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Abbot Martin Marty and the Pursuit of a Monastic Family for the American Church
- U.S. Catholic Historian
- The Catholic University of America Press
- Volume 35, Number 2, Spring 2017
- pp. 55-77
- 10.1353/cht.2017.0009
- Article
- Additional Information
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Martin Marty (1834–1896) as abbot of St. Meinrad Abbey in southern Indiana introduced to his Swiss-American Benedictine community the monastic vision of kinship. Through original archival work, this study demonstrates how Marty's idea of the monastic "family" informed his campaign to return his religious order to the original vision of its founder, St. Benedict. Marty realized this vision through a debate on the vow of stability and two controversial reforms regarding monastic prayer and work, the latter inspiring a missionary paradigm of a "double family" among the Lakota on the High Plains. Marty articulated a distinctly monastic vision of kinship that anticipated both the twentieth-century Liturgical Movement and the Second Vatican Council's attempt to bridge the cloister and parish life in the American context.