The Benedict Option is now officially closed to new inquiries

Like a mutual fund closed to new investors, with this declaration

You are right about that. The Benedict Option discussion has become so big now that I have decided no longer to publish comments that take random potshots, or that say things like, “I still don’t know what you are talking about” and “So you want to take your football and go home, is that it?” There are plenty of posts archived on this blog in which we talk at length about what we think the Benedict Option is, or might be. If anybody cares to read them, they have the ability to look them up. I’m not wasting any more time answering questions and criticisms I’ve dealt with many times before, or answering questions and criticisms that I don’t think are serious or constructive. By all means criticize; it will help me and readers think more clearly about the Benedict Option. But don’t come here to post the same old stuff and expect me to approve of the comment. I leave you with the words of my spiritual adviser in such matters.

Rod Dreher has closed his Benedict Option book income project to new inquiries and explanations. Those wishing to passively accept whatever the Benedict Option might be beyond a book marketing gambit remain welcome to add additional blog hits to his posts on The American Conservative. Such efforts, of course, will still not include Noah Millman's questions and criticism, which remains available here.

As for the rest of you, Rod Dreher doesn't need you any more. He now has all the potential investors in his book marketing gambit that he needs.

As we at EQE (and many others) have recognized and maintained all along, from the beginning Rod Dreher's Benedict Option has always been nothing more than a dimensionless, self-referential meme designed to attract potential purchasers to yet another book for him to write, given the successively poor outcomes of his prior two.

With this most recent declaration that the gates of explanation of the Benedict Option will be formally closed, Dreher is signalling that he believes he has accumulated enough believers in whatever his Benedict Option might be to fund a book on the subject. As for a publisher, one that believes that at the bottom of all this there surely must be a pony to be found somewhere has yet to step forward.

Christians who wish to continue passively about Dreher's word singularity - the rhetorical equivalent of a black hole, where words and ideas circle a self-referential event horizon until they are ultimately sucked into an abyss from which nothing, not even thought, can emerge - are no doubt encouraged to do so; after all, there is no such thing as bad advertizing.

Rod Dreher's Benedict Option

Those still holding out hope of understanding whatever his Benedict Option might be are now officially out of luck.

The Benedict Option Fund is now officially closed to new inquiries.

Musings on Topix by bookworm

Time to check in to out favorite Topix thread, now on page 25. First some commentary on the picture here from bookworm:

After all the sadness and disappointment his natural family has put him through, it's so gratifying to see the sheer, exuberant joy a virile young man brings to his face, even so far away. I guess some people have to travel far to finally find their true place in the world. 

Then bookworm demonstrates that he, too, sadly misunderstands the Benedict Option (like all other sensible people):

I think he's given up on that book. All he's talking about now is what he's calling his Benedict Option. Forming communes and stuff. You have to think the guy who's talking about it will be doing it himself, look pretty odd if he didn't. So sooner or later he'll be starting a Benedict Option commune around here. He's probably just waiting to get his hands on some land. Probably his family's land.

Well, bookworm, Rod Dreher has never worried about "looking pretty odd." Speaking of which, bookworm commentates again on gastronomy:

That sure does look like Rod's trying to make a doody. Or maybe like he has a cramp. Or maybe a gas pain. Hard to tell what that food's really doing to him, but based on that picture I think I'd pass on whatever it is he's eating and ask the waiter for a burger and fries instead. French fries of course.

and then bookworm museth further on the Benedict Option:

I'm not so sure how I feel now about Rod starting up one of these Benedict Option communes in our parish. In a comment one of his people is noodling over how to avoid the IRS by swapping labor, then asks, "If you could be certain that you can get away with it, would it be acceptable for a Benedict Option community to support itself by shoplifting?"

I don't think Rod himself would be doing any such thing, but he couldn't be keeping his eye on all his people all of the time. We could end up with something like a religious band of gypsies or those Irish travelers. They'd all be thinking what they were doing was justified because they were doing Rod's Benedict Option thing, but the lines could get real blurry real fast. 

