Health
A Peek Behind the Veil
Ever wonder just what does go on behind the doors of a cloister? Monks and nuns remain reluctant to turn their monasteries and convents into tourist attractions, but are increasingly willing to let the Internet in -- for a few carefully chosen peeks.
Tune in to St. Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, England, where Father Cuthbert Brogan help set up a visitors' site complete with sound effects in which the pages of a heavy manuscript are turned while the story of the monastery's history unfolds. Businessmen as far away as New York say the virtual reality tour of the chapel and cloister is an excellent way to "chill out" at lunch.
That spurred on the nuns of the enclosed Tyburn Convent in London to launch a site they think is even more dramatic. It opens with the good sisters singing the "Hymn of Comfort" while the tour guides visitors through the grille dividing the public pews from the nuns.
More simply, there is the 12th-Century Parkminster Charterhouse, an enclosed community of 24 monks in the southern part of England. The monks, although they are hermits, have indicated no objection to the cameras nosing around their wood-burning stoves and straw bedding -- but Father Cyril Pierce, the only resident with access to the Internet, says the others "don't have the foggiest" notion of what is going on anyway.
Tune in to St. Michael's Abbey in Farnborough, England, where Father Cuthbert Brogan help set up a visitors' site complete with sound effects in which the pages of a heavy manuscript are turned while the story of the monastery's history unfolds. Businessmen as far away as New York say the virtual reality tour of the chapel and cloister is an excellent way to "chill out" at lunch.
That spurred on the nuns of the enclosed Tyburn Convent in London to launch a site they think is even more dramatic. It opens with the good sisters singing the "Hymn of Comfort" while the tour guides visitors through the grille dividing the public pews from the nuns.
More simply, there is the 12th-Century Parkminster Charterhouse, an enclosed community of 24 monks in the southern part of England. The monks, although they are hermits, have indicated no objection to the cameras nosing around their wood-burning stoves and straw bedding -- but Father Cyril Pierce, the only resident with access to the Internet, says the others "don't have the foggiest" notion of what is going on anyway.
