Roman Catholics: Getting the Word

Several Catholic orders, ranging from the Carmelite nuns to the Capuchin friars, practice the rule of silence. None has observed it as strictly as the Trappist monks who, since their founding in 1098, have made an article of conscience St. Benedict’s warning that “those who talk much cannot avoid sin.” Trappists have normally been allowed to speak only when intoning the Gregorian chant at High Mass, reciting prayers at five other daily services, and when it is necessary to address superiors.

A Trappist who carelessly lets words drop on other occasions is required to do penance by prostrating himself across the doorway of his abbey’s refectory or sanctuary. As a substitute for the spoken word, a rudimentary sign language is the custom. For example, two fists struck against each other vertically means “work”; the index fingers and thumbs formed into a diamond signifies “bread.” But in today’s complex world, with Trappists operating farms and small industries, sign language is not enough. Says one Catholic prelate: “A few years ago we still used horses, but how is a monk supposed to explain a breakdown of his tractor to a mechanic in sign language?”

Recently, Trappist abbots took up the issue in a meeting at Citeaux monastery in France, which is the order’s headquarters (the order took the name Trappist from another monastery at La Trappe, France). After exhaustive debate—permitted at the abbots’ policy meetings—they decided to relax the Trappists’ rule of silence, a step allowed under the Second Vatican Council’s decree authorizing Catholic orders to modernize their codes of behavior. The world’s 80 Trappist monasteries (including twelve in the U.S.) are not about to turn into Towers of Babel; but Trappists henceforth will be allowed to speak “a very limited number of words,” to be determined by individual abbots.