Monks Protest Proposal for a Firing Range Next Door

Benedictine monks here are protesting a plan by the Police Department to build an outdoor firing range next door to the contemplative order’s Prince of Peace Abbey.

Abbot Charles Wright, who heads the abbey, says the constant rat-a-tat-tat will destroy an ingredient essential to the monks’ life of prayer and devotion to God: silence.

“Silence invites us to transcend this world,” Wright said. “Our whole way of life would be disrupted by a firing range. We would hear every shot, particularly when they start using automatic weapons.”

The firing range would be within 2,500 feet of the abbey, down a hill in what is known as Wire Mountain. Wright is concerned that to help pay the cost of construction the city would open the range to other police agencies, which would make for even more noise.

Police officials acknowledge that possibility. But they insist that berms and fences would muffle the noise to a level below what is acceptable under the city’s noise ordinance.

“I don’t have anything against the monks,” said Officer Rich Davis, the range master. “They have their views; we have our needs. It’s not a luxury. For the safety of the public and our own officers, we have to train with firearms.”

The 170-officer department lost its lease on a firing range several miles away. The owner wants to develop the property, and has given the police until October to leave.

The Planning Commission sided 7 to 0 with the police over the monks. The monks have appealed to the City Council, and are employing a two-prong strategy.

First, they are praying that the council will overturn the commission. If that fails, the abbey has retained a lawyer.

“We’re new to politics,” said Wright.

City officials like the site near the abbey because it is already owned by the city. The city has received a $150,000 federal construction grant toward the estimated $900,000 cost. The range would be open seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 10 p.m.

Founded by the Catholic Church in 1958, the abbey sits on 130 acres of lush hillside property in the city’s San Luis Rey Valley, bounded on the north by Camp Pendleton.

On a clear day, the 25 monks have a panoramic view of the Pacific Ocean, from San Diego’s Mt. Soledad on the south to Catalina Island on the north.

Wright notes that the monks have no beef with the Police Department, nor any objection to firearms training. The monks allowed the police to put a communications tower at the abbey and to use the abbey as a command post during Y2K planning.

Similarly, relations between the monks and the Marines at Camp Pendleton are good, said Wright, who served in the Army before joining the religious life and has been an auxiliary chaplain.

“We think of ourselves as the prince of peace but that does not make the Marines into the prince of war,” Wright said. “We prefer to think of them as the neighbors who handle their problems differently than we do.”

Wright, 66, who has been at the abbey since 1964, believes the institution may be paying a price for having been so quiet, so other-worldly in the past.

Public officials, he said, seem unaware that the abbey plays host to thousands of people each year who attend retreats and conferences, and that the facility is the collection spot for a daily delivery of food to the poor of Tijuana.

“We’ve kept such a low profile, they really don’t know what we have up here,” he said.

Once accepted into the order, the monks remain for life. They make their own plywood coffins, and 10 are buried in the abbey cemetery.

“Death is not scary to us,” Wright said. “We know it’s what we’re here for. ‘Nobody gets out of this life alive,’ as Brother Benno used to say.” Brother Benno, noted for his work feeding the poor, died in 1992.

Life in the abbey is not bound by a vow of silence, though the monks spend their days in study--the abbey has a library of 40,000 books on religious topics--and prayer. Six times daily the monks--ranging in age from 24 to 94--gather for prayer. Each has chores tending the property and its 17 buildings.

Some meals are taken in silence, though sometimes a monk reads aloud from a book considered uplifting.

They believe the Oceanside police should do their firing at ranges at Camp Pendleton. Indeed, 56 state, federal and local law-enforcement agencies use those ranges, according to base officials.

But Oceanside police say the long drive to the Marine ranges and the uncertainty of scheduling make that impractical. Officers need to be close to the city to respond to emergencies, Davis said.

“If we only shot once or twice a year, [Camp Pendleton] might be something we could look at,” Davis said. “But it just doesn’t work out. The monks have to understand that.”