Four Types of Men

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NI KA

THE SUMMER FEAST OF St Benedict is approaching (11 July) and, listening to the most recent Episode of Catholic Stuff You Should Know, I was reminded of how the Father of Western Monasticism begins his Rule. After the opening prologue, urging his spiritual sons to listen to his teaching, he lists, in Chapter 1, the four kinds of monks. It struck me that, in fact, these monastic types are the same as we find in the world. I would clarify by saying that these are mature images: there is a point where one is too-young to be any of these. Yet I think that someplace between puberty and college, one has drifted into one of these four types.

There are clearly four kinds of monks. First, there are the cenobites,that is to say, those who belong to a monastery, where they serve under a rule and an abbot.

Second, there are the anchorites or hermits, who have come through the test of living in a monastery for a long time, and have passed beyond the first fervor of monastic life. Thanks to the help and guidance of many, they are now trained to fight against the devil. They have built up their strength and go from the battle line in the ranks of their brothers to the single combat of the desert. Self-reliant now, without the support of another, they are ready with God’s help to grapple single-handed with the vices of body and mind.

Third, there are the sarabaites, the most detestable kind of monks, who with no experience to guide them, no rule to try them as gold is tried in a furnace (Prov 27:21), have a character as soft as lead. Still loyal to the world by their actions, they clearly lie to God by their tonsure. Two or three together, or even alone, without a shepherd, they pen themselves up in their own sheepfolds, not the Lord’s. Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden.

Fourth and finally, there are the monks called gyrovagues, who spend their entire lives drifting from region to region, staying as guests for three or four days in different monasteries. Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites. In every way they are worse than the sarabaites.

Rule of St Benedict with Commentary

Cenobites are those men who enter either marriage or an ecclesial vocation wholeheartedly. They give their word and, in a single moment, commit their whole lives to working out their salvation on that path, within that commitment. They set their hands to the plough and do not look back. This includes men who commit their lives in spousal love to their wives, in fatherhood to their children, and in leadership roles in their community. They may not be married and they take on fatherlike roles in their churches or in the workplace. Among their friends, they are the ones to whom one reaches out, or the ones wanted to lead the charity drive, etc. They do well at work but they are not arrogant about it. If they are so called, they enter the priesthood and do all of the above, but as spiritual fathers. They may never be the senior pastor, but they are the ones to whom people want to confess. If they are Byzantine Catholic or Eastern Orthodox, they can do all of the above. The type of monk called the Cenobite is the type of manhood to which all men are called. Full stop. Mindful of the things of the Lord, they can put the things of this world in proper proportion. Typologically, they are St Joseph or the wise Judges of Israel.

Eventually, Cnobites grow into the second type of monk (or man in the world, clerical or lay): the Anchorite. They have trained really hard in the school of marriage or the school of chosen celibacy-in-community and have, finally, graduated. As they enter their mature years (they may be widowed or not) they become the “village wise man” or the senior-most member of their family. They are respected as “grandpa” even when they are not the parent or grandparent of any children. They serve on boards and offer comfort. They not only serve their own community but build up others. They are, typologically, the Patriarchs – Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob – or the prophets. They may meld these two functions into one job: they may be a father at home, a grandfather in the Church; or a widowed elder statesman who is also a member of Big Brothers.

The third type of monk, Sarabaite – the third type of man – looks like the first, but they are driven by their desires. “Their law is what they like to do, whatever strikes their fancy. Anything they believe in and choose, they call holy; anything they dislike, they consider forbidden.” These St Benedict calls the most detestable because they manage to look exactly like the real monks. They appear to be righteous. We have in our world those things that look like marriages but are not – they are closed to life and closed to God. They are mortally sinful in their existence. Some might be repaired, brought into line with the revealed nature of man and the teachings of God, but some are intrinsically disordered and can never be made whole or holy. These are the sarabaites. They are respectable in the eyes of the world, but a wedding cake does not mean one is married. Even children, in these households, become status markers: embodiments of a selfish desire to “look normal”. Or one has “fur babies” instead of children because one cannot commit to the responsibility of parenting. Or else one has children and abuses them. Or one cheats on his wife or gets divorced and moves on in what we call “serial monogamy”. Needless to say, since they are not Cenobites, they can never become Anchorites. At most, they can only hold the accidents of the latter type as they had the accidents of cenobitism. They have some or all of the accidents – but none of the substance. They may become “sugar daddies” but never Grandpa. They are bachelors, but never celibates. They may be accidentally abstinent or momentarily faithful, but they are never chaste. Typologically this is Solomon with his many wives and worshipping all the gods of the nations while building a temple for the God of Israel and the Universe. This is Samson, knowing the blessings of God but giving it all up for a woman’s persistent nagging.

