|
Volume 34, Number 4 |
Richardton, ND 58652 |
October 2006 |
Photo: Br. Elias Thienpont, O.S.B.
MONKS AND MONEY
-
I: INDIVIDUAL POVERTY
The title of this essay may seem strange, almost an oxymoron. Monks are supposed
to steer clear of money, aren’t they? Saint Benedict begins his thirty-
Someone who is not a monk, but knows monks well, might wonder about this statement. Don’t monks have and use the same kinds of things that other people have and use? Certainly the monk has the clothes on his back, and he has a room with furniture in it, and he eats ordinary food. And then there is that watch on his wrist, and the car he sometimes drives, and the computer on his table and on and on. How can such a person claim to be following the Rule of Saint Benedict? If we examine the quotation given above, as well as the rest of Chapter 33 of the Rule of Benedict, we will notice that what is condemned is not use of goods as such, but rather the attitude that says: “This is mine and I will do with it what I please.” The monk must not say that.
Still, we might wonder what the monk’s vow of poverty is all about. Strictly speaking, the Benedictine monk does not pronounce a vow of poverty at his profession. But in fact such a vow is implicit in the promises he does make. Anyone who makes religious vows in the Catholic Church has taken a vow of poverty. Indeed, such a vow is simply included in the concept of Catholic “religious life.” Well, then, what is it? What does it entail? Is it the same for every Catholic religious?
If we have some acquaintance with the life of St. Francis of Assisi, we might wonder about this. Clearly, one of his basic convictions was the need to live a life of complete dispossession. He set out to follow the poor Christ by depending on the generosity of others for his daily sustenance. As far as we know, he and his earliest disciples did manage to live pretty much by this standard. Nevertheless, the official Church was never easy with Francis’ approach to religious poverty. And soon enough the Franciscans became embroiled in a long internal conflict between those who thought they must live without any possessions, and those who thought the community itself needed to have a stable patrimony. Very few religious Orders since that time have cared to repeat this interpretation of holy poverty.
Yet it cannot be denied that there is something very admirable about Franciscan poverty. The spectacle of a group of people choosing to “live from God’s hand” by depending entirely on the kindness of strangers, no one can deny that this is a demanding life! But we should notice also that there is nothing intrinsically Christian about it. For thousands of years the Theravada Buddhist monks of Southeast Asia have done exactly the same thing. Every morning they line the roads of Thailand and Cambodia and Vietnam with their begging bowls, and the Buddhist faithful respond with enough to keep the monks alive for another day. They see it as a way of joining in the spiritual journey of the monks without actually taking up their whole lifestyle.
Compared to this, the poverty of the Western Catholic monk or nun might seem pretty pallid. Does it even merit the title “poverty”? That is a very good question, because we should not throw words like this around loosely. What does it mean to be truly poor? No doubt there can be a broad range of definitions, but all of them come down to this: the poor do not know where their next meal is coming from, and they may not know whether they will have shelter for the coming night. From that point of view, we can probably even say that most Buddhist monks are really not poor. And there is another suggested definition that ought to be considered: the poor lack the education to improve their economic status. On this score, most western monks do not qualify. It is a rare monk who does not have a decent education.
Getting back to Benedict’s approach to poverty in RB 33, it is obvious that his emphasis is on dependency. The monk must not depend on himself for what he needs. It is hard to imagine anything more at odds with the capitalist system in which we live. In our society, people pride themselves on owning everything they need and depending on no one else. It is a point of honor with them, and they tend to disdain people that live otherwise. Isn’t this what we despise in Communism, that it teaches people to depend on the state for everything?
The flip side of the Benedictine monk’s dependency is the responsibility of the abbot and the community to provide everything that the individual members need for their daily living. Benedict devotes a whole chapter (55) to just this matter, and in it he repeats his curious little list of what the monks should be given: “cowl, tunic, sandals, shoes, belt, knife, stylus, needle, handkerchief, writing tablets.” Nowadays, we would substitute a rather different list, and surely we could argue about what is really needed and not just wanted. But the point is the same: for this system to work, people must get what they need. If they do not, we can expect that they will begin to “take care of themselves,” and that is the beginning of the end for monastic poverty.
