The CLOSING of a MONASTERY.

 1. The visitation of a monastery.
     A visitation by a religious General was always a fun day. Guests from other countries come to visit the monastery. We entertain them; bring them around the island. Celebration here and there. Then they make a report on the monastery and leave. Then the next visitation comes after five years. 
     But this one visitation was different. It was frightening. The visitator, an Abbot General meant business. He was a Liturgist and author of several books on the topic. 
     We don’t really know the whole story but at the end of the visitation, a threat hung. The monastery was going to be closed unless the monks put their act together. Visitations were going to be more frequent until the visitator was satisfied with the conduct of the monks. The older monks were disturbed. What will they do if the monastery was closed. They were old and cannot train themselves for new jobs. 
     From the discussions with the Abbot General it appeared that the reason for the threat was that the community was not monastic enough. In other words, the community was not Catholic enough. Not Catholic enough? These monks had been monks for years. They have all finished their theology. Some of them are professors of theology. The monastery had been in existence for a hundred years. They even have a splendid Liturgy and every corner of their monastery shows Catholic arts. And they are not Catholic enough! Unbelievable. Until the Abbot spoke about the four visible signs of the true Church mentioned in the Nicene Creed and further explained by the Fathers of the Church.  When the Abbot General explained the four visible signs, the monks realized they really did not have them. And I saw we did not have the four visible signs.
    We took for granted that we were Catholics for countless reasons without using the true foundation of true Catholicity, the four visible signs. We were even running a Catholic school. How did we make our students Catholic? Well, we did not convert our students to Catholicism. We did not know how, how can we. We simply took it for granted that our students were Catholics. 

2. Everybody is like those monks.
    Most Catholics are like those monks. They are baptized into the Catholic Church, they grow up in Catholic parishes.They study in Catholic schools. They marry catholic partners. They attend Catholic masses and are buried in Catholic cemeteries……but without checking if those things are really Catholic. Is that Mass really Catholic? Like those monks, everybody is just taking things for granted that those things are Catholic. 
     Yet the Creed tells us that what is truly Catholic have four visible signs; One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic.  

3. The monk who tried.
     The monks listened to the teachings of the General on how to form a truly Catholic monastery so they can exhibit the four visible signs. He said, begin with the fourth visible sign, Apostolic. Teach the people all the teachings of the Apostles as found in Scriptures and the Epistles. Then get the correct interpretation of those apostolic teachings from the Fathers of the Church. The, the General reminded the monks that this procedure is found in the last 
chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict. 
     He continued, stick to this activity, and then put what you learn into practice. As you gradually put these teachings into practice the monks will show the sign of Catholicity. If you continue putting more apostolic teachings into practice, the monks will show the sign of Holiness, And when they are about to complete their obedience to all the apostolic teachings, the monks will show Oneness or unity. 
     The monks begun to think; the reason they are not One or united is because they are not holy. The reason they are not holy is because they are not Catholic. And the reason they are not Catholic is because their doctrines are not Apostolic teachings.
     Well, that was simple. The procedure had been explained in the last chapter of the Rule of St. Benedict; ‘study Scriptures, study the institutes of St. John Cassian, study St. Basil and the other Fathers of the Church. St. Benedict was right. Start with the fourth visible sign and work backwards. That’s the way to do it.

4. St. John Chrysostom wrote that the spiritual state of a monastery reflects the state of the whole Catholic Church. God made it such so that we do not have to study the whole Church to find out its state. With the monastery that was about to be closed, it is evident that all religious institutes are making the same wrong assumptions. Everybody is thinking that they are Catholics just because they belong to a religious congregation. But they have never check the matter. 
     After the lecture of the Abbot General, the monks checked on some parishes, some dioceses, some religious secular groups and found out that like them, these other entities are not Catholics because they do not have the four visible signs. None of these other entities had ever bothered to check if they were really Catholics. This is the state of the entire Catholic world. Everybody had presumed that they are Catholics without proof. 
     
5. The Pope is the head of the Catholic Church.
     As head of the Catholic Church, is the present Pope Catholic? When the Abbot General gave his lecture he clearly showed that Pope John XXIII, the Pope that time,  was Catholic using the four visible signs from the Creed. 
     Mastery of the four visible signs will enable anyone to detect if someone is truly Catholic or not. Having learned from the General it was easy for the monks to see that John Paul I, Paul VI, John Paul II and Benedict XVI were Catholics. 
     But when it came to Pope Francis and his new Curia, they do not have any of the four visible signs of true Catholicity, except for Cardinal Sarah.

6. After 43 years.
     The monks followed the advice of the Abbot General and started putting into practice the fourth visible sign of the True Church by mastering the writings of the apostles as found in Scriptures and as interpreted by the Fathers of the Church. They are still hoping to begin showing the third sign in their monastery, Catholic. And that is 43 years after the threat of closure and after the lecture. But it is not the same monastery but an entirely different monastic community. 
     This story is being told to show the grand erroneous assumption of most Catholics that could result in their losing their souls. It is raised so that all may make the effort to sit down and find out once and for all if we are Catholics or not. And the only way to check that is by using the four visible signs mentioned in the Creed.