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MONKS AND MONEY: II
by Terrence Kardong, O.S.B.
III. THE ECONOMY OF ASSUMPTION ABBEY
My claim that by and large monks are not good at supporting themselves is surely borne out by the financial history of Assumption Abbey! As far as I know, we are the only Benedictine monastery in this country to suffer bankruptcy. That happened in 1924 and it was catastrophic. The monks were dispersed and the buildings stood virtually empty for four years until St. John’s Abbey of Collegeville, Minnesota, revived the place in 1928.
The story of that financial fiasco was complex, but it can be understood in its main outlines. The founder, Vincent Wehrle, attempted to finance the building of this large complex by taking advantage of the Homestead Act: people could claim quarter sections (160 acres) of land by building a shack, living in it for a few months a year, plowing up a few acres, planting a few trees and so on. Wehrle had his monks claim a few sections of land, which he assumed would soon increase in value. On the basis of that assumption, he was able to borrow enough money (about $350,000) to build our lovely church and quadrangle. Unfortunately, land prices dropped and we went belly up.
“Wehrle’s Folly” had nothing specifically monastic about it. At that time, lots of people overestimated the economic potential of North Dakota. We had plenty of company in our bankruptcy. Abbot Vincent might have moved more cautiously if he had consulted his monks about all this spending, but he felt that most of them were naïve young fellows who knew nothing about money. It now looks as if he was the naïvest one of them all. And his successor, Placidus Hoenerbach, made the problem much, much worse by speculating to try to bring down the debt. In the end, we owed about $1.4 million, an enormous sum for 1924 and a debt that no one could help us with.
When the Abbey was reopened in 1928, our credit in the region was next to zero. But Abbot Cuthbert Goeb was an extremely careful and clever manager of corporate finances. He refused to build anything with professional contractors until the mid-1950s, when the school had to expand or close. As it turned out, it probably should have closed since the debts we incurred in the period 1956-1961 (about $500,000) eventually forced us to close the whole educational operation at Richardton (1971). Nowadays, a paltry half a million does not look like a huge problem. But if you don’t have the money, and you don’t know how to raise the money, then it is indeed a problem.
So the school had to be closed and a lot of the monks went out to work at various teaching and pastoral jobs near and far. Many of them were already working in parishes, so that meant that over half the entire community was living and working outside the monastery. Whatever else one might say about that maneuver, it immediately changed the economic situation of the monastery. Consider the following fact: In 1971 we had no financial reserves. In other words, we were living from hand to mouth. We were probably one of the poorest monasteries in the country.
Why did the Abbey schools lose so much money? For a long time they did not, but that was because we lived so frugally. The fees were very low, but we lived a spartan existence. In those days, people in general had much simpler material needs. If we saw a dish of ice cream on Sunday, we were delighted. But the students who came to us in the 1960s expected more, and we gave it to them. Also in the 1950s and especially the 1960s more and more monks were sent off to graduate schools for advanced teaching degrees. Those degrees cost a lot of money, but we could not raise our fees at Richardton to compensate for that. What we really needed was an endowment of some sort, but we did not know that. We know it now, but it is too late.
Once we closed the school and stopped losing buckets of money, it is not surprising that our financial picture rather quickly improved. For the first time ever in our history we had enough income to build up some reserves in the form of funds for our health and retirement needs. Secondly, we have been able to set aside some funds for the education of our new monks. Last, but by no means least, we have been able to renovate many of our buildings as well as engage in systematic maintenance of them.
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Probably the most important result of our financial stability these past thirty years is that it enabled us to undertake the renewal of the Abbey church. Of course, most of this was paid for by donations from the capital campaign. But if the Abbey had been as economically weak as it was before 1970, this project could not have been undertaken. Moreover, the response of our friends to the fund drive for the church had significance beyond the project itself. For it showed that there is a solid base of supportive people out there who want to contribute to the works of the Abbey.
It is very important for us to know this, because it appears that we will have to depend more than we thought on the generosity of our friends. Why is that? Simply because it seems that our financial picture is slowly but surely slipping back into the red. From 1971 to about 2004, we finished every year slightly in the black; but for the past couple of years that trend has been reversed. This development is worrisome, but it is not too surprising. The cost of certain items of living such as health insurance and heating/electricity has continued to rise, but our earnings have also decreased a bit.
