Building the Benedict Option by Leah Libresco, Ignatius Press, 163pp, £13
The concept of authenticity has gained much cachet recently. In politics, the popularity of figures as disparate as Donald Trump and Jeremy Corbyn has been ascribed to their authenticity. In popular culture, the emergence of academic theories of gender and sexuality into the mainstream has been accomplished due in part to an appeal to “authenticity”. In the marketplace, bespoke is back in vogue and consumer choices in everything from produce to healthcare to underwear are sold as expressions of one’s identity – that is, of one’s authenticity.
But what does it mean to live authentically? We use this word when the reality of our interior lives is reflected in the choices and habits that make up our exterior lives. There is a widely shared, if often inchoate, notion that our world suffers from pervasive disintegration of the interior from the exterior – authenticity is about reintegrating that which should be whole.
Authenticity, therefore, is just a sanitised and subjective version of the traditional virtue of integrity. The authenticity trend is, on the whole, a salutary one because the complete human person is meant to live an integrated life. Like all contemporary social-psychological notions, however, authenticity avoids confronting the question of good versus bad movements of the interior life; it is a perverse kind of integrity that would praise acting on every transient desire. Catholics – and especially young Catholics who have seen the sad effects of a “dis-integrated” faith among their families and friends – have sought to apply the best aspects of our obsession with authenticity to their faith lives.
It is in this context that Leah Libresco, a noted convert from atheism, has written Building the Benedict Option: A Guide to Gathering Two or Three Together in His Name. The title references Rod Dreher’s book and the cover advertises Dreher’s contribution of a foreword, but this is a little misleading. The substance of Libresco’s book doesn’t really depend on the deeply contested concept of the Benedict Option; it’s better to think of it as a book about Catholic authenticity – Catholic integrity – today.
The integrated life of faith, Libresco reminds us, necessarily takes place in the context of a community of faith. It has been observed many times before, but it bears repeating: aloneness was the first aspect of His creation that God declared “not good” (Genesis 2:18). This is a matter of both spiritual and corporal wellbeing. The prevailing ideology of individual self-sufficiency is a leading contributor to social disintegration – that is, the breaking-apart of that which should be organic wholes – leaving people and families feeling alienated from one another and from the life of the Church.
Building the Benedict Option steps into this void to offer a remedial course in community-building – a skill that used to be second nature to Catholics, especially in America, but which has been lost in the course of only a few generations.
Libresco is ideally suited to the task. She has a keen eye, indeed a love, for the details of event planning and interpersonal dynamics. Some tentative hosts might be intimidated by the deeply analytical bent of her mind, but she writes with a warmth and a care for souls that should make anyone want to be the catalyst for a Catholic community.
Libresco’s book is limited in scope in ways that might frustrate some readers. She writes primarily from her own experience, and so the anecdotes and practical advice will be most applicable to young city-dwellers. Being at the stage of life when my family’s social gatherings are dominated by swarms of children, some of Libresco’s structured, detail-oriented planning advice feels unrealistic.
Some readers might also want more long-term guidance about community-building. To this, I say: have patience. In a society marked by such acute atomisation and alienation, the first steps described in this book are radical enough for now. The lessons in hospitality and integrity Libresco teaches here – especially the chapters on bringing our private devotions into communal and public spaces – will continue to be relevant as communities develop further. And we all have to learn to walk again before we can run.
Indeed, I suspect we will soon look back on Building the Benedict Option as the first of a series of books dedicated to sketching models of authentic, integrated Catholic living amid the social, political and economic challenges of our day. For all its limitations, it offers a spiritual wisdom and an intense focus on caring for the wellbeing of every soul. This, ultimately, is Catholic authenticity – scapulars and rosaries and feasts and processions, yes, but more importantly, seeing and cultivating the beauty of the Imago Dei in every person God places before us.
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