Page 5 - Priorities #40 2008-March

SMB: So we just have a few questions for you, well, maybe a little bit more than a few. Where did you grow up?
FM: I grew up in Newark, New Jersey and I went to a Benedictine school in inner-city Newark. When I was a young man growing up it was my first real solid connection with the Benedictine lifestyle. Then I went to New Hampshire for college at St. Anselm College and after graduating from college I decided I would try joining the monastery. I liked what I saw and what the monks were doing with students there. I thought it might be a good lifestyle for me so I figured I would try it... and I’m still trying.
SMB: Are you still connected to the high school in Newark, New Jersey?
FM: In some ways I am. It’s gotten to be a rather famous high school now because it’s an inner-city school. It closed for a short while in the 70’s because the school could not be supported by the clientele in the city of Newark. Since that time though they reopened it after about a year under a new headmaster, Father Edmund, and he managed to get the school started on a very strong course. It’s mostly minority students now and has a wonderful athletic program as it did when I was a student. They’re often getting state titles and sometimes national titles in sports like soccer and fencing and wrestling.
It’s just a good place. So every once in a while I go down there and meet some of the monks and some of the students. I went there a couple years ago for my 50th anniversary from graduating from school and it was really wonderful to see the great strides they had made in working with kids from the inner city.
SMB: Did you always want to be a monk?
FM: Not really. I went to college after graduating from St. Benedict’s and I began my college career as a biology major. I really liked biology and I wanted to be a medical illustratrator because I was pretty good at drawing. When I discovered that biology majors had to know an awful lotof math I decided that perhaps I would
be much better served as an English major. So I majored in English throughout college graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in English. It was at my senior year that I was looking over possible options. After I had graduated I decided that I would join the monastery and see if was a lifestyle that would be good for me — it turned out to be pretty good.
I decided that I would join the monastery and see if was a lifestyle that would be good for me — it turned out to be pretty good.
SMB: A little birdie told me that you once ran a bohemian style coffee house. Can you tell us a little bit about that experience?
FM: I’ve always been interested not only in music but all kinds of things that are creative. While I was teaching at St. Anselm College in the 60’s I saw it was a time when coffee houses were very popular with young people. I was very interested in the music and the poetry and the many other things that were possible. I really wanted to give the students who had talent a kind of forum in which to express that talent.
So we started this coffee house. It was more of an instant coffee house than anything else. We put up walls and sectioned off different parts of one of the large rooms to create an atmosphere that would be really conducive to students being able to get up and to present their interests and skills. I was also very interested in cultivating audiences that would allow students to get up there whether they’re really, really good or really not that good and present what
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