Carson Holloway on the Benedict Option

Catholics are practical people, even though we have some strange beliefs and practices. Carson Holloway provides practical advice about the Benedict Option and how the special snowflakes who live in the Benedict Option compounds will have to be protected from the wolves in our society even as the Hobbits in Tolkien's Shire were protected by his Dúnedain. Excerpt:

At the same time, I don’t see how, realistically, the Benedict option can be an option that excludes political activism for American Catholics. That activism will have to continue, for a couple of reasons.

First, Catholics will have to do what they can to help the larger society as long as they seem to have any chance of success. To take the most obvious example, Catholics cannot responsibly withdraw from politics while there is still some chance of effecting change with regard to abortion. If abortion kills innocent human beings, then Catholic cannot just shrug it off and walk away from the grubby business of politics. They will have to stay involved.

Second, I suspect that political activism will be necessary in defense of the Benedict option. Successfully living the Benedict option requires that the larger culture will leave you alone to do so. There are fairly powerful forces in the culture that would be happy to leave Catholics alone to do so. But there are also fairly powerful forces–forces of fanaticism–that won’t want to leave Catholics alone to live their lives according to their own standards. So the freedom to live the Benedict option is attainable but also in danger.

Accordingly, the Catholic enclaves will have to be defended by Catholic lawyers and political activists.

This all stands to reason for anyone who understands the history or the world and the nature of evil, which are of course inexorably linked. Some Catholics will have to opt to be sheep dogs to use Lt. Col. Dave Grossman's analogy, an analogy recently popularized by the American Sniper book and movie. These people will not have the luxury of Benedict Option-ing.

I am planning to write more extensively on just how closely the Grossman/Kyle sheepdog analogy matches Tolkien's view of goodness, evil and just warfare in his Middle Earth, mainly because it is amazing to me how many Catholics who claim to know Tolkien's philosophy on these matters utterly misunderstand it. This was evidenced in spades during the Facebook conversation I recently mentioned. But I just want to conclude now by pointing out that if things are bad enough to describe them in apocalyptic language, then how can the planned withdrawal to little enclaves and platoons be anything which can be described as strategic when you are basically broadcasting this intention where your enemy can hear you loud and clear? Or, well, maybe I'm not being invited to all the clandestine planning meetings where they discuss secret tunnel entrances, etc. That's probably it.