The Benedictine congregations, remember, which were formed around the time of the Protestant Reformation, before the time of the Council of Trump, during the 1400s, the Quattro Centauri, as they call it in Italian, during the 15th century, the 1400s and then in the first part of the 16th century, a very tumultuous time for the Church, time of division, time of reform, and so on. And among them, there's a famous congregation of Santo Justino, the Quattro. And actually, they say that the reform of the Comadres congregation, I just noticed it in these notes once again, was patterned after the reform of Santo Justino, because we'll see what the reform of the Comadres consisted of at that time, besides the formation of the congregation of Monte Carlo. So, first of all, those Benedictine congregations started at that time, and secondly, the Society of Jesus, which was Jesuits,

[01:03]

which was kind of specifically adapted to the needs of that time. And we read part of Morales' treatment of that, whether or not it's objective. Because he's comparing somewhat unfavorably the Benedictine with the monastic tradition, when he talks about the Jesuits. Now, we'd like to cover the remaining time up to the present, up to the time of Vatican II, and the first thing on our agenda is the Council of Trent. Now, there was a kind of a general decay as regards the religious orders, and in fact, in the Church, it seems, at that time, for many reasons. You remember even the division of the Church and the Antipopes during the Avenant or the Antipopes in the 14th and 15th centuries. Let's look at a little of the history of the Council of Trent. Now, here we're taking enormously complicated periods of history,

[02:05]

and I'm compressing them into a few minutes, so it's bound to be very crude. For my history, I don't go to Catholic Digest anymore, now I'm using my civilian book. Under councils. The Council of Trent was called, that was the 19th Ecumenical Council, according to the Western list, and it was called, of course, because of the challenge of reform at that time, and especially because of the confrontation of the Protestant Reformation. And there were very troubled times. If you read the history of the Council, it's amazing. The Council itself had even trouble finding a place where they could hold up things like that. I'll read you just a little bit of it, which is quite brief. With certain modifications, the 19th Ecumenical Council of Trent...

[03:08]

See, the Easterners wouldn't say that's ecumenical, because they wouldn't include all of that. ...maintained the structure of the papal general councils of the Middle Ages, and fixed the pattern of succeeding councils, called for by the German Protestants, who were still thinking in terms of the type of council so recently rejected. That means they would have wanted to have the kind of council that would have set aside papal authorities who can take on the role of the 13th and 14th centuries, the so-called consulates. The Council of Trent, by its very success, led to a strengthening of papal authority. The idea of a representation of the whole Church was rejected. With its relatively small number of participants and its permanent majority of Italian bishops, the ecumenicity of the Council depended once again on the papal congregation, the support of the participants in the papal confirmation of its decisions. So it's a very centralized council, with the idea of tightening up, pulling back into order, which was seen as so disparate and necessary at the time.

[04:10]

What he said was the idea of a representation of the whole Church was rejected. In other words, rather than this more collegial notion, which begins with Vatican II, where you look for a real representation from a local church from another part, curiously the Church had been attacked and it was threatened. And so what happened was that the defensive moves come from the central authority, which is very cautious then about the representation from out there. Because before there had been this conciliar movement, which had wanted to make representation from not the periphery of the body of the Church, really the real enforcement of the Church, as against the papal authority. So here you have a reassertion of papal authority, hence not the idea of having a lot of representation from the body of the Church. And that's the pattern that was set after Trent for the next 400 years, because it was kind of a defensive phase in the history of the Church.

[05:22]

And the central authority was invoked in order to keep the Church together, in order to keep it tight. Invitations were sent only to bishops, generals of orders, and representatives of monastic congregations, all of whom voted as individuals, and to the secular powers, whose delegates however had no voting right. The direction of the Council was entrusted from now on to papal leaders. The course of the Council of Trent falls into two main periods. The so-called imperial epoch, 1545 to 1552. That's the first half of the Council. 1545 to 1552, dealt with the Lutheran Reformation. And it was incorporated by the emperor, I guess he insisted. At the request of the French king, the second epoch, 1562 to 63, was devoted rather to Calvinism. So the first part was Lutheranism, and the second part was Calvinism.

