The buzz surrounding the Benedict Option has spawned many spinoffs, each looking to a particular spirituality to focus the renewal of Church and culture. As a Benedictine oblate, I agree with Rod Dreher that the Benedictines provide a crucial and necessary witness on how to rebuild Christian culture. We need strong local communities that find new w...

In battlefields, darkened by smoke and deafened by opponents’ screams, one might need to withdraw from the fray, to regroup and re-attack, in a word, to retreat. The idea of retreating is not one of failure, though it does carry that connotation. Rather, retreat is a realization that you, the soldier, cannot win this fight right now, armed as you...