Benedict Option: back to the Middles Ages - for you, at least
In his latest post calling For a New Middle Age, Rod Dreher now identifies his chimerical Benedict Option with a return to the Middle Ages, citing a post-Bolshevik Russian from 1923 as the authority who guides him (you can sample other quotes from the mentor Rod would guide your life by here):
In his 1923 book The End of Our Time, the Russian thinker Nikolai Berdyaev says that modernity has spiritually exhausted mankind, and that the time is ripe for a return to interiority, to a world in which the spiritual was more important than the material. To enter into this “new middle age” requires, he says, a “revolution in spirit.”
The Benedict Option is the term I use to describe this rising movement for a new Middle Age, a spiritual revolution in a time of spiritual and cultural darkness. The monk was the ideal personality type of the Middle Ages. Few of us will be called to the monastery, but all of us who profess orthodox Christianity are called to rediscover a monastic temperament, putting the service of God before all things, and ordering our lives — our prayer and our work, and our communal existence — to that end. We are going to have to recover a sense of monastic asceticism, and do so in hope and joy, together.
Naturally, in Dreher's Benedict Option as in post-Bolshevik Revolution Russia, the "monastic asceticism" of "this new Middle Age" will be for thee, not for he: this post was set up to drop automatically because Rod and his male companion, the "hirsute Italian" Sordello, have better things to do than a pursue a monastically ascetic Benedict Option, having just launched their fabulous, female-free European eating vacation beginning in Lyon, France and ending in Sienna, Italy.
As in most inchoate revolutionary and pseudo-religious hustles, the intelligentsiya proposes, the proletariat - that would be you chumps buying into Dreher's scam - disposes in order to support the former's lifestyle fancies.
You will carry out the social withdrawals and other inconveniences to your life, including all that Internet and other culturally dark stuff necessary to fulfill Dreher's Benedict Option delusion's and, hopefully, land him another book deal.
He will continue, as always, to do whatever strikes his fancy at any given moment, including ditching the missus to chow down on some snails in France with a hairy Italian man.
"We are going to have to recover a sense of monastic asceticism, and do so in hope and joy, together."
ReplyDeleteWhoa there big fella...will this monastic asceticism still have overpriced imported French jelly for my Whole Foods 15 grain toast?
I, for one, want no part of a dystopian new Middle Ages if it involves domestic confiture.
Hahaha!! Anon, good question.
DeleteBut hey, they don't call it the Eggs Benedict Option for nuthin'.
So much for the Benedictine oath of stability.
ReplyDeleteReminds me of this short parley between Rod and me.
Tax deductible junkets to France trump stability and localism.
DeleteSure, St. Joseph Abbey is only 90 miles from St Francisville...but it's soooo hot there in the summer and the local Muscadine wine is nothing to blog about.
I wonder how many of his readers will notice that "The monk was the ideal personality type of the Middle Ages" is an unintelligible statement.
ReplyDeleteTom, it actually is an intelligible statement - but only from the most postModern of perspectives. The Middle Ages wasn't populated with "personality types", that's an abstract de-construction of 20th Century and beyond social science (which is why Dreher relies so heavily on the pabulum known as sociology). The Middle Ages, to the contrary, was populated with actual, naturally self-integrated people.
DeleteYeah... there's choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine, melancholic, and... monkish, I guess.
DeleteWhich is my point. "Monk" isn't a personality type. Not in the Middle Ages, not today, not never.
DeleteBut it has a certain wiseiness to it, doesn't it? The monk something something ideal something something Middle Ages.
Yes! Yes! Phrased differently, one could even claim, I think, that the Middle Ages had a sort of "monkiness" about it, and monks have a sort of "Middle Agey-ness" about them.
DeleteThis is no doubt due to Robin Hood movies, movies in general, television and the many people in the world who are as imprecise as Dreher.
LOL, Tom.
ReplyDeleteEssentially, this is Convertodoxy on Steroids. For American converts to Eastern Orthodoxy, there is no concept of the Domestic Church, as there is in Catholicism. There is little to no lay piety apart from the monastic ideal. The goal is to live as monastically as possible "in the world."
