Wednesday, June 3, 2015

John Zmirak on the Benedict Option

I wanted to point this out earlier; it was written back on April 18, 2015 and reflects on the passing of Cardinal George. Zmirak praises the Cardinal's work and witness in the public square, and he acknowledges a temptation which arises in the face of the "prospect of real persecution" which Cardinal George famously predicted.

The prospect of real persecution contains within it a subtle, more sinuous snare for the Christian soul — the blissful escape of Gnosticism. That’s the comforting option of pretending that we few, we happy few, have been blessed with a higher vision that teaches us to disdain this earthly life, the needs of society and the claims of the common good.

All that we’re called to do is to decorate our own souls, and keep our children “clean” of the vast corruption that surrounds us. We are not obliged to fight in the squalid arena of politics, or to wade down into the “culture.” Instead, we can please Our Lord by fashioning tiny, private gardens, where reverent liturgies and wholesome lifestyles will somehow survive amidst the ruins. When the pagans around us finally collapse in their filth and futility, it’s to us (or to our sturdy, fearless great-grandchildren) that they will look, and our scions will rise from the rubble to build another Chartres from the broken pieces of abortion clinics and international airports.

Yeah, that sounds great to me. We’ll get our payback then, and we’ll sing Easter hymns on our enemies’ unmarked graves.

It would be possible to take such Gnostic comfort by willfully misreading Cardinal George’s final prophecy, that the heir of the martyred bishop “will pick up the shards of a ruined society and slowly help rebuild civilization, as the church has done so often in human history.” But Cardinal George was not such a cruel or callous man as to wish that future on us, or see it as something hopeful, a promise of vengeful glory after a temporary setback.

Zmirak compares the so-called Benedict Option not to the heroes in Lord of the Rings, but to the mad king, Denethor, who famously gave in to pride and despair, planning a murder/suicide with his son by burning and crying "The West has failed!"

We face a profound obligation today to fight the Culture of Death with all the tenacity that God gives us. We must indeed fight as Churchill promised “on the seas and oceans, on the beaches … on the landing grounds … in the fields and in the streets.” We cannot take comfort in the prospect of escape, of a “Benedict option” whereby we will hide from evil in tiny enclaves of fellow believers. Because evil will find us there, as wolves can sniff out lambs. In a closed, self-protective environment, evil is all too likely to take over, among folk whose guard is down.

No subculture is safe. Indeed, the bleak facts of the sex abuse crisis should teach us that preachers are not immune. So should stories like those of the Legionaries of Christ, and the Society of St. John, each of which set itself up as a militant, separatist alternative to the culture — and proved to be the vehicle for some to prey upon the unwary. The further we retreat from the cold, clear light of day, the more vigilant we must be about our motives and our leaders. In fact, I think that a better name for the separatist imperative is not the “Benedict” but the “Denethor Option.”

I think that "misreading Cardinal George’s final prophecy" is exactly what Father Longenecker does in his acceptance of the Denethor Option, although it is perhaps not a willful misreading.

And, learning from experience, it really does seem like creating subcultures increases the chance of child sexual abuse. Here's another example from the Amish which, from what I've heard, is not an outlier in that "gated community". It strikes me as a bit ironic that people who obsess the most about the chances of their kids getting abused would start talking about "options" which would create communities with less accountability instead of more. Of course you are never going to see a SNAP created to go after the Amish because the Amish don't have deep pockets.

Big kudos to Zmirak for writing this. Normal serious Catholics still aren't buying the so-called "Benedict Option". It's not Benedictine and it's not an option.

28 comments:

  1. "Are you tough enough for Grape Nuts?" LOL, love it.

    Ranks right up there with Volvo's "The Car for People Who Think" as Most Insultingly Elitist Advertising Slogan of All Time.

    Well, OK, maybe UNC's Kenan-Flagler Business School gets that award, for its slogan (now abandoned, thank God), "The Online MBA You Probably Can't Get Into." Yeah, UNC. Way to show you're in tune with the trend toward customer-centricity: Insult potential customers. :p

    Man, I hate elitism. And gnosticism. The Denethor Option indeed. Bravo, John Zmorak.

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  2. Oops, typo--meant Zmirak. Sorry!

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  3. This outstanding comment by AJ Partamian on Rod's embarrassingly self-promoting BOp post of today should close the conversation on the Dreherian BOp for good:

    http://tinyurl.com/ob4t5z3

    If Rod were honest and after more than a book deal, I think he'd have long ago realized the obvious points that Partamian makes (so very politely! Better than I could've managed) about the inevitable results of the elision of differences in Rod's slippery and empty term, "small-o orthodox Christians." AJP then points out the obvious: that the parts of the BOp that might work are old news and are embodied and nurtured in parish life.

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    1. Anon, alas, the ink's not working for me. Could you possibly provide an excerpt of AJ's comment before Rod deletes it? Thanks!!

