Tuesday, April 11, 2017

The Benedict Option as Triumph of the Therapeutic

Benedict Option

In which the blogger, c'est moi, overcome by a tragic attack of laziness, in the style pioneered by Rod Dreher recycles a commenter's comment as his own post filler. In this case it's the 61st comment from the Rod Dreher on Sam Rocha post below by our own Anonymous

April 11, 2017 at 2:00 AM

Rebecca Bratten Weiss (linked to by Rocha):

"And there are other problems: when you try to come Out (or In?), whatever you feared in the World comes in with you, into your microcosm. It’s ironic that my father’s first community was called “New Eden.” Into every Eden, a serpent will come. We tend to bring it in with us. Want to escape from overweening tyrannical power? Too bad, you probably brought it with you, and you will find the community dominated by whichever leader (usually male) has the loudest voice and the least empathy. Want to escape from sexual perversion? Ha. Have I got some stories! It’s amazing just how perverse people can be, on the land, when no one is looking. Want to escape from a welfare system in which those who don’t work won’t eat? I can assure you, you will be shelling beans or building a cabin while nearby some hanger-on rambles on forever about how misunderstood he is. Tired of nitpicking bureaucracy? Your community will be filled with nitpickers, happy to call you out if your daughters’ skirts are too short, or if your sons have been listening to evil music like (gasp) Simon and Garfunkel.

"Communities like this tend to attract those who are unable to get along in the ordinary world, and whatever it was that made them unable to get along, they will bring in with them."

The last point seems to be the most salient re Rod and his BO. Rod can never fit in, and can never follow the rules. He would bring that with him into any intentional community. He basically had to found his own church, because no existing one is good enough for him! He doesn't fit in in East Podunk, or the big city, or his own family. He would bring that same problem with him. As would the other Optionists. They are, like Rod, all would-be chiefs, and no Indians.

More from Weiss:

"But the main thing I want to touch on, here, is why the idea of radical separation into intentional community is delusional from the start. And that has to do with money. Money creates systemic dependence. That’s why agrarianism is a needed component in any marginally successful effort..."

Of course. Without a material basis, the whole thing is play acting. You can't work for Dow Chemical all day, and then pretend you are a monk or a Pilgrim at night. Or, rather, you can, but it is stupid.

As for the agrarianism, good luck with that! Being a subsistence farmer is a lousy lot in life. Real subsistence farmers dump that lifestyle as soon as they are able. Being cold, hungry and sick, and not having access to warmth, food and medical care is not a good thing. And nobody in their right mind wants it. But those conditions, and worse, are very real possibilities for truly agrarian intentional communities.

Otherwise, again, it is playacting. Thoreau at Walden going in to Concord to have dinner at his Mom's or over at Ralph Waldo's when he got tired of his beans for breakfast, lunch and dinner diet!

How is Rod Dreher's personal, idiosyncratic Benedict Option therapeutic in the manner of his beloved Philip Rieff?

Because, upon critical analysis it proves to be not historical, nor theological, nor even geometrical enough to pass muster with Ignatius Jacques Reilly.

It is, instead, in the foundational formulation of our own pikkumatti, the confusion and conflation of Rod's personal taste with truth, also arrived at independently at by Sam Rocha himself:

Here is an insecure man selling his internal condition wholesale to other insecure Christians.

The Benedict Option is what, solely to therapeutically satisfy the psuchological distempers of Rod Dreher and others like him, what religion should be.

Not just Catholicism, because the Benedict Option gambit isn't Catholic, nor limited to Catholicism.

Not just Orthodoxy, because the Benedict Option gambit isn't Orthodox, nor limited to Orthodoxy.

Not just Evangelical, because the Benedict Option gambit isn't Protestant, nor limited to Evangelical Protestantism.

No, the Benedict Option is what the entire human enterprise of religion itself should be, if rewritten from scratch to therapeutically satisfy the psychological-aesthetic needs of Rod Dreher and those enamored of his cult of personality.

To be sure, Rod Dreher's Benedict Option™ isn't MTD - Moralistic Therapeutic Deism.

It's really more like MDF - Medium-Density Fiberboard, a recomposition of sawdusted chunks of many religions, all hastily pasted together with psychological Rod-Glue.