But, as countless ex-convertodox have attested, this is a spiritual straitjacket. It is extremely limiting, spiritually and theologically. And it is ultimately self-defeating -- for, in fact, most laypeople (especially the married-with-family ones) are neither called to monasticism nor suited to monastic spirituality.
Monasticism is a genuine, legitimate, necessary calling, but it is for relatively few people. The rest of us are NOT, repeat NOT, called to emulate the monastic ideal. Sure, we can practice contemplative prayer, enjoy periods of retreat and silence, and all that jazz. But our primary vocation is to be "in the world, not of it," to be "salt and light," to love our neighbor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, practice the spiritual and corporal works of mercy. All with the help of Grace and bathed in prayer, of course. But no, we are not called to hole ourselves away in a permanent quasi-monastic retreat.
The classic Western critique of Eastern Orthodoxy is that it is too inward-focused, too exclusively concerned with mystical spirituality, e.g., seeking the Uncreated LIght of Mount Tabor. Again: There is nothing wrong with this Eastern inward-focused spirituality. But it is not the primary calling of 99% of laypeople. And, if laypeople en masse start adopting such an approach, the results could be disastrous -- both for society and for our souls.
But I highly doubt that many laypeople will heed Dreher's siren call, so maybe the whole thing is moot anyway.
Diane, you should think about this: why are so many Catholics verbally approving of the idea of the so-called Benedict Option? My short answer is that they all think that they are already doing it, and that the BO is merely a shorthand or placeholder for "whatever I'm doing to raise my children in the faith." To them, at least.
Delete(I should narrow it down to mostly blogospherical Catholic, I suppose....)
Diane, yes, if the statement was meant to mean something (rather than anything), I'd guess it was meant to mean something like, "The monk is the ideal of the Middle Ages."
DeleteThat's true enough -- if you asked a medieval monk. A lot of people did, especially other monks, and the answers were often written down, and saved, and copied. Even when the questioner wasn't monastic, the answers would be. All of which might give a biased impression of medieval spiritual life.
I have seen it argued that it wasn't until St. Bernard in the Twelfth Century that lay spirituality was taught to be a derivative of monastic spirituality. Then the mendicants came along in the Thirteenth Century, with their lay Orders of Penance, who combined the contemplative and the active in the secular world, even as most of the best books continued to recommend that holy layfolk were to live as quasi-monastics.
So what is his point, exactly?
Agree 100%. His point? I dunno. But he is woefully ignorant when it comes to the complexities of history.
DeleteDiane, sometimes your blanket statements about Orthodoxy can be as vexing as Rod's Catholic Church-bashing.
DeleteI willingly agree that there's a demographic of supremely annoying American Orthodox converts online. Fully granted. (As an aside, your continued irritation at their hands is not mandatory. You don't have to engage them. They are so very little and obscure; why bother?)
But you make a statement here with no qualification: "For American converts to Eastern Orthodoxy, there is no concept of the Domestic Church, as there is in Catholicism. There is little to no lay piety apart from the monastic ideal."
This is false. There's no reading of this sentence that doesn't apply your judgment to all American Orthodox converts. Please reconsider your use of blanket assessments.
The concept of the home as a "little Church" was one of the first things I learned as a convert. I'm not nearly as good at practicing it as I should be, but not because I wasn't taught. Likewise, I was carefully instructed about the differences between lay and monastic practices and repeatedly warned of the dangers of covert zeal that mistakenly aspires to monastic piety. Not that that kind of posturing ever appealed to me, anyway.
That certain niche cultures of converts are noisy online with their fantasies doesn't make their fantasies the actual teaching of the Orthodox Church, or even the practice of the majority of converts.
I am an American Orthodox convert who is as annoyed by Dreher as anyone here. I wouldn't say that Dreher is quite like the "monkabees." He's too "worldly" for that. He's got his own special brand of public oversharing, self-appointed prophet status, and narcissism going on, which is couched loosely in his Orthodox identity, but is more about him than about the Church. I think if he'd stayed Catholic, he'd be doing the same things, and annoying us just as much. I wouldn't color all American Catholic converts with the same Dreherish brush if he were still Catholic.
