my family porch: 13 Oct. 2011 St. Hilaire Abbey and Views of Carcassonne from the road

Friday, October 14, 2011

13 Oct. 2011 St. Hilaire Abbey and Views of Carcassonne from the road

This navigator has more problems understanding the Google maps directions. I’m looking for a street named Rampe de l”Eglise and in the town of Leuc I see a sign that indicates the Eglise is up the hill. I suggest we stop at the town parking lot. We eat a picnic lunch while we overlook a river. We walk back to the sign. We find a church but not an abbey. We return to the car and start to follow some signs. We think someone in this town may have a good laugh at the tourists who try to follow their abbey signs for they direct us through the narrow streets with blind turns and across the narrowest bridge to L'Eglise (which just means Church). This bridge would remind you of the bridge between the fields on Grandpa Taylor Dunn’s farm. When we came back across the bridge, Patrick noticed a weathered sign that directed us to St. Hilaire 8 Km away. We finally find the correct place.

At Abbaye de Saint Hilaire, monks no longer live here and it does not have its own priest. Only once every two months are services held here. The tour was self-directed with the audio guides in English. We took pictures of the cloister,

the church interiors,

and the abbot’s room with its ceiling paintings of naughty pictures.

The young man who works for the patrimoine (heritage site) has as many questions for us as we do. He speaks excellent English but I do not have many answers for him because they were questions I never thought about before. He is concerned with the illegality in France of asking people about their religion where they have three: Christian, Jewish, and Muslim; and yet we can freely discuss religion in America.
Why do Americans separate Church and State, and yet we have “In God We Trust” on our money?
Perhaps our cultural situation is different because USA has not had a State religion, as the Catholic Church has been in this region from time to time. Thank you, Thomas Jefferson.
Another explanation of a cultural difference may be there has not been a Crusade on our soil that destroyed all Cathars. If you want to leave a church you are free to start one of your own and have two or three Baptist churches in your village.
I can answer how many churches there are in my community and what denominations they are with a Facebook post when I return home. I also send a link to Don’s Flicker photos to this Abbey, and several French people comment on his pictures.

Monks first learned to make sparking white wine that predates champagne at L'Abbaye de Saint Hilaire. Blanquette de Limoux is no longer made by monks here; but it is still made and sold at a business down the road. Their wine is sold by the bottle as we expect. What we did not expect to see were customers who bring in their jugs for refills from vats with a hose and nozzle for the wines they prefer for their table wines. Yes, that was another cultural shock and I had to take a picture.