[06:25]

But that's a very crude, oversimplified breakdown, I think, because they also dealt with different subjects in the two. And it was a kind of methodical division of subjects. There was some in 1536, but it couldn't meet until 1545, where there were too many wars going on, and they had a plague, so they had to postpone it, and that was fantastic. In 1547 it was withdrawn because of tightness, and it was transferred from Trent to Bologna. And suspended until 1562, because the rebellion had returned to France. He says its significance rivals the significance of the first Council of Messiaen. It had an enormous effect on the Church for the next 400 years, up until it.

[07:26]

Not only up until Vatican I, but Vatican II, because Vatican I was still very much in the wake of the Council of Trent. Hoping for a union with the forces of reform, which had already broken away, in the Protestantism, the Council from the outset tackled simultaneously the two main tasks of affirming traditional doctrine and of bringing about a comprehensive reform of the Church. So you've got the idea of defending the doctrine and straightening up the discipline, as they say, for morals. In retrospect, the Council of Trent proved to be the starting point for a renewed Church within a changed environment. Men came to terms, both institutionally and spiritually, with a division of Christianity. So it was that the changed environment means a split Christianity. There is another Christianity over there,

[08:27]

and the provisions of the Council are made for only for this part. And that's, of course, a kind of theological sacrifice. It seems that the split with the East wasn't as thorough going at times. It didn't put the Church in a defensive position in some way. It's different to a split up from orthodoxy, where you have two empires and really two Churches, which are culturally separate, already, from having this kind of great imputation in part for the Catholic Catholicism, the German kingdoms, an almost mortal blow, a mortal crisis for the Church. And to kind of come to terms with that situation, in a way, was much more costly. Even though it's possible that these splitting with the East had already prepared a criminal case by depriving us of certain knowledge, certain dimensions.

[09:28]

It's hard to know what's cause and what's effect in the end. Respect for the Council's decisions thus raised to a unique status, shaped the so-called Tridentine system down into the 17th century. This system, in turn, determined the new characteristics of Church administration. Here, it wasn't so much a matter of... Vatican II and the Council of Trent are very different, because the Council of Trent made decrees which sort of reinterpreted the tradition of the Church and stated it very firmly. Whereas Vatican II was rather trying to rediscover the tradition of the Church. There's a difference between asserting something, or proclaiming something, and then kind of finding proofs in the other tradition of the Church, and trying, in a more dispassionate way, to find the original tradition of the Church, the original tradition. You see, Protestantism was an attack on the Church

[10:36]

in the sense of claiming that what was in Catholicism was not what was in the original Church. And the Council could only kind of respond with an authoritative decree with a certain amount of learning and a certain amount of study at that moment. But the study and so on couldn't go deep enough, really. It couldn't be detached and serene enough to explore the early tradition and kind of project a goal, because of that atmosphere of tension. Whereas it's different after 400 years of Vatican II, all of the kind of study that went on on both sides, in Catholicism and in Protestantism, about the early tradition of the Church, trying to rediscover what it really was. There's a big story there. But remember that Protestantism claimed that the Catholic Church had moved away from, had abandoned the early, the original tradition of Christianity by introducing all of those things that it didn't.

[11:38]

For instance, bringing philosophy into theology, taking in Aristotle, possibly even Plato into theology, by introducing the mediation of the priesthood and the whole hierarchical structure of the Church, by elaborating the sacramental system. Protestantism had said, all these things, those are things you brought in. Christ didn't institute them. So we want to go back to that tradition. And the Church had to react quickly and very firmly against that. And it didn't have time to react by, you know, really going back and again. You don't have time to go to college. You don't have time to do a whole study in the situation. And in fact, that could only happen in a few centuries. So the Church was able to get a much more serene look at the tradition, a much more confident look at the tradition, and certain things just reemerged at that time.

[12:41]

What does Verhulst say about the Council of Trent? This is on page 27. The Council of Trent in its 25th session, I believe that was about 1562 to 1565, dealt only with those who were legally considered religious, regularibus et monialibus. That means monks and nuns and so on and so forth. The Council prepared a complete armory of regulations, prescriptions, and sanctions aimed at reforming the religious way. But Verhulst is pessimistic about institutional reform. This one, just as about the reform of Benedict of Arianne, in the time of Chabon, that you don't go to the leagues. It does not appear to have achieved very good results, but what those things do is, at least they give a push in the opposite direction on something that's fairly important. They shore things up. They provide sometimes structures to help.

