By Susan Gallagher

Carmelite monks known widely for their gourmet coffee sold under the “Mystic Monk” label are brewing plans for construction of a monastery, with Gothic architecture, on a ranch near the northern Wyoming town of Meeteetse.

The monastery would be built with donated money on part of a 2,500-acre ranch that the New Mount Carmel Foundation Inc. intends to buy on behalf of the monks, said Father Daniel Mary, prior for the Wyoming community of Monks of the Most Blessed Virgin Mary of Mount Carmel. The real estate deal is set to close on Oct. 1, he said. County special-use permits are among the requirements for the monastery to move forward. The Carmelite plan is under consideration by the Meeteetse Local Planning Area Advisory Committee, which advises Wyoming’s Park County Planning and Zoning Commission.

“The goal has been to build a monastery for 40 monks, and we are designing that,” Father Daniel Mary said in a phone interview. As of mid-summer, the contemplative Carmelites of Wyoming were a community of 14 men, with four more scheduled to arrive within weeks. Father Daniel Mary said growth has been robust and he expects it to remain so, thus the need for new quarters.

“We want an agrarian life with cattle and horses and sheep and gardens,” he said. The ranch is a good place to live that way, he said, and it offers what the monastic community wants in terms of isolation and an environment for spiritual formation. The cloistered monks lead lives of prayer, study and manual labor. They are silent 23 hours a day.

“People think we must be austere and somber,” Father Daniel Mary said. “But when they meet us they say, `You guys are a fun group.’”

Present in Wyoming since 2003, the monks occupy an eight-bedroom house near Powell and operate Mystic Monk coffee as a means of support. They roast the coffee, then sell it by mail.

Washington, D.C., architect James McCrery, known for his design of Catholic Church structures, has produced drawings of the planned monastery. It would consist of a cluster of buildings, and would include small hermitages for monks who want to live as hermits and have the spiritual maturity it requires, Father Daniel Mary said. Novitiate cloisters for incoming men are planned, as well.

The Carmelites want to break ground next spring and move into the new monastery four years later, taking the coffee enterprise with them, Father Daniel Mary said.

“The monastery is not only for the monks,” he said. “It really is for the whole Church, for anyone who wants to come here and pray.”

Guest quarters are planned and with the Gothic styling, “you’re going to feel like you’ve gone back in time to some of those monasteries in Europe,” said the prior, who grew up on a Wyoming ranch. He returned to the state from Minnesota, where he entered the Carmelite community in 1991.

More information about the Carmelites and plans for the monastery is on the Web at www.carmelitemonks.org and www.thenewmountcarmelfoundation.org.


Published in The Montana Catholic Online, Volume 26, No. 8, August 20, 2010.