Oh, dear, what is the Benedict Option?

Let's face it, being a fraudulent hustler of religious culture like Rod Dreher is hard work. It's not easy selling people cutting edge hydrogen oxide when they are accustomed to drinking water. But if you're Rod Dreher you persevere in your emperorography, and then one day

Boom, there it is: the strategy for the Benedict Option. Christians have to play the long game, as our ancestors in the faith did. This is what I mean by the Benedict Option: to figure out how to live, and build the structures of community that make it possible to live, so that we raise generations of Christian families. Historical circumstances have trimmed back the previous growths of the faith down to the roots. Our job is to patiently tend the roots, and nurture them for the day when the long winter darkness ends.

Boom! At least someone else is finally providing Rod with something with which to substantiate the completely cool and at the same time utterly hollow Madison Avenue brand name "Benedict Option" he has been trying to market for the last several years now.

Those who have followed this ad campaign from the beginning know quite well that it started out as a flight-from-corrupt-society religious mutation of his original Crunchy Cons mish-mash, except that no one wanted to buy that product and, as a result, Dreher was forced to wander in the wilderness pretending he knew quite well what he was talking about without, however, ever quite being able to clearly state what he knew.

In philosophical terms, the Benedict Option trade name was forced for a time to revert from actuality back into the less stressful quantum state of pure potentiality while it awaited a new product host and a new consumer base for that new product. Now, though, it seems old, unimproved Tide Benedict Option has actually been officially banned for all consumers:

UPDATE.2: And the next person who repeats the much-denied claim that the Benedict Option is about running off to the hills and building a compound to keep out all the impure people is going to get punched. Seriously, though, I am so tired of repeatedly denying this that I’m simply not going to publish any comments stating this untruth.

Given our working prophet's burgeoning Russophilia, the delicious Sovietness of this edict should not be surprising, but it does raise some ancillary and as yet unanswerable questions. What happens if I do decide to run off to the hills and build a compound to keep out all the impure people while patiently tending the roots, nurturing them for the day when the long winter darkness ends? Am I still licensed by Dreher, Inc. to use the term "Benedict Option"? For that matter, how will any individual or group know for sure whether

• they are practicing the genuine Benedict Option;

• got saddled with an old, out of date and previously recalled Benedict Option;

• are erroneously practicing a faux-Benedict Option (never buy one from the trunk of someone's car);

• or simply happen to be a sluggard who isn't trying hard enough and is only effectuating some inferior pre- or sub-Benedict Option?

In other words, where can one find the official catechism of the official Benedict Option to ensure one is getting it right?

I’m preparing to undertake a book about the Benedict Option

Ah, perfect. So one will be available for sale.

Still, I remain confused. Some posts back I laid out my thinking as to why everything Dreher must deal with in under-girding his tantalizing trade name "Benedict Option" with actual practicable substance leads with inexorable logic to a terminal secular millenarianism, and, again, if anyone can show me how it escapes this logic trap, by all means do so.

But the "Boom" paragraph with which I led off this whole post suggests something new, something different, something exciting

This is what I mean by the Benedict Option: to figure out how to live, and build the structures of community that make it possible to live, so that we raise generations of Christian families.

To figure out how to live, to build the structures of community that make it possible to live so that we raise generations of Christian families. So...to be Christian. That's the Benedict Option. To be Christian.

But still, to figure out how to live as a Christian, to build the structures of community that make it possible to live as a Christian so that we raise generations of Christian families - with a way cooler new appellation, The Benedict Option.

Not that dull old traditional Zud figuring-out-how-to-live-as-a-Christian option, building the structures of community that make it possible to live as a Christian so that we raise generations of Christian families. No, new, improved Benedict Option figuring-out-how-to-live-as-a-Christian option, building the structures of community that make it possible to live as a Christian so that we raise generations of Christian families.

