The Wall Street Journal visits Clear Creek Abbey

The three-day American holiday weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal featured an article on the front page of its "Review" section looking at "a burgeoning movement among traditional Christians" to create "their own small communities".

It could have said "community", as the piece focused almost entirely on the work of the Benedictines at Clear Creek Abbey.  The article began:

"When the first few monks arrived in Hulbert, Okla., in 1999, there wasn't much around but tough soil, a creek and an old cabin where they slept as they began to build a Benedictine monastery in the Ozark foothills. Dozens of families from California, Texas and Kansas have since followed, drawn by the abbey's traditional Latin Mass -- conducted as it was more than 1,000 years ago -- and by the desire to live in one of the few communities in the U.S. composed almost exclusively of traditional Catholics."

Clear Creek Abbey was recently visited by Raymond Cardinal Burke for the latest Benedictine ordinations.  Cardinal Burke, who has traveled to the monastery previously for ordinations, stayed to hear the first Mass of the newly ordained and received their first blessings.

The full Wall Street Journal piece highlighting Clear Creek, linked above, is available to subscribers to the paper, and we respect that copyright, which means we cannot reproduce the entire article. But the writing of Ian Lovett is worth a read if you have access to the paper's website or print edition.  Several families in the article talked about moving near Clear Creek, drawing "inspiration from the Catholic Land Movement of the 1920s, which extolled an agrarian life as closer to God." Four beautiful photos (by Max Whittaker) accompany the text, which contains quotes from Dom Philip Anderson, O.S.B., abbot of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey.

We assure you this is not fake news.