[13:46]

That's not going to happen. If an effective reform of religious life did take place, it was due rather to the breadth that we know, which has already stirred the religious world as prior to the Council, and which continued to gather momentum of its own accord. And he speaks of the reform of the commonwealth. And then how the court told him something like this. The decrees of the councils, there's a whole book with an accountant, the decrees of the Council of Trent, in it all by itself. And there's a catechism in the Council of Trent, too, which boils it down for catechesis. For all of the councils, the standard reference book is this Denzinger, which is called the Incuridium Symbolorum, in the original edition. And in English, it's the Sources of Catholic Dogma. That's the standard reference book for the decrees of the councils. And also for certain documents of the popes.

[14:46]

And if you look through the book, you'll find the documents listed under the respective popes in chronological order. Right from the beginning, the first creeds. And for the Council of Trent, we have three great sections. The first under Paul III. His dates here do not correspond quite to the ones we've done in the other sources. 1534 to 15... Oh, that's the date of Pope's... 1545 to 1563 are the dates for that. And I think these are all of the official decrees of the Councils. These are the ones on religious, if I take them up in the last... I'm looking to see whether they've got the ones

[15:57]

for the religious life there, or whether they've just selected them. It's selected, they don't have all of the decrees. And I don't think they've got the ones for the religious life. Most of these deal with the sacraments. The defense of the sacraments. And then justification in the first session, which was the great question with Luther, justification by grace. And faith alone versus justification by works. No, I don't see the ones on religious life. Maybe because they weren't universal. Okay, then Verhulst talks about a kind of multiplication

[17:09]

of certain kinds of congregations. And these are the active congregations, the active communities, which had not been encouraged at all by the Church. If you wanted to be a religious, then you should be a monk, that was the idea. You should have a paper Christ, appropriately. In fact, down at the bottom of 27, he talks about the reform of Pius V, that's the reform of Pius V, that's the reform of the Council of Trent. The effect was an increased centralization of religious life, more and more dependent upon ecclesiastical authority, particularly upon the congregation of Epiphany and Regulus, which would be in Rome, probably. Ever greater uniformity upon religious orders and congregations. So you had these communities which had sprung up like mushrooms in the world earlier, just before this, and this threatened them. Certain abuses had led the Pope to take a radical step. By a constitution of 1566, he first prescribed a strict insistence upon enclosure

[18:11]

for every monastery. Then an invitation to the Third Orders and other similar communities to pronounce the solemn vows which they've acted consequently to assume the papal enclosure. So, a continual kind of movement towards separation from the world, in a way. Now, that's different from what he's talking about here. I think so. Ever since at least the beginning of monasticism in the fourth century. Before that, you had people withdrawing from the life of the world,

[19:13]

but apparently not withdrawing from the world itself. But then, with the coming of monasticism, you had the community moving out. Now, that had already happened before, in Israel, Messines, and some other groups, too. But what's the difference between that and what he's talking about here? It's one thing to separate yourself out and form a community of like-minded people, to pray, to do good works, study the Word, whatever. This, however, is authority stepping in to say, you should be separated from the world in a legal way and with certain rules which prevent your premature contact with the world. It's coming from above. The grassroots thing is always happening, but with the grassroots thing, it also often tends to be a cycle. It'll be a cycle of withdrawal and then return. For the individual and sometimes for the community as well. For instance, a lot of hermitages have sprung up

[20:14]

during the history of the Church, and then, after a while, they revert to monastery. They become synodic, you see. And after a while, they probably open up more and more contact to the world. There's a kind of cycle which tends to happen, which we can look at as kind of perverse, you know. We can look at it as a decay. However, maybe it's just a cycle of nature. What was the second cycle? The Naraka or the Talmud. The Talmud, definitely, the one that lasted. The one that lasted, the one that lasted, the one that lasted, the one that lasted. I think that's just the last. Or in the communication of the Naraka, it was one of the last. One of the three. I see. One of the more dual. Uh-huh. In the same... With the same influence. You've still got Sai Baba over there. Don't know whether Mukundananda will be recycled too.