Finally, I'm sure we both agree that Pauli's post today, "Family Option vs. Benedict Option," is a good, constructive response to the airy fogginess of the BO.
It's possible that Diane is doing some broad-brushing here. This post might be helpful, BTW, on the topic of Orthodox getting overzealous about monastic practices.
DeleteMy (admittedly limited) experience with reading stuff by Orthodox converts has been that if they came from being protestant or not having religion they are much more bearable than if they came from Catholicism. I know I'm generalizing here, but I think you really almost have to have a serious beef against the Catholic church to convert to Orthodoxy. I mean, look: we almost believe EXACTLY the same things and worship in much the same way especially if you look at Eastern Rite Catholics.
Anon: "Finally, I'm sure we both agree that Pauli's post today, Family Option vs. Benedict Option, is a good, constructive response to the airy fogginess of the BO. "
DeleteThanks, Anon.
Pauli: Oh, yeah, Brother Boris in that post is right. Rod should not be yapping away, spilling his tens of thousands of words of opinion and advice. As long as he's been doing this, I've been wondering, what in the world does his priest think about this? Why doesn't his priest shut him down? It's especially crazy-making when Rod goes on one of his jags in which he goes on and on talking about how deep and rigorous his spirituality supposedly is. YOU JUST DON"T DO THAT. But Rod does. Sigh.
DeleteYou just don't go broadcasting advice to strangers, but Rod does. And then he blinks not as he turns on a dime from pontificating on his deep spirituality and discipline to extolling male sexuality as expressed by the rolling Stones. (And I like the Stones. But as others here have noted, Rod has a way of ruining things you like.)
Noticing typos in my comments. Bleah. Sorry.
DeleteBTW, oy, Rod's post bragging about his coverage in the Italian newspaper.
BTW, oy, Rod's post bragging about his coverage in the Italian newspaper.
DeleteEven before that, using a link to David Brooks as a sandwich board:
Rod Dreher, author of the truly outstanding book “How Dante Can Save Your Life,”
I'm beginning to think of what Rod practices as "ecto-Christianity", a process containing molecules of it but otherwise effectively outside Christianity entirely, like the mucous a snail reflexively exudes in its travels.
Anon, I only know what I was told by one particularly obnoxious Catholic convert to Orthodoxy. She grudgingly conceded that she missed the Domestic Church Thing after she Doxed. We Catholics do not have icon corners. We have icon houses. With statues, rosaries, holy cards, scapulars, sappy Mary hymns, and special prayers for everything. If you've never been Catholic, I don't expect you to understand. It's not monastic or quasi-monastic. It's lay. And it's what keeps us going, even when our local parishes leave something to be desired.
DeleteBut I certainly do concede that not all converts are Comvertodox-ish. Not by a long shot. They are individuals like anyone else. But there does seem to be a certain online type IYKWIM. Once you've encountered them, you don't know what has hit you!
DeleteHe's got his own special brand of public oversharing, self-appointed prophet status, and narcissism going on, which is couched loosely in his Orthodox identity, but is more about him than about the Church.
DeleteOh, ain't that the truth! LOL!!
Nonetheless, would you not agree that there is more emphasis on the monastic ideal in Convert Orthodoxy (at least in its Russian-influenced iterations) than in other Christian communions? As even you concede, the noisy online brigade certainly do give that impression.
Alas, I admit, my experience is very limited. The online contingent are all I have to go by here. The only Orthodox I know in Real Life are Greek Orthodox, mostly cradles, and they are as salt-of-the-earth as all get-out. I mean, they're about as far removed from monkabee-ism as possible -- no peasant tunics or long denim skirts, believe me. Au contraire! LOL!
Anyway, I sit corrected. But I do think that Dreher is influenced by that Monasticism Thing, even if he applies it in his own peculiar way.
