Leah Mickens makes a good point about The Benedict Option

It's obvious from her about page that I don't have a lot in common philosophically with Leah Mickens, but she says something I generally agree with in this piece:

While it’s true that monasteries helped drain swamps, preserve those works that were considered worthy of being saved, and maintained a culture of literacy, it’s unclear how much the average peasant or serf would have benefited from their efforts. Monasteries, especially those in the early Middle Ages, were essentially closed communities, and monks weren’t supposed to have much contact with the masses, because that could lead to too much worldiness. Most people living in classical antiquity, the medieval period, and beyond would not have shared in the cultural inheritance of their society, because they weren’t literate.... Presumably, everyone in Dreher’s Benedict community would be literate, but that in and of itself, is a modern innovation that he doesn’t seem to understand.

I think the monasteries in Benedict's time were probably a benefit to the world, but not in the way the mendicant orders were. They encountered the world in more of a direct way which is, frankly, what I think we need now.

The mendicant friars were bound by a vow of absolute poverty and dedication to an ascetic way of life. They lived as Christ did, renouncing property and traveling the world to preach. Their survival was dependent upon the good will of their listeners. It was this way of life that gave them their name, "mendicant," derived from the Latin mendicare, meaning "to beg." Unlike monks of the Cistercian or Benedictine orders, mendicants spread God's word in the cities. They were active in community life, teaching, healing, and helping the sick, poor, and destitute. Their personal maxim was: sibi soli vivere sed et aliis proficere ("not to live for themselves only but to serve others").

Nota bene: If you decide to become a Dominican or Franciscan Friar, please don't call it the Mendicant Option or the Friar Option. Just go do it.

For example, Saint Angela Merici was a member of the Third Order of St. Francis and founded the Ursulines who actually started schools for girls so they wouldn't end up in prostitution. That's an example of the true and correct type of feminism which Pope JPII called for.

Speaking of just go do it, I heartily agree with Mickens's point that all kinds of cultural, religious and literary stuff is available to us now that wasn't in the past. All we have to do is tap it in our domestic churches.