I am/was the senior Oblate at CTK Abbey. I have been a member for 20 yrs. I cannot tell you the anguish I have been thru since right after Christmas.
Dear friend:
The holy Patriarch of Western monks, St. Benedict, will not suffer his true children, who have fought so hard to maintain the holy faith, to be abandoned.
The wretched lies that the monks have said are really astounding, but not astonishing.
Abbot Leonard would have never consented to such a thing. If he had made such a decision, he would have left a
hand-written testimony thereof. Would not these monks have already presented such a docuмent in their desperate attempt to validate their betrayal as being "blessed" by the late Abbot? But that docuмent does not exist, because there was no such "blessing," no such decision on the late Abbot's part.
They have abused the Holy Rule's chapters on obedience and humility in trampling upon their own Father Abbot's authority and in causing their fellow brethren to leave. They are unworthy of their habits, of Saint Benedict, of the Holy Rule, and of the late Abbot.
Another evil they have perpetrated: they had closed the Abbey against the Oblates, who are really members of the monastic community and have a strict right to the Abbey Church, and thus showing what disdain they had for the Benedictine Order, which has ever shewed paternal solicitude for the lay Oblates.
But don't give up, as Lighthouse replied. The monastic community can be restored, and the work of Abbot Leonard will go on. He would not care so much for the physical property of Christ the King Abbey, but would dedicate his entire energy in providing for the Monks, Sisters, lay Oblates, and the faithful in general, another Chapel for Mass and the Sacraments, and to re-establish the monastic community.
Please be assured of my prayers.