I wouldn't count on it standing up to a hard rain. 

29 comments:

  1. Yes, that 61st comment was pure gold. Thank you, Anonymous!

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  2. R. Reno reviews the BO in the May issue of First Things. (It's in "The Public Square," not among the other book reviews.) He says some nice things about Rod and his ideas, but mostly is quite disappointed in the book and criticizes its fixation on disaster. Reno and First Things, we know, spend plenty of energy discoursing on how bad things are getting in the culture and the church, and yet Rod is just too catastrophizing for Reno.

    https://www.firstthings.com/article/2017/05/benedict-option

    A favorite quote: "At times, The Benedict Option can read like Breitbart with incense."

    His conclusion: "But when all is said and done, what will sustain us is simply the Christian Option."

    Oh, BTW, guess who is among the book reviews? Alasdair MacIntyre. His new book, Ethics in the Conflicts of Modernity: An Essay on Desire, Practical Reasoning, and Narrative is reviewed by John Haldane. Another MacIntyre work for Rod to neglect to read.

    - Another Anon

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  3. "Here is an insecure man selling his internal condition wholesale to other insecure Christians."

    Only one correction to Rocha's otherwise perfect insight: Rod's selling his insecurity retail, man. Definitely retail.

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  4. He basically had to found his own church, because no existing one is good enough for him! He doesn't fit in in East Podunk, or the big city, or his own family. He would bring that same problem with him. As would the other Optionists. They are, like Rod, all would-be chiefs, and no Indians.

    Yes! Those opting for the Dreher version of the BO are those who agree with Dreher's premise that the existing church, of whatever flavor, isn't up to the job. Obedience will not be a defining characteristic among that group.

    And because, in Dreher's formulation, the substance of one's faith is much less important than the manner in which faith is expressed, it is hard to see how the BO in practice would hang together as any sort of coherent "movement". Maybe a scattering of Branch Davidian compounds, each with their own quirks, is about the best that could be expected.

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  5. Pik, I think you're dead-on about how the sociology of Dreher's little communes is likely to turn out. But there's a parallel internal psychological pathology that probably bears exploring as well.

    Dreher's career arc can be seen as one of ever-increasing detachment from the annoyances of having to work in environments and alongside people he doesn't particularly care for or control. He left his newspaper, supposedly because the whole newspaper thing was going to come crashing down. To the best of my knowledge, though, nothing of the sort happened, at least not in his area, nor was there any indication it was going to. Nor could he really tolerate the subsequent, multi-employee world of the Templeton Foundation either, despite the career advance it represented.

    No, Dreher has become happier every day in the cocooned, lotus-eating world of a weenie-Howard Hughes, magnanimously approving comments stimulated by his writing - his, Maw! - in a closed universe where he never need actually, really interact with anyone or any idea that might displease him; the Google outrage-mining he does is, like pornography, only an abstraction.

    While he wants via his BO to bask in the reputational value of the cloistered orders (even while denying it) - people called by God to very different lives entirely - there's really a more accurate term for Dreher and those who would like to be like him, if they only could.

    Christian Snowflake

    It's hard to see Dreher's BO movement - though not necessarily other efforts elsewhere he has cavalierly arrogated under his own banner in order to pad his followership - as anything but that curse of Millennials needing "safe spaces" in order not to be "triggered". Never mind that Dreher works diligently at amping up that triggering histamine daily.

    So we've got a guy who has made a cushy berth for himself as a professional snowflake (Lord help him if Wick Allison ever cuts him loose, as he is prone to do), inventing a movement that celebrates his modus operandi as the cure for their allergies, while giving all the kiddos all the dander they can snort.

    Something tells me anyone currently looking to Rod for the solution to his life's spiritual woes won't have the will and skills to organize a sock drawer, much less stock a Branch Davidian armory. Instead of going out in an ATF blaze, theirs will likely come to a dreary end at a bistro patio table over a latte grown bitter and cold.

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    1. Oh my gosh. You have nailed it. Christian safe spaces.

      But Dreher already has his. Why would he ever give it up for life on an actual agrarian, localist commune? (Short answer: He wouldn't and won't.)

