Frequently Asked Questions

Surely contemporary women find this life very outdated and oppressive?

It is true that the women who present themselves as candidates for monastic life today have many different attitudes from women who entered forty or even twenty years ago. They certainly have a lively awareness of contemporary women’s issues.

But the core values of monastic life - seeking God, prayer worship, solitude, obedience, humility, simplicity, work, hospitality - remain permanently valid. They are not in themselves oppressive, though at times the expression of some of those values has been interpreted in a way which was (or which seems to us to have been) oppressive. Sacrifice and self-renunciation are required of all who follow Christ - the daily taking up of the cross. But ultimately Gospel values liberate, they do not oppress.

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