"Why so many Catholic laypeople are thinking about some form of the Benedict Option"

Really? How many? Rod Dreher doesn't say, nor does he need to, because "so many" means exactly the same thing as "Benedict Option" - anything and nothing. However many "so many" may be, Rod desperately needs every last one of them he can make you believe exists if he is to give his Benedict Option book proposal marketing angle any sort of meaningful religious grounding.

What may help that "so many" become a few more, though, is Rod Dreher's sock puppet blog The Benedict Post, designed to woo Catholics to his Benedict Option by posing it as a weekly staple of Catholic thinking. Benny, as I like to call Rod's Catholic-fishing alter-ego, has had some publishing gaps over the last several weeks because Rod has been preoccupied with the death of his father. Our condolences on their loss. I'm confident Benny will be back up and chirping out Dreher-pitch-perfect Benedict Option Catholicisms any day now.

Benny

With Jake Meador on his team, dutifully referring to Rod's Benedict Option by its inventor's preferred trade mark, the shibboleth "BenOp" (because, for a Christian concerned with thickening his religious faith, those full five syllables can be a burden far too heavy and distracting; and, of course, because Twitter) and with Rod invited to retreat with Evangelicals to make his pitch directly, so far Benny doesn't have a little Protestant sock puppet blogging brother.

The rebrand that "everybody" is talking about.

But stay tuned. It's still early in the campaign season, and a Protestant Benny may still pop up. Or, less likely, I may be proved wrong about Benny, an option statistically as likely as Rod posting a picture of Francis that just once invokes the Vicar of Christ instead of a sixth Marx brother.