      I can kind of sympathize with Dreher's disdain for the corporate slog. I wasn't crazy about it myself, during my recent 17-year stint at Big Fortune 500 Apparel Company. But I put up with it for the same reason most of us working stiffs do: It paid the bills. And we didn't have the luxury of safe spaces.

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    2. When viewed objectively, and in a sort of Marxist-materialist way, the entire trajectory of Rod's adult life fits this pattern. It has always really been, despite all the misdirection, about finding a nice, comfortable, prosperous, "safe space" for Rod.

      For most folks, this would be an honest, straight forward, even if difficult, task: How do I create a life and lifestyle that is sustainable financially, and that makes me happy?

      But Rod is not most folks. He needs, for whatever reason, for there to be a facade of doing God's will. And so he always claims that prayer and soul searching and the "study" of Dante and now, most absurdly, concern for the fate of Western Christianity, is what led him to do what he wanted to do in the first place.

      Rod wants to be a well off, best selling writer. And he wants to live somewhere where he feels at home. Those are not bad things, per se, but he has to dress up those perfectly acceptable ambitions as something more, partly, I guess, to make them come true, and partly to ease his own conscience.

      Take the Little Ruthie thing, for example. It COULD have been a heartwarming, if somewhat simple, account of a how a small town grieved over the death and celebrated the life of a person who does appear to have been a very good person. A dedicated daughter, wife and mother, and a self less and diligent public school teacher. The tale of the town coming together is what actually appeals to readers.

      But noooo. Rod has to make it all about himself, and go full on Wendell Barry, and turn the whole thing into something it is not. It can't just be that, for Rod, staying in East Podunk his whole life would have been bad, while it was good for his sister Ruthie. Nor can it be that his sister embodied the foibles and failings of small town provincialism as well as its virtues and charms. No, now he "realizes," because God and WB told him so, that he too should live in that town. But that isn't the end of it either. No, to be truly important, Ruthie's "Way" must be the "Way" for everyone. All of us must be "stickers," and not "boomers," as WB's reductive dichotomy would have it. And his sister was a saint, rather than merely a good person, with flaws as well as qualities, for realizing it all along. All of that makes the book "bigger," and presumably, Rod thought it made it more marketable. At the same time it provided cover for Rod returning to live in his home town, which is what he wanted to do at that time. Very neat.

      Except that, it turned out, Rod did NOT want to live in that town. Most folks there, including his own family, don't seem to like him very much. They loved Ruthie, and he was in conflict with her. And for all of his deification of her, he didn't actually like her very much. Perhaps too, the town is really not much fun for Rod, who after, has seen "Pa-ree." Clearly, the townsfolk were not very grateful to Rod either, when he tried to shove an alien religion down their throats.

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    3. (continued)

      In any event, Rod had to get out. But how? Perhaps not everyone reading this realizes just how over the top Rod was a few years ago about "sticking" in your hometown. About how, as he now calls it, he "made an Idol out of Family and Place" (as an aside, Rod loves loves him some random capitalization...its like reading a bad version of "Winnie the Pooh!"). So, again, Rod could not just say..."I'm not happy here, I think I want to move to Baton Rouge."

      Instead, after failing to get the ball rolling with his Dante flop, he links up his desire to move with (1) what he purports that God wants and (2) his latest marketing scheme. Can't do my Benedict Option in East Podunk because, heaven forfend, I can't just join an existing Christian church there (and there are Christian churches on every block), and try to contribute to it being more thorough and "thick," and so on. No, I have to move to Baton Rouge. Because, if I don't, then there is nothing dramatic. Nothing that says the BO is not merely a book, a book that I wrote to make my money (which, again, there would be nothing wrong with that), but something that comes directly from God and is Very Important. And, waddaknow, coincidentally, it allows me to move out of the town I don't want to be in and into a city where I do want to be.

      All about, and always about, Rod finding his comfort zone, his "safe space," and his material prosperity, but gussied up with God, and Wendell Barry, Dante, and McIntyre and St Benedict and whoever else is at hand to provide the patina of scholarship and serious religiosity.

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    4. You are too kind.