At this point, the reader will perhaps be muttering to herself about infantilism. Doesn’t this kind of system run a considerable risk of promoting unhealthy dependency in its adherents? It certainly can. Many Benedictine monasteries (mostly of women) have experimented with an “allowance” system in which the members must budget their personal expenditures. No doubt this is done to make sure that the members “know what a dollar is worth” and also know how other people need to worry about daily life. Is it not an important part of adult responsibility to have to worry about money? If a monk is spared that worry, does he or she not risk missing out on a crucial part of “growing up”?
Actually, most of the people who join monasteries today have plenty of experience of making a living. They have held responsible jobs and have lived by their own resources. We do not need to teach them about that. But those of us who joined monasteries right out of school are a different story. We have never really been “on our own.” We may well need lessons from time to time on harsh economic reality and about how the “real world” lives. But it is still true that our monastic poverty is essentially not a matter of deprivation but of living from the common goods of the monastery. And there is no doubt that this has its advantages. In a sense, it is a “life free from care.” As John Cassian, the great fifth century monastic theologian put it:
In this way of life, then, there is no providing for daily work, no distractions concerning buying or selling, no inescapable worries about the year’s supply of food, no concern about the bodily matters that are involved in attending to the needs not only of ourselves but also of our many visitors, and finally none of the arrogance that comes from human praise, which is more unclean than anything else in the sight of God, and which sometimes brings to naught even the great labors of the desert (Conference 19.6,1).
The background for this remark of Cassian is the difference between the eremitical (hermit) life and the cenobitical (communal) life. He points out that the hermit, who is also a monk, does have to worry about his own livelihood. He does not have a vow of poverty and he must take care of himself. The cenobite, however, possesses nothing; but on the other hand he does not have to worry about such mundane matters such as food and clothing. Now, many people in our society would certainly like such a “life free from care”! They might not like having to ask for what they need, but when it comes time to pay the monthly bills, they would not mind being free from that.
But isn’t it really too good to be true? Doesn’t somebody have to worry about such
things as food and shelter and heating? Of course, and we will talk about that matter
in the third part of this paper. But in reality the individual monk also must make
economic decisions. In most of our communities, the monk must buy his own clothes
and other personal items. Obviously, there is a wide range of quality in these items.
A pair of Florsheim shoes costs a lot more than those you get at Pay-
Quite a bit depends on what you are used to. If you come from a background in which
people wear Florsheims and are wont to repeat the mantra “You get what you pay for,”
then you will probably be unhappy with Pay-
What is crucial is that the monk have a clear idea of his vow of poverty. To illustrate
this, take the following scenario, which almost every monk has experienced. At some
point in his life, usually a home visit, some well-
Well, alright, but the monk who has fully internalized the spirit of cenobitic poverty will cringe. How would this friend or cousin feel if someone were to give him a twenty and say: “Now this is for you! Don’t give it to your wife or kids!” Because the case is the same. The married man has no slush fund of his own, and the monk doesn’t either. Both of them are part of a body, and whatever they receive is for the body.
II: CORPORATE POVERTY
To begin this part, let me pronounce an axiom that I cannot exactly prove, but which has become more and more apparent to me as I read the history of Western Monasticism: “Monks are not Good at Supporting Themselves.” Now this may seem like a dubious dictum, since many monasteries throughout history have been financially well off. They have lived in beautiful buildings, dressed in elaborate and expensive habits, possessed rich libraries and artworks, and so forth. How can I then claim that such folk are not good at making a living? I would counter that these appearances can be deceptive. Sometimes they are not at all a sign of a healthy monastic lifestyle, and they may mask a positively dysfunctional economic system.
Take for example the situation of the monasteries in Feudal Europe. Most of the famous abbeys of both men and women were built by the crown or the nobility. This is plain to anyone who looks into the economics of building such huge, ornate structures. For example, the roofspan of the vast abbey churches demanded the largest timbers available; but since these timbers were almost always owned by the king for military purposes, that meant that the king had to grant them to the monks. And so the monks were immediately beholden to the crown. Likewise, many noble families built monasteries on their property. It should not be thought that those monks and nuns were entirely free from the control of their donors.
