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It is easy for us to rebel against the style of our own parents—either becoming too lax so as not to repeat the sins of harsh discipline, or reacting to the laxity of some of our parents and careening into a hyper-strictness that will damage our children just as much. I once saw, in a study focused on teen abstinence education, a chart that correlated different levels of parental discipline with the likelihood that a teenage child would experiment with premarital sex. The results of the study were much as you would expect: Those teens whose parents were either over-lax or over-strict were most likely to get in trouble. The optimum point on the curve, where the smallest number of kids experimented with sex, was about ¾ of the way along towards the "strict" end of the continuum.

Whether this does or does not include spanking must be left to the individual parent: anti-spanking legislation is a patent over-reaction to a real situation of tragic abuse in which civil authorities have a legitimate right and duty to intervene with legislation. What is more important is that as parents we learn to mete out discipline appropriate to the task of forming mature, healthy people, and yet also make gentle allowances for our children's human frailties and their individual quirks and needs.

This was the approach of one leading Christian 1500 years ago, and his words still carry wisdom for us today. Benedict of Nursia was an abbot (leader of a monastery—from the word "abba" or father) whose wise words on the subjects of discipline and obedience created the foundation for Western monasticism. Now Roman Catholic author Dwight Longenecker has realized that what Benedict intended as a manual for abbots and monks—his famous "Benedictine Rule"—has great value for ordinary parents. This is the premise of his book Listen My Son: St Benedict for Fathers (Morehouse Publishing, 2000).

"Compassionate discipline" is the best word for Benedict's way of doing things. Legend has it that Benedict learned this approach the hard way. As Mark Galli and Ted Olsen recently told the story:

The first monks who tried to live under his direction hated his regimen—so much so they plotted to kill him. They put poison in a glass of wine and offered it to Benedict. Before he took it, he blessed it, as was the custom. According to the story told by Pope Gregory I (Benedict's biographer), when Benedict made the sign of the cross over the wine glass, it shattered, and the wine spilled to the floor.

Benedict, Gregory wrote, "perceived that the glass had in it the drink of death," called his monks together, said he forgave them, reminded them that he doubted from the beginning whether he was a suitable abbot for them, and concluded, "Go your ways, and seek some other father suitable to your own conditions, for I intend not now to stay any longer amongst you."

We don't know if Benedict was overly strict or if his first monks were simply obstinate. But years later, when Benedict wrote a rule of life for another group of monks, it turned out to be a model of monastic moderation and one reason monasticism blossomed in the West.

Longenecker's book divides Benedict's Rule into short daily readings and accompanies each reading with a commentary dealing with issues of fatherhood. I confess that I have not read the book beyond its introduction and early pages, but I know Benedict's Rule well. Longenecker is exactly right to point fathers—or really, any parents—towards its pages.

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June (Web-only) 2004, Vol. 48