Clear Creek Priory

Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Abbey or Clear Creek Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey in the Ozark Mountains near Hulbert in Cherokee County, Oklahoma. It is located in the Diocese of Tulsa.

Origins

The monastery traces its roots to the Abbey of Fontgombault in France. Thirty-one American Catholic men, seeking to live the full Benedictine life, went to Abbey of Our Lady of the Assumption at Fontgombault, France, which is a monastery of the Solesmes Congregation.Hinton, Carla
"Oklahoma monks' Spartan life is Christian 'witness to the world,'"
''The Oklahoman'', March 31, 2013. Accessed May 8, 2015.

In 1999, seven of these men, now monks from Fontgombault, along with six other monks from Canada and France, established a community near Hulbert, Oklahoma at the invitation of Bishop Edward James Slattery. Clear Creek is the second monastery of the Solesmes Congregation established in the United States; the first is a house of nuns at Westfield, Vermont. The monastery is being built in phases, and until the church was finished, Masses were said in the crypt.

Abbey Community

In February 2010, Clear Creek Abbey gained abbatial status. It uses the 1962 Roman Missal (Tridentine Mass)."D.C. Catholics join effort for Oklahoma monastery,"
''Washington Times'', October 31, 2003. Accessed May 8, 2015. The choir is well known for its Gregorian chant. Its first abbot, as of 2010, is Dom Philip Anderson, who had been the prior since the monastery's founding. He has said, “We just follow the old monastic life. We pray, worship and do manual labor and give counseling to people... There's a whole culture war going on and a series of disappointments with the Catholic Church in America. People look to this monastery as a new beginning, as a new element that has a solid backing in a long tradition of monastic life.”

Clear Creek is now actively recruiting to its full capacity of 60-70 monks. As of 2003, there were 22 monks, while by 2013, there were over 40. Clear Creek currently houses 60 monks, and in recent years, a community of lay families have started to gather around the abbey.

The monastery is also actively fundraising, having raised $4 million (as of 2003) of a target of $32 million. After a large gift was received in 2009, construction on the church moved forward in 2011. The west façade, the nave, and the transept were raised to half their planned height. A roof was put over this new structure, allowing for its use as a church. In 2013, schematic architectural plans for the remaining buildings were completed. A contract for construction of the church’s eastern portion, or chevet, was signed on March 10, 2016.

See also

*List of communities using the Tridentine Mass

References

External links

Clear Creek Monastery official websiteThomas Gordon Smith Architects: building the monasteryArticle about the Kansas professors whose students founded the monastery
* ttp://www.lincolndiocese.org/op-ed/bishop-s-column/3966-monastic-silence Column about the monastery by a Nebraskan bishop*'
Interview with Dom Philip Anderson: We Must All Build Bridges
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Clear Creek
Benedictine monasteries in the United States
Communities using the Tridentine Mass
Christian organizations established in 1999
Christian monasteries established in the 20th century
Buildings and structures in Cherokee County, Oklahoma
Roman Catholic Diocese of Tulsa
Cherokee County, Oklahoma
1999 establishments in Oklahoma