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The article presents an examination into the historical and contemporary Benedictine missionary method of engaging the secular world and preserving culture for the good of both the Catholic Church and wider civilization. An overview is given of several periods in history where chapters of the Benedictine order aided both by adhering to values such as preserving cultural works regardless of content, offering a distinct communal life, and maintaining what the author calls an open intellectualism. Comments are then given taking these themes and applying them to possible work which the Benedictines can offer to contemporary 21st-century concerns of Catholic engagement with postmodernism.

The article discusses 20th century Catholic monk Thomas Merton's understanding of hospitality. It describes Merton's monastic disciplines at the Abbey of Gethsemani, the relationship between his hermetic asceticism and his welcoming of visitors to his hermitage, and his understanding of worldliness and engagement with the world as demonstrated in his spiritual autobiography "The Seven Storey Mountain." Other subjects under discussion include Merton's engagement with other religions, his prayer habits, and the mysticism expressed in his journal "Conjectures of a Guilty Bystander."