The Benedict Option On Weathering The Liberal Storm

Mandeville, LA – Exclusive Transcript – “We make this out to be that it’s this impossible task and it can’t be done.  They did it for over a thousand years without computers.  They did it without guns.  They did it without calculators.  They did it without food processors.  They did it without refrigeration air conditioning, mechanized transportation, mechanized farming.  Somehow they did it.  Modern man has failed because modern man hasn’t tried.  What does Chesterton say?  Christianity hasn’t been found tried and wanting; Christianity has been found difficult and never tried.” Check out today’s transcript for the rest….

Begin Mike Church Show Transcript

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The idea of the Christian village has recently gained more traction with the defeat of Indiana’s religious liberty law, which is seen as a foretaste of a coming persecution. Writers like Rod Dreher are urging people to make a strategic withdrawal from modern society that would allow Christians to reassess their situation and explore their identity in a liturgy-rich context. It need not be the full village version, but it does entail something of a withdrawal. He calls it the Benedict or “B-option” and proposes that people find their strategic retreat parishes/communities to weather the liberal storm.

It must be said that there is nothing fundamentally wrong with the idea of a Christian village centered on family and faith. It is entirely according to our social nature to desire to live in a community committed to virtuous life in common. Such communities help individuals put their lives in order and control their disordered passions. They satisfy the longings of the postmodern heart that crave community and wholeness. Such villages would return God back to the center of things where He belongs. It is where we need to go but …

… There is one major problem with the B-option and that is what might be called the “B-challenge.” Benedictine communities may have flourished, but they also seemed to attract barbarians who ravaged and plundered them …

…Such communities are not enough. Benedict alone does not suffice.

Such a task consists of understanding the nature of the barbarian. Historically, barbarians were those who gave in to their whims and destroyed indiscriminately. They devastated ordered society and redistributed its wealth. They did not leave Christians alone, but rather sought them out, often coming from afar, to loot and plunder their communities wherever they might be found.

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There can be no doubt that we live in a neo-barbarian world inside a culture of death. Today’s tattooed and wired neo-barbarians are likewise aggressive.  They also redistribute the wealth, albeit through taxes and entitlements. They do not live and let live, but insist that all approve their disordered lifestyles. Indeed, it is the very brutality of the neo-barbarian mandate that impels those considering the Benedictine option to flee.

The lessons of history are particularly expressive regarding the triumph of barbarians. Vikings, Huns, Goths, Moors and communists all devastated the tranquility of even the most isolated of organic societies. There is no escaping. There is a kind of impossible co-existence between barbarian and villager. Thus, in our case, the B-challenge can only consist in confronting the brutal neo-barbarians at the gates.

That is not to say that Benedict loses his validity as an option. After all, the core of what is to be defended and gives meaning to life is found inside his liturgical framework turned toward the worship of God.

But Benedict must be defended against the ravages of the barbarian. The barbarian must be fearlessly confronted, contested, fought against, defeated…and converted.

To the efficacious prayer of Benedict must be added the zealous action of a Boniface, apostle of Germany. He did not dialogue with the barbarians, but chopped down the great oak tree which they worshiped as their god, and brought them to the knowledge of the true Faith. To Boniface can be added legions of saints like Patrick in Ireland or Remigius in France, all of who overcame the barbarian and secured Benedict’s peace.

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Mike:  Let me go back to my conversation with Brother last night.  I got my handy-dandy prayer and thought book here.  I write things down so I don’t forget them.  Brother told me last night when we talked about the C option.  Somebody needs to write a book, not the Benedict Option but the Catholic Option.  In other words, be clear about where you want to go.  Does that mean that you’re going to force people into it?  Does that mean you’re going to start making prisons for people who don’t go along?  No, of course not.  Islam conquers by the sword and by physical coercion; Christianity doesn’t.  It never did.  It was the victim of the other conversion.

Brother said to me last night in our conversation about this, this is our task.  The seven of you that remain listening, this is your task.  I wrote this down.  You won’t believe the source.  Here’s what Brother told me: Catholic laymen need to sanctify the temporal sphere.  What does that mean?  That means that you’ve got to take on the barbarian.  That means that you’ve got to stay in the world not of it.  That means that you’ve got to find – I’ll give you an example.  The Crusade Channel is a temporal sphere.  It’s self-contained.  It’s got its own address, own name, own identification.  We have borders, if you will, because it’s only here on this app or this website or this IP address.  That’s a sphere.  [mocking] “Mitter Church, how do you sanctify it?”  Good question.  How do you?  Well, I hope, I pray you keep doing what we’re already doing.  The fact that we’re here means that we were failing or were kicked out before we could sanctify the previous sphere.  They didn’t want it to be sanctified.

What purpose did the guilds serve back in the day?  What purpose did the guilds serve?  The guilds served the purpose of what?  Sanctifying the temporal sphere.  The guilds say: Hey, man, you want to be a blacksmith?  Awesome!  You can make a lot of money and support a family doing that.  We’ve got rules.  Our first rule is that we don’t believe in two judgments.  Remember the bit that I did on, [mocking] “Mitter Church, when I get to Heaven, I’m going to tell God, ‘You got one book there, Mitter Peter.  You’ve got to judge my work life differently.’”  No, you don’t get that.  You get one judgment.  That’s the experience of Christendom.  That’s what happened.  They sanctified spheres.  They made them no longer secular.  They made everything in pursuance of holy death and blessed eternity.

