Creative minorities

During an interview on the state of Europe in 2009 Pope Benedict remarked:

I would say that normally it is the creative minorities that determine the future, and in this sense the Catholic Church must understand herself as a creative minority that has a heritage of values that are not things from the past, but a very living and relevant reality. The Church must actualise, be present in the public debate, in our struggle for a true concept of liberty and peace.

(Interview during flight to Prague, Feb 2, 2009)

He takes this idea from the historian Arnold Toynbee, who claimed that the fate of a society always depends on its creative minorities. Pope Benedict has repeatedly called on Christian believers to see themselves as just such a creative minority, helping Europe to reclaim what is best in its heritage and to thereby place itself at the service of all humankind.

This notion goes further back. We could look at the work of the early Church, a minority if ever there was one, spreading the Good News of Christ to an indifferent world. Blessed John Henry Newman asked himself why God chose this method of spreading the message. In a famous sermon from Plain and Parochial Sermons – ‘Witnesses of the Resurrection’ – he commented on the text:

Him God raised up the third day, and showed Him openly; not to all the people, but unto witnesses chosen before of God, even to us who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead. Acts 10.,40-41.

It might have been expected, that, on our Saviour’s rising again from the dead, He would have shown Himself to very great numbers of people, and especially to those who crucified Him; whereas we know from the history, that, far from this being the case, He showed Himself only to chosen witnesses, chiefly His immediate followers; and St. Peter avows this in the text. This seems at first sight strange… But the chief priests would not have been moved at all; and the populace, however they had been moved at the time, would not have been lastingly moved, not practically moved, not so moved as to proclaim to the world what they had heard and seen, as to preach the Gospel. This is the point to be kept in view: and consider that the very reason why Christ showed Himself at all was in order to raise up witnesses to His resurrection, ministers of His word, founders of His Church; and how in the nature of things could a populace ever become such?’

Creative Christian minorities

And so it continued in the Dark Ages, that period of the eclipse of Roman civilisation which was rescued by intrepid Christian monks and turned into a glorious Christian culture, the culture of Europe.

Let us listen to Alasdair MacIntyre on this, from his concluding reflections in After Virtue:

What they set themselves to achieve – often not recognizing fully what they were doing – was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained so that both morality and civility might survive the coming ages of barbarism and darkness. If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought also to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point…. This time however the barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament. We are waiting not for a God, but for another – doubtless very different – St. Benedict.’

(After Virtue by Alasdair MacIntyre).

The work of St Benedict, and we might say, of the Irish monks, peregrini pro Christo, was well summarised by his namesake Pope (General Audience, April 9, 2008):

In fact, the Saint’s work and particularly his Rule were to prove heralds of an authentic spiritual leaven which, in the course of the centuries, far beyond the boundaries of his country and time, changed the face of Europe following the fall of the political unity created by the Roman Empire, inspiring a new spiritual and cultural unity, that of the Christian faith shared by the peoples of the Continent. This is how the reality we call “Europe” came into being. By proclaiming St Benedict Patron of Europe on 24 October, 1964, Paul VI intended to recognize the marvellous work the Saint achieved with his Rule for the formation of the civilization and culture of Europe.

Seeking God

Not that they intended to “save civilisation” or make a name for themselves. Listen to Pope Benedict again:

It must be frankly admitted straight away that it was not their intention to create a culture nor even to preserve a culture from the past.  Their motivation was much more basic.  Their goal was: quaerere Deum.  Amid the confusion of the times, in which nothing seemed permanent, they wanted to do the essential – to make an effort to find what was perennially valid and lasting, life itself.  They were searching for God.

Our present situation differs in many respects … yet despite the difference, the two situations also have much in common.  God has truly become for many the great unknown.  But just as in the past, when behind the many images of God the question concerning the unknown God was hidden and present, so too the present absence of God is silently besieged by the question concerning him. Quaerere Deum – to seek God and to let oneself be found by him, that is today no less necessary than in former times (Address to representatives of the world of culture, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 12 September, 2008).

And so it continued, with many great Christian “minorities” – the revolution of St Francis of Assisi, the Oxford Movement spearheaded by Blessed John Henry himself, the universal call to holiness sounded by St Josemaría in 1928 – all were examples of someone searching for God (having, of course, first been found by him). Only God will answer our questions, and the question of God cannot be ignored; it is as important for us as it was for any of those luminaries, in fact without it we lose our own identity:

A purely positivistic culture which tried to drive the question concerning God into the subjective realm, as being unscientific, would be the capitulation of reason, the renunciation of its highest possibilities, and hence a disaster for humanity, with very grave consequences.  What gave Europe’s culture its foundation – the search for God and the readiness to listen to him – remains today the basis of any genuine culture (Pope Benedict XVI, Address to representatives of the world of culture, Collège des Bernardins, Paris, 12 September, 2008).

Benedict or Escriva?
A recent controversy

The American Catholic writer Rod Dreher has taken up these ideas with his ‘Benedict Option’ for faithful Catholics: to make a difference to the culture we need to follow the example and the route of St Benedict by forming communities with an ordered, even monastic spirituality: regular hours, the liturgy at its centre, with prayer and contemplation inspiring life.

Austin Ruse has replied with ‘The Escrivá Option: An Alternative to St. Benedict’, an article published in Crisis, July 2014 and republished in Position Papers in August-September this year. He suggests that St Josemaría is a better role model for lay people:

Escrivá taught something the earliest Church knew quite well, the universal call to holiness, something that became, under his influence, a key teaching in the Second Vatican Council…. He said laymen need not remove themselves to monasteries to achieve perfection and that the places they would find Christ were precisely in the home and in the workplace. And it was there they would bring others to the Gospel.

The seeming revolutionary nature of this proposal is recognized by the reception St Josemaría received when he first took it to Rome. They said he was one hundred years too early.

And all the while, he built what Dreher and others would call an “intentional community” that even and especially today draws individuals and families together in order to learn and teach and gain strength and then to go forth into the market place, the sports arena, the prisons and universities and draw others closer to the Gospel and toward a spiritual perfection equal to the monks and nuns. Escrivá said Christ wanted a few men of his own in every human endeavor.

The Escrivá Option calls men and women to become contemplatives in the middle of the world, to live as best they can in the presence of God throughout the day from the moment of waking to turning out the light at night. This is achieved through prayer and study and a vigorous regimen of daily, weekly, monthly and yearly norms of piety.

It strikes me that whichever creative minority option one favours, it will always involve a contemplative heart and a willingness to search for God.

A story is told about St Josemaría showing a guest around Opus Dei’s headquarters, which includes some rather beautiful chapels. The visitor asked him which chapel was his favourite, and he responded by throwing open the window and pointing to the street. He felt that we should be able to find God there too: contemplation can be carried on in the hustle and bustle of life.

I would like to give the last word to Blessed John Henry Newman in ‘Witnesses to the Resurrection’. He asked himself why did God use a few souls to begin and continue the work of the Church, and answered in this way:

I have already suggested, what is too obvious almost to insist upon, that in making a select few the ministers of His mercy to mankind at large, our Lord was but acting according to the general course of His providence. It is plain every great change is effected by the few, not by the many; by the resolute, undaunted, zealous few. True it is that societies sometimes fall to pieces by their own corruption, which is in one sense a change without special instruments chosen or allowed by God; but this is a dissolution, not a work. Doubtless, much may be undone by the many, but nothing is done except by those who are specially trained for action.