Of Claudio Risé

Source: Claudio Risé
The Benedict Option. A strategy for Christians in a post-Christian world
The holy monk from Norcia saved Europe from the decline of the Roman Empire with his "ora et labora". Today Rod Dreher proposes to transform Christian homes into many monasteries to free contemporary civilization from drugs and smartphones.
“Move away from the most followed media. Turn off the television. Put away your smartphones. Read books. Play games. Compose music. Party with your neighbors. It is not enough to avoid what is bad: one must also embrace what is good.” Nonconformism, personal commitment, fidelity to the strong aspects of Western history and thought: these are the inspiring principles of “The Benedict Option. A strategy for Christians in a post-Christian world” (San Paolo editions) di Rod Dreher. The strategy is to transform the homes and meeting places of Christians into monasteries where they live, work, and we pray with the commitment and profound intensity of the Benedictine monasteries. The book, presented in an interview by Martino Cervo on “La Verità” il 31 last August, In recent weeks it has aroused strong interest and unexpected debates throughout Italy. Also because in the meantime the post-Christian world and Church crisis scenario has generated sensational news events. Starting from Monsignor Viganò's letter to the Pope, former Vatican Apostolic Nuncio in Washington, published by “La Verità” and followed by qualified interventions such as that of Monsignor George Ganswein, and significant developments, followed with daily attention by this newspaper.
The Benedict Option is inspired by the holy monk Benedict of Norcia, founder of the movement at the origin of the spiritual and cultural rebirth of Europe, of which he was named patron by Pope Paul VI. The Benedictine spiritual awakening is historically recognized as one of the main causes of the restoration of territories and practical developments, scientific and spiritual that in 1500 years of presence of the monks transformed a small continent, poor in raw materials and with swampy and abandoned lands, in the richest area of ​​the world both materially, spiritually and culturally.
Who has studied the monastic experience, like the philosopher and mathematician Ludwig Wittgenstein, one of the masters of twentieth-century thought, or the philosopher Giorgio Agamben (“Very high poverty. Monastic rules and way of life”) he attributes a change to her “so decisive for the ethics and politics of Western societies that perhaps even today we are unable to grasp its entire nature and implications”. Yet the text that inspired it, the “Rule” written by Benedict for his monks is very simple, apparently elementary in its prescriptions.
It's exactly this, but, his strength, yesterday and today. Who works with people's discomfort, come me, o Rod Dreher, attentive journalist, experience in the field how the simplicity of the Benedictine Rule can restore vision and impetus to a continent devastated by corruption and the depression it generates. In fact, today's malaise also derives from it, in large part, from the Western rejection of every handed down norm, of behavior, moral or physical, about the body, life and physiological well-being. It is the ancient problem of limits, that man in the phases of success rejects, and by whose loss it is destroyed. Until, Then, agree to find him. The interest in Opzione Benedetto comes from here.
Lo “wild look” (and authoritative scientific journals) they told how the “shit syndrome” (the shitty life syndrome) is in Anglo-Saxon countries, reversing the previous trend towards lengthening life, shortening it under a deluge of drugs, also pharmacological, accompanied by all types of self-destructive behaviors. The Christian Churches, including the Catholic one, they have often preferred not to judge this reversal of the worldview. Nevertheless, as the mystical philosopher Simone Weil wrote, this paradigm shift no longer looks at human life from the point of view of man's duties towards God and the living world, but from that of the protection of desires, transformed into personal rights and guaranteed by States. This reversal has created great disorientation and weakened people's very vital drive.
It happens again today, ricorda Dreher, what happened in the decline of the Empire: even then norms and customs were replaced by instincts and the Roman world dissolved into disorder and physical and moral weakening. It was then that the young Benedict left the troubled Rome behind and prepared for his monks “The Rule of the Monks”, a proposal for an orderly and industrious life, lived in the service of God. The young men who followed her considered her an extraordinary gift, because it gave a good and strong program to people's existence. Those who entered the Benedictine monasteries had their day carefully divided into useful actions, healthy and often pleasant, even if sometimes tiring: and “fare” which was also, at the same time, meditation, and prayer. Not a little for a world in ruins (like today too).
The Benedictine Rule gives those who accept it a form in which to place their life, saving it from shapeless liquidity, prey to the impulses and emotions of the moment, where it used to be. And where the Churches often leave it, when they become fearful of setting unpopular boundaries, and therefore separations, distinctions between good and evil, order and disorder. The Christian, but, wants and must distinguish: it has been the vocation of Western man since Pythagoras, and central part of Jesus' legacy: “May your words be yes-yes, no no: the rest is of the devil.” It is the sword that Christ claims to carry, as the Barnabite friend tells us, Father Antonio Gentili in his I come to carry the sword. Life as spiritual combat.
The distinction is precise, daily, between the things to do and what not to do at any moment of the day: this is the precious commodity (rare in periods of decline), that the man asks the father abbot, accepting the Benedictine Rule. It didn't happen in the 5th century AD for the first time. Throughout the story, the eras where order had disappeared and people behaved as if every god was dead, they were devoured by anxiety and loneliness. When the satisfaction of every desire and abundance suffocate the relationship with God and therefore the personal strength of man, the disoriented man destroys himself. Today, the powerful people of the world who pose under the media spotlight altered by alcohol and substances while their companies are reeling are an example of this.
However, escaping dissolving hedonism is more difficult today, because it has become one of the pillars of consumerism since Western civilization. Not becoming addicted to consuming things is considered antisocial. The one about drugs, for example, it is promoted by entire economic sectors, partly illegal but also already emerged and authorized, and connected to influential political powerhouses, media and financial. The same is true for many psychoactive pharmaceuticals and painkillers; for entertainment chains; for media that spread destructive behavior; laboratories and organization of reproductive and sexual manipulation: all practices have now become “market”, and therefore untouchable for the media and mass public opinion. Dreher convincingly denounces the conflict between the market empire and Christianity and recalls how man's freedom from goods and needs has been a strong value of the West since Judaism and Greek thought, roots that Benedict and his monks held dear.
L'”Benedict option”, with its proposal for the commitment of lay people to a monastic and hard-working form of life, it also involves stopping “shore up” the sick look of”Empire” western, corroded by his hedonism. I am, Indeed, two different programs: il “market”, where those who do not recognize spiritual forces sink, and the energy of concentration on the interior, at the center of which the Lord awaits us.