I don't think bookworm needs to worry about this, and most people here probably agree with me. Dreher has always been about talking and writing about things and not really doing them. Besides, the Benedict Option has always been about what you need to do, NOW BEFORE IT'S TOO LATE, but what he needs to do is to think deeply and intensely about what the Benedict Option really, actually is, or could be, and somehow formulate ideas about something which has no formulas and write a book about something entirely new which he has been talking about for ten years.

Oh, we're really going to fall for that...

We know Rod Dreher lies, and Keith's example is merely the latest evidence. His greatest example of long-form lying is his ridiculous narrative of why he left the Catholic Church. But, to paraphrase somebody, there be lies, dang lies and utter bullcrap:

United Airlines, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Wall Street Journal aren’t the only organizations that have encountered technical turbulence lately: on Tuesday an item was incorrectly published on Noah Millman’s blog due to an error in our system. The problem has now been fixed, and we apologize to Noah and to our readers for the mix-up.

You can find Noah’s latest posts here at: The Necessity of Greece’s Separation and Obergefell and the Pursuit of Happiness.

The Hat Tip goes to Virgil —thanks man. (I'll continue writing when everyone is done laughing.)

OK, it was technical turbulence, everybody. When's the last time you heard the word turbulence? Did you end up landing at the wrong airport? Because that's what tech turbulence does to the American Conservative's website.

"Spock, report."

"Captain: it appears that the entire electro-magnetic structure of Mr. Millman's article has transformed and undergone a mitotic reflex changing it from a criticism of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option to two separate articles entirely, one of which is a futile attempt to assign logic to Justice Kennedy's Obergefell decision."

 

"Any guesses on why this happened?"

"It is possible that the Klingons did this in order to distract people from their attacks on United Airlines, the New York Stock Exchange, and the Wall Street Journal."

Yeah, yeah... me and my wife, Morgan Fairchild, are really buying this story. And I thought I was joking comparing Dreher to Hillary. That should learn me. Earth to Rod, earth to Rod: it's not the crime, it's the cover-up. Ever hear that one?

But you have to admit that lying is so, so much easier than answering criticism with reasoned arguments. That is if you don't mind losing your remaining credibility. This shouldn't affect TAC readership one bit. They will keep giving out what their readers love. In shovelfuls.

The so-called Benedict Option, which is neither of Benedict nor is it an option, will not stand for criticism.

I think I'll end with a little inversion of I Cor. 13:4-7 which might apply.

The BenOp is impatient, the BenOp is unkind to the doubtful and is envious of better ideas; the BenOp brags arrogantly that no one understands it, it secures its own oxygen mask first, it is always provoked, it takes into account every wrong suffered, does not rejoice in the truth, but lies to protect itself; bears nothing, believes we're doomed, hopes to sell books, endures no criticism.

I've preserved Noah Millman's entire original article here. I hope they at least pay him for it.

Rod Dreher's Benedict Option lies

One of the tell-tales of a larger fraud like the fraud with which Rod Dreher is currently trolling Christians with his protean and chimerical Benedict Option is the trail of smaller deceits it leaves like turds along its way.

Rod Dreher addressing Noah Millman's Benedict Option post

One such turdlet of truthlessness is this classic small boy squirmer, one of Dreher's "NFR"s in response to commenter Maxine pressing him on the question his colleague Noah Millman got deleted for asking originally (as usual, because we are dealing with items that have a habit of mysteriously disappearing when they prove embarrassing to Rod Dreher, the screen capture of this comment may be found here):

[NFR: I just now realized that Noah posted today about the Benedict Option. I had not seen that post; I thought you were referring to the post back in May. Noah’s post today has not been deleted; here it is. I will answer those questions. But you know what? I’m really tired of your gripey, hostile attitude. I don’t understand why you read this blog, except for the sake of liberal outrage porn. But I don’t have to waste my time with your constantly kvetchy comments anymore. — RD]

Let's unpack these casual, pathological untruths one by one, shall we?

I just now realized that Noah posted today about the Benedict Option

No, Rod, you didn't. "Today" would have to be July 9, 2015, the date stamp of the post. Google's cached version of Millman's post is two day's earlier on July 7, 2015 at 16:01:33 GMT. You did not realize that Noah posted today about the Benedict Option.

Noah’s post today has not been deleted; here it is.

