UK: "Reality" TeVee: Reality monastery for BBC Two

http://tinyurl.com/9klty

02/05/2005

A new TV show has reportedly transformed the lives of those taking part.

The Monastery, a new experiment which saw five men, ranging from an atheist in the pornography trade to a former Protestant paramilitary, spend 40 days and 40 nights living with Roman Catholic monks in West Sussex.

The five underwent a spiritual makeover at Worth Abbey and the results will be screened as a three-part series on BBC Two later this month.

The programme aimed to test whether the monastic tradition still has any relevance to the modern world, according to The Telegraph.

The participants lived together and followed a disciplined regime of work, instruction, study, reflection and prayer. None of the participants was a Roman Catholic, but they shared meals with the monks, worked in the grounds and joined in daily worship, as well as following the monks' rules of silence, obedience and humility.

After the show atheist, Tony Burke, 29, became a believer and has now quit his job producing trailers for a sex chat line, Gary McCormick, 36, a former member of the Ulster Defence Association reportedly began to overcome his inner demons and Peter Gruffydd, a retired teacher, rediscovered the faith he had lost in his youth.

The newspaper reports that Nick Buxton, 37, a Cambridge undergraduate, has moved closer to becoming an Anglican priest, while Anthony Wright, 32, who works for a London legal publishing company, started to come to terms with a troubled childhood.

Worth Abbey's Abbot, Father Christopher Jamison, said that the monastery was delighted with the results.

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Who would of thought? :shrug:

This is reprehensible. Its brainwashing in a very real sense. And I don't use that word very often is connection to religion.

...but we'll be seeing this trumpeted in the Idiot Media as "proof" of religion's miracle-working powers. It'll be just like the "scientific experiments" proving that intercessory prayer made women more fertile, etc.

Was this experiment commissioned by "Reader's Digest," I wonder? They seem to run a lot of this nonsense.

And similar results...