French Catholics are outraged at new sex education curricula in French public schools. I think the outrage is largely misplaced, but I wrote a post (in French) arguing to my fellow French Catholics that they should realize they’re a (tiny) minority now and they shouldn’t be surprised when the majority enacts public school curricula that disagree with their worldview. My advice to French Catholics, in a nutshell, is to, instead of agitating for more Christian-compatible curricula, take their kids out of public school and build true Catholic schools that are a sign of contradiction against the prevailing culture, rather than carbon copies of public schools, as most French Catholic schools are at present.
That got me to wondering if I wasn’t advocating a version of what’s been called “The Benedict Option” as a Christian response to the secularization of the West. The Benedict Option, named for Saint Benedict, encourages a retreat from secular life to build alternative societies. The explicit analogy is that the West is undergoing a similar decline as the Roman Empire did; by retreating from the decline, this narrative goes, the monks saved all that could be saved of Western civilization and eventually restored it. In general, I tend to be highly critical of the Benedict Option. I don’t think the West is as far-gone as “Benedict-ers” seem to think, and I also think Christians have a duty to serve the world and be in the world. (By the way, you should read this excellent and largely sympathetic story by Rod Dreher on the Benedict Option as it’s currently being practiced.)
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