Walter Dirks

History can be gambled away by intercourse with a woman (even one’s wife)—by lust; by feathering one’s nest—by riches; or by ruling and managing (poorly or even well)—by power. The private vices and false virtues are, in the solidarity of mankind and in the communion of saints, not private. The demons make history not only by way of such private vices and false virtues, but also directly.

This is true above all for the demon of riches and for the demon of power. We have reason to be grateful to Marxism for having provided us with insight into the historical power of riches, of “interest,” of the power-giving quality of riches and of those planned deceptions and self-deceptions whereby men have transfigured and glossed over their will to power through riches and their will to riches through power (and to lust through riches and power). Whoever wishes to orient himself on this aspect of history can do so in the pages of Marx, but he can do it equally well in the writings of the monastic leaders. They proceed from the same fact, except that Marx is stronger as a positive analyst, and the founders of the orders are stronger as healers. If they should once begin to think and talk together, the possibility of an approach to a good theory and practice of history would exist.

Even the legality which Marx discovered in this field is correct, and the monastic fathers also take it into account. Otherwise they would not have opposed their own legality, the Rule, brotherhood, and the vows, to the demons.

We are concerned here with the legality of fallen man. At the moment when he drops the reins and allows complete freedom and autonomy to his desire of the flesh, his greed for money, and his lust for power, he becomes the slave of strong impulses and the victim of strict relationships between cause and effect. In this way he becomes so much the slave of general and superpersonal laws that general statements, in the nature of statistical laws, can be set up about his kind of person. Psychoanalysis is at work on the discovery of such laws of “love” of fallen man; Marxism fixes the “laws” of his social behavior, the laws of the society of a fallen race of men interested in wealth and power. We all have reason to study these laws. We must know them if we are to be aware that we are called to break through this statistical legality in the freedom of the children of God. Surely we know that we are called not to act as the “world” acts but to act humanly. And after Adam and Christ that can only mean, as men who have fallen and who are saved by their faith in the Holy One; who, from this sanctity of the Church, behave among their fellow men (among Jews, pagans, Christians, sinners, and saints), not “normally,” in the usual way and according to the triple law of the world, but fraternally. Because of this, knowledge of these laws is important: we must recognize the danger which menaces us; we must know the partners with whom we are called to live in brotherhood, even if they themselves behave not as brothers but in accordance with the laws discovered by Freud and Marx; and we must know them particularly well if we wish to form, inside this world, fraternities, islands of God’s kingdom, chance encounters and beginnings of a new dispensation.

But these three procedures are the opportunities for the Christian to make history. Let us name them again: not to become errand boys of evil powers; to do right in common with all men, to the best of our power, to set up the best possible order and to find the best possible way; and third, to establish and maintain cells of Christian life, “brotherhoods” —whether these are families or groups of friends or farmers’ associations, or business enterprises, or factories, or universities, or unions, or monasteries, or groups and cells in all these associations and organizations and communal groups, or just meetings which take place once and do not recur (but which just the same stand in the book of life).

Thus the monastic life form must be regarded as a service to history even before all historical differentiations which led to the diversity of the various orders occurred. Fraternal common life is not an extraordinary service, but only the permanent, obligatory decision in favor of a way of living together appropriate to the Christian. The only heroic thing about it is that it happens; that for once the appropriate thing happens.

Translated by Daniel Coogan. From The Monk and the World by Walter Dirks (David McKay Company Inc, 1954).