Wherever there’s a rule, you’ll find
a guy who wants to break it, even in a monastery. For people like this, there have to be
consequences. Otherwise, the order of
the community falls apart. Worse still,
the monk himself may lose his vocation. Saint
Benedict’s first response is to reason with him, but if that doesn’t work, the
monk needs to see in some practical way that his disobedience is affecting the
whole community. As a last resort, the
abbot may decide that it is better for the community—indeed, better for the
monk himself—if he spend some time alone.
By modern standards, this sounds
severe,[1] but
considering that the Rule was
composed at a time when you could lose a hand for stealing, and homelessness
was rewarded with a brand on the forehead, the penalty of excommunication is
surprisingly moderate. Notice too that
Benedict doesn’t excommunicate someone for a mistake, or even for misbehavior. Thoughtlessness, impulsivity, ignorance…these
aren’t what he’s afraid of. The abbot
should only exercise this authority when the offense is deliberate and
rebellious.
Today
we often misunderstand excommunication. We
tend to think of it in secular terms the way we might think of a prison
sentence or a fine. We wonder, for
example, why the Church didn’t excommunicate more Nazis during the Second World
War. But excommunication is something a
superior only does when he still believes he can bring the disobedient
Christian back into the fold. It’s not really a punishment, therefore, it’s a
wake-up call—and a chance to atone for the harm that one has done.
Have you ever got the
impression that someone was mad at you, but you had no idea what you did to
cause it? You end up walking around all
day trying to guess what you did wrong.
Worse yet, have you been in a situation where you angered someone, but
didn’t find out they were upset until days later? These situations are doubly frustrating
because there’s no way to set them right.
Saint Benedict has no interest in holding a secret grudge. When someone does something wrong, you tell
him straight away. You tell him twice in
private, then you tell him publicly. It’s
a blunt system, but simple, and, ultimately, charitable. It’s better to be openly angry than politely
resentful.
[1] Though, as Philip
Jenkins points out in The New
Anti-Catholicism, most organizations—and certainly all businesses—enforce
some kind of behavioral standards on their members (p. 116).
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