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  6. Hey, wait a second. Rod writes: "I do write with alarm in The Benedict Option, because I believe there’s a lot to be alarmed about — and because we can and must do things to get through this crisis. It’s not going to be easy, but what else is there?:
    ***Didn't he go ballistic over Jamie's Smith unfair characterization about his book being alarmist? Didn't he end their friendship over this charge? Odd that. I'm sure Rod will offer a mea culpa and say that it turns out Jamie was actually right.

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    1. I'm sure Rod will offer a mea culpa and say that it turns out Jamie was actually right.

      In the immortal words of Buddy Holly, that'll be the day. ;)

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    2. The R.R. Reno post is Dreher Blogging 101

      1. Compose a post to respond to valid criticism.

      2. Break out some statistics* you don't understand to prove your point.

      3. Before you start posting comments add a hysterical Dreherbait update to throw the hounds off your trail... "sure Reno might have a valid point; but TRANNIES"

      *Seriously; he's not a stupid guy why can't he comprehend that you can't just extrapolate every statistical tend into the future. I mean what's the use of the BenOp anyway; the average temperature in March in DC is 56, in April it's 67, by November it will be 144 freaking degrees and we'll all be dead anyway.

      -Anonymous Maximus

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    3. Oh, man, of COURSE Rod wrote a classic Rodblog response to Reno. Rod is just exhausting.

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    4. Yet he still hadn't responded to Adam DeVille. How telling!

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    5. Very telling. Very.

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  7. Why do some above say Dreher should just join a local church in his hometown and criticize his move to Baton Rouge? If there are no Orthodox churches in said town, what else can he do? Revert to Protestantism? Do the critics above think all churches are the same, and just joining some local Protestant slap-up is the same as being part of the Catholic or Orthodox Churches? That liturgical and theological differences don't matter?
    Also, helping to found an Orthodox mission church in his hometown hardly amounts to "shoving a foreign religion down their throats." Did he lasso the populace and force them to attend and convert at gunpoint?

    I must say, for all the valid criticism of Dreher here, there is an awful lot of over-the-top, sanctimonious, ad hominem, self-righteousness on display too, and probably a good dose of envy also for Rod's success and lifestyle.

    How dare he write a book on Dante when he doesn't speak Italian and isn't a certified Dante scholar (TM) approved by the academy! He never claimed to be a Dante scholar and such criticism misunderstands the book's purpose and intent.

    And whatever particular faults the Benedict Option book and concept may have, there can be no denying its general theme that Western Christianity (and by extension - the two go together - Western Culture at large) is indeed in grave crisis. Anyone who thinks otherwise, and thinks that things are just fine, has his head in the sand and hasn't been paying attention.

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    1. Rod knew there were no Orthodox churches in his hometown when he moved there. At the time, though, doing the Wendell Barry, you must be a "sticker" not a "boomer," thing was more important, apparently. And, yeah, opening up a vanity "mission" of a for-that-place very unusual version of Christianity in one of the most already Christianized regions in the country is insulting, and does amount to trying to shove said vanity version of that religion down the throats of his poor cousin, never been across the county line, fellow townsmen.

      As for what Rod "should" have done, when his "mission" quite predictably went belly up, if living in your hometown was half as important as Rod was prating on about during his "Little Ruthie" phase, why couldn't he just either suck it up and join another church, of which there are plenty, including liturgical Protestant and Roman Catholic, ones, right there? Or, as some have mentioned, why couldn't he just continue to live in the community (which, again, it seems like only yesterday he was saying was the most important thing in the world) and commute to his precious Orthodox church on Sunday?

      On the Dante thing, no he doesn't have to be a scholar to write about Dante, but writing a book about how Dante can "save your life," and then have it actually be all about how Dante "saved" his life, strikes me as preening and self centered. As well as jejune. And the real point of the whole deal was to lay the groundwork for Rod changing his cant from "You Must Go Home Again" to "You Can't Go Home Again," or, again, really more like "I Couldn't Go Home Again, because Daddy still doesn't like me, and so forget all that stuff I have been preaching about Family and Place and all that for the last three years." And, oh yeah, I read me some Dante and he helped me to feel good about myself as I re invent myself yet again, but NEVER in an MTD way, perish the thought!

