Emmanuele Barbieri
Corrispondenza Romana
September 21, 2018
In the first few weeks of
September, the American blogger Rod Dreher toured Italy to present his book The Benedict Option, A Strategy for
Christians in a Post-Christian World, described by David Brooks of the New
York Times as, “the most discussed and most important religious book of the
decade”.
The book which appeared in the
United States in 2017, was translated into Italian by Edizioni San Paolo. In the
Italian tour, Dreher’s work had some illustrious presenters, such as Monsignor Georg
Gänswein, Prefect of the Papal Household and Secretary to Benedict XVI, the
Director of the Osservatore Romano,
Giovanni Maria Vian and the Bishop of Reggio Emilia-Guastalla, Massimo Camisasca.
Some questions spring to mind spontaneously:
Why have these figures connected with the ecclesiastical establishment been
induced to publicize Dreher’s book, when they have regularly ignored the works
of the most orthodox Catholic writers in Italy? Why have none of these
presenters mentioned and stigmatized the fact that Dreher is guilty of unhappy
apostasy, having abjured the Catholic Faith in 2006 to join the schismatic Orthodox Church? The answers are perhaps in the American journalist’s basic thesis itself.
Dreher’s idea is that Christians who
want to maintain their faith need to segregate themselves from the world and
live in small communities, like the Trinity Presbyterian Church in
Charlottesville, or the “Compagnia dei Tipi Loschi” of San Benedetto del Tronto
(but Gian Maria Vian suggested he include also Enzo Bianchi’s “Communità di Bose”).
Its point of reference is the action of St. Benedict of Norcia, reinterpreted
according to lectures of the Scottish philosopher, Alasdair Macintyre and the “creative
minority” of Benedict XVI.
Dreher’s exit strategy, however,
risks being an option for the catacombs: the illusion that is, of saving oneself, by
forming privileged islets where you live the faith in the family and small communities, forsaking
public combat in the modern world. The “catacomb mentality” is not properly an
escape from the world in the sense of withdrawing into hermitages, grottos or
monasteries, it is rather the stance of those who withdraw from the battlefield
and dream of being able to survive on personal testimony alone, without facing
the enemy publically.
The “catacombalist” doesn’t want to
fight as he is convinced that he has already lost the battle: for him, in a
world inundated with evil, one can only build “arks of salvation”, waiting for
the waters to subside. In The Benedict
Option, Dreher uses the image of Noah’s Ark, prepared under the indications
by God to resist the flood and then return to the dry land. “The inundation has arrived –said Dreher
in Rome – and the water is rising very
quickly. What we Christians are doing is not working and so it’s now the moment
to begin a radical change, it is the time to build arks before the inundation
sweeps us away.”
The Benedict Option seems to be a fruit
of that rejection of the militant notion of Christianity, which became
widespread after the Second Vatican Council. Walls must be substituted by bridges, since
there are no contrasting visions of the world and the different Christian
confessions, Catholicism, Protestantism and Orthodoxy can join together against
the dictatorship of relativism, by basing themselves on a generic sentiment of transcendence,
which sets aside the supernatural action of grace.
“Man will never reach perfection except
through Grace” as Abbot Michael John Zielinski
rightly said, when presenting The Benedict Option at the “Giornata del Timone” which
took place in Staggia Senese on September 15. But no authentic supernatural Grace can be
obtained by those who have separated themselves from the Catholic Church, which
is the one and only Church of Christ, the One and Only “Way, Truth and Life” in
this crisis of the modern world. And if Dreher could not stand the wave of
scandals which have overwhelmed the American Catholic Church and has lost the
faith, it is precisely because he had no recourse to the highest source of
Grace.
What kind of lessons can he give to Catholics today who, in the [midst
of] the storm, remain firmly attached to the only Bride of Christ?
Translation: Contributor Francesca Romana
