Our Lady of Spring Bank Abbey
Monasterium B.M.V. ad Fontem | |
Very Rev. Bernard McCoy, O.Cist. | |
Architecture | |
---|---|
Functional status | closed |
Site | |
Coordinates | 43°55′20″N 90°42′46″W / 43.92222°N 90.71278°W[1] |
The Abbey of Our Lady of Spring Bank, founded in 1928, was an American monastery of
History
In the years following
In looking for a place to build their monastery, the monks received an invitation from
Following
In 1985 the monastic community made the decision to relocate in an effort to find a setting more conducive to their lives of contemplation than the city in which they lived for nearly six decades.[3] They settled upon the town of Sparta, Wisconsin, where they acquired some 600 acres of land, which was divided into forest lands and agricultural tracts leased to local farmers.[1]
A new monastery was built which would be able to accommodate 20 monks. Membership in the community, however, stayed around half that for much of the subsequent era. Like most monasteries, Spring Bank Abbey struggled to find ways to support itself. Under the leadership of an administrative prior, Bernard McCoy, O.Cist., who came into office around A.D. 2000, the abbey launched a discount printing and toner operation, known as LaserMonks. Profits from this endeavor reached into the millions of dollars and McCoy became widely known in the business world and the media, both for his business success and as a face of compassionate entrepreneurism, flying around the country to give talks in a donated airplane.[5]
As a result of a number of factors, by 2010 profits from these enterprises had begun to diminish severely and the business was closed the following year. Whether from this or from other factors, the decision was made in 2011 by the monastic chapter to dissolve the abbey.
References
- ^ a b "Cistercian-Abbey-Our-Lady-of-Spring-Bank". Wikimapia.
- ^ "Spring Bank Abbey: A Monastery Photo Album". Spring Bank Abbey.
- ^ a b Treat, Stephen, O.Cist., Br. "Ordinariate Life: Some Parallels from the Experience of Exempt Religious". The Anglo-Catholic.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Our Lady of Dallas History". Cistercian Abbey of Our Lady of Dallas.
- ^ Johnson, Annysa (November 16, 2011). "Rural Wisconsin monks fold printer supply business, abbey". Milwaukee-Wisconsin Journal Sentinel. Retrieved March 26, 2015.