What could happen when a group of male religious digs in for life’s duration?
SECURITY — There is good and ample food; clean neat rooms; private bathrooms that a maid cleans. Meds paid for; utilities, paid for; pocket money handed to you; doors locked to keep unwanted souls out. Your car has its sacred parking space, so designated for your use only.
PREDICTABILITY — There will be Mass and prayer at the same times five days per week. The same cook and cleaning lady will attend to your daily needs. Weekends are as dull as any other day. The only difference is that there are no set times for meals or prayers. Both are “on your own.”
Lunch and dinner will be available in buffet arrangement –neatly by-passing the familial custom of passing food to one another; you just have to be concerned about filling your own plate. Whatever fraternal communion occurs when family members eat together does not have to occur.
No one will call for you to help and no one will disturb your morning and afternoon hours much less your after dinner time. The TV will be on after dinner showing “Wheel of Fortune.”
Tedium, boredom, dullness, sameness, all work to blunt your spirit.
THERE IS LITTLE SENSE OF PERSONAL MISSION. NO MATTER WHAT YOUR AGE, THERE IS NOTHING TO DO. NO WORK, NO PLAY.
Since no wives or S.O.s live with us and no children or grandkids are around, there will be nothing to impinge upon our self-centeredness. Monads in our cubicles behind closed doors.
Religious –how?
Institutionalization — like globalization makes us all homogenized.