Now, of course, the whole enterprise will feel more or less new, improved Benedict Optiony as opposed to old, unimproved Zuddite or any other traditional Christianity optiony depending on one's relative hysteria about the putative Dark Ages one is living in compared to other periods in history with other anti-Christian hazards. Wolves. Meanies. People that when you tell them you're a Christian go "Nie!". Disco. Vikings.

Where does this now leave me? Adrift between apocalyptic, dark-agey secular millenarianism and this new gospel of a fascinating new hydrogen oxide, with its own exegetical catechism to be offered for sale some time after the book about how Dante can save my life will finally be offered for sale.

Thanks, I'll just have water. No, really, I'm good, just ordinary, 2,000-year-old water. If it was good enough for Jesus and those who followed Him, it's good enough for me. But, still - way cool brand name, dude.

UPDATE (as they say): Commenter Mike W at the Dreher post linked has questions similar to mine:

Mike W says:
March 19, 2015 at 12:25 pm

A few questions. As a practical matter, how would the Benedict option look? What would be the general attributes of someone (or a community) following the Benedict option? How would you know if you were actually doing it properly? How do you “modernize” the approach to deal with 21st century pressures such as 24/7 media, etc. Who’s doing it now? How successful are they (and how do they define success)?

[NFR: All great questions ... but ones I am not prepared to answer. All of them I have to explore while working on the book. -- RD]

All great questions indeed, and in most cases the sorts of things one would want to have thought about and have answered before embarking on a great commission to recruit others to completely recreate their lives to suit one's vision.

But, just as with the case of Obamacare, the Benedict Option is nothing more than a political marketing chimera designed only to enhance the reputation of its proponent while dumping the unknown burdens of implementing it - including even the most fundamental question: what is it? - onto the paying marks in the cheap seats.

Here's the litmus test that Rod Dreher's Benedict Option (TM) is nothing more than fraudulent vaporware. If it were a real thing he really believed in for himself, Dreher would have already stated in clear and practical terms,

"Here is what I am doing myself and for my family in pursuit of the Benedict Option as I envision it.

Here is what I am doing:

1.

2.

3.

and here is what I am not doing:

1.

2.

3.

That is the Benedict Option in practice for my family, the Drehers."

But having taken the orders and the down payments, alas, there is no product in the warehouse for delivery.

"Sad Little Bunch"

Recently the term Sad Little Bunch was thrown at us — well, at people who fit the description "Dreher anti-fans who seethe at everything he writes" — so I guess that's how some people would characterize some of us.

Someone else brought up this bit on Saturday and I remember thinking "Yeah — another Sad Little Bunch!" It's funny; check it out:

Resumes of Apostles

To: Jesus, Son of Joseph
Woodcrafter’s Carpenter Shop
Nazareth 25922

From: Jordan Management Consultants

Dear Sir:

Thank you for submitting the resumes of the twelve men you have picked for managerial positions in your new organization. All of them have now taken our battery of tests; and we have not only run the results through our computer, but also arranged personal interviews for each of them with our psychologist and vocational aptitude consultant.

The profiles of all tests are included, and you will want to study each of them carefully.

As part of our service, we make some general comments for your guidance, much as an auditor will include some general statements. This is given as a result of staff consultation, and comes without any additional fee.

It is the staff opinion that most of your nominees are lacking in background, education and vocational aptitude for the type of enterprise you are undertaking. They do not have the team concept. We would recommend that you continue your search for persons of experience in managerial ability and proven capability.

Simon Peter is emotionally unstable and given to fits of temper. Andrew has absolutely no qualities of leadership. The two brothers, James and John, the sons of Zebedee, place personal interest above company loyalty. Thomas demonstrates a questioning attitude that would tend to undermine morale. We feel that it is our duty to tell you that Matthew had been blacklisted by the Greater Jerusalem Better Business Bureau; James, the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus definitely have radical leanings, and they both registered a high score on the manic-depressive scale.

