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THE VOW OF POVERTY
By Fr. Matthew
Continuing along in this series on the monastic vows, next is the vow that monks take to renounce personal ownership. This is commonly called the vow of poverty. This particular word has led to some misunderstandings, because the word poverty to most people means a major social problem in America. While the vow of poverty is a virtuous thing, we associate poverty with something unpleasant, degrading or even dehumanizing. So in this sense, the word poverty is misleading.
Vows of poverty, chastity and obedience are the common Church practice for men and women in religious life, and this is why monks take a formal vow. Yet the Rule of St. Benedict does not mention a vow of poverty anywhere. The Holy Rule of St. Benedict, dating from the sixth century AD, predates the Church practice of a vow of poverty. You could say that the Holy Rule laid the foundation for religious vows as they now exist.
The Rule does make clear that someone who wishes to be a monk must give up the right to own private property. Chapter 33 of the Rule states:
The vice of private ownership must be uprooted from the monastery. No one, without the abbot's permission, shall dare give, receive or keep anything - not book, tablet or pen - nothing at all....they may keep nothing unless permitted or given them by the abbot. All things are to be common to everyone for, "Neither did anyone say or think that anything was his own". (Acts 4.32) St. Benedict is describing a community where all property is owned in common, and used for the overall good. Benedict bases this on the practice of the earliest Christian community as described in the Acts of the Apostles. As the early Christian communities grew it became impossible to continue this practice, but it has remained an ideal of the Christian life ever since. Therefore monks, like other religious orders, hold all their property in common under the name of the community.
So the vow of poverty could also be described as "common ownership of goods". As far as how many items an individual monk may have for his personal use, St. Benedict leaves that up to the abbot. This part of the Rule is interpreted differently at each monastery. You can find some abbeys where individual monks have little more in their rooms than a bed, table and chair. At other monasteries, monks may be allowed more things for their personal use. Some days, as I rummage through my own closet at Blue Cloud, I say to myself, "For someone with a vow of poverty, I sure have a lot of junk in here!"
St. Benedict does not ever specify how much the monastery as a whole can own. For example, some abbeys in the United States run colleges, and therefore own physical plants worth many millions of dollars. This is not a source of scandal to most people, nor should it be. St. Benedict's Rule is careful not to make too many specific demands regarding the work that monks do. Rather, Benedict allows great freedom to a community to engage in various types of work, and to use whatever material goods are needed for it. An honest misunderstanding could arise if someone sees a monastery owning a large and impressive complex of buildings, and then hears that each monk takes a vow of poverty. He might wonder, "What kind of poverty is that"? Misunderstandings like this did exist at the time of the Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century, and they led to mob violence against some abbeys.
The danger always exists that monks will grow lax in observing their vow of poverty. This is a particular problem in a wealthy society like America. A monastery could be living a lifestyle similar to the "rich and famous", and nobody might even notice! We are constantly seeing modern scandals of a sexual nature in the news, but did you ever hear of someone in trouble for owning too much, or being too rich? It's not likely.
St. Benedict's Rule wants the monks to strive for an unselfish detachment from material goods. By sharing the use of the things they own, the monks support each other and unify the community. This also provides an example of an ideal society where mutual concern ensures that nobody goes wanting for life's necessities.
I have been asked more than once if the way monks share their property is something like Communism. People can share property in many different ways, ranging from jointly owned businesses, to communes, monasteries and government-controlled economies. Communism is one particular form of sharing, based on the teachings of Karl Marx, and is quite different from monastic poverty. Communism actually prohibits or limits the basic human right to own private property, and for this reason it has always been a morally unacceptable system.
Monastic life is based on monks freely choosing to give up certain rights they have: the right to marriage, to own property etc. A system that would force people to give up these rights might have a superficial resemblance to monasticism, but really is anti-Christian because it denies basic human rights. The historical record of Communism shows this clearly, as Marxist governments have brutally violated human rights by confiscating peoples' property. So monastic poverty resembles Communism as volunteer work resembles slavery.
The sharing of property that St. Benedict had in mind was always in the context of a small, local community, under the leadership of an abbot, and the unifying bond of Christian faith. St. Benedict also assumed that the monastery would be free to own whatever property it needed, and to carry on necessary buying and selling with the world outside. In these ways an abbey is no different than many jointly owned businesses around it. We could even compare a monk taking solemn vows to a lawyer or doctor being accepted as a full partner in a shared practice. Perhaps if more young people understood religious life in this light, they might feel attracted to it.
The monastic vow of poverty is indeed meant to be a sacrifice, a giving up of something good. But our faith also assures us that God rewards those who sacrifice for Him. To take a vow of poverty does require a special calling from God. But it does not take superhuman strength or superhuman virtue to live it out. |
