Sandro Magister, after Aldo Maria Valli earlier this week, reminds us all of yet another egregiously anti-Catholic Bergoglian initiative - his cavalier hostitity towards
monastic life. One could see this as a supreme disregard as well for the monastic life of prayer that his predecessor has chosen to live since his retirement,
in which after the Church, his main prayer intention is for his successor...
Evidently, the Evil Clown who is the object of Mundabor's blatant contempt is also a master juggler who can keep any number of balls in play enough so his audience
can and do lose sight of the individual balls (devilish tricks, in this case) and will tend to focus only on whatever happens to be in his hand at the moment... One can
almost imagine that the first joint synodal-papal document under the new Jorgecadabra Apostolic Constitution will have a title exalting Homosexualitatis laetitia
or Gaudium homosexualitatis.... Oops! Scratch that. I forgot: 'homosexuality' and its derivatives are not in the lexicon of the church of Bergoglio. They call it clericalism.
Recalling the second of Benedict XVI's '9/12s'
After Regensburg in 2006, his 2007 address to the French cultural elite in Paris
on how the medieval monks' search for God also led to the rebirth of Western
civilization two centuries after the fall of the Roman empire
Sept. 19, 2018
That Rod Dreher's
The Benedict Option” is truly “the most important religious book of the decade” - as David Brooks predicted in the “New York Times” - is
now beyond a doubt [That's a rather dubious sweeping statement to make], seeing how the discussion it has generated has come to involve even the highest levels of the Catholic Church.
In presenting this book last week in a meeting room of the Italaian Parliament's Chamber of Deputies, Archbishop Georg Gänswein, Joseph Ratzinger’s secretary before and after his resignation from the papacy, did not hesitate to bring the two last popes into the discussion when he said,
“Even Benedict XVI from the moment of his resignation conceived of himself as an elderly monk who feels it his duty to dedicate himself above all to prayer for Mother Church, for his successor Francis and for the Petrine ministry instituted by Christ himself.”
Of course, the Benedict of the “option” - in the book by the American writer Rod Dreher, a Protestant turned Catholic and then Orthodox - is not Papa Ratzinger, but Saint Benedict of Norcia, the great monk of the fifth and sixth centuries who gave rise to a formidable rebirth of Christian faith and culture in the chaos that followed the collapse of the Roman empire.
But the other Benedict, the pope, evoked precisely that rebirth in his memorable address - absolutely worth rereading - of September 12, 2008 in Paris, at the Collège des Bernardins, essentially proposing that the Catholics of today take up and bring to life again the lesson of that great Benedictine monasticism, at the present juncture of civilization:
> "Quaerere Deum"
It cannot be said, however, that his successor finds himsekf in harmony with this vision, according to at least two indications.
The first is the direct attack that
La Civiltà Cattolica carried out last January on the book by Dreher, dismissing its “option” as
the heresy of a Christianity made up only of the “pure”:
> Saint Benedict in the 21st Century. But "La Civiltà Cattolica" Condemns Him to the Stake
It must be kept in mind that
Civiltà, edited by the Jesuit Antonio Spadaro, is not just any magazine, but is printed after every one of its articles has been inspected at the Vatican. Moreover, Spadaro is among the few who have the closest symbiosis with the current pope.
The other indication is more recent, namely, the cold shower with which Francis has doused monasticism, through the apostolic constitution “Vultum Dei quaerere” of 2016 and with the subsequent applicational instruction “Cor orans” of 2018,
undermining the material and spiritual autonomy of the monasteries and requiring them to federate under the bureaucratic command of authorities outside of themselves.
The two documents concern female monasticism, but they are the expression of a more general lack of appreciation that Francis has repeatedly shown for the contemplative life with respect to the active life, going so far as to say for example, in the exhortation "Gaudete et exsultate” on the call to holiness in the contemporary world:
"It is not healthy to love silence while fleeing interaction with others, to want peace and quiet while avoiding activity, to seek prayer while disdaining service… We are called to be contemplatives even in the midst of action."
The heavy-handedness of this attack on the contemplative life has been noted with great concern in many monasteries, to which expression has been given by the vaticanista Aldo Maria Valli in this three-part analysis, published in a few days ago:
> Qualcuno vuole liquidare il monachesimo? (Does someone wish to liquidate monasticism?)
> Se nel nome del rinnovamento si distrugge la vita contemplativa (If, in the name of renewal, contemplative life is destroyed...)
> Con lo sguardo rivolto al mondo, non a Dio. Ovvero come snaturare la vita contemplativa (With eyes turned to the world, not to God: How to denature the contemplative life)
[Which 3 articles I am in the process of translating but have not completed]
Naturally, all is not sunny in modern-day Benedictine monasticism, especially in the men's communities, which are marked here and there by lapses and degeneracies that are in some cases quite serious. But Dreher’s proposal, and even more authoritatively that of Benedict XVI in the address at the Collège des Bernardins, wager everything on that
quaerere Deum, that “seeking God” which is uniquely at the origin of the monastic life in addition to being a wellspring of civilization, and which must be revived today in its creative authenticity.
It is no coincidence that the latest book by Cardinal Robert Sarah - who shares this vision and is well known to be at the polar opposite of Pope Francis’s approach - bears the characteristically monastic title
Against the Dictatorship of Noise, includes an illuminating conversation with the prior of the Grande Chartreuse, and opens with a preface by Joseph Ratzinger:
> Cardinal Sarah Has the Pope On His Side. But His Name Is Benedict
Dreher’s “option” leaves itself open to not a few criticisms, especially on account of its insistence on an “escape” from the world in order to rebuild Christian existence in small, self-contained communities, as in “an ark before the flood comes,” as Reggio Emilia bishop Massimo Camisasca objected.
In discussing the book in the author’s presence in Rome, this criticism was aimed at Dreher by both the editor of
L'Osservatore Romano,” Giovanni Maria Vian, and the founder of the newspaper
Il Foglio, Giuliano Ferrara, a great atheist-admirer of Ratzinger.
Dreher’s response is that in any case “we ordinary Christians must work to make our faith more monastic.”
But that’s just the point.
The great monasticism founded by Benedict did not separate itself from the world. On the contrary, it made a decisive contribution to building modern European civilization, founded on the concepts of the person and of freedom.
If today the “dictatorship of relativism” so roundly denounced by Benedict XVI reigns supreme, it is inevitable that the two linchpins, the person and freedom, will also fall apart.
But this is one more reason why Christians as a “creative minority” should not withdraw in private or into works of charity - as the world desires and applauds - but should continue to work in the public sphere, in the light of quaerere Deum. Doing precisely what Pope Benedict always preached with consistency, not only in the address at the Collège des Bernardins that marked the pinnacle of his pontificate.
Since that address of September 12, 2008, ten years have gone by. If it is true that the Catholic Church as well has had “its September 11” - as Monsignor Gänswein said in commenting on Dreher’s book, referring to the catastrophe of sexual abuse - why not also mark September 12 on the calendar of history as the start of a journey of rebirth for Christianity and civilization?
[Except, of course, that the intended rebirth has been so violently interrupted and indefinitely put off by the current pontificate and its unregenerate and increasingly rabid anti-Catholicism.]
[Modificato da TERESA BENEDETTA 19/09/2018 23:17]