One of the candidates, however, shows great potential. He is a man of ability and resourcefulness, meets people well, has a keen business mind, and has contacts in high places. He is highly motivated, ambitious, and responsible. We recommend Judas Iscariot as your controller and right-hand man. All of the other profiles are self-explanatory.

We wish you every success in your new venture.

Sincerely,

Jordan Management Consultants

Classic.

We Want It All.

[The following apologia/meditation comes from our friend, Diane, and could have the title “Why I am not leaving the Catholic Church.” It echoes my mind precisely and I couldn't have put it better myself. Thanks, Diane.]

Jesus, I Want It All!

by Diane

Years and years ago, I worked at an ad agency in downtown Winston-Salem. Every Advent, one of my colleagues there used to don a sparkly red graphic sweatshirt with the message: “Santa, I want it all!”

I hereby claim a variation on this message to sum up my allegiance to Catholic Church: “Jesus, I want it all!”

I want the fullness. Both-and, not either-or. Both East and West. Icons and statues. Iconostases and stained-glass windows. The Eastern Fathers and the Western ones, too. All the saints – every single one. Seraphim of Sarov and Francis of Assisi. Pre-Schism. Post-Schism. The whole enchilada. Byzantine chant and Gregorian chant. Russian choral music and Renaissance polyphony. And, yes, even the operatic Masses of Mozart, Verdi, Gounod, and Saint-Saëns. Not to mention the immortal Western religious art: the Annunciation frescoes of Fra Angelico, the bas reliefs of Andrea della Robbia, the Madonnas of Raphael. How impoverished life would be without them!

And there's the rub. That's why I could never, ever be Orthodox. Especially not Convertodox – a member of the vocal, polemical online convert community.

I cannot believe that Jesus was incarnate, crucified, and resurrected for a small part of the planet composed of Greece, Russia, and a few areas in the Middle East. I cannot believe that East Is Right and West Is Wrong. I cannot believe that the “phronema” is limited to one spirituality, one cultural expression or one theological perspective. Or even to just a few.

It has been said that the West can accommodate the East better than the East can accommodate the West. In my experience, this is abundantly true. Personally, I know no Catholic who doesn't love icons or who feels weirdly out of place during the sanctuary tour at the local Greek Festival. We are open to all that stuff, the icons and iconostases and Pantocrators, the Jesus Prayer, the mysticism. We love it all. We just don't happen to believe that it's all there is – or that everything else is wrong.

Moreover, we want the “everything else”. The rich diversity of Catholic spiritualities. The countless ways to pray, from Rosaries and Novenas to wordless contemplation to charismatic praise and worship. The endless variety of religious vocations – from the austere ascesis of the Carthusians to the baroque mysticism of the Carmelites to the charity-in-action of the Franciscans. Not to mention the varied charisms of the many Catholic women's groups, lay and religious.

Jesus, I want it all. I don't even want to exclude the best of Protestant culture and spirituality. I've lived here in the Bible Belt for 25 years, and I've come to appreciate the gifts our separated brethren possess, which we would do well to emulate: evangelical fervor, zeal for souls, ardent love of Jesus, intimate knowledge of Scripture, fearless willingness to preach Christ Crucified. I love much of Protestant hymnody, from the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal (still the gold standard in my opinion) to Southern Gospel (black and white) to the Sacred Harp “shape-note” tradition.

Moreover, as a Catholic, I am free to appreciate these authentically good elements of Protestantism. I don’t have to reject them all out of hand as hopelessly heterodox or as rife with “prelest”. As a Catholic, I believe that our separated brethren are incompletely—yet genuinely—joined with us Catholics, and that what is true and beautiful in their traditions is true and beautiful for us as well. This does not mean that I accept everything indiscriminately or that I blindly adhere to anything that contradicts Catholic Church Teaching. No way. But, as the Decree on Ecumenism states, many elements of Catholic grace and truth exist outside of the Catholic Church's visible bounds. I rejoice in this.