      As for envy, there are many, many writers who I don't much like, and who have had much more success than Rod. Stephen King, for example. Or the current crop mystery writers. But, for some reason, they don't stick in my craw, despite the fact that if envy was driving my bus, they would. I wonder what that reason could be? What is it that makes Rod different? I don't care if he is successful. As I said, there is nothing at all wrong for him wanting to be, and being, a materially successful writer, living where he wants to live. There is something wrong, though, in pretending that every move, literally and figuratively, you make in your adult life is in fulfillment of some sort of divine commandment (Little Ruthie...you must go home again), societal imperative (urban BoBos are going to "save the country," with their homegrown vegetables and fancy beer and wine), or now a combination of the two (God wants me to save Western Civilization AND Western Christianity by moving to Baton Rouge and pretending to be the equivalent of a monk or an Amish person).

      The question of whether our Culture is in grave crises or not is above my pay grade. And I am not a Christian at all, so I won't even touch that aspect. What I do know is that a self serving, phony, careerist, just out to make a buck, blogger with a BA in journalism, who changes his abode, his raison d'etre, his religion, and his tune more often than he changes his socks, does not have the answers. Stephen King writes books for money, and, apparently, enough people think he is good at it to make him rich. Rod does too, and, apparently, enough people think he is good at it to make him well off. Good for him. But I don't need either one of them to tell me how to live, or for tips on how to save Christendom. Thanks anyway.

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    2. I am always dismayed to read defenses of Rod's books that say it's wrong to criticize them for being shallow and poorly argued. Books that are meant for a non-academic, popular audience are fine, but they don't get to pass off plain nonsense and a-historical fantasies as truth. That is insulting to the non-academic, popular audience, who deserve an author who does his homework enough to be accurate to the depth he chooses to go, whatever that is.

      But Sam Rocha and Adam DeVille have already said all this better than I can.

      I'll grant you that some of the personal criticism goes over the top, but Rod's two books before TBO, and a huge portion of his blogging, are all about his personal life and internal struggles. In this writing, he has constructed a complex script centering on how his family is mean to him and yet he overcame their bullying and small-mindedness. The line of criticism that calls Rod to task for this--and the aforementioned quasi-academic failures--is a perfectly legitimate response to matters that he himself has published for all to read. It's what's on the page, and that's what critics examine.

      There is nothing amiss about pointing out that his constant blaming of his sister and father, after their deaths, for sins they committed against him, comes across as adolescent, unseemly, and self-righteous, no matter how much he dresses it up in supposed spiritual and emotional growth and healing on his part. Those are things you discuss with your priest and therapist; you don't publish them for big bucks. And keep bringing them up over and over and over again in your blog.

      He invites (and in his regrettable and embarrassing response to Rocha, all but demands) us to judge him a tabloid-style writer who does not want to give up that style, no matter how much he yearns to be numbered among the intelligentsia.

      - Another Anon

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    3. Perhaps it is you who haven't been paying attention, snowflake.

      Christianity, Western or otherwise, as well as culture is no better or worse no than it ever has been: both have always been vulnerable to the follower-fueled exploitative predations of the Rod Drehers of their times.

      Yet both Christianity and culture inevitably persist.

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    4. All of that is true, but it is not only in his personal life that Rod comes across as unseemly. He acts almost as if he is unaware, to take just one example, that the intentional community, BenOp living arrangements he is now calling for if not demanding are 180 degrees removed from the organic, hometown, community as birthplace ideal that he was espousing as the Holy Grail just a very short while ago. One blog post, I think, where he says he made an Idol out of Family and Place, and then, I guess, all of that is to be forgotten. Now it is on to the next thing.

      First, being an urban conservative bohemian gourmet was going to save the world. Then going back to East Podunk was going to save the world. Now, going to Baton Rouge by way of Norcia is going to save the world.

      How about, instead, we just concluded that Rod has no clue. And not only about his own family (and, let's face it, lots of people have unresolved, and unresolvable, family issues), but about anything else.

