Circling the Square

A few hundred yards up Memorial Drive, jammed in between a swank apartment house and the Boston Elevated stockyards, towers a neo-rom-anesque stucco structure, a bastard of medieval and modern simplicity. It is the retreat of the Cowley Fathers, black-robed brothers of the Order of St. John the Evangelist, who have come to seek heavenly peace on the fringe of the State's No. 2 industrial city. It is from here that the fathers set out on their nation-wide pilgrimages to preach the Episcopalian gospel; it is here that a good many world-weary sinners--ex-convicts, professors, journalists--have spent a quiet week of spiritual refreshment.

A streamlined bit of old-world charm, the monastery is furnished with the ultra-modern frugality which is considered chic in profaner abodes. White stucco-walls of a peculiarly warm tone, a few austere paintings (not all religious), and plain dark furniture (not all antique) are as suitable to monkish taste as to "The Home Beautiful." The brothers' wholesome fare is supplied from a flashy kitchen with air exhaust, at a cost of 141/2 cents per meal (attention Harvard Dining Halls). Their cells are considerably smaller, but lighter and cleaner than those across Boylston Street. Enterprising fathers can climb on the belltower, where boxing gloves have been seen to peep out of a dark corner.

The brothers of the Society of St. John the Evangelist are Catholics in faith and tradition, but for historical reasons they deny papal authority and dislike being lumped together with the Roman Church. They hold five services a day, and take their meals in silence while the Father Superior reads from the Scriptures to take their minds off their plates. Malicious tongues have it that they are sometimes overzealous in conforming to the Catholic ritual; and it is related that the late Cardinal Hayes warned a blundering altar boy that his faux-pas might soon be adopted by "the brothers of St. Mary the Divine." But the Episcopalian fathers aver their complete freedom from the stiff-necked formalism of the Papist Church.

The daily routine of the brothers is strictly regimented. A Latin call awakes them at 5:40, but they are human enough to spend 45 minutes--presumably in bed--before they appear in chapel for the first office. Most of their day is given up to prayer, studies, spiritual reading, and outside calls. Every novice is required to take a weekly one-hour walk in company of a father to whom he is assigned.

But the life of the order of St. John the Evangelist is not always one of monotonous spirituality. In 1932, for instance, a devout believer is reported to have sent the fathers two cases of beer, as a token of his gratitude to God for the repeal of Prohibition. The fathers promptly celebrated; unfortunately so did a party in the apartment-house next door. According to the tale, the party eventually addressed their neighbors as "swizzling monks", and the brothers leaned out of the window to reply. Their exact answer has never been recorded.