Robert Moynihan proposes that the renewal
of Europe (and the world) will come from a return to the spirituality and
transcendent humanism of the Benedictine Cloister
The Renewal Begins...
The renewal of Europe will come from the
tiny town of Norcia, Italy.
It will not come from a secular humanism
which has lost all sense of, or belief in, the transcendent.
That "de-transcendentalized"
humanism offered no consistent impediment to the rise of savage regimes which
destroyed human dignity in what St. Pope John Paul II in 1990 called a
"regression without precedent" in the 20th century.
And it is not offering a vision to the
Europeans of today which will enable them to maintain their cultural and
religious heritage -- from the Atlantic to the Urals (that is, including
Russia).
The renewal of Europe and the West will
come from a renewal of that Christian humanism which saved Europe after the
fall of the Roman Empire. That Christian humanism was incarnated in the life of
the Rule of St. Benedict and in the lives of the Benedictine monks who for
1,000 years kept the light of learning burning in the West, through their
profound love of the transcendent, all-holy God who had become visible in
Christ.
And this renewal has already begun.
It has begun in Norcia, birthplace of St.
Benedict, at the exact geographical center of Italy -- the heart of Italy -- in
one of the most beautiful of all the Italian hill towns.
It is a renewal which will restore faith
in Europe, the West, and the world.
It is a renewal based on the fundamentals:
prayer and work ("ora et labora," the motto of the Benedictine
order).
It is a renewal based on the vision of the
Patron Saint of Europe, St. Benedict of Nursia. (Nursia is the old Latin name
for Norcia.)
Fittingly, on the very site where he was
born, a Benedictine monastery has come back to life during the past 15 years.
It is called The Monastery of St. Benedict of Norcia.
Here, the spirit of Benedict is alive
again in the monks who bear his name.
It is a spirit that, just as in the Middle
Ages, will give a soul to Europe, and from Europe, to the world.
Rather, I believe
that the renewal will come from America (not from Europe) beginning in the south and spreading to
the north (and from there – globally), as the papacy for the Church now and in
the future is from South America in the person of Francis.
It is the thought of
Alberto Methol Ferre, philosopher from Uruguay, and Bergoglio himself. The
human existential incarnation of this renewal will not be monks living in the
religious state with vows of poverty, chastity (celibacy) and obedience, but
the Christian people themselves [not with celibacy but with matrimony] whose faith has formed culture. (By the way, if faith does not become culture, it is not faith). This faith was
transported from Spain to South America, and in 500 years has formed a people with a cultural identity that
continues to develop. It is a more powerful identity (though economically and technologically poorer) than the Anglo-Saxon
culture of the north that has been weakened and vitiated in person and family by Pelagian and
Gnostic ideologies. North America is a
diminished culture in that we understand “culture” to be the cultivation
of the human person. The North has been left with a savage, sad and
lonely individualism with each turned to self and the relation to the other is
competitive and ontologically accidentaI.
The North has arms and legs to work; the South has head and heart to know and
love. The latter comes from a lived faith forming a people. The successful economic and industrial development that
has occurred in the North (and still rules the world) due to an unredeemed
individualism and naïve Christian life, will wane, and is waning. Profit for
self can never be the defining dynamic of a burgeoning humanism and culture
since it contradicts the very meaning of the human person revealed in the
God-man, Jesus Christ.
But then, there is migration. The Latin comes
north to advance professionally and runs the risk of contamination by northern
individualism and selfishness and thus damage to his Christian culture of
giftedness and family. But having a stronger culture qua culture because of an imbedded sense of Christ as the meaning
of man, the Latin culture can – and does with appropriate formation– assimilate
the truth of the working and competing individual and turn him into a working
person for others (beginning with the family), and as such (the working person
as opposed to profit) develop the
true Christian/Catholic spirituality of becoming another Christ in the very exercise of secular work.
Thus,
as Italy and Spain were “originating” Churches for all the other churches at the time of the
Protestant Reformation (16th c.), and Germany and France were “originating” at the time
of Vatican II (20th c.), now (21st c.) it will be the “Cono
Sur” of South America who has cast off the Marxist dimension of the
personalism of “Liberation Theology” and is positioned with this profound,
discerning and contemplative pope, Francis, to reform the global culture after
he reforms the Church herself into her pristine figure of “Communion” (having
shed the monarchical trappings of the 16th – 20th
centuries). The pope continues to be the pope, but as vice Christ, ruling from
his knees and creating “oneness” by washing
the feet of the apostles.
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