On Tuesday, Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams spoke at St. Anselmo, a Benedictine institution in Rome. Here is the text of his talk.
The "Benedict" is St. Benedict, and here is Williams’ program:
I shall outline three aspects of the Rule which are of cardinal importance in understanding the crisis of modern Europe and which suggest the areas where we should be most active in challenging some aspects of our present cultural consensus for the sake of the future of some kind of spiritually credible civilisation, especially in our continent. These are (i) what the Rule has to say about the use and the meaning of time, (ii)what the Rule has to say about obedience, and (iii) what the Rule has to say about participation
snip…to near the end
The way in which the Benedictine contribution to Europe has sometimes been discussed is in terms of a kind of withdrawal into enclaves where the memory of civilisation was preserved, not always fully understood – a sort of archive of cultural treasures. But, while this is not completely wrong, it misses out the positive contribution of Benedictinism as a model of active Christian life in itself; Benedict’s monks were creators of community before they were librarians, and the vision of human possibility and dignity contained in Benedictine witness was at least as important as the conservation of classical letters – or rather, it gave to the heritage of classical letters a clear and practical application, animated by faith. If the Rule is to be one of the sources for the conservation and renewal of European civilisation in the centuries to come – granted that these centuries may be every bit as brutally anti-humanist as the so-called Dark Ages – it will be because of this sketch of political virtue, not because of any merely conservatory role.
In the Sistine Chapel with Cardinal Kasper. Image source.
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