Benedictine Monks in London

Daily Reading from the Rule of St Benedict

CHAPTER 65: THE PRIOR OF THE MONASTERY
QUITE often it has happened that through the appointment of a Prior serious scandals arise in monasteries. There are people who get inflated with an evil spirit of pride, and thinking themselves to be second abbots they assume a dictatorship, foster scandals and cause dissensions in the community; this occurs chiefly in places where the Prior is appointed by the same bishop or by those abbots who appoint the Abbot himself. How ridiculous this procedure is can easily be seen, for from the very source of his appointment grounds are given him for pride, when his own thoughts suggest to him that he is exempted from the authority of his Abbot, ‘for you are yourself appointed by the same persons as the Abbot is’. By this are set in motion envies, quarrels, slanders, rivalries, dissensions, disorders, so that, while the Abbot and Prior are at variance with each other, the result is bound to be that their own souls are imperilled by this disagreement, and those who are under them go to perdition by taking sides. For this dangerous state of things those are primarily responsible who have brought about such a bad arrangement.