Monastery of the Holy Cross

In his important chapter, “Summoning the Brothers for Counsel,” Saint Benedict stresses that in deliberations on significant monastery business, all monks, even the youngest should be summoned.  Anticipating objections, he adds, “The reason why we have said all should be called for counsel is that the Lord often reveals what is better to the younger.”  This consideration is sometimes held up as evidence of Benedict’s fairness and inclusivity.  Surely it is this, but following a recent discussion I had with an oblate who has a lot of experience working in bureaucracies, I have a few other avenues to offer.

It is fruitful to compare this line with Benedict’s primary source, The Rule of the Master, where the Master writes, “The counsel of all is to be sought because sometimes there are as many diverse opinions as there are people–all at once the best advice may well be given by one from whom it was least expected, and this may redound to the common good–and from the many opinions the one to choose will be easy to find.”  The principle here is that it is best to get as many ideas as possible: at least one of them will be reasonably good.  Note, however, that the Master sees that this utility is achieved only occasionally (’sometimes’), whereas for St. Benedict the younger ‘often’ has the better idea.  In a community where rank is reinforced at every turn, this is a significant insight on Benedict’s part.

We all know that organizations and communities can go stale if new blood is not regularly infused, and that often the newest member has the freshest ideas.  In a monastery this also holds, but it is not an easy sell to adopt the idea of a newcomer when so much emphasis is placed on tradition.  Acclimation to the monastic life takes a long time, and there are areas of judgment that newcomers typically lack because they cannot see contingencies that experience illuminates.  Nevertheless, their counsel is to be sought.

I would like to suggest that it is not merely a matter of fresh, new ideas, but of simple observations of truth within the community that can come to the youngest or most recently arrived.  While it is true that the newest can’t see certain contingencies, it is perhaps equally true that entrenched power structures and relationships of mutual benefit, whether the healthy kind or the codependent kind, can take on the force of ‘reasonableness’ to the beneficiaries, who are typically the more settled members of the monastery.  We tend by habit to treat better those who have more to give us, or who can make our lives more unpleasant if we cross them.  Especially coming out of a democratic society in which people-pleasing is important to getting ahead, persons tend to cultivate the pseudo-virtue of identifying where the power is at and flattering that power, further entrenching it.  In these cases, the green newcomer is someone who can’t hurt you, and as a result is often the person who sees more of the reality of given personalities and relationships, like the slave who holds the clothing of the bathing queen.  The queen is not embarrassed to be undressed before the slave because the slave doesn’t count.  We can perhaps get the best picture of a person by how he treats those who have no power over him.  In this way, a young, nearly powerless member will often sense, even if intuitively, who can be trusted and whose self-interest is clouding the argument.  In cases where entrenched power obscures the truth of a matter, the outsider is potentially the proverbial boy who sees that the emperor has no clothes.  An abbot who is able to listen for this (and of course we should mention the danger of the abbot using the newcomer to beat down any rival power structures; but given the theoretically absolute power of the abbot, this shouldn’t normally be a terrible concern) can often gain insight that might not otherwise be surfaced by those who’ve figured out how to get what they want out of the system.  This is then an opportunity for all of the brothers to reassess their understanding of their monastic renunciations.