Sandro Magister on 'The Benedict Option'

The Benedict Option: A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation. In July, I shared Chevalier Charles Coulombe's opinion on it, yesterday I shared His Eminence George, Cardinal Pell's opinion, The Church in a Post-Christian Age, and today comes Sandro Magister's.

I am fascinated by the book, tho' I have serious doubts about the wisdom of the idea. I can hardly wait until I can afford to buy it.

From l'Espresso

"Quaerere Deum." Twelve Years Ago On the Dot, the September 12 of the Church of Benedict

That “The Benedict Option” is truly “the most important religious book of the decade” - as David Brooks predicted in the “New York Times” - is now beyond a doubt, seeing how the discussion it has generated has come to involve even the highest levels of the Catholic Church.

In presenting this book last week in the chamber of deputies of the Italian republic, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Joseph Ratzinger’s secretary before and after his resignation from the papacy, in fact did not hesitate to bring to the field the two most recent popes, because - he said - “even Benedict XVI from the moment of his resignation conceived of himself as an elderly monk who feels it his duty to dedicate himself above all to prayer for Mother Church, for his successor Francis and for the Petrine ministry instituted by Christ himself.”

Of course, the Benedict of the “option” - in the book by the American former Catholic and now Orthodox Rod Dreher - is not pope Ratzinger, but Saint Benedict of Norcia, the great monk of the fifth and sixth centuries who gave rise to a formidable rebirth of Christian faith and culture in the chaos that followed the collapse of the Roman empire. But the other Benedict, the pope, evoked precisely that rebirth in his memorable address - absolutely worth rereading - of September 12, 2008 in Paris, at the Collège des Bernardins, essentially proposing that the Catholics of today take up and bring to life again the lesson of that great Benedictine monasticism, at the present juncture of civilization:

> "Quaerere Deum"

About Pope Francis, however, it cannot be said that he finds himself in harmony with this vision, according to at least two indications.

The first is the direct attack that “La Civiltà Cattolica” carried out last January on the book by Dreher, dismissing its “option” as the heresy of a Christianity made up only of the “pure”:

> Saint Benedict in the 21st Century. But "La Civiltà Cattolica" Condemns Him to the Stake

It must be kept in mind that “La Civiltà Cattolica,” directed by the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, is not just any magazine, but is printed after every one of its articles has been inspected at the Vatican, and has with the current pope a relationship of the closest symbiosis.

But then there is that other indication, which is the cold shower with which Francis has doused monasticism, with the apostolic constitution “Vultum Dei quaerere” of 2016 and with the subsequent applicational instruction “Cor orans” of 2018, undermining the material and spiritual autonomy of the monasteries and requiring them to federate under the bureaucratic command of authorities outside of themselves.

The two documents concern female monasticism, but they are the expression of a more general lack of appreciation that Francis has repeatedly shown for the contemplative life with respect to the active life, going so far as to say for example, in the exhortation "Gaudete et exsultate” on the call to holiness in the contemporary world:

"It is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service… We are called to be contemplatives even in the midst of action."

The heavy-handedness of this attack on the contemplative life has been noted with great concern in many monasteries, to which expression has been given by the vaticanista Aldo Maria Valli in this three-part analysis, published in a few days ago:

> Qualcuno vuole liquidare il monachesimo?
> Se nel nome del rinnovamento si distrugge la vita contemplativa
> Con lo sguardo rivolto al mondo, non a Dio. Ovvero come snaturare la vita contemplativa

Naturally, all is not sunny in modern-day Benedictine monasticism, especially in the men's communities, which are marked here and there by lapses and degeneracies that are in some cases quite serious. But Dreher’s proposal, and even more authoritatively that of Benedict XVI in the address at the Collège des Bernardins, wager everything on that “quaerere Deum,” that “seeking God” which is uniquely at the origin of the monastic life in addition to being a wellspring of civilization, and today must be revived in its creative authenticity.

It is no coincidence that the latest book by Cardinal Robert Sarah - who shares this vision and is well known to be at the polar opposite of Pope Francis’s approach - bears the characteristically monastic title “Against the Dictatorship of Noise,” includes an illuminating conversation with the prior of the Grande Chartreuse, and opens with a preface by Joseph Ratzinger:

> Cardinal Sarah Has the Pope On His Side. But His Name Is Benedict

Dreher’s “option” leaves itself open to not a few criticisms, especially on account of its insistence on an “escape” from the world in order to rebuild Christian existence in small, self-contained communities, as in “an ark before the flood comes,” as Reggio Emilia bishop Massimo Camisasca objected. In discussing the book in the author’s presence in Rome, this criticism was aimed at Dreher by both the director of “L'Osservatore Romano,” Giovanni Maria Vian, and the founder of the newspaper “Il Foglio,” Giuliano Ferrara, a great secular admirer of Ratzinger.

Dreher’s response is that in any case “we ordinary Christians must work to make our faith more monastic.”

But that’s just the point. The great monasticism founded by Benedict did not separate itself from the world. On the contrary, it made a decisive contribution to building modern European civilization, founded on the concepts of the person and of freedom.

If today the “dictatorship of relativism” unmasked by Benedict XVI reigns supreme, it is inevitable that the two linchpins of the person and of freedom will also fall apart. But this is one more reason why Christians as a “creative minority” should not withdraw in private or into works of charity - as the world desires and applauds - but should continue to work in the public sphere, in the light of “quaerere Deum.” Doing precisely what Pope Benedict always preached with consistency, not only in the address at the Collège des Bernardins that marked the pinnacle of his pontificate.

Since that address of September 12, 2008 precisely ten years have gone by. If it is true that the Catholic Church as well has had “its September 11” - as Monsignor Gänswein said in commenting on Dreher’s book, referring to the catastrophe of sexual abuse - why not also mark on the calendar of history that September 12, as the start of a journey of rebirth for Christianity and civilization?

(English translation by Matthew Sherry, Ballwin, Missouri, U.S.A.)