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    2. Thanks!! That was excellent.

      The problem would lie in the very real differences in doctrine and practice among orthodox Christians. There is simply no realistic way to create an intentional BenOp community that allowed for any serious diversity of worship and doctrine.

      Oh my gosh. This describes the charismatic covenant community my goddaughter belonged to. 60% Catholic, 40% Protestant, 100% kooky. (BTW, a woman who grew up in said community was one of Dreher's subjects in his Crunchy Cons book. Small world, eh?)

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    1. Thanks, man. Was just checking some others for today. For some reason, the media always makes a huge deal about Anderson Cooper's birthday, ugh. Same year.

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    2. Nothing matters to the media like the media.

      I'd stick with Chuck Barris if I were you. Genius.

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  5. "Normal serious Catholics still aren't buying the so-called 'Benedict Option.' It's not Benedictine and it's not an option."

    Whoever said Longenecker was a normal amything,Catholic or otherwise? You must be a fruitcake to write for Patheos. In fact, I think that's a requirement.

    Come to think of it, why isn't Dreher writing for Patheos? He'd be perfect!

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    1. Joseph, I really haven't read enough of Father's stuff to agree with what you are saying here. I think calling him a fruitcake is most likely overstating any case you could have against any of his ideas.

      I sometimes agree with what he has to say and sometimes I think he's probably just thinking out loud and wrong. Whatever the case is with Father, I don't think he has been on the Dreher-watch as long as we have been.

      As far as Dreher writing for Patheos, I think BeliefNet -- where he used to blog -- is a lot like Patheos. They are both big media companies which try to capitalize on trending religious topics.

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  6. BTW, Pauli, I didn't know it was your birthday! Hope you have a great day. Celebrate well and with gratitude for all of God's blessings!

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  7. Here's an update on The D'Hippolito Option: We're still conducting focus group testing. We had been conducting meetings with our PR consultants on "branding" but they've been called away to help put a nice, shiny veneer on the FIFA scandal. ;)

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  8. Happy birthday, Pauli, you young thing, you!

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  9. Mark Shea is a friend of mine, which is the only reason I still read his blog since it's moved to Patheos. That is by far the most annoying website I visit regularly. It's slow to load, has too may ads, including annoying in-frame pop-ups, and regularly hangs up my browser. There are one or two other Patheos blogs I would read regularly if they weren't on Patheos -- I think I'm missing a lot by not reading more of Will Duquette, for example -- but I'm not really interested these days in the Catholic Blogosphere generally.

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    1. Tom, with all due respect, you should get a better class of friends. You can do far better than Shea.

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    2. Joseph, really. You don't have to be friends with Shea, but don't go telling people to not be friends with him. You come off seeming petty and insecure.

      I consider you a friend and Tom and I'd stick up for both of you when the situation warrants. Just for the record.

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    3. Patheos is annoying as infrastructure. But I wouldn't go busting on the content in general since it is likely to change at any moment. It is a company with an advertiser-supported content provision model. The content is all belief-system-oriented; I would say religion-based, but they have a huge atheist "channel", so I needed to broaden the category.

      From what I know the writers are all pretty much on the B-team. But hey, they've got Bristol Palin.

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    4. Pauli, thanks for your support. Tom, I apologize.

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    5. Thanks. No offense was taken.

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  10. And because it's your birthday, Pauli, I will simply mention that Denethor was a steward, not a king, and leave it at that.

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  11. Zmirak is a Whig Catholic and so opposes integral Catholicism in general, so it's no surprise that he would oppose the Benedict Option.

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    1. Isn't that kinda-sorta the Genetic Fallacy? Why not actually address Zmirak's arguments? He makes some compelling ones IMHO.

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    2. I don't see that Zmirak has actually made any arguments. He doesn't even attempt to understand the Benedict Option ("hid[ing] from evil in tiny enclaves"?), confusing it with Fortress Catholicism or monasticism.

      And no, it's not the genetic fallacy.

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    3. That's surprising; his hair looks totally real to me.

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    4. Didn't you mean to write "integral calculus"?

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    5. It should be obvious why Zmirak doesn't "attempt to understand" the BenOp: that's because it doesn't exist, nor does anyone including Dreher know what it is supposed to be or if it will be anything at all.

      It's not just me saying this. Just one recent example of Dreher's own words saying this:

      ... I am very far from a definitive statement on what the Benedict Option is; in fact, as Fr. Peter avers, we are working this out now, theoretically and, in some cases (his), concretely.

      Well, I'll agree that Fr. Peter is working it out concretely because he's actually living the Rule of St. Benedict, which is what the Benedictines have done for centuries. Dreher, OTOH, is "working this out" by crowd-sourcing it among his self-selected choir of believers, atheists, pagans, Uncle Chuckies, et al. IMO, those two things are not like one another, except for Dreher trying to co-opt the name.

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