People have some very interesting notions of what a Benedictine house should look like, how it should pray and how it should interact with the secular world, because “This is how it was done before Vatican II.”
The problem is that what was done before Vatican II is not Benedictine tradition. Benedictine tradition is quite fluid. First, there is no such institution as a Benedictine Order. The OSB behind the names of a Benedictine do not mean that he belongs to an order with a central government and unifying structure like that of the Dominicans or Jesuits. The term “order” in their name refers to the rule. They follow the order (rule) of St. Benedict. This allows for each abbot to govern his house differently. The rule makes provisions for the discretion of the abbot. THAT is Benedictine tradition. Benedictine tradition is patriarchal. Abbot comes from the Hebrew word, Abba, Father. The abbot is the father of the house. His word is final. He decides how the house will pray, work, dress, interact with the world and what it studies, teaches and how it supports itself. He has the power to govern unilaterally. He is one hairline from infallible. His governance and commands are not to be questioned, even if they are as foolish as picking your nose while standing on your head.
One house praying in Latin and the other in Swahili, one wearing the black habit and another wearing a white cassock are equally Benedictine, if that is the will of the abbot. The essential feature of the Benedictine community is obedience to the abbot, stability and conversion of manners. Everything else is up for grabs. If the abbot says “Go left,” and everyone in that house goes left, while every other house is going right, that house is just as Benedictine and as traditional as the next… It’s following the abbot. The abbot can command anything that is not contrary to the rule and can change anything in the rule that Benedict allows to be changed.
When people balk at these changes as not being traditional, they usually don’t know what the Benedictine tradition really is. If a Benedictine tells me that he tap dances on the way to chapel, because the abbot commanded it, I applaud him for being a traditional Benedictine. He is submitting himself to the voice of the abbot. If a Benedictine tells me that he lives in an apartment in NYC, two blocks from a Benedictine monastery, because he belongs to St. Elsewhere’s Monastery in Some City, USA, I applaud him for his fidelity to stability. Stability means that he belongs to the house in which he entered and to no other, even if he is sent on mission around the other side of the globe. I was actually taught by Benedictines who were thousands of miles away from their abbeys. The lived in faculty quarters at the university, not as a community, because they were not from the same abbey. The rule does not allow for mixing and matching as do Dominicans from different provinces.
When the local clergy, laity and sisters get upset because these monks are not doing whatever it is they would like them to do, they are often not understanding what the tradition is all about. I remember a situation where three Trappists were students at the same university where I was. We were all studying theology. On weekends, the other religious would go to different places to help out. Some of us taught CCD, others visited the hospital. If they were priests, they would help the local parish with confessions and mass.
These three Trappists were priests. On weekends, they stayed on campus. They played tennis, read, slept, worked on term papers and did whatever other students did. Of course they were very faithful to their liturgical life. There was a local parish that did not like them, because they desperately needed another priest for confessions and Sunday mass. They asked one of the Trappists. He said, “No. I don’t do that.” Their chagrin came from a mistaken belief that because the man was a priest, he should be eager to celebrate mass and hear confessions. They did not appreciate the fact that the man was a monk. Monks who are priests love celebrating mass in their monastery. They only hear confessions of people who come to the guesthouse on retreat. They don’t make it a habit of sitting in a confessional. They may hear the confessions of their confreres, but that’s about it. Staying put on a weekend and doing things together or alone is very much a part of Trappist tradition, even if they’re at university.
Tradition is not always what we think it is. We’d be surprised at what some traditions actually entail.
Fraternally,
Br. JR, FFV
Women religious just have this way about them, that is uncanny. I’m still trying to figure it out. 
