Outposts, Fortresses

Wimmer Wednesday. Boniface Wimmer’s early conclusions on mission development.

“Father Boniface points out further how once upon a time the conversion of England, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Hungary and Poland was, to a large extent, carried out by the Benedictine Order, and in such a manner that it lasted for centuries. This success, however, can be credited to the fact that the missionaries erected monasteries that stood like outposts and fortresses, where the contemplative and the active life were beneficially combined, where scientific studies, education of the youth, manual labor, and farming were engaged in, and from where a priestly ministry was carried out in all directions. What once was done in the Middle Ages might now be done again, and in no country more easily and better than in America, where there still were huge expanses of uninhabited land.

“’Were one to acquire a sizeable piece of land at a very minimal cost in the interior of the country, far from cities, and to erect a Benedictine monastery on it, it would soon become the center of a German colony. The new settlers would consider it advantageous to establish themselves near such an institution…'”

—From Boniface Wimmer, Abbot of Saint Vincent in Pennsylvania, translated by Dr. Maria Von Mickwitz and Father Warren Murrman, O.S.B., editor.