Growing up Catholic in America my ideas about monks centered around what I had surmised from books and movies. They lived in drafty and damp seclusion usually in 12th century monasteries, even in America. They were called Father, Brother or Friar and wore hair shirts and equally scratchy brown sack tunics tied at the waist with a rope. They all had Moe Howard haircuts, sang Gregorian chants quite well and made some pretty darn good champagne.