"I was brought up in a tradition that classified involvement with “worldly things” like competitive sport, the media and the world of arts and entertainment as something Christians should abstain from. The idea reflected the injunction that good Christians should be “separate from the world”… What I have come to realise is that Christians cannot cocoon themselves in cotton wool, be imprisoned in a monastery or live in a self-perpetuating community on some idyllic Pacific Island. Our calling is to live in this world, whether it is as a professional sportsperson, a talkback host, a top-billing musician, a model or newspaper publisher, so that people know we are different. Different but not peculiar. A person to be respected, but not ridiculed." (my emphasis.)
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| La Grande Chartreuse Monastery |
Firstly, monks and other religious are not “imprisoned” in monasteries and cloisters: they stay there of their own free will, dedicated to their God-given vocations. It has been said that if God means for you to enter religious life, no one and nothing will keep you out, while if he does not mean for you to stay in religious life, no one and nothing will keep you in.