Finally, there is a type that is even worse than the Sarabaites. These are the gyrovagues: “Always on the move, they never settle down, and are slaves to their own wills and gross appetites.” They are what we might call “rootless cosmopolitans”. They have no home and, worse, they want none. They run away from all responsibilities and all community. In as much as it is our community that gives us our personhood, they are in a perpetual state of suicide: constantly killing off, in the name of “freedom”, anything that might grow. A sarabaite might one day realize his accidents are without form and void, and sense some duty to repair that – as Samson returned to God, as St Peter repented. A Gyrovague, confronted by his own inner void, will simply move on – like Simon Magus or even Judas. They seek comfort at all costs and avoid anything that smacks of duty and self-gift. They can be of any age, but they have never matured at all. In as much as maturity requires some sacrifice, some choice of “this but therefore not that”, the gyrovagues are unable to make those choices for fear of missing out. A Sarabaite may make a choice without commitment. A gyrovague hasn’t commitment to make.

Your host is ashamed to admit that for most of his life he has been a Gyrovague attempting to pass as Sarabite: aware that only a couple of things stood between himself and some sort of respectability in the world. Sometimes this respectability required a change in the world – and so your host became a political activist to make things change. Sometimes it required that friends, family, or faith communities open up – become “more welcoming” – and so your host became an evangelist for the acceptance of vice. It was only after discovering, first, that being respected by the world wasn’t necessarily a good thing; and, second (much later), even the essay was entirely incompatible with Christ that one could, by grace, see the need move on. It took your host nearly half a century to reach that turning. Even Sarabitism is damning – but it looks pretty. The damage of being a gyrovague and demanding “my rights” and “equality” were done, however.

St Benedict’s line “slaves to their own wills and gross appetites” is the kicker here: Gyrovagues define ourselves by our desires. What I want is who I am. Although the Rule marks “our will” there, really our will is enslaved to our appetite as well. We are like Ourobouros, eating our own tails: we dwindle, like all addicts, down to one point of existence until all that’s left is that one thing, done over and over. Yes, we are – as St Thomas knows – questing for happiness. But, having rejected the only happiness available to humanity, we’re stuck sucking the seeds out of the forbidden fruit and planting more of those trees. Lather, rinse, repeat. Then we die. (Your host takes great comfort in the line of prayer, after communion, “release me from my slavery to my own reasoning.”)

We live even now in the collapse of the vacuum created by so many men abandoning the commitments of cenobitic life and becoming slaves to their own reasonings. “Their god is their belly,” says St Paul. It’s possible to point fingers and lament a loss of “masculinity” but that’s not the issue. What defines “masculinity” has, for millennia, shifted from culture to culture and from time to time within culture. It’s ok to admit that what we think of as “masculine” is only a cultural construct. But what we think of as a man is made by our bodies. We are our DNA. Even our souls are imprinted with our DNA according to Catholic Anthropology. The hylomorphic unity of each person is unique, instantaneous at the moment of conception: your body is 50% Mommy and 50% Daddy, your soul is 100% God’s. All of you is created at that moment, your soul knows you are male, made for a certain sphere in the human community, made for reproduction in a certain way, made for self-gift in a certain way. There is no going back.

You can live cenobitically and grow up into an anchorhold. You can pretend to do that. Or you can reject the cross you’ve been given. There is no other choice.