Why would 6 men need any help [to make a 2000 square foot addition to the priory]? The parishioners do everything and the prior does not lift a finger (and the six men) and he is complaining? I wish I had 5 men to help me.
Readers must be astonished that monasteries could've been
built in totally unsettled locales [×]
by mere monks--and rebuilt--from stone, using
mediæval construction technology:
• as magnificent and eventually huge as Monte Cassino
• as challenging as Citeaux [@@@] or Clairvaux [@@@@@]; or
• an environment as severe as Chartreuse [@@@@] of the Carthusians.
But
wait! There are important lessons to be learned from Florida
cracker-houses about construction that can make the summer
subtropical climate tolerable. That can be creatively combined with the modern
ish concrete-pad technology that's so well-established in Florida. Not only is
concrete-block technology practically universally available, but Florida also has quarries for
coquina-rock near St. Augustine (St. Johns Co.), and for more ordinary stone near Ocala (Marion Co.).
Maybe if SSPX is newly determined to indulge in
modernist ‘
oecuмenism’, they should arrange to have their clergy trained in
building construction by
Habitat for Humanity".
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Note ×: "totally unsettled locales" meaning locales completely lacking civilized inhabitants, e.g., wood-workers and stone-workers.
Note @: Cassino survives in modern Italy, in inland Lazio (class.
Latium), near where an imaginary coastal perpendicular from W.-coastal Gaeta would cross the Liri (River) approx. 1/4 way N.W. across the peninsula.
Note @@: Cluny (est. 910), in Burgundy.
Note @@@: Abb. St. Robert's Citeaux (est. 1098), in Burgundy.
Note @@@@: St. Bruno (of Cologne)'s Chartreuse (Fr. Alps) (est. 1076) of the Carthusians.
Note @@@@@: St. Bernard's Clairvaux (class.
clara vallis: "valley of light") (est. 1115), originally the "Valley of Wormwood".