Analysis – A change of era such as the current one suggests courageous changes to embody monastic life in new forms
by Luigino Bruni
published in Avvenire on 13/12/2024
In the Middle Ages, monasticism was the most important cultural and economic phenomenon in many European regions. Without monasteries and abbeys we would not have – or would have a much poorer – natural pharmacy, wine-gastronomic biodiversity, forestry, many technical and technological innovations, work culture, schools and books. An important component of the European economy matured and grew within the monasteries and in their long external supply chains, without forgetting the dense network of fairs that almost always took place in the abbeys' forecourts, which guaranteed that fides (faith and trust) necessary for the markets of yesterday, and perhaps also today. The ‘Ora et labora’ was also a cultural, economic and social spirit of Europe. The first European union flourished from a constellation of abbeys and monasteries, both male and female, where the Christian faith, classical civilisation, and innovation in almost all spheres of life were preserved.
Many of those ancient institutions are still present in European countries, despite a religious and civil scenario that has changed profoundly over the last half-century. Abbeys and monasteries are still there, with their beautiful churches and other buildings and grounds, but life within them is gradually dying out. There are still, here and there, monastic communities experiencing new springs of creativity and vocations, but they are bright exceptions in a generally dark night. Demographic data suggest that in a couple of decades about 90% of the current European monasteries will be empty. Their future is entrusted to the market, if some multinational company sees a good investment in them; the rest will end up with some rare, particularly far-sighted (and rich) public institution that will turn them into museums, and what will not meet the interest of either the public or the private sector. They will simply be over. Is this then the only possible fate for them? Perhaps not.
The situation is as serious as it is underestimated. It is not so much, only or primarily, about the fate of real estate and heritage: the core of the question is theological and spiritual, not economic - in fact the economy, in religious life, resembles the red light in the dashboard of a car: it is the first to come on in a ‘crisis’, but it only goes out when the ‘engine’ is fixed. In recent years, I have had the opportunity to accompany several monastic realities, all in difficulty due to a lack of future, which is further emphasised by the richness of the past. What emerges is the difficulty of imagining scenarios that are truly different from those known so far (every profound crisis is a crisis of the imagination of the future). Adding to this is the experience of not being adequately listened to by diocesan or Vatican institutions that, perhaps with good intentions, respond to their cry for help with the code of canon law and the documents for monastic and consecrated life, clearly written in and for a world that now almost no longer exists. This is also because in a certain part of the church the memory of past times when monasteries were strong and powerful is still alive and well. What to do then?
When a change of era occurs, small adjustments at the margin, or gradualism, not only do not work but are the perfect way to run into a wall. There is a need for a radical and rapid re-founding of monastic life (and religious consecrated life in general), both male and female.
Let us do a side reasoning, a sort of allegorical exercise. Let us imagine an Italian company that started to build ski facilities in the Apennines in the mid-twentieth century, first in the region of Romagna, then moving on step by step to Tuscany, Marche, Lazio, Abruzzo. It has built an empire. For some years now, climate change has arrived: less and less snow, more and more artificial snow, more costs, less profits, fewer quality employees willing to move to the Alps. The increasing losses are the result of this polycrisis, which has already turned into a work malaise and a growth of conflicts. What can this company do? It can close down, of course; it can also try to go on for a few more years shooting snow with cannons while keeping its hands raised towards the sky so that the temperature does not remain too high. But it can also do something else: it can decide to use its last resources to attempt a radical change. It can acknowledge that the world's climate has changed, and will not go back; therefore overcome the nostalgia for the good times, stop cursing the bad world that generated global warming, and then direct its desires towards the future. And then, one fine morning, it can start transforming the old facilities into a network of ecological parks, with educational programmes in the woods, walking, cycling, lots of sports and ecological culture, perhaps investing in the education of children and in zero-impact restaurants and hotels. Of course, this entrepreneur will also ask themselves: will there be a market? Will I find new associates and quality workers?
The church is not a business, we know that. Neither are monasteries, even if, historically, they have served as a response to social and economic needs, not just spiritual ones - in the Middle Ages. In fact, Vallombrosa in Tuscany or Aderbode in Flanders were something similar to our Harvard or MIT: upon entering, one was not so much attracted by the sacred (there was plenty of it outside), but by the libraries, the scriptorium, the vineyards and the pharmacies.
Shifting from ski resorts to ecological parks in the field of monastic life would mean starting to think that today the monastic charisma can be embodied in something different from the past, because the ‘spiritual climate’ of the world has really changed. It would entail starting to include families, young people, people of all ages and marital statuses in the monasteries, not as ‘guests’ but as ordinary ‘inhabitants’, to try to continue the charisma of monasticism in a new way, and thus keep it alive. To imagine something like this would require a Copernican revolution. First of all, to begin to distinguish the state of life (marriage, celibacy) from the monastic vocation, then to believe that the monastic charisma is beyond and an excess of celibacy or consecration that have characterised it until now. Today the binomial manachism/celibacy, which made sense when it was born in the Middle Ages, seems in many ways an inadequate inheritance to save the experience and charisma of monasticism. There will always be celibate people in monasteries, but the challenge is to overcome the exclusive association between celibacy and monasticism.
In fact, if we dig even deeper, we find that the challenge is even more radical. We discover it if we try to answer this question: why should the essence of monasticism – community, prayer, liturgy, work, contemplation, the Word – be a monopoly of an elite of celibates and virgins? Why not extend the spiritual heritage of St. Benedict, St. Augustine, St. Bruno, St. Teresa of Avila also to lay people, families, the youth and the elderly? Our time, which is very much like the Roman time when the first monasticism was born, has all the conditions for a new springtime of the monastic charisma. But there is a need for a democratisation of monasticism. Community, contemplation and mysticism can become popular experiences, potentially open to all life conditions, because they are part of every person's basic repertoire. We can then begin to imagine monasteries, old and new ones, where the core group of celibates are joined, with the same dignity and rights, by other people, different yet equal. Places full of humanity, of children, of life all-round. Thus overcoming, on a theological and anthropological level, the ancient idea of a spiritual-ethical superiority of celibacy over other states of life. Not least because, incidentally, the huge question of women in the Catholic Church itself will not be resolved as long as there is a sacral hierarchy between different vocations and between ministries. The arrival of different people with the same monastic vocation will inevitably lead to changes in forms of governance, concrete practices and responsibilities, and the challenge will be creative fidelity to the great past together with openness to the spirit that blows in the present time. There are already new monastic communities that are attempting something similar; however, it is now a matter of imagining a general reform of traditional monasticism that would consider such experiments as ordinary affairs and not as exceptions at the margins (often viewed with suspicion).
Furthermore, a specific discourse must be made for the elderly. Today, and even more so tomorrow, there are many elderly people, both families and singles (widowed, separated), who would like to spend their years of active ageing in a community and spiritual context, as a response to an authentic vocation - I know some of these. But not to live in retirement homes housed in the monastery premises, but as ordinary, active members, spending one, two or more decades of their mature existence in the monastery, together with everyone else.
I am convinced that the ‘market’, the ‘needs’ and the ‘workers’ (vocations) are there, but they are still latent, so they need to be discovered and activated. There is certainly a growing demand for spirituality in Europe, which, unfortunately, is almost always being met by the wrong offer, by emotional sects, do-it-yourself meditations, or neo-shamanisms.
The great monastic tradition can still attempt a new encounter with the spirit of our times. It would ‘only’ need a new ability to take risks, more theological thinking, more generosity on the part of the monastic orders, more desire for the future, a great deal of trust in human beings, a mustard seed of faith – ingredients that the gospel has always had, and it still does.
