Benedict on Discipline and Punishment

Benedict’s Rule contains two sections on discipline and punishment: chapters 23-30 and 43-46. Taken together, these chapters show us how Benedict thought about the difficulty of community. Some time ago, a colleague who was new to our university community started reading Benedict’s Rule. Upon encountering these chapters, this person panicked: “Our community is founded on this book? Why?! Benedict is writing about punishing people with rods!” My colleague’s response was understandable. Many 21st century Americans are squeamish about corporal punishment. And anyway, it’s challenging to hear about how different communities deal with discipline and punishment.

It’s challenging enough when we discover that different cultures around the world right now, in 2024, don’t all think about discipline and punishment the same as we do. And even as I write that sentence, I realize that there’s not even a “we” in the US in 2024 that agrees on how to discipline and punish people. A few semesters ago, I learned from some of my students that in some cultures in the US, getting smacked with your parent or grandparent’s shoe is normal. When I was a boy, if my sisters and I were misbehaving in the back seat of the car, my dad — a peaceful man who loves us very much — would twist his class ring around on his finger and thump us on the skull with the sapphire. It worked. And it was better than what he went through as a child in the 1960s.

The challenge is only made more difficult when we add historical variation. For millennia, human communities have been disciplining and punishing wayward members. No one has landed on a fool-proof method. It would be a miracle if some community had. I would want to know everything about the method. Parenting would be easier. Education would be easier. Being in any community would be easier.

So, though my colleague’s antipathy is understandable, it’s not really defensible. Like any community of persons, Benedictine communities must have some method of disciplining difficult members. And like any community of persons that exists in a specific history and culture, Benedictine communities are going to make decisions about discipline that seem strange to outsiders.

One solution to the problem of strangeness is to ignore everything that seems strange: engage only with perspectives like your own; spend time only with people like you; try things that you’ve already tried. But that’s a recipe for chauvinism. I doubt promoting chauvinism was my colleague’s intention. But the visceral reaction helps me understand why we need
communities and their discipline in the first place: it’s not easy to accept others, especially those who are strange. It’s much easier to ignore and neglect them. Benedict has left us provocative resources for how to deal with waywardness and strangeness. His methods are not perfect — no one’s are — but his methods invite us to do the hard work with open eyes and listening hearts.