The Francis Option

The “Benedict Option” is one way for Christians to respond to the apparent victory of secularism in the culture war. I want to propose something else — the “Francis Option,” as laid out in Laudato Si (Care for Our Common Home), and referring to the patron saint of ecology.

But I don’t want to give short shrift to the Benedict Option — named for the saint but appropriate for the recent Pope Benedict, too, as Father Dwight Longenecker points out. As Pope Benedict XVI put it, “When darkness seemed to be spreading over Europe after the fall of the Roman Empire, St. Benedict brought the light of dawn to shine upon this continent.”