Well not yet, but since this photo with the Prinknash community was taken in 2019 at least five have left!
A comment from "Thinking Catholicism" blog post Farnborough Abbey Concerns makes the point.
Only Dom Benedikt remains from this article in Portsmouth Diocese publication Viva Voce
What can we say about those who do stay?
This is difficult and reasons may be varied and complex but the continuing "Farnborough Concerns" is that Abbot Brogan clones are being created that reflect and potentially effect the worst of R.C.C. abuses that are suffered and borne in varying degrees of silence by countless victims and are time bombs waiting to explode!
It is said that it is an ill wind indeed that does not blow some good and if lock down has prevented any more devout men from joining Farnborough and being scandalised, abused and having their faith destroyed, then that at least is some good! So you can imagine my deep disappointment in discovering this article featuring Dom Benedikt. I do not speak the language but have been informed it is rather light or even lightweight but if we can allow ourselves to glimpse the pious young Catholics we once were, then this is just the sort of thing that might begin a correspondence leading to an invitation to visit and join.
How many more (Slovakian) vocations are the church prepared to let Brogan et al destroy?
How many more mother's sons ruined?
"Any man considering joining a community with that rate of attrition
would be well advised to reflect on the likelihood that he will end up
leaving for the same reasons as all the others."
The other thing apparent in the picture at the top is that nobody has been at Farnborough and stayed for decades. This means the current members are all of relatively recent entry (both Dom Thomas and Gregory in the picture were in other forms of religious life before joining), and for a community founded in the 1940s you only have Stephen left from the seventies, Cuthbert from the eighties, and Thomas from the nineties.
ReplyDeleteAt the time of the great divorce after the abbatial election in the nineties there were about fifteen in the chapter. Only David, Anscar, Be David, Bede and Wulstan have died of that chapter. Everyone else has left.
The only charism the monks of Farnborough seem to have is leaving Farnborough, and on that basis Cuthbert definitely doesn't have what he calls the Farnborough thing.
John Berry.