An Idea Who’s Time Has Come, perhaps, Returned?
In the prior post, I queried for a resource (hopefully online) for the 14th oration of St. Gregory the Theologian, which is on poverty. In a book that I am reading about St. Gregory, John McGuckin’s St. Gregory of Nazainzus: An Intellectual Biography, heightens my interest in this. One of the things Mr McGuckin relates in his book is that in this particular oration St. Gregory calls for what he terms Byzantine “city-monasticism” that is monastic cenoboetic (communal) communities, which are not withdrawn from the world, but which served to staff hospitals and other philanthropic institutions.
American in particular is a barren desert when one considers its monastic presence. Could encouraging young and old to a commitment to serve in such a community work? Would it not be a good thing?
Filed under: Christianity • Mark O. • Religion
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We started such a program in our community: Urban Corps. It was a group effort between some rural mennonite churches and our urban church and others, where we invited recent college grads – primarily from rural and suburban settings – to move to an urban setting (Louisville), living in a communal house and taking on some urban work (with school kids, with a community center, etc) for a year.
It was an exciting program while it lasted but the funds dried up. That’s a problem when a bunch of relatively po’ folk try to start a program such as this…
Dan,
Why does a monastic community need a lot of money? It seems that is something a po’ folk can do.
It wasn’t a “monastic” community (however that might be defined), but a community of young people who were working in an urban setting while living simply and communally.
The board of directors for the project, I would presume, had to come up with some money at least for the rent of the building and there may have been a stipend involved, etc. I was not on the board so I don’t know all the details.
Dan,
Why the scare quotes on monastic?
I was just indicating that I’m not sure what you mean by monastic, in the context of your essay. It was not an attempt to do anything but indicate you referred specifically to monastic communities.
By my understanding of monastaries and monastic living, this arrangement we had smacks of it (living contemplatively in community while doing good urban work), but I didn’t know if you meant something more specific.
Scare quotes is a general term for quotation marks used for purposes other than to identify a direct quotation. For example, authors might use quotation marks to highlight special terminology, to distance the writer from the material being reported, to indicate that it is someone else’s terminology…
That is what I was doing.