Recently, a very well known Catholic scholar made a call for the formation of something called the League of St. Benedict.  This entity would provide housing or quarters for young Catholic couples who were just starting on their lives’ journeys as man and wife.  The concept is intended to encourage marriage and the raising of children.  It is a great idea, and just what this society needs.  It is a sincere attempt to build Catholic communities which is the best way to effect fundamental, long-term social change in this decaying society.  The League is based on a solid hermeneutic from Catholic history.  But like other enterprises proposed by Catholics that need Catholics to be successful, there are some serious obstacles that will have to be confronted. 

 

Allow me to digress somewhat, but with this digression, make my point. Most people walking around today just want to get through the day.  They are being beset on every side with worries and cares and, for the most part, they find themselves alone.  They become prone, or vulnerable, to the stuff that the mainstream media gives them constantly and that is designed to keep them isolated in their individuality by being self-absorbed.  Harmful thoughts, ideas, values, attitudes, beliefs, modes of behavior, and the limits of discourse are reinforced by friends, neighbors, family, co-workers, bosses, and total strangers.  Pride, lust, greed, pleasure, and more are all nicely packaged and safely ensconced as a modern value when they are nothing more than a way of enslavement of mind and soul. 

 

Catholics are not insulated from this control and so it is hard for them to come together to do anything. They have their big comfortable houses in suburbs like Granger that isolate them from others, they drive their SUVs, they are somebody at the parish or sit on some school board.  They go to plays like “Cinderella”, watch it with their children in rapt attention, and then run out of the theater after it is over without taking a minute to talk to other parents, or, other people for that matter.  They can go to Ritter’s Frozen Custard anytime they want, they spend hundreds of dollars on Notre Dame football games and parties, they come and they go as they please, where they please.

 

It is hard to get people to live in a real community where there is give and take all for the common good.  It requires a change in values.  It requires that the individual change.  Who wants to give up their comfortable house in the suburbs, their vacations to tropical places, and more, or what young couple wants to be off to the side with some religious “weirdos” as they may be called?  Everybody nowadays wants to be a hero, a leader, the center of attention.  They want to write the last great American novel or be the spokesman for the new movement that sets it all free or be popular and liked.  Nobody wants to work together and be obedient to authority (as if they can agree on who or what will be the authority).  That’s because nobody trusts anyone else, even if they all claim to be good Catholics. And, most people no longer know how to get along with each other anyway, much less talk to each other.  There are very few, if any, really Catholic communities anymore.

 

Most people, I dare say, who read any Catholic publication will, when they are done, go back to what they were doing before they picked it up.  And these talks or seminars -- everybody sits around and listens to all these great speakers talking about great and important matters.  But, then, when the talk is over, everybody leaves and goes right back to their houses in the suburbs and right back, all alone, to the same old rat race.  Reading, listening, going to conferences is really only so much titillation, so much entertainment.  Of course, writers and thinkers get their egos stroked when they become featured speakers.  To do something other than worn out paradigm is too hard or unimaginable.  And that is symptomatic of a failure of leadership, as well as the depth of the rot in society and the scope of the problem which must be successfully tackled if any real progress towards a Catholic society is to occur. 

 

Leadership is supposed to motivate, present a vision of what can be accomplished, and plan how the vision can be successfully achieved.  Those who should be leaders – priests, bishops, cardinals – are not leaders or no longer have the Faith or have been effectively neutralized by the media blitzes of the last few years.  Those who could be leaders – scholars, writers, businessmen – are too caught up in themselves or are too interested in making a profit or making a living.  Both of these groups have allowed the toxic dominant culture to overwhelm the Catholic people.  And neither of these two groups really know how to create a genuine Catholic culture as they have little or no experience in making things work and they have no clear vision themselves of how it is all supposed to fit together.  To a large degree, their own vanity and worldliness blinds them to the real solutions to the problems of today.  The masses of Catholics in the pews do not know who else to look to for leadership.  As I mentioned earlier, they are distrustful of so many, especially those around them.  So, they stay alone in their lifestyles of consumption and production.  And, so, the answer lies elsewhere.

 

The real problems of today are spiritual.  There is a lack of virtue, an abundance of vice, and a craving for comfort.  Yet all that results is more suffering and more misery and more lost souls. 

 

The answer to this situation lies with another successful hermeneutic of the Catholic Church.  That is the example given by saints and martyrs.  Holy men, and, on rare occasion, holy women, whose authority comes from God because they have opened themselves totally to Him while seeing the world and the ways of men for what they are.  Before St. Benedict began the monastic order that was to create Europe, he spent nearly ten years in a cave, praying, fasting, and growing ever closer to God.  St. Francis of Assisi renounced all possessions and lived in great poverty while praying constantly, and, as a result, we are told, he received assurances from on High that the Franciscans would continue to the end of time.  St. Ignatius Loyola, the founder of the Jesuits, undertook a similar cleansing from worldly corruption in the Sixteenth Century before founding his order.  Other holy men lived lives of obscurity and simplicity without any seeming results, but the graces that flowed from their love of God and their lives of virtue had real and tangible effects for those to come.

 

Indeed, the saints and the martyrs present us with hermeneutics of how we should live our lives.  Too bad hardly anybody ever talks about them or writes about them.  Catholics should study their lives regularly.  The saints’ lives are truly inspiring, and interesting to remember.  Learning about them could go a long way to building common ground between Catholics so that a genuine Catholic community could start to form again. 

 

What lesson shall we draw from these and other saints and martyrs?  That first and foremost they changed themselves to be in constant dialogue with God and subservient to His will.  Unless the founders of this League are willing to do the same, and unless their followers are willing to follow their lead, the obstacles to success are very great. But there is great worldliness and attachment to the material world especially among those called believers.  And purposes are not pure.  All of these things are the ultimate threat to the success of endeavors, for if the spiritual is not right, then what follows will not succeed.

 

First and foremost, the answer is holiness and dedication to God in accordance with the Roman Catholic Faith.  Until people want to get together for that fundamental purpose, with the renunciation of self and the things of man that this entails, with all the suffering that must be embraced, with all the grace that will flow….then there will be no lasting progress towards a League of St. Benedict or any Catholic endeavor for that matter.