that it's probably the right one."

By Rev. Pat McCaughan, National Correspondence for Episcopal News Service.