[21:22]

Okay, you can see that Vayu has a point in all of this. Okay, he has his own theory, and it creeps out here and there, he has his own passionate feeling about this, which is that the multiplication of forms of life, the spontaneity of an individual's life should not be limited or constricted by authority from the Bhagavad-Gita. It's his faith that leads that. And it makes a final affirmation of itself. Then he talks about the kind of multiplication of communities in his spontaneous growth, not being arrested, because it was... At that time, at that time... The tarot had been released, and both France and Germany soon possessed numerous populations of the same type. So, remember what happened with Saint Francis de Sales and the community of the visitation, Saint Jane de Chantal. They were to have been active religious, but it wasn't possible, it wasn't great at that time. It was a story, wasn't it?

[22:26]

So they had to be committed. Of course, they became a great community. But other orders had to take over to act effectively. It was a real difficulty. What surprises us is that the Church would not be hesitant about allowing it. But there must have been a lot of abuses too, to create enough of a scandal, enough to be scared. But that religious state was held so high, that was a real sacrifice. You know, there are a lot of women still that they could be doing the same thing inside, say, inside the habit, inside the religious life, and outside it. But as long as they were outside it, they'd never feel right, because they have that feeling, unless you're religious, unless you're really a sister. And now it's not so much a nun, it's not so much a nun, it's not necessarily a songbird. Unless you're a sister with a habit, and a religious, what word religious means so much, you're not really doing anything real. Because there's something too,

[23:27]

that the value of the religious state, it can become exaggerated to such an extent, that the ground outside the official religious life becomes sterilized. Nothing can happen, because everybody's intimidated. You're not doing it in an official way, and you're not doing it right. And that's far from the Gospel. Because the Gospel has got that kind of democracy, which allows the life to strengthen. Okay, now we get to the period of secularization and the French Revolution. The French Revolution, for your further information, in case you've forgotten, was from 1789 to 1799. Bayeux is kind of emphatic about it. He may love liberty, but he isn't exactly saying the phrases of the French Revolution. With the French Revolution, however, Europe was again to be

[24:29]

plunged into the darkness of night. And at least in France, almost all organized religious life disappeared. It's a strange thing, and I don't understand it in depth here, because I don't know the history of that world. But notice how a revolution in modern times tends to be a revolution not only against political order, okay, but against political privilege, and against the old regime, against the royalty and nobility. It tends to be a revolution against religion as well. Against, you can say, the established church and religious privilege, okay? But it turns out in the end to be a war against religion itself. And hence we speak of secularization. But secularization is broader than that, because you'll find even the kings, see, during the secularizing, they'll start absorbing or suppressing the religious communities for one reason or another, as being useless, or as being a kind of

[25:31]

drain and burden on the country, something like that. And this begins to happen, it seems, around the same time. It begins to happen in the 18th century. I'll read you a little bit of this story. This story was very important for the economists, because they suffered three suppressions, and they were just completely wiped out by the middle of the 19th century where they completely fell. Only a few of them. We'll get into that in more detail later. ... Yeah, because Napoleon's work was pretty thorough. See, some of the earlier suppressions, this house and that house, they were kind of selective. The emperor would look around and say, those fellows over there are not putting their salt, so wipe them out. And I'll be happy to accept the donation of the land into my treasury. But then Napoleon, the ideological thing seems to come up, and he wiped out

[26:31]

the whole world. So they had to go into these, take these ruses of handing their property over to lay people and putting it in their name and getting out of the country and hoping to come back. And then the new orders come up, which were able somehow to be elusive enough to escape those suppressions. ... [...] Is that a general opinion? ... [...] You're talking about Hindu restaurants. ... ... ...

[27:32]

... [...] Also, remember that in the Middle Ages there was a kind of tendency of property to accumulate and accumulate and accumulate around the monasteries. See, people would leave them bequests. They would say, well, celebrate a thousand blessings for my family and noble people and so on. That was their way into heaven sometimes, was to leave their property for the monks. So you can imagine what happens. And so sooner or later somebody's going to come along with a bulldozer and just take it all away. And so they did. And the monks, sometimes were better off for it. That's what happened. ... [...]

