Back in their prepodcasting days, Father Peter Funk and his Benedictine brothers at Monastery of the Holy Cross knew exactly to whom they were chanting. Between two and five devotees turn up each day for mass and the seven prayer services they offer at their Bridgeport cloister; the Sunday mass draws up to 30. At a recent Thursday night Compline service, I was the only nonmonk in attendance. But they’ve found a wider audience since taking their service online last December. Father Funk hasn’t checked listener statistics in a while, but he enthuses about the numbers anyway: “The last number I know was from the first week and that was seven. It’s probably a lot more. We have listeners in England and Ontario–those are the people that have written. And in both cases, actually, those are Anglican priests.”
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While a gulf divides the brothers from the rest of the world, they consider the podcast to be in line with their monastic tradition. “Monks have tended to be at the forefront of technology–but that kind of ceased being the case in the 16th or 17th century,” Funk says. “In the middle ages, monasteries were places where learning took place, copying manuscripts–Christian and classical books. In terms of architecture and agriculture, monks have been highly experimental and forward-looking. So even though we dress in a funny way and sing chant that’s 1,200 years old, we’re not deliberately antimodern. That is just the discipline of living in a tradition.