No, Rod, it has been deleted. Your "here it is" link goes to the same "Not Found" page it has been doing for the last three days now, the same "Not Found" page it has been going to when you declared I have no idea why Noah’s article is not here anymore (screen capture here). You are lying either by saying that it has not been deleted when you know it has, or by attempting to deceive your readership by blindly throwing a link up you calculate few will follow, simply trusting your word about it instead.

But let's be as charitable as possible; after all, no matter Rod Dreher's actual calendar age, it's pretty obvious we are still dealing with the mind of a child habituated to reflexively throwing out any answer he believes might get him off the hook when cornered and confronted by a grownup.

The only way Rod Dreher, self-appointed Christian prophet and impresario of his so-called Benedict Option could be telling the truth is if he has no real knowledge of his TAC colleague Noah Millman's recent and incisive critique of his Benedict Option at all - not when it was originally posted, not that it was deleted, not that it "has not been deleted; "here it is", not what it asks answers to, nothing, nada - , a critique, moreover, that raises, not one, but three questions while quoting from Ross Douthat, a columnist Dreher admires greatly and quotes from frequently himself.

To be innocent of lying Dreher must be entirely innocent of any knowledge of the recent Millman post as well.

We must believe Rod Dreher has had absolutely no interest in this recently deceased Millman piece critical of his Benedict Option, not when it was originally posted on July 7 (or earlier), not that it had been deleted, not that he could as easily have pointed his commenter Maxine to the cached Google version just as we do - none of that.

In a post entitled "Critics of the Benedict Option" constructed of Rod interviewing himself as a way of responding to their questions, our most charitable alternative to seeing Dreher as a childlike, pathological liar is to presume his response to his critics has no real interest in any real world, actual critics asking concise questions, particularly those who work for the same publication he does.

Behold your prophet, fellow Christians. Follow this dissembling little boy at your caprice and at your peril.

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.

Benedict Option Denialism is like Climate Change Denialism

Confusing the phenomenon of El Niño for climate change (to be charitable, because he spends most of his time online he's not particularly knowledgeable about the real world)

We just came off a month of record-breaking heat and rainfall in the US, which is the kind of thing scientists predicted would happen as the planet warms

Rod Dreher then goes on to construct a rather random mashup of denialisms in order to suggest, in reverse application, that if one denies his Benedict Option is needed, one is remarkably like the cretinous Climate Change Denier (who in turn, of course, is like the savage and barbaric Holocaust Denier).

When several commenters question the validity of these associations, Dreher lays down St. Rod's Rule of Benedict Option Political Correctness:

Look, I’m not going to let this thread turn into a climate change argument. I brought up the global warming article to draw an analogy with the Benedict Option concept. If global warming turns out to be not true, that doesn’t obviate the Benedict Option, which is about something else...

But, wait, Slick: you linked the BO to climate change to give it the gravitas currently enjoyed by climate change. So any loss of credibility climate change may suffer directly vitiates the artificial link you're trying to construct here, in turn draining the credibility you're trying to pump from climate change over to your Benedict Option.

Are all BOppers as patently intellectually dishonest as you, High BOpper?

Anybody who wants to turn this thread into an argument about global warming per se, I’m not going to post your comment, no matter which side you take, and no matter how minor a part of your overall comment it is. I don’t have time to edit that part out. You have been warned.

Well, that's one way to save the village.

Rod's TAC blogging colleague Noah Millman asked

So I have to ask: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be to stop pursuing outrage porn? And if it isn’t – why isn’t it?

 and, for his trouble, found his post unpublished down the memory hole.

Those of us not yet within the Benedict Option's Soviet sphere are thus obligated to ask in turn: is one of the strictures of the Benedict Option going to be Liberal Political Correctness and, in particular, Liberal Political Correctness with respect to Climate Change Denialism and other Liberal apostasies? And if it is - why is it?
 
You have been warned, Mark Steyn.

A hit parade of options, one Benedict

Diane's blog friend, the Catholic < - > Orthodox Gabriel Sanchez, has put together a list of Christian Options worthy of being perused far beyond the borders of his own blog. So as not to over-borrow, I have only excerpted the first and last four. Go here to read all the rest.