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    5. Orthodoxy as a "vanity version" of Christianity? OK. A 2 thousand year-old continuous theological and liturgical tradition, which, along with Catholicism, is one of the two branches of Christianity that can claim legitimate apostolic succession. Dismissed as "a vanity version of Christianity". Funny one. Your average American Protestant churches, with their watered-down, comfortable, bourgeois prosperity gospel and "LGBT inclusion" obsessions have more reason to be called "vanity versions of Christianity" (arguable whether some are really Christian at all in any true sense). Again, no one was forced to attend or convert, and obviously not many did, since it closed down. FWIW, there is an interesting documentary available on YouTube called "Orthodoxy in Dixie", about Orthodoxy in South Carolina, so it is not as "foreign" to the South or supposedly offensive as the person above makes it out to be. There are some Orthodox monasteries in the South also.

      As for this: "Christianity, Western or otherwise, as well as culture is no better or worse no than it ever has been: both have always been vulnerable to the follower-fueled exploitative predations of the Rod Drehers of their times." Not only is it laughable to claim that the state of Christianity and Western Culture is no worse than it has ever been, but we're also supposed to believe that Rod Dreher and those like him represent the worst threat to those very things! Yes, Rod Dreher, enemy number one of Christianity and Western Culture, that horrid exploitative predator, with "followers" too! Talk about over-the-top.

      For what it's worth I never read Little Way, because the subject never interested me. Sad she died, but her life is of no interest to me, nor was the going back home story of Dreher as relates to her. I liked the Dante book because of the Dante bits (which inspired me to read a lot Dante over the past year or so, as well as many books about him by Hollander, McInerney, Santagata, Charles Williams, etc.), but found much of the family stuff off-putting and self-indulgent as well. Also, his family frankly sound like a bunch of jerks who I wouldn't want to be around, so I never could understand why he cared so much what they thought or wanted to move back to be close to them. But, inspiring me to read more by and about Dante (except for the Inferno in high school Dante had been a gap in my reading) was worth the price of admission. As for the BO, I skimmed a few bits in the bookstore, but don't plan to buy or read it because he's blogged so much about it ad nauseum for 2 years that I feel the book itself is somewhat superfluous at this point. The BO book seems like just a puffed-up, slightly expanded compilation and reworking of stuff that was already covered in his blog posts. Perhaps an occupational hazard of one who both blogs and writes books for a living. Blog too much about what you are writing about, and by the time the book comes out people feel they have already heard and read all about it, and may be fatigued with the whole subject already.

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    6. "Vanity" because, as I understand it, it is not the main version of Orthodoxy found in the USA. And because Rod himself set up and funded the "mission." And there were RC and Lutheran and Espiscopalian churches nearby, not just "prosperity gospel" sects. And, again, as I understand it, "missions" are for non Christian areas. Which makes the project all the more "vanity."

      As for Dante, fine if Rod led you to him, but the main thrust of Rod's book is the family griping and the MTD.

      I'll let Keith handle the crises in Christianity stuff, but suffice to say if there is one, Rod does not have the answers in his BO book. As even you seem to recognize.

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    7. Dear Anonymous at 1:54 PM on April 13:
      "How dare he write a book on Dante when he doesn't speak Italian"

      I did point out that Rod didn't "bother" to learn Italian, but I never challenged him for writing a derivative book based on secondary sources, people do it all the time. In fact, congratulations Rod on joining that fraternity.

      My bigger point was his hypocrisy in mocking the feel-good strain of liberalism while using it as the market for that book.

      Similarly with the developments being instigated by his followers around his BenOp initiative: the Facebook groups, the "how-to" encounter groups etc.. I don't challenge those people, or ask how they "dare", I think those are good activities. I think people should get together and talk about what is the right way to live. But Dreher trashes that demographic when it's not focused on his own book. And hypocrisy is a very annoying thing.
      SecDem


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  8. Rod's mission church wasn't about vanity; it was about convenience. He could have gone to the mission church he now attends in Baton Rouge (or, God forbid, the Greek one--but the Greek one will NOT be made in Rod's BenOP image). So he could have driven 45 minutes; this is what most Orthodox in non-urban areas have to do. But he wanted to thicken his Christianity, so he had a church planted there for him. That's what makes it boutique--not because it's Orthodox where there are other churches.

