Patrick HENRY. Benedictine Options. Learning to Live from the Sons and Daughters of Saints Benedict and Scholastica. Collegeville, Minnesota: Liturgical Press, 2021.pp. 162. $19.95 pb. ISBN 978-0-8146-6681-4. Reviewed by James K. HANNA, University of Notre Dame

It will delight the author of the reviewed book if your first glance at his title triggers in your mind the thought of Rod Dreher’s The Benedictine Option. A Strategy for Christians in a Post-Christian Nation (Sentinel, 2017). Indeed, Dreher and his book are referred to so often by Henry that a reader may mistake Dreher as the target when he is not.

Henry disagrees with Dreher on many aspects of Benedictine charism and adroitly explains the reasons why. However, it would be a mistake to call this book a rebuttal - it is more of a juxtaposition, a contrast of scholarship and interpretation, beginning with the title using the plural “options” vs. Dreher’s “option,” a distinction Henry tackles in his first chapter where he writes “The Benedict Option is about restoration. The Benedict Options is about rebuilding. These are not the same thing. “
And yet, there are several points where Henry and Dreher agree but as Henry writes, “he and I extract different lessons,” and that defines the trajectory of the scholarship and interpretation that follows.

Henry is quick to point out that he, like Dreher, is not a monastic but that he draws on his long association with Benedictines, including his seventeen years as a day scholar at Studium, the research center at St. Benedict’s Monastery that followed his twenty years as executive director of the Collegeville Institute for Ecumenical and Cultural Research (1984-2004).
Though the author goes to lengths to set his thoughts apart from those of Dreher the book is not entirely Dreher-focused. Instead, in nearly alternating chapters Henry, drawing on his extensive historical experience with Benedictines and attendant writings, incorporates much material adapted from his voluminous inventory of previously published books, essays, and conference presentations. These are well used not only to support his explanation of Benedictine charism but also to provide the reader with some important history lessons. For example, in Chapter Four, aptly titled “A Wagonload of Trouble,” Henry, with adaptations of his previously published The Ironic Christian’s Companion: Finding the Marks of God’s Grace in the World (Riverhead Books, 1999) brings to fore the upheaval wrought upon Benedictine religious sisters by Vatican II: “There are very few things I claim to know for sure. One of them is this: feminism is for the sake of everyone, not just women.”  

Perhaps the most intriguing chapter is the concluding “Learning from Father Godfrey and Sister Jeremy” where Henry animates what he has been building up to: that “Benedictine options depend on evidence of the actual lives of real Benedictines.” Here he focuses briefly on the lives of Sister Jeremy Hall, OSB (1908-2002) and Father Godfrey Diekmann, OSB (1918-2008) and in a review of  lessons of this son and daughter of Saint Benedict Henry leaves the reader with the sure knowledge that the school of experience is the best teacher.