Dear Abbot, Brothers & Sisters,

A while back, while editing an updated version of our formation guide, I noticed one of our threefold vows listed as "conversion of life," well it is, but it's also much more than that.  Like most Benedictines around the world, we now use the ancient term conversatio morum.  The trouble is, it's hard to translate into plain English, and is not exactly clear in the original Latin for that matter.  I've been working on a monster collection of monastic quotations (1.4 million words) and ran across a number of them on conversatio morum and am sharing some of them here in hopes of shedding some light on a murky topic.  I was hoping to put the article into the forthcoming newsletter, but at three pages, it's too long.  Accordingly, I've attached it below just in case you've ever wondered what it was we all vowed to do when becoming a Benedictine. :- )

Br. Steven Olderr