OK, so I'm playing a lawful good monk, and struggling on the 'lawful' part. For the most part, I RP as making self-control central to my PCs personality. The group is massively chaotic neutral, so a lot of my lawful good acts thusfar have been things like 'stepping in and putting the bad guy out of his misery instead of letting the group torture them some more for info (out of misery generally meaning knocked out, not kill.) Generally, while he doesn't like it, he's come to accept that he can't be responsible for everyone else's actions, but still tries to stop the worst of it.
Well, there's a recent incident where we discovered a priest is hiding something from us that might be of vital importance to not only us but several nations. Since we've recently been betrayed by an ambassador who was supposed to be dealing with this issue, I took it upon myself to take the only course of action that made sense: recruit the rogue, sneak into the church and investigate his office for proof.
I kind of accept that this might not have been the lawful thing to do.
As a result, as part of the action the chaotic rogue decided to steal like it was going out of style, including the deeds to the church, a large chunk of the town and a church a town over. Obviously, this bothers my charactor as he is now responsible for breaking the law on a large scale, and potentially doing some major damage to someone whome we haven't found any real evidence to suggest they were actually guilty. I now have a mess to clean up.
So, my question is this: was a I completely wrong to attempt to sneak in and investigate? Did I have other options (considering my char is not built for diplomacy or charisma?) How would YOU have handled the situation?
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I think the core issue here is the one that many LG characters find themselves in, being stuck in a group of chaotic or possibly even evil party members (whether they admit it or not). Without going into a lengthy discourse on alignment, good and evil and so on Chaotic Neutral is generally the "easiest" alignment to roleplay, because it essentially gives you the freedom to do whatever you want with no moral consequences. We have a word for these people in out modern society as well, they're called psychopaths.
From Wikipedia: "Psychopathy is a personality disorder characterized by a pervasive pattern of disregard for the rights of others and the rules of society. Psychopaths have a total lack of empathy and remorse, and have very shallow emotions. They are generally regarded as callous, selfish, dishonest, arrogant, aggressive, impulsive, irresponsible, and hedonistic."
If this sounds like the people in your party then you may be in more trouble than you thought and while I would never suggest you stop playing your character you may find it, more acceptable to the party, if you were of a different alignment.
Okay now to your actual question ^_^ I often think of my lawful good characters as particularly benevolent police officers or other forms of law enforcement, though the amount of authority you exert depends on what groups you are affiliated with if any, and thus they must always follow procedure. In this case you could have ended up at this point, but a lawful character would have to attempt diplomacy and reason first.
1. Knock on the door and ask to speak to the priest. If you are able to speak to him explain the situation. If you are denied the right to speak with him than seek proper authorities who can legally make him talk.
2. If the above steps don't work than you may have to "take the law into your own hands", this may not be a strictly lawful act but if the fate of several nations hangs in the balance it can be justified and explained later for proper atonement.
Now this is all assuming you have the time to go about this. If the rogue is already breaking in the lawful thing to do might be to join him and try and mitigate his chaotic tendencies. Again you're in a really rough spot, technically your alignment dictates you should turn the rogue in, if not beat the daylights out of him right there and drag his unconscious butt to jail, but then again he is an ally and betraying him isn't very "good" of you. I would prepare for many more incidents like this one, I've been there myself and in the end you may actually turn on the party like I had to. They decided to burn down a building full of people to force the enemy leader out, and my paladin would not stand for it, we fought, I died and made a new character :P Hope this helped, good luck! :)
I should probably point out that I do not have a superior at this point in the campaign.
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LG as most Monks practice it has nothing to do with the law of the land. It's about, as you mention, self control, but also about a personal code of conduct that you do not violate, come hell or high water.
You should work out what that code is, and then never deviate from it, regardless of whether doing so breaks the law of the land. Now, it sounds like investigating was very much within your Monk's beliefs and codes.
In fact, it sounds like the Good portion of your character's alignment is the part objecting to this theft. But in either case, taking responsibility for what happened is avery LG thing to do, and, IMO, taking the deed back from the thief and returning it anonymously seems the best thing you could do in this situation.