Is it possible that all of this Benedict – restoring European energy and vitality historical analogy stuff has some traction?

A piece in the Weekly Standard suggests…maybe?

But even more pregnant with possible significance is Italy’s sudden surge in new monastic vocations. A recent conference organized by the Vicariate of Rome and the Unione Superiore Maggiori D’Italia revealed that in the last year, no fewer than 550 women entered cloistered convents–up from 350 two years earlier. In contrast to recent trends, the new candidates were predominantly native-born and college-educated Italians. Similar gains are said to have occurred among male monastics. The Italian village of Nursia, for example, recently welcomed a small group of American monks to rehabilitate a monastery built at the birthplace of St. Benedict, the great patriarch of western monasticism. Last year, for the first time since its suppression by Napoleonic edict, the community celebrated a Benedictine ordination. Though many monasteries continue to close, new houses are beginning to open, suggesting–perhaps–that a corner has been turned.

WHAT, then, is one to make of Italy’s renewed interest in monasticism? It may very well be a statistical anomaly, influenced, perhaps, by the new pope’s special devotion to St. Benedict. But monasticism’s utility as a leading social indicator should not be underestimated. "The monastic turn," writes historian Bernard McGinn, "was the great religious innovation of late antiquity, and monastic institutions and values have continued to affect the history of Christianity to the present." The possibility exists that a contemporary monastic risorgimento may likewise presage something more profound.