The Benedict Option does not have the substance, unity, and goal of the Benedictine ideal that set the world on fire with the love of God.

"The Imaginative Conservative" 

Essays of the Week

The Dangers of the Benedict Option by John Horvat One of the problems with the Benedict Option is that it is "Benedict lite." If there was someone who did not exercise the Benedict Option, it was Saint Benedict himself. The Benedict Option does not have the substance, unity, and goal of the Benedictine ideal that set the world on fire with the love of God. It does not aspire to the grand objectives that made the Benedictine model the center of culture and the foundation of Christian Europe. It is merely an option, or rather many options, one can entertain inside the storm. In postmodern terms, it represents the unraveling of a dominant metanarrative into many fragments and shards...  [MORE] Roger Scruton on Architectural Principles in an Age of Nihilism by Christopher Morrissey It is Roger Scruton’s challenge to modern architecture not only to provoke, but also to persuade. One considerable merit of Sir Roger’s devotion to beauty lies in his ability to get people to actually perceive their environment, as if for the first time. They have been living among ruins, and yet, for the most part, have been blind to its entirely unnecessary ugliness. The aesthetic vocabulary that would preserve a connection with the nature of things is abandoned in modern architecture. Thoughts about higher things are not easily enabled by an environment crassly utilitarian or transgressive. No such thoughts can take wing when the forms in which we dwell embody far more of the temporary than of the permanent... [MORE] The Role of the University in the Twilight of the West by Bradley J. Birzer Robert A. Nisbet believed that the primary purpose of the university was “strictly intellectual, but beyond this it is a mission of disseminating intellectual values to the widest possible audience, to the largest possible public.”The manifestation of genius in the university is simply an added benefit, not a primary purpose of the institution. Instead, the purpose of the university is to preserve the great ideas of the past and to introduce the present generation to timeless conversations, thus preserving such wisdom for countless and unknown future generations... [MORE] Conservatism and Ideological Politics by Glen A. Sproviero The genuine conservative is not motivated by fear, avarice, or power. The very constitution of his being is directed toward the perfection of his soul, yet he does not hesitate to distill his principles into judgments regarding public affairs. Rejecting the promises of false idols and the prophets of a decadent culture, he confronts the conjurers of political turmoil with imagination and hope. He does not retreat from the battle of ideas, for he knows, with Edmund Burke, that “when bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle”... [MORE] An Imaginative Conservative’s Man of the House by John Willson The theme of Man of the House is that the Great Progressive Fallacy—the individual is the moral center of the culture, and that the state is the individual’s protector—serves only the forces of destruction. The author would not argue with the notion that the immortal soul is the unit of salvation. But the individual personality is not, therefore, the end of life as we live it this world that is falling apart. Things that are important start, rather, in the household—things like liberty and happiness and virtue—and it is, therefore, critical that we are taught and later teach what constitutes the kind of household most likely to achieve important results... [MORE] The Classical Tradition in Antebellum America Is Another Surge in Afghanistan a Good Idea? Has America Lost Control of Her Destiny? Leaving Providence College: A Window Shuts, A Door Opens There and Back Again: A Conversion Story Eastward Expansion to Save the European Union Who Is the Conservative Intellectual? On Debate and Existence Higher Education: A Modest Proposal for Reform