My problem with the Benedict Option

The Anti-Gnostic ^ | 06-18-2017 | The Anti-Gnostic

[NRx]

Rod Dreher has spilled a lot of ink on this. I have a lot of sympathy for Rod's vision but ultimately, I think the "Ben Op" is the same approach to rapacious secularism as that taken by the Middle Eastern Christians in response to rapacious Islam. That is, in exchange for payment of taxes and pledges of loyalty to their Arab overlords, the Christians were allowed to raise their children in the Faith and function as mercantile middlemen. This has not worked out well as Christianity slowly goes extinct in its former homelands. In like fashion, Rod Dreher begs to be left alone with his nuclear family and a few close friends in rural Louisiana as the world goes to Hell and our children slowly slip away from us.

There is also the ahistorical understanding of St. Benedict's mission and his context. The early Christians practiced their faith and seized the levers of State power as soon as they could. Modern Christianity by contrast practices secularism as the first and greatest Commandment.

Contrast Christianity's endless cession to its enemies with the robustness of Islam in the West: when they need their cultural space, they simply carve it out, and nobody lectures them about the lack of female imams or refusal to recognize gay marriage. In similar fashion, the Amish are expanding into the American Southwest and Mexico, and the Hasidim maintain their millenium-old bloodlines. Even the Mormons with their bizarre creed have managed to insinuate themselves into much of the United State's national security apparatus.

The future belongs to those who show up, and the "Ben Op" doesn't seem to be a strategy for showing up. Rather, it strikes me as a rear-guard action by aging converts begging to be allowed to die in peace.

[NRx]

For clarification, I am not the author and this is not my blog.

[Coyote Choir]

This review is right on the money -I read most of the book very recently and was convinced by the time I dropped it that it was written by someone who was in effect working to make certain Christianity went extinct: a “let’s all curl up and die” battle cry. The writer appears to want to be thought well of and to make a lot of money writing a bestseller as well. Avoid.

[AnalogReigns]

My argument is that the tyrants of Benedict’s age were not totalitarian. If you paid your taxes (or provided social benefits, in the case of the Church) they left you alone. You simply needed not to be a rebel.

Today’s ideologies though (like Islam) are totalitarian. They demand all areas of your life—and the education of your children. Living independently is the last thing modern governance permits.

[livius]

The difference is that the Church, at the time of Benedict, was pretty orthodox. Now the rot is in the Church itself, and the Church itself has become addicted to secularism (because that’s where the money is...).

In any case, even Benedict didn’t expect laypeople to withdraw physically from the world. And I agree, it’s a stupid “curl up and die” attitude, and also one which leads to odd things like some of the cult-like traditionalist “chapel” communities, with their women covering their elbows and hair like Orthodox Jews (but not as fashionably!), the children dressing like Little House on the Prairie, and everybody spending their time trying to avoid “contamination.” I don’t think that’s what Our Lord came to preach.

[vladimir998]

Most insightful review I’ve read on this book: http://www.catholicworldreport.com/2017/05/05/reading-rod-drehers-benedict-option-with-macintyre-and-schmemann/