For the Sake of Silence – Michael Cawood Green

FOR THE SAKE OF SILENCE, by Michael Cawood Green. Published by Umuzi, Cape Town. 2008. 558pp.

Reviewed by Michael Shackleton

‘Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.”

These familiar words introduce the poem Desiderata. They would receive a nod of approval from the monks of the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance who take a solemn vow never to speak except in extraordinary moments, so that they can fully devote their lives to peaceful prayer, contemplation and work.
It was into this order that Franz Pfanner, a secular priest and later abbot of Mariannhill, was professed in 1864 at the monastery of Mariawald in the Prussian Rhineland. Before long he was promoted to prior and novice master and then abruptly demoted.

In this “historical novel” (or “faction”)  For the Sake of Silence, Michael Cawood Green portrays him as a gruff and difficult character. His superiors recommended that Pfanner leave the order but he was determined to protect his Cistercian vocation and, at length, was permitted to start a new foundation, Mariastern in Bosnia. Such was Franz’s enthusiasm and energy that this new monastery thrived and a small town grew up around it where he was seen as the driving force. Going placidly amid the noise and haste was, it turned out, not an easy option for his restless spirituality.

This drive to be active outside the monastery was irreconcilable with his strict vows, and it is the principal thread that runs through the story. Life’s noise and haste were constantly to burst into Franz’s hours of prayer and penance, a contradiction compounded by his uneasy relationship with his superiors in spite of his vow of obedience.

He had blithely presumed, when settling into Mariastern, that the Trappist order would immediately establish the new venture as a daughter house of Mariawald. Probably displeased by his earlier differences with them, the superiors refused.

Green weaves a fascinating intrigue through the pen of Fr Joseph, a Cistercian monk and friend of Franz’s who describes the unease that he and members of the community feel about Franz’s liberal interpretation of the ancient and hallowed Rule that tolerates no exceptions.

Their sense of alarm intensifies when Franz accepts the invitation of the bishop of Port Elizabeth, James Ricards, to establish a new abbey at Dunbrody, a remote and barren spot in his diocese. Franz was still lawful prior of Mariastern, a decidedly odd circumstance, yet perhaps a manifestation of his longing to be free from his order’s tepid appreciation of his deep yet eccentric zeal. This was to have repercussions later.

Bishop Ricards, a man of ideals, schemes and splendid oratory, imagined that a successfully positioned Trappist abbey would be a beacon of Christian example to the surrounding Tembu people who so far had resisted the attempts by Catholic and Protestant missionaries to convert to Christ. This turned out to be a golden dream that swiftly faded into the void.

Bishop Ricards saw these monks, sworn to an enclosed life, as missionaries, which they certainly were not in the accepted sense. Yet Franz went along with this extraordinary inconsistency until his patience with the bishop’s gradual lack of funding and cooperation was spent. Some of the monks, fed up with living the strict Rule in this unfamiliar and unconducive landscape, abandoned the order.

Not long afterwards, authorities in Rome began to investigate Franz. The numerous conflicts that arise from now on make up the substance of Fr Joseph’s candid revelations as he traces the monks’ move to Mariannhill in Natal and the eventual settlement there in 1882. Like Mariastern before it, Mariannhill monastery became a booming centre of Catholicism, agriculture and industry for the entire region, with Franz at the helm.

The shadow of Franz’s superiors soon darkened and restrained his bright ambitions. Fr Joseph tells of suspicions and a divided religious community. However, after an official Visitator was sent to assess the problems at Mariannhill, the highest authority in the order at last accepted that Trappists could also be missionaries provided that they remained faithful to the Rule.

Franz, however, being Franz, continued to put more effort into missionary outreach than into the strict observance of the Trappists’ daily routine. This meant that his monks required an inordinate number of dispensations from the Rule. His concern was that the letter of the law must give way to its spirit in circumstances unforeseen by the Trappist Rule, in which the need for missionary work was more pressing than the need for the contemplative life. His rashness and ostensible disobedience rapidly brought about his suspension from office by his superiors. He moved to a remote outstation.

Yet the renown of Mariannhill quickly caught on in Europe where people were already aware of Franz’s exploits. It was now the biggest Trappist foundation of all, with more than 300 members. The Sisters of the Precious Blood, begun by Franz, were equally admired, and he, in spite of his superiors’ reservations, was esteemed as a true missionary of the Gospel. The monastery was visited enthusiastically by notables such as Mahatma Gandhi and Mark Twain.

The climax to the history of the Trappists of Mariannhill comes in 1909 when Rome separates the order from the new missionary foundation of the Missionaries of Mariannhill that would soon grow and spread around the world.

Green has given us a mix-and-match patchwork of fact and fiction, and moulded it with care into a fascinating saga that embraces revealing details of the Rule of St Benedict, which the Trappists observed precisely. How this Euro-centric model began to founder in the harshness of 19th-century Africa is very much part of the story.

The author’s research over ten years of intensive study and wide travel is repaid in a work that is sure to stand as one of the great South African writings not only for the local Church but also for a fuller understanding of life under colonial rule in a missionary territory.

Michael Shackleton is a former editor of The Southern Cross.