When Brother Frederic Collins arrived at the abbey of Gethsemani, he was a product of his upbringing. A businessman with a degree in business, he was uncritical of U.S. free-market capitalism. Then he met Merton.

Around the Felician world, gripping news trickled out from their convent in Livonia, Michigan, last March, of sisters becoming sick and being hospitalized.

“It is necessary that knowledge becomes practical through listening and welcoming of the least ones, the fragile ones, and the one who is considered discarded by society,” the pope said in a message to moral theologians today.

All day these monks work, pray and brew great beer.

It is some comfort to recall that Catholics have already survived many difficult periods like our own.

Letters on discerning out of religious life, Julian of Norwich and Catholic schools in the time of coronavirus.