The Order of Saint Benedict (Latin name: Ordo Sancti Benedicti) is a Roman Catholic religious order of independent monastic communities that observe the Rule of Saint Benedict. Within the order, each individual community (which may be a monastery, a priory or abbey) maintains its own autonomy, while the organization as a whole exists to represent their mutual interests. Today the terms "Order of Saint Benedict" and "Benedictine Order" are also used frequently to refer to the total of the independent Benedictine abbeys, thereby giving the wrong impression of a "generalate" or "motherhouse" with jurisdiction over dependent communities. The Benedictine Confederation, which was established in 1883 by Pope Leo XIII in his brief Summum semper, is the international governing body of the order, headed by the Abbot Primate. Members of the order generally use the initials O.S.B. after their name.
Read more about Order Of Saint Benedict: Historical Development, Benedictine Vow and Life
Famous quotes containing the words order of, order, saint and/or benedict:
“The world men inhabit ... is rather bleak. It is a world full of doubt and confusion, where vulnerability must be hidden, not shared; where competition, not co-operation, is the order of the day; where men sacrifice the possibility of knowing their own children and sharing in their upbringing, for the sake of a job they may have chosen by chance, which may not suit them and which in many cases dominates their lives to the exclusion of much else.”
—Anna Ford (b. 1943)
“One must love humanity in order to reach out into the unique essence of each individual: no one can be too low or too ugly.”
—Georg Büchner (1813–1837)
“There’s so much saint in the worst of them,
And so much devil in the best of them,
That a woman who’s married to one of them,
Has nothing to learn of the rest of them.”
—Helen Rowland (1875–1950)
“We have not the motive to prepare ourselves for a “life-work” of teaching, of social work—we know that we would lay it down with hallelujah in the height of our success, to make a home for the right man. And all the time in the background of our consciousness rings the warning that perhaps the right man will never come. A great love is given to very few. Perhaps this make-shift time filler of a job is our life work after all.”
—Ruth Benedict (1887–1948)