Monastery of Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek

The completed section of the monastic compound.

Our Lady of the Annunciation of Clear Creek Abbey or Clear Creek Abbey is a Benedictine Abbey in the Ozark Mountains near Hulbert, Oklahoma.

Clear Creek Abbey was founded in 1999 by monks from the Abbey of Fontgombault, France, itself founded in 1091. Monastic life at Fontgombault was re-established in 1948 by monks of the Solesmes Congregation, which has 760 monks in 31 monasteries, mostly in Europe. Clear Creek is the second monastery of the Solesmes Congregation in the United States; the first is a house of nuns at Westfield, Vermont.

Clear Creek Abbey, which in February 2010 gained Abbey status, uses the 1962 Roman Missal. The choir is well-known for its Gregorian chant. Its first abbot, as of 2010, is Dom Philip Anderson, who had been the prior when the abbey was a priory. He comments, "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 currently actively recruiting, as it looks to expand from 22 monks (as of 2003) to its full capacity of 60-70. The monastery is also actively fundraising, having raised $4 million (as of 2003) of a target of $32 million.

Origins

The monastery can trace its roots to the Abbey of Fontgombault in France. Many young American Catholic men, seeking to live the full Benedictine life, went to monasteries throughout France in the late 1970s and 1980s, most notably to Fontgombault. In 1999, these same men, now monks from Fontgombault, established a community near Hulbert, Oklahoma, at the invitation of Bishop Edward James Slattery. Until the church is finished, services will be held in the crypt. It became an abbey in February 2010.

See also

• Communities Using the Tridentine Mass

External links

• Clear Creek Monastery official website
• Official website of the Abbey of Randol, another offshoot of Fontgombault
• Thomas Gordon Smith Architects: building the monastery
• 2003 Washington Times Article on the monastery
• Article about the founding of the monastery
• Another article about the monastery's beginnings
• Article about the Kansas professors whose students founded the monastery
• Article about their educational approach.
• Tulsa World article on Brother Joseph-Marie Owen raising sheep