Monks’ building plan riles ranchers

Associated Press

MEETEETSE, Wyo.

Plans by a group of Roman Catholic hermit monks to erect an outsized monastery in northern Wyoming have pitted neighbor against neighbor and aroused debate with religious undertones.

At the center of the controversy is a remote ranch where the Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel want to build a 144,000-square-foot French Gothic-style monastery and coffee-roasting barn. The monastery will feature a church that seats 150, with one spire rising 150 feet.

The proposal triggered a clash between ranchers who live miles apart, trying to protect their quiet, rural open spaces, and the hermit monks who live a secluded, Spartan life of prayer and meditation and are looking for more room to accommodate their expanding order and maintain their privacy.

And it’s forced the monks to abandon temporarily their seclusion as they seek permission to build.

The plan has cleared a planning-and-zoning board but still needs approval from Park County commissioners, who will discuss it Oct. 5.

The monks now occupy a small monastery about 40 miles east of Yellowstone National Park.

They belong to an order rooted in the 16th century that requires they sustain themselves through mostly manual labor. They dress in handmade, full-length robes, sleep in small, individual housing units called hermitages with no radio, no TV, no Internet. They raise and grow most of their own food, funding their operation by making and producing their own brand of coffee called Mystic Monk. They market mugs, bag clips, T-shirts, travel mugs and a CD of Gregorian chants over the Internet and with mail- order catalogs.

The Rev. Daniel Mary created the Wyoming monastery in 2003.

And the order is growing. The original two members now number 18. They occupy about 40 acres nestled in the Beartooth Mountains.

To maintain their seclusion, the monks have their eyes on a 2,500-acre ranch about 50 miles away in a rugged area with creeks fed by looming mountains. The area has few roads, a few widely dispersed ranch homes, a few scattered oil and gas wells.

They plan to build a monastery mainly of stone with 30 separate hermitages for monks, a small dormitory for men in training to become monks, a commons area and a church.

Ranch owner Dave Grabbert, whose family has owned the property since 1938, has agreed to sell to the religious order, and he describes the two monks he has met as personable, intelligent and “just decent guys.”

“I don’t care if they’re Hindus, Buddhists or what they are, but being decent people, that’s really a plus in this day and age,” Grabbert said. “Not everyone is.”

Some of his neighbors object to the sale, citing concerns about traffic, wildlife, water — and questioning whether the massive stone structure fits with the rural landscape.

Alan Siggins, chairman of the Park County Planning and Zoning Commission, which unanimously approved permits for the project, said he’d heard rumors of anti-Catholic comments, but none surfaced during the public hearing.