Jesus, I want it all. I reject what von Balthasar called the “anti mentality”: us against them; East versus West. The great sin of schism is the lack of fraternal charity, and the anti mentality epitomizes this. In my experience, the typical polemic employed by Online Convert Orthodox is indistinguishable from the old saw about olfactory fatigue. Thanks, but no thanks.

Jesus, I want it all. Sun-bleached Greek monasteries and French Gothic cathedrals. Ancient chants and baroque Masses and even shape-note fuguing hymns. I want everything that is true and good, everything that comes from You, in this whole big wide world (East and West) in which You were incarnate and for which You died.

Jesus, I want it all. I could never join a communion that would force me to reject my statues and Holy Cards and Rosaries and stained glass and Benediction hymns and Renaissance Madonnas. You would have to pry that Rosary out of my cold, dead hands. Or drag me away from that statue of Our Lady of Lourdes. In the immortal words of the old Gershwin song, “No, no, you can't take that away from me.”

Jesus, I want it all.

And that is why I am Catholic.

Apology Melodramatics

If you are at a Justin Bieber concert and you spy a young lad and lassie making out furiously in the aisle, let me be the first to acknowledge something. It is possible that these two sincerely love each other and in ten years will be happily married with three kids and a nice house in the suburbs. But let me also be the first to point out that no one would fault you if you thought these two were at least to some degree just using each other and were dispensing with any self-respect they might have, trading it for stimulation in the passion and heat of the moment.

Likewise no one would fault you if you doubted the sincerity of a quadruple apology made publicly on a blog by someone who was virtually unknown to four better-known people for unspecified offenses. Even if the apologizer uses the strongest terms for himself in order to appear self-flagellatory — demonic and satanic, for instance — the fact that one of them didn't even know he had attacked him might detract from the perception of seriousness on the part of third party passers-by. I hope that no one who really feels the need to apologize to me ever decides to just throw me into a category of people-I-may-have-offended-if-they-knew-who-I-was-and-what-I-said and then thinks they've done something unburdening and praiseworthy by making an impassioned public apology, chewing the scenery like a starved chihuahua. Just say it to me directly and privately; email is fine.

I should point out that this is by no means the first public apology which sounds somewhat phony. The whole public apology industry is problematic even if you can afford speech-writers.

I imagine you might hear a security guard at that Bieber concert whisper to another, "See her over there, making out with that dude? She's that hate-mail chick who's trying to get back-stage." Then you hear the other one nod and say "Got it. I'll keep an eye."

Weekend Warrior

This is just a notification that I'll probably be mostly a "weekend warrior" on the blogging front for the foreseeable future. I have made a major change in my "day-job" employment which should be an improvement in the long-term, but the adjustment period will most definitely see a drop in posting. My mates might pick up the slack, who knows. We may be headed toward a heavy news season on our favorite topic. April showers supposedly bring May flowers, right?

Open Comment Thread (2015-03)

Here's the new Open Comment thread. I know, I know... late on this. But now it's here because I found this thing the other day walking down the street.

And so I finally got a round tuit. Get it? A "round tuit", as in gretting around to it? Do you guys get it? Say it slowly if you need to. Do you get it now?

(smack, smack, smack...)

Well, that was kind of sad, seeing Pauli — who used to be funny at one time — stoop so low for a cheap laugh. Here's the old comment thread for reference.

Is Rod Dreher really only Wick Allison's Erin Manning?

That is, in the final analysis only a useful tool kept, like all useful tools, strictly at arm's length only for its utility?

Here's why I ask.

As Jonathan Carpenter had originally mentioned, Dreher was in his old Texas stomping grounds yesterday on various business, attending a secretive TAC meeting, doing a book signing for TLWORL, working his own DIY publicity tour for his Dante book, all of which writing efforts Dreher credits as originally having been birthed at TAC.

Here's the promotion Wick Allison provided Dreher for all those things on his primary D Magazine FrontBurner blog. No, your eyes do not deceive you, there's nothing there. And by all means, if I've foolishly missed something obvious somewhere, call me out on it so I can make amends.

