It is a serious error to excuse unconfessed error and to allow it to linger without remorse and repentance. We may consider accountability as almost unChristian. After all, are we not called to forgive one another? However, grumbling, dishonoring group norms, or rebellious attitudes toward leaders are sources of division. St. Benedict required punishment for offenses that jeopardized the wrongdoer and community. The penalty prescribed was designed to offer offenders a temporary taste of the potentially permanent destructive results of their acts, if they were left unchecked. By jeopardizing the harmony of lives lived together, offenders were to suffer loss of community. The degree of that loss was to be proportional to the seriousness of the transgressions. Eventually they were denied fellowship during worship and meals. They were denied the reassurance of spiritual comfort and blessing.
These punishments set by St. Benedict may appear trite when compare to corporal punishments required in civil systems. However, these were nearly equivalent to spiritual capital punishment to the religious. Perhaps that is the intent in denial of fellowship in the most precious of communal settings – worship and meal – and knowledge that rebellion separated one’s self from even prayers of blessing is a foretaste of hell itself. The starkness of experience cries out warning and motivation for change.
The attitude of those who must administer discipline is one of heartbreak. It is difficult to love another enough to allow them to suffer in the present while hoping they will join the community in bonds of mutual love and respect in the future. This is a lesson of hope that the prodigal will return to the loving father.
This chapter calls out warning that the community remains while the rebellious experiences its boundaries. “Benedict’s Rule calls for the group whose life we affect to say “Enough,” to quit bearing us up on the litter of community, to quit rewarding our selfish and surly behavior with security and affirmation and a patina of holiness. Excommunication, for all practical purposes, says, “You want to be a world unto yourself? Fine, be one.””[1]
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[1] Joan Chittister, The rule of Benedict: a spirituality for the 21st century (New York: Crossroad, 2010), 147.