We make this out to be that it’s this impossible task and it can’t be done.  They did it for over a thousand years without computers.  They did it without guns.  They did it without calculators.  They did it without food processors.  They did it without refrigeration air conditioning, mechanized transportation, mechanized farming.  Somehow they did it.  Modern man has failed because modern man hasn’t tried.  What does Chesterton say?  Christianity hasn’t been found tried and wanting; Christianity has been found difficult and never tried.  That’s the heresy of the modern world, of Americanism.  That’s the heresy that we are all living and breathing today that we could call – the word will come to me in a moment.  Unitarianism.  It doesn’t have a Unitarian purpose.  We don’t need it.  We don’t want it.  What does it do?

The failure that we are seeing all around us – the amazing thing is, every person that calls themselves Christian, regardless of denomination today, a condition that we should all be praying to end, denomination, regardless of denomination today, we’re all geniuses at identifying the problem.  You can see it all around you.  The problem is the remedy.  We don’t agree on the remedy.  You know, you see, [mocking] “We live in a fallen world where we abort 56 million babies.”  Of course we do.  There’s no authority to stop it.  There’s no appeal to an authority to stop it.  The authority that could stop it has been told: You, go sit there on the sidelines.  We’ve got this new thing Constitution.  We got this new guy.  We got this guy We the People.  He’s awesome.  Just wait till you see.  How’s that working out for you?  Modern man refuses to sanctify the temporal sphere.  That’s what’s going on.

How do you propose to correct that?  The only remedy, practical, pragmatic remedy for that, the only one that has any possibility whatsoever, the only one, you have to do it where you have the greatest influence.  That’s the most – [mocking] “That sounds stupid, Mitter Church.  How’s that gonna work?”  Well, it’s pretty simple, actually.  You have a great influence over your family.  That’s where it beings, in your house.  You have a greater influence over yourself.  Get yourself right, then the family.  Then if you find more families that are doing that, that are sanctifying the temporal sphere, then you have more families sanctifying temporal spheres.  If you have that, then maybe they find each other.  We can get together and have a little network here.  That’s the only possible solution, folks.  There is no other way, that and praying for divine intervention, which could happen.  It is 2017, after all, 100 years after the promises and prophecies of Fatima.  That may be in the offing.

Back to John Horvat and his conclusion about barbarians and the Benedict Option.

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It would be wrong to assume that Boniface plays only a temporary role inside a B-option. Successive waves of barbarians followed after Boniface’s triumph. Saintly kings, knights and crusaders rose to the occasion to engage and defeat them. Even our modern times saw the need to defend the West from yesterday’s Nazi and communist brutes and today’s Islamic beheading savages.

In this vale of tears, we must be continually engaged in the fight for order since there will always be those who oppose God’s law and undermine the family, marriage, and all those other institutions that make up the heart and soul of an economy, a culture and the Christian village. There will always be those who never live and let live and will seek us out.

Like it or not, when we cease to fight for our Christian culture, we prepare ourselves for defeat. Unless there be Bonifaces with the fortitude needed to confront this great struggle, all our efforts will come to nothing.

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Mike:  Just think of an example I’ll give you from the martyrology.  What did St. Lucie the day that her eyes were plucked out and she was ultimately beheaded because she wouldn’t marry the Roman prefect’s son, what did she ultimately accomplish on that day, Christopher?

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Christopher:  When they killed her?

Mike:  Yeah, the day they killed her.

Christopher:  She became a martyr.

Mike:  She became a martyr.  She didn’t end Roman tyranny.  She didn’t end the persecution of other martyrs.  Add another 20,000 or so or 100,000, however many there was, and now it always comes to martyrs, unfortunately, or maybe fortunately because they call it the crown of martyrdom.  The point is, should she not have done it?  Should St. Lucy have given in and said: Come on in, I’ll marry the dude.  I’ll marry the creep.  He can have me.  Ravish me.  Should she?  Insert martyr name here.  After the first round of scourging and everything, should St. Sebastian have gone: All right, I give.  You ain’t gotta shoot any arrows at me, man.  Show me where Jupiter is.  I’ll kiss his feet.  I’m done.  Did he change anything that day?

Our view is: What good is that going to do you?  If you’re concerned about holy death and blessed eternity, you don’t worry about what good it’s going to do anyone else tomorrow.  What good is it going to do you?  We are all faced with choices every single day.  We can go along with this sick, twisted, perverted, heretical modern world, or every time we’re confronted with the opportunity to not participate in it, or to explain why participation is not warranted, that’s a chance.  That’s a St. Lucy.  Name your martyr, St. Sebastian, St. Polycarp.  Who was the one that was grilled?  St. Lawrence was skinned alive.  Thousands upon thousands of others.  Our perspective is always: Yeah, well, that’s easy for you to say.  How’s that going to change anything?

When the first Carmelite nun had her head cut off, did that stop the second one?  Did it prevent the second one or the third one or the fourth, all the way through the fourteenth and then the mother superior, number fifteen?  No.  Five days later, though, the great terror of the guillotine and of the Constitution Congress did end as they had vowed to offer their life for its end did.  You see, we’re Westerners.  We’re Americans.  We’re used to the convenience of the modern world.  We’re not used to looking at things from having a viewpoint of 20,000 feet instead of two.

End Mike Church Show Transcript