Even today the consequences of these beginnings perdure. In many European countries the government owns the monastic buildings as national monuments. This is hard for American monks and nuns to imagine, but it is taken for granted across the Atlantic. Now of course this means that the government has to worry about maintaining those structures, which is very nice for the monks. But with such “freedom from care” comes the inevitable corollary that “there ain’t no free lunch.” The government then decides what can be done with those buildings in terms of renovations, alterations and so on.
This kind of dependency is not intrinsically harmful to monks, but there are other kinds that are definitely injurious. Thus most medieval monasteries were supported by the “dowries” of the members. That meant that no one could become a monk or nun who could not afford to bring along a considerable amount of money for personal upkeep. Usually that meant that only the rich could become monks, and it is not surprising that they often lived in high style. Worse still, many, perhaps most, of these people really did not want to be monks at all. They were the younger children of the rich nobility for whom there was no place in the feudal scheme of inheritance except in a church career. And so economic considerations filled the monasteries with persons who felt no vocation to the life. Is it any surprise that monastic morale often fell to low levels?
Sometimes people set out to overturn this decadent system by revolutionizing monastic
finances. The Cistercians of the twelfth century are a prime case in point. They
deliberately refused to accept the dowries and lands of rich benefactors because
they did not wish to be corrupted by the consequences of the feudal system. They
wished to return to St. Benedict’s principle that “then they are monks when they
live by the labor of their hands” (RB 48.8). In order to do that, however, they had
to shorten the time spent in church at the liturgy. Presumably they tried to hew
closer to the time-
Now it would be good to report that this return to the spirit and practice of Benedict
was a success. But in fact it was not. Soon enough the primitive Cistercians found
that they simply could not find enough time for work so as to make a living. What
to do? They instituted a second class of monks called “lay brothers,” who would be
able to work full days but who would not then be able to spend seven hours at the
Divine Office and in lectio divina. As a matter of fact, this two-
The system of lay brothers was a big improvement on the feudal system of endowed
monks. But it also had its downside. In order to support their usually large communities,
the Cistercians had to farm large tracts of land. And they had to farm it intensively.
When you read the history of the medieval Cistercians, you learn that this called
for a good deal of hardfisted management. Thus in England, a typical Cistercian abbot
spent much of his time in court fighting with the local land-
One of the questions that might be asked about the case of the Cistercians is simply this: Is St. Benedict’s timetable and economic system actually workable? After all, they came as close as is normally possible to living according to the letter of the Rule, but they could not make a living. Their solution, namely, lay brothers, is not something envisaged by Benedict, and I am not so sure he would have approved of it. Notice, please, that this is not meant to criticize the lay brothers! In my estimation, they usually lived a monastic lifestyle closer to the ideal than did the ordained monks. But they did not live according to RB 48.
Since the Rule of Benedict is usually thought of as a Rule based on lived experience and not just theory, it is quite possible that Benedict and his monks actually did manage to get along economically with the horarium he presents. But this horarium begs a lot of questions that one needs to answer in order to create a coherent monastic economy. For example, even Benedict’s seemingly admirable principle that monks should live by the work of their hands is not as rock solid as it may appear. In the same breath he tells the monks they should not be sad if they are so poor they have to do the field work themselves. This implies that normally they would be able to hire other people to work for them. Not exactly a symptom of what we usually think of as poverty!
The next question that leads from the first is this: Where did they get the means to be able to hire those field workers? Perhaps, if they were extraordinarily clever, they figured out a way to raise cash crops that brought in enough income to support both the choir monks and the hired field workers (peasants). But that is not very likely. There were and there are a few monastic industries that are reasonably lucrative, but they are the exception, not the norm. Very likely, Benedict’s monks were somewhat dependent on the donations of people in the region. What did he think of that?
By and large, we get the impression that Benedict wants his abbot and his monastery
to be free from dependency on outside forces. But occasionally he says things that
make us wonder. For example, in RB 64.1-
Rather than continue to discuss the theory and history of both individual and corporate monastic poverty, let us descend from the general to the particular question of the economy of Assumption Abbey. That is where this essay has been heading all along, so it is time we get to the point.
(To be continued)
Photo: Fr. James Kilzer O.S.B.