[28:35]

... ... It still goes on, the religious orders, which have these little horns on them to send around, here's how you make your will, you know, and our legal name is such and such, and I put it in my pail and I'm buying it. But it's for a good cause, you know, because they're doing missionary work, but if monks do that kind of thing just for their own keep, maybe so they won't have to work, it's not exactly... There's something about it, isn't there? It earns this, it kind of merits this scourge that comes along, you know, and then investigates it, sort of, with the strings low. The process of secularization, now secularization here means the taking away of sacred properties,

[29:40]

okay? It means... I don't have a definition for it exactly, but I think you know what it means. Secularization here means depriving the religious communities and the church in general of any privileged status, okay? And sometimes putting it in an underprivileged status, and sometimes depriving it of any right to existence, legally. And it's the separation of church and state in a radical way, with a vengeance very often in such a way sometimes that the state tries to deprive the church of the right to existence. See, in the Middle Ages it often got mixed up, remember? That is, sometimes the church would go a little bit upper hand, sometimes the state would go a little bit lower, but there was not much inter-race, inter-worldly. Now, here comes a distinct separation, sometimes a kind of aggressive or vindictive separation, which almost throttles the church, or cuts it off. The process of secularization, which involved no simultaneous uniform measures but took place

[30:41]

at various levels in the course of more than a century, was already signaled in 1759 when the Jesuits were expelled from Portugal and its colonies, so that seemed to be the earliest moment. It was a complex combination of political, anti-Catholic, and inter-scholastic theological interests which first led to the expulsion of the Jesuits from all the countries under the Bourbon dynasty, and that's in 1764 in the colonies. And finally, to the suppression of the order by Clement XIV, the Jesuits were suppressed. And I don't have a date for that, but I think it occurred around or before 1800. Then further suppressions, and each of the European countries would have this war beginning between the government and the church, and the government struggling not only for independence but struggling for control, for economic control, and for control also of the people.

[31:42]

Under the Enlightenment, lack of understanding of the Catholic ideal of the religious life led to—Enlightenment was in the 18th century, when the intellectual movement walked away from all those things—led to a partial secularization of monasteries in France in 1766. So secularization means there that the government just takes them over, either throws the monks out or puts them to work for sale or something, which bore on all types of religious. Partial secularizations in Lombardy under Maria Theresa and finally in 1782 in Austria and Hungary—now these are still imperial or royal governments—were directed against useless and superfluous monasteries, which led a merely contemplative life. So you can see there's not exactly an enthusiasm for the pure monastic ideal. There isn't any understanding of it at all, you see. That's what happens with the scientific positive mentality in the world, you know,

[32:47]

it comes in broad, it comes in that much more. And then the government, the government interests, I think, just take advantage of the situation, of the popular change in attitude, in particular. The measures taken in Bavaria after 1769 were principally intended to weaken the monarchy in others. The general secularization in France in 1790—okay, that's the French Revolution—was inspired by the financial needs of the state and also by the principle that there should be no positions of privilege. The position of privilege, I suppose, would mean exemption from taxes or ability to live from the offerings of the public. The secularization in Germany in 1803 was meant to provide funds for the ruling monarchs. The fundamental motives, therefore, varied widely, ranging from a sense of responsibility on the part of the state for the religious welfare of the people to an anti-clericalism

[33:48]

of principle. The faithful themselves came under the influence of the Enlightenment. From 1700 on, there was a sudden drop in recruitment, even for the clergy to be appointed to regular benefices. And the trend to secularization made ground among Catholics. Only a few orders disappeared entirely as the process of secularization went on, but the general picture was fundamentally changed. Remember the story of the Trappists in France? I think Martin wrote it to me in War and the Waters or something like that. First of all, if they were on savior forums, he was in the face of this kind of thing. And when the Trappists really were able to keep the contemplative life alive, or as any kind of capsule, and take it elsewhere, there were a lot of crimes. It was pretty strange. Society of Jesus was restored in 1814.

