Does Society Need a St. Bernard?
You all know the big dogs that carry rum to save Swiss or alpine skiers caught in a storm or some other trouble. That is not the St. Bernard I am contemplating but you might think this St. Bernard to be an even bigger dog once you get to know him. “The intellectual and institutional evolution of these reform movements during the almost exactly one thousand years between Benedict of Nursia (who founded the monastery of Monte Cassino in about 529) and Martin Luther (who entered the monastery of the Augustinian Hermits at Erfurt in 1505) is a story of inestimable importance for the history of Europe and of the world. (13) Over and over, it was the primitive model of Christ as Monk, and of the monk as the imitator of the model, that animated these reform movements. There is in some ways a depressing repetition of pattern, as each monastic reform in its turn protests against decline and stagnation in the monasteries, sets up new administrative and disciplinary structures to reverse the down
