Cracks in the Cloister

Each Christmastime, the monks of a certain Benedictine abbey in England put whatever talents they may have to work for the entertainment of their brothers. Last Christmas one of them scratched out a collection of cartoons satirizing the cloistered life, and the brethren nearly split their blackrobed sides laughing at themselves. When Roman Catholic Publisher Francis Sheed saw the sketches in England last year, he begged to make a book of them.

The abbot gladly gave his permission. His reason: in the Middle Ages, when the religious life was close to the secular and monks were as everyday as draymen, sanctity was less often confused with sobersidedness; it would do only good, he felt, to let some laughter back in.

Out last week was the resulting volume: Cracks in the Cloister (Sheed & Ward; $2.50). The anonymous author, who signs himself Brother Choleric, has never taken an hour's instruction in art, draws only for fun, and carries on the regular priestly duties of preaching and teaching. His characters in cloister clothing are crabbed, crotchety, pompous and appealing. Their shoptalk might be taken from a good public school or a business office, except that it is heavily clerical, e.g., a monk's full prostration before his bishop brings the comment: "Rather ham, don't you think?", and one catty nun will say about another: "And you should see her genuflections." The abbot on the phone burbles to his opposite number: "Well, Abbess, and how's the old blood pressure?", while a fierce little monk clutching a horsewhip snarls: "Who's pinched my relic of The Little Flower?" Most of Brother Choleric's cartoons are taken from real life. Says he: "One doesn't have to think up jokes in a monastery."

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