Monestary, can I complete it without stealing from the church?

[Jonnie]

First, is there no way to create a spoiler marker for text?

Second, and more to the point:
I know there are many posts on this portion of the main quest, but i was hoping someone experienced in the

So. Henry is generally a good guy, believes in the authority of the church. Doesn’t steal, certainly does not want to steal from the church.

I’m hitting a wall with the monestary quest, where the only path forward I see is to steal from the monestary, get lockpicks, and start poking around where I’m not supposed to be I have been to the cellar and I ratted on the circators to the Prior. I still need to help John get elected (need the lockpicks for that I think, so I might end up skipping that part).

Can I complete the monestary portion of the main quest without breaking into places?

[Aradiel]

The fact that you’re already in the monastery means you’ve broken the law. Too late to worry about that now. That said, you can get the keys, and don’t need to pick locks and steal etc. You can also just kill one of the other novices and the quest continues. You don’t even have to be the one that kills him. He just needs to be dead.

[Jonnie]

Cool thanks! I did end up coming across some keys. That kind of let loose the log jam and I noticed some new dialogue options. I had been searching the area with the keys, but didn’t see them initially. I had to rely on meta-game info for that. Mostly the story here is setup for someone to get the lockpicks and sneak around that way, which is not a criticism. But kudos to the developers for indeed allowing another less sneaky (sort of, at least slightly less thieve-ish) path.