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    1. I think founding your very own mission smacks of vanity. That it also shows that Rod is all about his own convenience (some monk he would make!) doesn't change that.

      As for Orthodox or not, that is just the other side of the same coin. Rod, in his You Must Go Home Again phase, could have chosen an RC or other church in his hometown that was good enough. Or, he could have commuted to the Orthodox church in Baton Rouge. But he chose to do neither. Because he is an egomaniac. AND because he is lazy.

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  9. As for this: "Christianity, Western or otherwise, as well as culture is no better or worse no than it ever has been: both have always been vulnerable to the follower-fueled exploitative predations of the Rod Drehers of their times." Not only is it laughable to claim that the state of Christianity and Western Culture is no worse than it has ever been, but we're also supposed to believe that Rod Dreher and those like him represent the worst threat to those very things! Yes, Rod Dreher, enemy number one of Christianity and Western Culture, that horrid exploitative predator, with "followers" too! Talk about over-the-top.

    You don't really understand when you're not really saying anything meaningful, do you.

    If you don't believe Christianity and culture are now in no worse straits, just different ones, then name a time or times when either was better, and explain why each one was so. Or STFU.

    Your reflexive intellectual dishonesty is revealed here:

    Yes, Rod Dreher, enemy number one of Christianity and Western Culture, that horrid exploitative predator, with "followers" too! Talk about over-the-top.

    What you did here above is this: declare something I never said - Rod Dreher, enemy number one of Christianity and Western Culture, - then declare your straw man as my being over the top.

    What makes Dreher and those like him worse than merely existential threats to either Christianity or culture is that he, like priests that bugger little boys, is both an internal parasite and an internal predator: his whole career is based on burrowing into the Christian community, then using his writing to seduce the psychologically and spritually vulnerable into following one of his schemes of the moment, schemes he seldom follows himself. What he really believes at any given moment - ghosts? sky-is-falling energy predictions? Catholicism? Orthodoxy? - is just that: something he believes at the moment, nothing more.

    Ask Father Matthew Harrington what he thinks about Rod's beliefs of the moment. Like his blog fan base chaff, he, too, was an expedient, ultimately dispensable tool of the moment.

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    1. "...his whole career is based on burrowing into the Christian community, then using his writing to seduce the psychologically and spiritually vulnerable into following one of his schemes of the moment, schemes he seldom follows himself. What he really believes at any given moment - ghosts? sky-is-falling energy predictions? Catholicism? Orthodoxy? - is just that: something he believes at the moment, nothing more."

      To me, as a non Christian, it is this inconsistency that really bothers me the most. That he, assuming he is at all sincere, is a flighty, lightweight, can't make up my mind, neither fish nor fowl, nobody, pretending to have the chops to opine profoundly about society, the meaning of life, and so on.

      No one is bound to be only one thing in his life. But, for an adult, to move from Methodist to agnostic to Roman Catholic to Orthodox to specialty Orthodoxy marks one who should be doing some listening now, some introspection, rather than pontificating. You are confused, you don't what's right and what's wrong in the world. You aren't sure about your worldview. OK, there are a lot of things much worse than that, but don't pretend to have all the answers either. You once thought that leaving your small town and living in the Big City (Dallas, Philadelphia, Brooklyn) was the way to go. But then you had second thoughts and moved back to your hometown. Now you have "third thoughts" and are moving to Baton Rouge. Again, no crime, nothing wrong with any of that. But, please, can you NOT, at every friggin' stop along the way, act as if you have figured out the key to Life, The Universe, and Everything? You, Rod, are the one who claims that where you live is a really, really important thing. Not just a lifestyle choice. Not merely a matter of personal preference. And yet you can't choose between a BoBo existence in a big city, a Wendell Barry life in your hometown, or now a BenOp intentional community somewhere in between.

      I have this vision of Rod moving Julie and the kids down to the rain forest in Nicaragua in a year or two. Rod running bare chested through the jungle, claiming that THIS time he really has figured it all out, once and for all!

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    2. Our very different Benedict, hard at work thickening Christianity:

      https://twitter.com/roddreher/status/852234973918576640

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