In fact, this is the last I recall of Allison's FrontBurner acknowledging Dreher was even still alive. At least his old newspaper pals celebrate his keen journalistic skills when using his position to expose unsatisfying vendors.

But we also learn that TAC is a sponsor of Dreher's Walker Percy Weekend.

So why is Wick Allison so reticent to directly acknowledge the Allison-Dreher connection on Allison's own home turf? Dreher certainly has a history in Dallas, and the two are far closer than just remote publisher and hired writer. Allison's promoting Dreher's appearance locally in Dallas would certainly raise much broader awareness of Dreher's visit, and thus attendance at Dreher's events, and thus potentially more eyes on Dreher back at TAC in turn. Similarly with Dreher's WPW.

What seems one obvious precipitate from all this to me is that Dreher is far more a liability for Allison if seen to be connected to Allison's primary D Empire (which even boasts its own Academy) than he is an asset for Allison as the little engine that could still keep TAC alive and useful as a tax shelter if nothing else. Manning's unshakeable belief in her Catholic faith may play an analogous role with Dreher.

The other obvious takeaway is that giving Dreher the tax-deductible blog space in TAC to advertise his doings while contributing to Dreher's also tax-deductible WPW is cheaper than raising his salary.

But as much as Dreher does to promote Allison's take home revenue through TAC, one would think that Allison would at least publicly give him the time of day in Dallas rather than treating him ultimately as a potential embarrassment. I'm sure Erin Manning could commiserate.

Obama foreign policy

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is scheduled to speak to Congress tomorrow to discuss the threat a nuclear-armed Iran would pose to Israel, the region and the world. But in a different historical timeline, he might not have been, putting his energies into military cleanup actions closer to home instead.

From the Zionist Israeli newspaper Arutz Sheva:

Report: Obama Threatened to Shoot Down IAF Iran Strike

The Bethlehem-based news agency Ma’an has cited a Kuwaiti newspaper report Saturday, that US President Barack Obama thwarted an Israeli military attack against Iran's nuclear facilities in 2014 by threatening to shoot down Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

Following Obama's threat, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu was reportedly forced to abort the planned Iran attack.

According to Al-Jarida, the Netanyahu government took the decision to strike Iran some time in 2014 soon after Israel had discovered the United States and Iran had been involved in secret talks over Iran’s nuclear program and were about to sign an agreement in that regard behind Israel's back.

The report claimed that an unnamed Israeli minister who has good ties with the US administration revealed the attack plan to Secretary of State John Kerry, and that Obama then threatened to shoot down the Israeli jets before they could reach their targets in Iran.

I obviously can't confirm or document what Obama actually did or didn't tell Netanyahu, but the paper goes on to cite Zbigniew Brzezinski as the original source of the option, based on an interview he gave The Daily Beast back in 2009:

Former US diplomat Zbigniew Brzezinski, who enthusiastically campaigned for Obama in 2008, called on him to shoot down Israeli planes if they attack Iran. “They have to fly over our airspace in Iraq. Are we just going to sit there and watch?” said the former national security advisor to former President Jimmy Carter in an interview with the Daily Beast.

“We have to be serious about denying them that right,” he said. “If they fly over, you go up and confront them. They have the choice of turning back or not. No one wishes for this but it could be a 'Liberty' in reverse.’"

Denying America's oldest ally in the Middle East the opportunity to preemptively defend itself against an existential nuclear threat not only to its own survival but but also to setting off a region-wide nuclear arms race, on the pain of physically shooting down its Air Force (and who would prevail there?) seems to me an awfully high price to pay for some watery thin porridge of Obama's personal legacy deal with Iran as currently constituted.

But a true national leader - unlike what we have - does what he has to do, so tomorrow Netanyahu will be in Washington, hat in hand, trying to convince Congress simply to strengthen sanctions against Iran rather than giving them the nuclear store.