ABC-TV 2002
"Trappist"

Background Information
TRAPPIST is a one-hour documentary for public television that examines monastic life in the Western world as it is being lived at the end of the twentieth century. Trappist will probe the convictions and daily life, the music, the labor, the worship and the everyday difficulties and rewards of living in a close-knit, tightly-structured community of Roman Catholic monks from Mepkin Abbey, near Charleston, South Carolina.

As Trappists, the 30 monks of Mepkin Abbey lead a strict contemplative life that purposefully separates them from what modern culture proclaims to be essential elements of human happiness: parties, TV, sports, restaurants, fashionable clothes, homes, cars, vacations, even families. Mepkin Abbey is built on the ruins of a colonial rice plantation that was once a center of the slave trade. The name Mepkin is probably from the native Americans who lived in the South Carolina area before they were driven from the land. Mepkin's painful history echoes in many ways the monk's spiritual striving and reaches deep into America's spiritual past to dreams crushed and silent, to man's inhumanity to man, to the fleeting nature of material goods.
Trappist monks trace their history through 1,700 years of Western civilization. Monks have had a remarkable influence in our arts, education, science, and technology. But their solitude, contemplation, and humility seem out of place in today's world. The reality of a monk's life as it is lived at Making Abbey, a Trappist monastery in South Carolina, combines with startling and beautiful images of the past to explore how a monk fits into our modern world in this unique and revealing documentary.

Featuring interviews with best-selling authors: Thomas Moore (Care of the Soul), Kathleen Norris (The Cloister Walk) and Herbert Benson, MD (The Wellness Book).
The program will be shown on Sunday. December 1, 2002
Check your local TV station for the time.
To order a copy of this program or the companion book, visit: http://www.mepkinabbey.org/mepkin_gifts_heart.htm

Produced by Paulist Media Works and WTVI-Charlotte. Presented by the U.S. Catholic Conference of Bishops through the ABC-TV "Visions and Values" documentary series.