Too Many Options

After months of painstaking research and serious scholarly inquiry, I have uncovered a comprehensive list of all of the available “Options” that we Christians of 21st Century liberal America can exercise during these most unsettling times. You’re welcome.

 1.  Cupich Option – I’m ok, you’re ok
 2.  Ligouri Option – You’re definitely not ok and neither am I; in fact we’re probably both going to hell
 3.  Romanides Option – The Franks are definitely not ok
 4.  Bandera Option – Poles and Russians are definitely not ok; Ukrainians, however, are
:
22. Kallistos Option – Birth control is not ok, then again maybe it is sort of ok. Never mind, now it’s ok
23. Palamas Option – Seeing God’s uncreated energies is perfectly ok
24. Thomist Option – No it isn’t
25. Benedict Option – To be determined

Keith interviews Keith about Rod Dreher, his Benedict Option and much more

I found the standard just set by journalist Rod Dreher in interviewing himself about his Benedict Option to be a handy and highly efficient way to get directly to the heart of things while keeping the distractions of inappropriate questions to an absolute minimum.

Keith: A few disaffected voices claim you're critical of Rod Dreher and his Benedict Option, although most people would argue you're more than fair when it comes to those subjects. What say you?

Keith: Oh, I quite agree.

:

Keith: What about his self-interviewing technique, the one we're currently employing ourselves?

Keith: It's pretty obvious, isn't it? It's absolutely critical for successfully resolving the Benedict Option, particularly in the post-cognitive culture we find ourselves in today.

:

Keith: So, can you tell us what Rod Dreher's Benedict Option is?

Keith: No, I'm afraid not, but that's because it's Rod Dreher's Benedict Option, not Keith's Benedict Option, and, like Rod himself says, "there is no formula!". So we're simply going to have to pass Rod Dreher's Benedict Option to find out what's in it. For better or worse, though, you will be assuming the consequences of testing out Rod's blogging ideas on yourself and your children and letting others know whether they're better or worse than what you're doing now, not I.

:

Keith: Wait a minute: I am you, so neither of us will be testing anything.

Keith: I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I believe you've checkmated me on that one. Let's just agree to disagree and move on to the next question, shall we?

:

Keith: Very well, now that we've exhausted all possible questions concerning your treatment of Rod Dreher and his Benedict Option, if you were a tree, what kind would you be?

Keith: Man, you're ruthless! Okay. Let me think. Offhand, I'd say an oak, because that was the original answer to the original what-kind-of-tree-are-you interview question, plus oaks are majestic and strong, so it's just plain cool to say "oak", but you know? There's nothing quite like a lonesome pine soaring into the evening sky, silhouetted against the setting sun.

What happened to Noah Millman's "Three More Benedict Option Questions"?

Yesterday Rod Dreher's The American Conservative colleague Noah Millman published a probing critique of Dreher's Benedict Option entitled "Three More Benedict Option Questions" which, unfortunately, you can now only read by way of Google's cached version; a screen capture of the cached version may also be found here.

This morning, after Rod Dreher had awakened from a customary long nap, Millman's article had mysteriously disappeared.

Perhaps TAC has simply misplaced Millman's post from yesterday critical of Rod Dreher's Benedict Option and written without Dreher's editorial guidance or prior approval and it will re-emerge some time in the future.

In the meantime, if you happen to be one of those hapless bloggers who linked to Millman's piece and are having to deal with a 404 today, again:

Google's cached version.

Our screen capture of Google's cached version, in the event the latter swan dives into the memory hole as well.

Oh, you're quite welcome.

UPDATE (as they say): In fast-breaking Benedict Option news, this just in: Noah Millman's piece critical of the Benedict Option has been superseded by Rod Dreher's piece controlling the narrative from both sides:

While I was away in Italy and France these past nine days, there has been lots of talk, much of it critical, about the Benedict Option. I think I’ll answer these critics by interviewing myself.

As I explained above, whatever Rod Dreher does in fact defines the Benedict Option, so this sort of narrative control and revisionism is not only perfectly understandable but perfectly consistent as well. Moreover, if you find yourself in a Rod Dreher Benedict Option community, this is the sort of control you should look forward to embracing as your defense against the forces of cultural darkness.

