Prioress and Abbot display quick, nimble thinking
Saint Benedict’s
Henrita Osendorf, OSB (1906-92), was tenth prioress (1961-73). One of her responsibilities was to serve on the Board of Trustees of the Saint Cloud Hospital.
Once, when Mother Henrita was chair of the board, a topic was discussed at great length. A local banker decided that anything of value had already been said and so he spoke up, saying, “Madame Chair, I call the question.” The remark stopped her short; she was unfamiliar with this phraseology. So she turned to the legal counsel and said, “Legal Counsel, I need some advice. What do I do?”
He responded, “Madame Chair, you have two choices. You may call the question and take the vote or you may ignore it.”
Mother Henrita thought a moment, looked over her glasses as was her habit, and said, “I choose to ignore the gentleman”
[From Imogene Blatz, OSB, and Alard Zimmer, OSB, Threads from Our Tapestry: Benedictine Women in Central Minnesota (St. Cloud, Minnesota: North Star Press, 994), 26.]
Saint John’s
At the original Benedictine foundation in Pennsylvania, the transplanted Germans did not brew beer, both because it was a teetotaling area and, consequently, brewing gave no economic advantage. In 1856 Abbot Boniface Wimmer wrote to Bishop Loras of Dubuque about his visit the previous year with Pope Pius IX:
When I was in Rome last summer, even the Holy Father plagued me a little in an audience I had with him, about the beer-affair. I replied: “Holy Father, you have good saying about your Benedictines brewing and selling beer; but you forget that we don’t drink any these nine years, and that we have no brewery.”
“Germans and not drinking beer,” he replied, “that is much.”
“Yes indeed,” I said, “until now we could do so, being young; but when we grow older, we will probably be in necessity to make beer.”
“Of course,” he said, “S. Paul also wrote to S. Timothy he should take a little wine for his weak stomach, and so you must have something”—and he laughed heartily.
[Quoted in Colman Barry, OSB, Worship and Work, 3rd ed. (Collegeville: Liturgical Press, 1993), 15.]