Feast of St Benedict's twin sister, who seems to have adopted a religious life before he did and according to St Gregory's "Dialogues" was a woman of great holiness and prayer. Although we know little about her, the woman Gregory presents to us was no namby-pamby, a good example of a "mulier fortis", and certainly well able to win the respect and admiration of her brother. Monks tend to get embarrassingly sentimental about her. I remember once looking through a collection of revised collects in English prepared by one of our male brethren. The prayer for St Scholastica was greeted with hoots of laughter and found utterly unsingable by the community, so we substituted something much more sober and fitting (and incidentally, more accurate: Scholastica was not necessarily a nun although she lived a devout life). It is interesting how often the male of the species is dogmatic about what nuns are or should be. A psychologist might find this a fruitful subject for investigation. In the meantime, I am slightly irritated, as always, by an entry in the Portsmouth Diocesan Ordo, which exhorts everyone to pray for the Benedictine Sisters (=sorores) in the diocese. There aren't any, both St Cecilia's, Ryde, and ourselves are communities of nuns (=moniales); and St Scholastica isn't our patron, St Benedict is. But who are we to challenge male misconceptions?