Although I think the Clintons have always done this sort of narrative thing more elegantly, don't you?

Most American Muslims Want Sharia Law in America

A new CSP poll shows that a significant number Muslims living in America would prefer to be governed by Sharia law rather than the U. S. Constitution.

According to the just-released survey of Muslims, a majority (51%) agreed that “Muslims in America should have the choice of being governed according to shariah.”  When that question was put to the broader U.S. population, the overwhelming majority held that shariah should not displace the U.S. Constitution (86% to 2%).

More than half (51%) of U.S. Muslims polled also believe either that they should have the choice of American or shariah courts, or that they should have their own tribunals to apply shariah. Only 39% of those polled said that Muslims in the U.S. should be subject to American courts.

So 61% OF Muslims believe that they should not be subject to American courts. And they prefer Sharia law. We disagree; we're in the majority.

These notions were powerfully rejected by the broader population according to the Center’s earlier national survey.  It found by a margin of 92%-2% that Muslims should be subject to the same courts as other citizens, rather than have their own courts and tribunals here in the U.S.

One in four American Muslims are also cool with violence toward people who disrespect their phony religion, and one in five are cool with violent takeover to impose Shariah.

Even more troubling, is the fact that nearly a quarter of the Muslims polled believed that, “It is legitimate to use violence to punish those who give offense to Islam by, for example, portraying the prophet Mohammed.”

...

Nearly one-fifth of Muslim respondents said that the use of violence in the United States is justified in order to make shariah the law of the land in this country.

Here's the conclusion, which I agree with, presented by the CSP President, Frank Gaffney:

The findings of the Center for Security Policy’s survey of Muslims in America suggests that we have a serious problem.  The Pew Research Center estimates that the number of Muslims in the United States was 2.75 million in 2011, and growing at a rate of 80-90 thousand a year.  If those estimates are accurate, the United States would have approximately 3 million Muslims today.  That would translate into roughly 300,000 Muslims living in the United States who believe that shariah is “The Muslim God Allah’s law that Muslims must follow and impose worldwide by Jihad.”

It is incumbent on the many American Muslims who want neither to live under the brutal repression of shariah nor to impose it on anybody else to work with the rest of us who revere and uphold the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution in protecting our nation against the Islamic supremacists and their jihad.

The Benedict Option fully and finally explained

Here.

Rod Dreher going full Benedict Option

The circular waterfall of emotive exposition I linked above, overflowing with illustrations, is probably the most cogent exegesis of the Benedict Option to date, but because, as its creator continues to stress time after time, "everything is connected", it would be impossible for me to excerpt any single part of it as representative without thereby unraveling the whole thing into an incoherent mess. To grasp it in all its fullness, therefore, you must read the whole thing, but, because it illuminates the Benedict Option like nothing which has ever come before, I believe the serious seeker after the Benedict Option will find it well worth the effort.

Now the overriding element of the Benedict Option everyone has been clear about from the outset is that, unlike an oil change or a haircut, the Benedict Option is a wholesale and transcendentally transformative lifestyle - otherwise we would simply be calling it the Status Quo Option. The Benedict Option is not a task on a honey-do list; having chosen it, it is one's life as one now lives it.

Because Rod Dreher has spun the whole cloth of the Benedict Option out of a single, slender thread from Alasdair MacIntyre, no one doubts that Rod and Rod alone is its creator and champion. And, because it would be the apotheosis of hypocrisy for that creator not to adopt and practice that wholesale lifestyle himself, what Rod Dreher does therefore is the Benedict Option. The life you see Rod Dreher living at any given moment is the Benedict Option in practice.

The lettuces

But perhaps at this point you have now read the whole thing I linked initially, the unfurling scroll of a latter day Jack Kerouac blessedly hooked on lettuces rather than amphetamine, and somehow, perversely, you still don't get it. You still cannot see how to achieve the transcendence of our dark, ruined culture as Rod Dreher is doing every day with every fiber of his being, demonstrably living the true Benedict Option to its fullest.

Well, my friend, I'm afraid you must simply address your failures honestly and just try harder. It's your only hope, and the very future of your children and their children in turn depends on it.

Perhaps you should meditate more deeply upon the lettuces. Maybe that will help.