The main issue for us now has to do with outside salaries. About 40% of our entire income derives from the fifteen or twenty salaries of monks working as teachers and pastors outside the monastery. Looking down the road, and not too awfully far down the road, this number is almost sure to decrease. The reason is simple: the men are getting older and most of them cannot be replaced. This means that we must look for other sources of income. For many years we have wracked our brains for some kind of light industry that the home community might work in. But even that takes a fairly large corps of able-bodied men and we are not getting any younger. And so it seems that we will have to depend more on donations.
This prospect is not too welcome to many of the monks. At the meetings where we have discussed these matters, it has been common for individuals to express their reluctance to live on alms. Aren’t monks supposed to “live by the work of their hands?” Don’t we work hard enough to make a living? Why should we expect other people to support us? These are exactly the same questions that have appeared throughout monastic history. I will simply repeat that it is never simple for a monastic community to support itself, and sometimes it is not possible without outside help.
Come to think of it, it may be good for us monks to have to ask for money. True, the Christian monastic tradition does not encourage begging, but it does encourage humility. It could be that financial independence and freedom from worries over money are not the best condition for monks. Of course, it is very nice not to have to spend a lot of time agonizing over economics. But it can induce a general feeling of self-sufficiency, and even pride. “We don’t have to ask anybody for anything!” Yes, but no matter how financially stable we are, we still need to ask God for salvation.
To judge from the tone of the monastic newsletters that come into our reading room, most of the other monasteries in the country are also feeling the pinch. Most of the newsletters contain financial appeals of one kind or another. Apparently it is becoming increasingly difficult to fund religious communities. Of course, the individual circumstances differ greatly, but it would seem that the world economy itself is a big part of the problem. For example, any community that must engage in a construction project right now faces almost shocking costs. And the cost of health insurance is not far behind.
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Various bits of wisdom are passed on in the monastic community. Here, Bro. Placid (L.) teaches Fr. Thomas some fine points on how to braid palm branches. |
Bro. Jacob contemplates a pile of lead bars formerly used in our printing business. We are gradually selling off the equipment used in our printshop. |
Over the years, the Assumption Abbey Newsletter has not been devoted to fund-raising. It has not even been intended to promote public relations. Like it or not, this situation will now have to change, or at least be modified. The alert reader will no doubt have noticed that we now run a page entitled “Development Office.” This page will be written by Fr. Thomas, and it will be a regular feature. We do not think that one page out of eight represents a serious prostitution of our lofty ideals.
Of course, donations are not a new thing for us. Every year we receive some donations, but the numbers fluctuate, mostly due to bequests that are entirely unforeseen. We do not live in an especially affluent area of the country, so these numbers are comparatively modest. But they are still important. People do give us money. But we have now come to the point where we feel we must approach the matter of financial development in a systematic way. This means that we need to adopt a careful, long-term method of reaching out to the public with our needs. We do not want to be caught flat-footed by financial disaster as we were in 1924, and almost were in 1971. We need to take prudent and reasonable steps to prepare for our economic future as best we can. We do not know exactly what God has in store for us, “but God helps those who help themselves.”
We must offer people an opportunity of supporting our work in all kinds of ways, but especially with donations. This will not involve any kind of aggressive campaign, as was appropriate for the church project. But it does mean that we need to spend time, and also money, building up a sustained base of outside support. Fr. Thomas has been appointed Director of Development, mainly due to his fine work on the church campaign. He has gathered a Development Committee to help him, and they are currently working with a professional development firm on plans for the future.
Someone might object to the idea of calling in outside professionals to help with fund-raising. In view of our own economic history, this would seem like the only prudent thing to do. But is it really so complicated to ask people for money? Yes it is. Or at least it is hard to do it right. The art of fund-raising is like many other things of this nature. There are certain principles and methods that have proven effective over a wide spectrum of experience. We need to learn these things from experts.
Should we really get into permanent fund-raising? In my more cynical moments, I feel we should simply shut the place down rather than beg for help. But that is by no means a long view of the situation. What is at stake here is a century-old institution, one of the chief religious shrines on the Great Plains. It is also a cultural anchor in a region where there are all too few long-term institutions. In a sense, the monks are not the owners of this place, we are just the caretakers. We feel that the public has almost as much stake in the Abbey as we do.
The present situation of most monasteries seems to make it imperative that the monks and the nuns find a way to involve a broader range of people in their operations. We are not drawing novices like we once did, so if we are to continue to function as viable religious entities, we need to reach out beyond the confines of the official community. There will be need for increasing cooperation, but for the present what seems to be needed most is an increased level of donations.
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