Sunday, July 3, 2016

The "Benedict Option"

Some pro-monarchy Catholic bloggers have been sharing this idea lately called the "Benedict Option," i.e. a movement of sorts in the USA of Catholic "communities" which ultimately aims at a future Catholic nation.

In Thomistic moral philosophy, all actions are teleological, that is they follow a hierarchy of means and ends.  One means reaches towards an immediate end, which in turn serves as a means to a proximate end, which in turn aims at remote ends, which ultimately culminate in the ultimate end.

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Something like this would have to happen:

So, if the ultimate end were to somehow one day be a new American Catholic monarchical kingdom, then the remote end--imo--would likely first have to be mass conversion of the American public to the Catholic Faith.  The proximate end/means might be practical collapse of our current American-secularist system; and the immediate end/means may very well be, in the foreseeable future, a global economic collapse and/or war.  Well respected economists and politicians have already made this prediction.

Catholic "Communities" ??

Two "Catholic communities" come to mind here in the Heartland, one in my own home state of Oklahoma, both of which I have visited multiple times in my youth.

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1.  The Friends of Clear Creek Abbey near Tahlequah, OK.  Dozens of families have formed a kind of hamlet around the monastery, sharing a love for the Traditional Latin Mass, Benedictine monasticism, and Catholic counter-cultural living.  One can trace this Experiment to the writings of Dr. John Senior (RIP), once a famed professor of humanities at Kansas University.  He was the intellectual and spiritual mentor to many student converts, some of whom would go on to become French monks returning to Oklahoma, to found a monastic community based in part on Senior's vision.   His vision was for Catholics to organically come together as actual communities around monasteries, or to re-found Catholic ghettos in the city.

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2. St. Mary's, Kansas.  3000+ traditional Catholics, devoted to the Latin Mass and all things traditionally Catholic, live in this small northeastern Kansas town.  The Society of St. Pius X runs a parish, elementary school, and college there, serving as a spiritual and cultural center for the citizens of St. Mary's.  It is no separatist commune, but rather simply a large school/parish founded by Archbishop Lefebvre that gradually attracted so many Catholics to make the move that they effectively took over the town.  Most of the town's teachers, attorney's, nurses, doctors, police officers, councilmen, and even the mayor himself are traditional Catholics.  It is de facto a local Catholic society/government.

LINK

Other similar American Catholic Community Experiments exist:  Star of the Sea in Arkansas, John Michael Talbot's community also in AR, Post Falls, ID, Ave Maria, FL, and another in western Wisconsin to name just a few.

The "Benedict Option"

St. Benedict's monasteries--often with their attached lay communities--once served as localized cells of Catholic culture during the Dark Ages.  If today is a sort of Dark Age, the "Benedict Option" is an "immediate means" as it were to the "remote and ultimate ends" of a Catholic nation.  To create analogous social cells today centered around the Faith, traditional liturgy/piety, if not also monasteries.

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Mont Saint-Michel in France, at high tide.  LINK

AS ALWAYS, THE COMMENT BOX IS OPEN FOLKS!