From Catholic Online
By Alison Roncin
For more than nine centuries, Trappist monks and nuns have witnessed to the gospel of Jesus Christ through a cloistered, communal life wholly ordered to contemplation. Cistercians of the Strict Observance, also known as "Trappists" are an order of the Roman Catholic Church who founded their first monastery in the U.S. in 1848.
Cistercian presence in the U.S. has since expanded to include 17 monasteries across the nation. Yet recently, monastic membership has drastically decreased-50 percent since the 1940s-leading those 17 communities to explore more modernized means of fostering new membership.
