RADICAL YOUTH?

Sister of Charity in India

In France, one of this week’s events is a new film by Marie-Castille Mention-Schaar, director of Les Héritiers (the Inheritors), a wonderful movie about a high-school class and their project on teenagers in the Holocaust. The new film concerns what we now call the “radicalization” of teenage girls, who often in a short space of time become what they think are strict Muslims and set off for Syria. Listening to an interview with the admirable director, who has lived with these girls and their families for three years, I was struck with a dolorous thought of great force: WHERE IS THE CHURCH?

            From what Mention-Schaar said, it was clear that many if not most of these girls, not at all from a Muslim or even immigrant background, were responding to on the one hand a barrage of indoctrination on the vile immorality of Western capitalist society, and on the other hand a burning desire for a life that is pure, upright, dedicated to both a divine plan and human betterment.

            Uh, huh. There was a time – and my wife remembers it well from her own childhood – when such girls burned to be missionaries or teaching nuns or religious working with the poorest of the poor. Mother Teresa was an example of those, probably a minority, but still, who went through with it.

            But even before this connection came up, when last year was proclaimed a Year of the Religious, and a number of people were lamenting the decline in vocations, I was astonished by the lack of recruiting, advertising or even public relations the Roman Catholic Church (and the Anglicans are no better) is doing on the subject. Supposedly, they want the young or the relatively young: many orders take no one over 45. But are they lifting a finger to get them? No. For a time I was a member of an Internet group of Carthusian enthusiasts called the International Friends of St Bruno. In the 2 or 3 years I spent with them I don’t think I ever saw a posting from someone under 40.

            It is, and probably always has been, a feature of the teenage years to want to be an arrow on a divine bow: straight, sharp, noble, and aimed and shot at a deserving target. Nowadays, it does not occur to many to turn to a religious order to be arrowed; but the social networks turn a startling number of them to an Islamist jihad. Were we to see a tenth of that recruiting activity, both in quantity and in quality, on the social networks for the Carmelites, the Carthusians, the Benedictines, the Cistercians or the Franciscans, the number of novices would shoot up; and even if only a minority stay the course, fewer monasteries and convents would be inhabited only by the agèd and fewer would close. And for those who want activity, who burn to help the downtrodden, the Sisters of Charity are still in Calcutta and elsewhere. Pure you can be; dedicated you have to be; needed you will be. Of course you won’t have the thrill of the Kalashnikov; but on the other hand you won’t have the sweat and the bad breath of the freedom fighter on top of you whose slave you have been declared. And nowadays, your parents might even – oh joy! -- disapprove.

young Carmelites

Franciscan Sisters of the Renewal

A GREAT LADY

 

Today is the feast of St Scholastica. I first learned of this in Oxford, where her feast-day in 1355 gave rise to a stupendous riot that left over 80 people dead and the city’s narrow paved streets running with blood.

Scholastica herself, I later found out, was the sister – some say the twin sister – of St Benedict of Nursia, the founder of cenobitic monasticism, in other words, monks living together instead of on their own in a desert. He wrote the great Rule which became the basis for all such communities; and it is said that his sister adapted it to found the first convent for Benedictine moniales or nuns. There is a delightful story about her and her brother, who were very close and used to visit once a year and have lengthy talks about God and the Holy Spirit. One year, when Benedict was visiting, they had talked until supper and beyond. When, finally, Benedict said it was time for him to leave, she protested, and begged him to stay with her for the evening so they could continue their discussions. He refused, insisting that he needed to return to his cell. At that point, Scholastica closed her hands in prayer, and after a moment, a wild storm started outside of the guest house in which they were housed. Benedict asked, "What have you done?", to which she replied, "I asked you and you would not listen; so I asked my God and he did listen. So now go off, if you can, leave me and return to your monastery." Benedict was unable to return to his monastery, and they spent the night in discussion. According to Gregory's Dialogues, three days later, from his cell, he saw his sister's soul leaving the earth and ascending to heaven in the form of a shining white dove – which reminds me of the lovely Spanish song “La Paloma” sung memorably by Caetano Veloso in Almodóvar’s film Talk To Her.

            If you are a 21C non-monastic person, what do you do with someone like Scholastica? I think that first of all you give thanks that such people still exist. On this blog I have once or twice mentioned the admirable Sr Emmanuelle Billoteau, that great intellect of the faith, who is one of Scholastica’s successors, having started as a Benedictine moniale and graduated to being a Benedictine hermit who translates works from the English and writes fine meditations. The religious, as they are properly known, are what you might call the salt of the salt of the earth, the leaven in the bread of the faith.

            Secondly, Scholastica teaches us that it is not only pleasing but good to discuss religion, and to do so intelligently among spirits who fundamentally agree. This is not the same as the difficult and occasionally maddening task of discussing it with those who deny not just its truth but its value: it is the inspiring activity of collaboration between like minds, allowing them to reach further than each would on its own.

The illustration is "St Scholastica" by Andrea Mantegna, from the San Luca altarpiece in Milan.