[34:53]

The various orders were able to survive the storm as meager remnants. The orders in congregations which were in the nature of personal unions with centralized structures succeeded gradually in re-establishing themselves and setting up new foundations. But the orders based on autonomous monasteries found things much more difficult. See, here the benefit of centralization appeared. Because if you had houses in a whole bunch of countries, or if you had religious who were responsible personally to a central authority, you were much more flexible. But if you had, it's a question of independent monasteries like Benedictine monasteries, it's harder for them to come back to life. It's harder to pump new blood into them, you see, and to receive the transfusion, because they're so autonomous, they're so isolated. Nevertheless, on the other hand, it's probably easier to wipe out a centralized order than it is for autonomous monasteries. I'll just take it over.

[35:58]

Okay. The Commodities Suppressions were three. The first one was 1770 to 1790. That's on page seven of those notes that you have. Right in the middle of the page. 1771 to 1791. Suppression of some Commodities houses by Joseph II, Austria. That must have been the Piedmont congregation. Leopold I, Tuscany. Now, Tuscany is where Commodity was. Ferdinand IV, Naples, the Venetian Ferdinand. And the second one under Napoleon, 1797 to 1810. Now, evidently, all these hermits were not wiped out completely, but the centralized order.

[37:07]

And then 1860 to 1873, you have this anti-clerical, anti-Catholic, Italian government. So they were practically wiped out. What happened to the Hermit House? I think they threw them out and left maybe just a custodian or something like that. They took away... Let's see. I'm not sure, so I'll have to check on that afterwards. I think it's here in this digest. Let's see. It's on the next page then. 1868, the Hermitage was completely confiscated, but eight priests and five conversors, that is, lay brothers, were tolerated at Commodity as custodians. In 1873, they got the Hermitage back on a rental basis. And they still don't own Commodity, neither the Hermitage nor the monastery.

[38:14]

There's a certain benefit in that, because they repair it. In the 1810 suppression, which was the second suppression under Napoleon, the Monastery of Fontepruno was left. Now, that's the synovium of Commodity, you see. And they left twelve people there, because evidently it was useful, either as a hospitium or maybe as a hospital. So, yeah, they had to fight in order to get it right. I'm not sure why the government froze the article, but we'll come back later. I think they throw them out because sometimes on principle

[39:17]

and sometimes because they want to make use of their land. And then sometimes there can be a popular movement which gradually forces the government to let them back in. But sometimes they find that they can't get anybody else to do it better than the monks themselves. Or it's a little like Russia now. They'll throw the monks out, and then they'll let a few back in as kind of museum pieces, or as custodians, to show the people around and make them think that there's a living monastery. And sometimes the government policy will get sort of perforated by the subterfuge of local people, and they'll find ways around. It's not entirely consistent. It's almost like they don't mind having the presence of the past. Exactly, sure. They want to kill the vitality of it. First of all, they want the property.

[40:18]

And then they want to kill any power of it. But they like to have it around as a kind of token. And to keep people content. They want to give, because people will accuse them of being... See, governments sometimes are very sensitive about accusing accusations from outsiders, and so on. They have to have a token in order to be able to deny the accusation. Maybe a 99.9% lie, but that's okay with them. Because then they can say, No, we encourage you. The church is thriving. The Tibetan is typical. It's an old-fashioned thing. It's not for everybody, so that's why.

[41:20]

In fact, it's hard for us to keep those two amongst Lillian. Okay, in the 19th and 20th century, you have these monastic reforms. There's a mystery under all this history that we're talking about. Obviously, there's a mystery. There are enormous forces that are engaged there. There's a kind of atheistic force, which nevertheless purifies the church, because there's so much fat, there's so much dead wood that accumulates, that these things have to come along, just like the Assyrians and the Babylonians in the Old Testament. Boy, they cut deep. And then things come back. And things come back in a strange way, like in these 19th century reforms, there were a lot of them, like Romanticism. And when they tried to get into touch with the earlier monasticism, it would only go back to a certain point. It would go back to the monasticism of 1300, or something like that, or 1200, and set it up to be the absolute peak.

