EXCERPT:
‘The Monastery’, a new reality TV show slated to air this month on the U.K’s BBC 2, has reportedly left a deep spiritual impact on its five male participants, one of whom, an atheist pornography producer, who gave up his trade and became a believer.
The men, none of whom are Catholic, spent 40 days and 40 nights living and abiding by the rules of a Catholic monastery in an effort to show whether or not the monastic life, instituted by St. Benedict over 1,500 years ago, still has relevance in the modern world.
GET THE STORY.
(CHT to the reader who e-mailed!)
Author: Jimmy Akin
Jimmy was born in Texas, grew up nominally Protestant, but at age 20 experienced a profound conversion to Christ. Planning on becoming a Protestant seminary professor, he started an intensive study of the Bible. But the more he immersed himself in Scripture the more he found to support the Catholic faith, and in 1992 he entered the Catholic Church. His conversion story, "A Triumph and a Tragedy," is published in Surprised by Truth. Besides being an author, Jimmy is the Senior Apologist at Catholic Answers, a contributing editor to Catholic Answers Magazine, and a weekly guest on "Catholic Answers Live."
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PBS has had a tendency to repeat BBC’s generally high quality “reality” programs. I hope they show this one. Or maybe it will be on BBC America for those of us with cable.
–arthur
Here is the BBC press release on the program. It sounds very interesting.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2005/04_april/22/monastery.shtml
And while seaching for that I found this very interesting article about a recent documentary piece the Beeb had done about another monestary
http://www.bbc.co.uk/insideout/eastmidlands/series7/monastery.shtml
–arthur