What has changed that cloistered catholic monks (as communities) are not advancing technical sciences and engineering today?

What has changed that cloistered catholic monks are not advancing technical sciences and engineering today?

The schools of higher education are no longer restricted to monastic institutions. At one time, in Christendom, the monastery was almost the only form of education in Medieval Europe. Not today!

Many monastic orders developed over the years. In medieval Western Europe, monks spent their days praying and working. Their work would entail either writing or performing physical labor to maintain their home and grounds. Those who were literate would copy important texts to preserve them.

Until the High Middle Ages, monasteries were dominant centers for education. The High Middle Ages spanned from around the 11th century to the 13th century. Leading up to this time, the Catholic Church had become the dominant religion in Western Europe.

The university is generally regarded as a formal institution that has its origin in the Medieval Christian setting. Prior to the establishment of universities, European higher education took place for hundreds of years in Christian cathedral schools or monastic schools (scholae monasticae), in which monks and nuns taught classes. Evidence of these immediate forerunners of the later university at many places dates back to the 6th century AD.

With the increasing growth and urbanization of European society during the 12th and 13th centuries, a demand grew for professional clergy. Before the 12th century, the intellectual life of Western Europe had been largely relegated to monasteries, which were mostly concerned with performing the liturgy and prayer; relatively few monasteries could boast true intellectuals. Following the Gregorian Reform's emphasis on canon law and the study of the sacraments, bishops formed cathedral schools to train the clergy in Canon law, but also in the more secular aspects of religious administration, including logic and disputation for use in preaching and theological discussion, and accounting to control finances more effectively. Pope Gregory VII was critical in promoting and regulating the concept of modern university as his 1079 Papal Decree ordered the regulated establishment of cathedral schools that transformed themselves into the first European universities.

Learning became essential to advancing in the ecclesiastical hierarchy, and teachers also gained prestige. Demand quickly outstripped the capacity of cathedral schools, each of which was essentially run by one teacher. In addition, tensions rose between the students of cathedral schools and burghers in smaller towns. As a result, cathedral schools migrated to large cities, like Bologna, Rome and Paris.

Syed Farid Alatas has noted some parallels between Madrasahs and early European colleges and has thus inferred that the first universities in Europe were influenced by the Madrasahs in Islamic Spain and the Emirate of Sicily. George Makdisi, Toby Huff and Norman Daniel, however, have questioned this, citing the lack of evidence for an actual transmission from the Islamic world to Christian Europe and highlighting the differences in the structure, methodologies, procedures, curricula and legal status of the "Islamic college" (madrasa) versus the European university. - Medieval university

Today, secular universities outnumber both monastic and other religious universities combined. What started out as monastic schools of higher education has been taken over by secular universities.

Some monastic communities may still make advancements in technical sciences and engineering, natural sciences such as in agriculture today, but they are less well known.

Take the example of beekeeping at Buckfast Abbey

Beekeeping

Buckfast Abbey monastic produce shop Brother Adam (born Karl Kehrle in 1898 in Germany, died in 1996) was put in charge of the Abbey's beekeeping in 1919, and began extensive breeding work creating the honeybee now known as the Buckfast bee. Brother Adam had to replenish the bee colonies as 30 of the monastery's 46 colonies had been wiped out by a disease known at the time as the Isle of Wight Disease, but later called "Acarine", all the bees that died were of the indigenous Old British Black bee (a now extinct British strain of the A. m. mellifera). The 16 hives that survived were of Italian Ligurian origin (A. m. ligustica). At the request of the government, Brother Adam helped in restocking the British Isles with his disease resistant Buckfast bees. Today the breeding of pedigree Buckfast bees is regulated by the Federation of European Buckfast Beekeepers (G.D.E.B.) in over twenty six countries with numerous breeders.

We should always keep in mind that technical sciences and engineering is secondary to a monks primary studies. The primary studies would naturally be of a theological nature: God, the sacraments, holiness and so on. A monk’s primary concern is the contemplation of things Divine.

Other influences that added to the move from the monastic styled school universities to state universities were the introduction of the printing press, the use of the vernacular language instead of Latin and the now famous Reformation.

In modern times, the Jesuit Order seems to have taken up the studies of technical scientific studies and monks have returned to their original way of theological studies.

Take the Vatican Observatory as an example.

The Vatican Observatory (Italian: Specola Vaticana) is an astronomical research and educational institution supported by the Holy See. Originally based in the Roman College of Rome, the Observatory is now headquartered in Castel Gandolfo, Italy and operates a telescope at the Mount Graham International Observatory in the United States.

The Director of the Observatory is Brother Guy Consolmagno, an American Jesuit. In 2008, the Templeton Prize was awarded to cosmologist Fr. Michał Heller, a Vatican Observatory Adjunct Scholar. In 2010, the George Van Biesbroeck Prize was awarded to former observatory director, the American Jesuit, Fr. George Coyne.

Mount Graham International Observatory