Roman Catholic lay pundit Rod Dreher has an
article in
The American Conservative which talks about the Benedict Option. In a sentence, here is what that is:
The Ben Op is about keeping the faith alive in a time of collapse.
And the article quotes Catholic priest Dwight Longenecker:
The Benedict Option may be the only option. It may be the only option not because the surrounding culture is decadent and we want to protect our children. It is not the only option because we are fed up with the technological, fast-paced, shallow existence of twenty-first-century life. It is not the only option because we are disgusted by porn, shocked by war, and spooked by gender confused radicals who are on the warpath. It is not the only option because we think the worldlings are worldly beyond redemption.
It is the only option because it is the only option.
And Dreher concludes:
We still await, as MacIntyre said, a new, doubtless very different, St. Benedict: a figure who knows how to build something enduring in the ruins of a civilization.
Human civilizations rise and fall, it was ever thus. The prognosis of our civilization ruined is, shall we say, apocalyptic? Prophetic? At the very least, less-than-optimistic and perhaps premature.
