Opting for Benedict in an Ordinary Parish

[Michie]

Within the liturgy, within our academic life, within our hard work in serving the poor in a needy parish, we are seeking in our own small way to take the Benedict option. Like St Benedict we’re not trying to change the whole world. We’re simply doing what we can with what we have where we are.

I first encountered the Rule of St Benedict while I was a student at Oxford. I had enrolled to train as a priest in the Church of England, but a Catholic woman in the United States who had befriended me wrote and suggested I visit a Benedictine monastery.

She didn’t quite understand that for a boy from Bob Jones University, monasteries and convents were one of the big dark secrets of the Catholic Church. The monks and nuns crept around in long black robes in huge, old buildings that looked like something out of the Addams Family, and the alarmists told us that the convents and monasteries were connected by underground tunnels, and that the monks and nuns would meet down there… and NOT for prayer meetings!

Well, I’m not exaggerating that much. Nevertheless, the idea of a monastery was alien, but admitting that I was attempting to get an education, off I went during a cold and dreary English Lent to visit Douai Abbey in Berkshire.

It was an enlightening and delightful visit, and I went back during the summer and many times hence. Then in 1987, I went on a hitch hiking pilgrimage from England to Jerusalem and stayed in Benedictine monasteries all across France and Italy and in the Holy Lands. On becoming a Catholic I also became a Benedictine oblate.

When Rod Dreher published The BenedictOption, I was eager to see his thoughts on some conclusions I had already come to: that a renewal of monasticism would plant the seeds for an eventual renewal of the Christian faith and subsequently a renaissance of Christian culture. Dreher made some excellent observations about our decaying culture and some spot-on ideas for a Benedictine-style renewal.

Dreher has been criticized for saying that we should all opt out, grow long beards, head for the hills, and get chickens and goats. To make that criticism is to misunderstand both Dreher and the Benedictine tradition. Benedictines don’t opt out or hunker down waiting for an apocalypse. They are simply realistic and understand that when things reach a particular state of societal breakdown, there is an accompanying breakdown in rational discourse and conscientious dialogue. Where there is social anarchy there is philosophical anarchy and spiritual chaos.

Continued below.

Opting for Benedict in an Ordinary Parish

Within the liturgy, within our academic life, within our hard work in serving the poor in a needy parish, we are seeking in our own small way to take the Benedict option. Like St Benedict we’re not trying to change the whole world. We’re simply doing what we can with what we have where we are...

theimaginativeconservative.org

 

[Wolseley]

The most important line in the whole essay, to me, was this one: "Where there is social anarchy there is philosophical anarchy and spiritual chaos."

Very true. It does us little good to try to engage some of these people on an equal intellectual or spiritual basis. They belong to a completely different worldview, holding ethical codes and systems of behavior that are totally alien to us.

The worst part is that it's more difficult for us, as Christians, to interact with these people, than it was for missionaries coming here to convert the Indians. The Indians had belief and behavior systems that were alien to us, too, but they had never heard of Christ or Yahweh, so they may have been more receptive to the message being proclaimed to them. These people today, however, have at least heard of Christ and the Christian message----but the difference is, they have totally rejected it.

To them, we represent the forces of evil, because we come from the systems which they see as "oppressive": white, European, educated, colonial. They see the Christian Faith as being tied up in all that, and they will literally fight to avoid having anything to do with it.