[42:22]

Not going back to the early age. Nevertheless, gradually, gradually, it gets clearer. But as it gets clearer, it doesn't get much stronger. And monasticism is not a great force in the church today. Pfeiffer doesn't have much on these latest reform periods. The 19th and 20th centuries have been a period of restoration, consolidation, we could have said convalescence. And we know it for both the White and the Black Monks. That means both the Carthusian, there's Hemian Cistercian in the White Monks, and the regular Benedictines. Guéranger. Re-establishment of monasticism. Monasticism in France with the reopening of Salon. Refused to be a continuation of pre-revolution, it sought its inspiration at an earlier and better age. But that earlier and better age is not too far back, the High Middle Ages. 19th century, an encouraging number of monastic realizations.

[43:26]

At the end of this century and throughout the 20th, the return to monastic sources has proceeded apace with the same movement in other areas of the church's life. Biblical, liturgical, and theological renewal. So the Vatican II expression is very important, it's a kind of culmination of that. Vatican II is, as it were, the product of those renewals. And it's not an end, though, it's a beginning. So it seems a start. After this kind of quantum leap, to get into genuine touch with the first tradition of monasticism. In all of this, we don't want to get obsessed with the idea of renewal of an original tradition, in the sense that, in a scholarly way, we have to go back and find out exactly what they were doing. Because we know in our bones that that's not exactly what's necessary. How many people can do that? That's it, that's kind of like chasing the herd. It's much simpler, really, to get into touch with the original inspiration of monasticism

[44:30]

that is right in our heart, if we've got the vocation. At the same time, we have to get rid of the false images of it that we do have. Many of us have crept in here and now. Profound study of the Holy Rule has made it possible to understand its teaching against the background of the earlier Eastern and Western monasticism, and now even of non-Christian monasticism. And to see Saint Benedict once more in his real environment, freed from the excrescences which have obscured his thought over the centuries. Now, people will probably read that in another hundred years, and be glad about the satisfaction. Thus, the original inspiration of primitive monasticism stands revealed in all its strength and simplicity. The only trouble is that sometimes the better you understand it, the less you do it. There's a principle, I'm sure, of arriving at the complete picture of early monasticism,

[45:31]

you know, sort of washing your hands of it, and going off on a journey, and completing that journey from start to finish. You did it just right at the moment, right? Your thesis should be published. Do something else. The principle of intellectual understanding, the principle of monastic life, are not the same. And really, it's very hard to get to the end. Thinking about something is not the same as doing something. Do you know all about it from the outside world? I know I fall into that trap all the time. It's very hard to avoid just enjoying getting a nice intellectual gift or something. You can get more and more reluctant to do it because you do that, extremely. Reluctant, really, to do it.

[46:34]

You go around it and admire it. You get another kind of relationship with it, which very nearly replaces that journey. Yeah, because you're content with the intellectual grasp of it. Because there's a great deal of satisfaction in feeling that you're really in touch with something. Because you are in touch with it. But you're not in touch with it in the ultimate way, and so you may be able to help others to understand it. But it's a far cry from doing it. Because simplicity is not the same as that understanding. There are two different ways. I think the idea, really, is to try to get the two together. It's not to sacrifice intellectual understanding. Because we see the blind alleys that people get to make shows into when they do that. They get extremely narrow. When they get to get obsessed with one thing, they do that one thing their whole lives,

[47:34]

they never look around. But it's very difficult on the other hand. If you follow the other track with your eyes open, it's very difficult to keep that concentration, to keep that intensity, that focus where I'm being transformed. And I'm going through the tunnels that the dark places you have to go through in your life. Because the person who is... I think in our life we probably go through different phases. There's a phase of intellectual expansion. There's a phase of initial, say, concentration and sort of going through the tunnel that one has to go through. Then there's a phase of intellectual expansion. I suspect. And then there may be another call to let go of all that and enter into a darkness and enter into the depths of it. A lot of people never accept that call. If you accept that call,

[49:00]

how much you could let go? Yeah, you want to. Do you feel the need to let go? And at the same time, I let go of my problem. I let go of myself. At the same time, I don't let go of the experience. I don't let go. I don't let go. I let go. It seems to me that he did better than almost anybody else in holding the two together. Because most people that go at one, we're talking about a baby, but even the Eastern thing in Christianity, I think he held the two together pretty well. I've seen so many that let go of the Christian thing and they get fascinated by the Eastern thing. That's the only way. We try to let go. We try to let go. We try to let go.

[50:01]

@Text_v004
@Score_JJ