"You greatly delude yourself and err, if you think that one thing is demanded from the layman and another from the monk; since the difference between them is in that whether one is married or not, while in everything else they have the same responsibilities... Because all must rise to the same height; and what has turned the world upside down is that we think only the monk must live rigorously, while the rest are allowed to live a life of indolence" - St. John Chrysostom
DeleteThis quote, which encapsulates the spiritual approach of the ancient Christian East, explains why Orthodox Christians have retained the ancient spiritual disciplines of strict fasting, continual repentance, and a fuller parochial liturgical life. Far from eschewing apostolic action in the world, the spiritual life of Orthodoxy enables the faithful Orthodox Christian to retain the healthy spiritual life that ensures the Church a transformative presence in the world, thus fulfilling the call of Christ to be a leaven in society that she resides in but to which she is not conformed.
Likewise, consider St. Symeon the New Theologian, who says that the monastic and lay person must, "eternally and continuously repent and weep and pray to God, and by these actions to acquire all the other virtues." This focus on repentance, which all too often has been constricted to the cloister in the Latin Church, remains the province of all members of the Orthodox Church. While modern Roman Catholics would consider St. Symeon to be espousing a spirituality reserved for the monastery, they only demonstrate their own distance from his spiritual life and that of the ancient Church, which retains his teaching as the common inheritance and guidance for all Christians.
While nobody should impinge the worthy actions of the Latin Church in actively seeking to transform society and restore all things in Christ, it is unfortunate that she has created a wide divide between the monastic and lay states. In fact, this gulf has resulted in a degeneration of the spiritual life of many Roman Catholics, in which the profane, such as Protestant-inspired worship, is placed alongside the ancient and holy worship of the Church, and the spiritual hunger of the Roman Catholic is unmet through a dilution of fasting and ascetic disciplines. Far from increasing apostolic activity in the world, such a radical and artificial divide between the monastic and lay states has compromised both the spiritual life and apostolic zeal of the Latin Church, as is readily observed by the lamentable state of Catholicism at the present time.
My guess is that Diane's writings about the Orthodox read to the Orthodox about the same way that Blogger's writings about the Latin Church read to the Latins.
DeleteHe's got his own special brand of public oversharing, self-appointed prophet status, and narcissism going on, which is couched loosely in his Orthodox identity, but is more about him than about the Church.
DeleteAt least unlike the worse convertodox he has or cultivates a personality that's not based ONLY on being Orthodox. That's normal, healthy, even if you don't like that personality. He gets some joy from his relatively new faith (he's not a newb anymore), liking the rite. That's normal too. I'm no fan but I'll give the man some credit.
"Diane, you should think about this: why are so many Catholics verbally approving of the idea of the so-called Benedict Option?"
ReplyDeleteAre they? This is an internet phenomenon. I.e., transient and unstable.
What appeal is has is to despair. Right now conservative traditionalism is leaderless and rudderless. Guys like Dreher fill a vacuum. Which nature abhors.
I agree! Most Catholics I know in Real Life -- heck, most Protestants, too -- have never even heard of the Benedict Option.
DeleteAnd I bet if I asked our local Greek Orthodox about it, they wouldn't have a clue what I was talking about. And they'd care even less!
DeleteGee, thanks, Tom. LOL.
DeleteI *always* take pains to distinguish between the Convertodox I've encountered Online Only, on the one hand,and the salt-of-the-earth Greek Orthodox I've met in Real Life. And I don't think I ever bash Orthodoxy per se, just the Online Convertodox Phenomenon. (This reflects my very bad experiences with some of the nastier Online Convertodox.)
Blogger thinks we're a bunch of graceless hellbound heretics. When have I ever remotely implied such a thing about the Orthodox?
I like and respect you, Tom, but I think you need to hone your reading comprehension in this case. Yeah, this is the Internet, and no one has time to read carefully, but, if you can't read carefully enough to make important distinctions, then please don't then spout off and insult people personally on the basis of less-than-careful reading.
My comment above showed up in the wrong place. It was a response to Tom's comment comparing me with Blogger.
Delete