David QuinnHow many Irish people today have heard of St Benedict of Nursia (Norcia)? Few enough I would say, and they won’t have been any the wiser if they watched the Six One News on RTÉ television last Sunday evening.
The bulletin duly reported the earthquake in the central Italian town of Norcia, and it mentioned the fact that the basilica named ‘St Benedict’ was almost destroyed. But it didn’t mention the fact that the town is the birthplace of St Benedict, founder of the Benedictines, and one of the most influential Europeans ever, so much so that Pope Paul VI named him the Patron of Europe in 1964.
You would think it would be newsworthy to mention the town’s most famous son, but no. The oversight was probably not deliberate, more the result of historical amnesia.
When you ask people to give a potted history of the Church, you’re likely to be given a version that would grace a Monty Python movie. You’ll get to hear about the Crusades, the Inquisition and in this country, you’ll hear about Archbishop John Charles McQuaid, the child abuse scandals and the Magdalene laundries.
History
This would like asking for a potted version of the history of America and hearing only about slavery, the Vietnam War, Richard Nixon and Watergate and the ‘military-industrial complex’.
In other words, people see the history of the Catholic Church, and Christianity more broadly, through the eyes of its worst critics only. This means they carry around in their heads not history as such, but a sort of ‘myth-history’ which is probably worse than knowing nothing at all.
To return to St Benedict, in the 6th Century he founded an order, the Benedictines, which helped to lay the foundations of Western monasticism and of the West itself. He founded it as Rome’s Western Empire was collapsing, as the waves of barbarian invasions were crashing into Europe, and as Europe, therefore, needed models of order (pun intended) in the spreading chaos. The monasteries offered that.
The monasteries spread to many parts of Europe and in doing so helped to knit together a common European identity. The ‘empire’ of Benedict and his many imitators spread through peaceful means, whereas the Roman Empire was spread by force and maintained by force. The monastic movement was voluntaristic. Men and women travelled sometimes to the most dangerous and lawless places to live together in community as they believed Christ wanted. This was their calling.
Indeed, the monastic movement at its best based itself on one of the central and most revolutionary moral insights of Christianity, namely that we are all created morally equal. In other words, our moral worth is in no way dependent on birth and social positon.
Of course, the monasteries often ended up recreating the social stratification of the world outside, and the nobles (Benedict was from a noble family) often ruled inside or well as outside the monasteries and convents. The monasteries could become very corrupt and worldly, and then renewal movements were launched.
But the ideal was sometimes lived out. People not of noble birth could come to head a monastery or a convent, and they were elected. That was radical. And of course, the monasteries often become great places of learning where no other existed.
Benedict helped to launch all this within Western Christianity. That is a tremendous legacy for anyone. His name should be widely known. He should be as famous as some of the Roman emperors. If it is not, who is to blame? Not RTÉ despite its neglectful report, but the Church itself. Why don’t we learn about the likes of St Benedict when we receive 14 years of what is an allegedly Catholic education while in school?
Disposing of our dead
Speaking of education, if many Catholics now scatter the ashes of their loved ones at a favourite beauty spot or keep them in an urn on the mantelpiece, what has the Church really done to educate Catholics as to the proper Christian practice?
We Christians have always buried our dead in communal places and in consecrated ground. That is because we belong to a community of faith. We remember our dead together. The Christian who dies didn’t belong only to him or herself or his or her family, but to the whole Church, to the Communion of Saints, to the living and the dead joined together in prayer and in memory. The growing practice of scattering the ashes is highly individualistic. The person is not even buried in a family plot, never mind in a communal Christian burial place.
When the Vatican issued a document last week reminding people of the proper Christian practice, a lot of people got annoyed and felt insulted. This is partly because, once again, the Church has failed to explain to people what the proper Christian practice is, and why. How many priests, I wonder, took the opportunity to preach about this at Sunday Masses last weekend? It was a great opportunity to remind people that Christianity is a communal faith, involving communal practices, not an individualistic faith. In fact, Christianity is the best antidote to a highly, excessively individualistic age.
Pope Francis in Scandinavia
At the time of writing the Pope is in Sweden, one of the heartlands of Lutheranism. Next year is the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation. The Reformation was a necessary reform movement which unfortunately tore Western Christianity asunder. Previous reform movements in Christianity brought about the reforms without having this effect.
Lutheranism is now in very steep decline. Its decline has been faster and steeper than that of the Catholic Church in Europe. One reason is that it has been too quick to ‘adapt to the times’, the advice that is constantly offered to the Catholic Church. One Swedish Lutheran bishop supports abortion. This earns a pat on the head from Swedish, Danish and Norwegian secularists. But they don’t return to church as a result.Meanwhile the faithful few who remain, leave the pews and join churches or congregations that have remained more faithful.