Scottish Catholic Observer

Rod Dreher’s The Benedict Option is a book every Christian in Scotland should read. Many may disagree with much of it. His prescription that renewal of the Faith requires withdrawal from the world can be contested. But his central diagnosis, that we are living in a post-Christian world and we need to find ways to resist that world or be absorbed by it, is one we know to be true.

Our need to foster stronger communities in Christ is also self evident. If you are engaged in the life of a parish, if you talk together, if you break bread together, if you share in each other’s lives, it is not just the parish that is stronger but our Faith.

We are strengthened, together. Yet we live in an isolated world; we drift apart. Some of the book’s harsher strictures may repel, and few, if any, will agree with all of it, but its ideas must be reckoned with.

The age of Christendom has passed in the West. What comes next, and how we reckon with it, is the challenge of our days.