Near the Piazza Navona and the Pantheon in Rome there is a restaurant --part of an international chain-- called L'eau vive, Living Water. It specializes in fancy French cuisine and it is run by a consciously international society of religious women, the Missionary Family of Donum Dei. Their website features luxurious Gallic food and a statue of the Virgin Mary...As (very partisan papist) Hillaire Belloc wrote:
I took my parents there in 1973 and the waitresses, all from this religious group, were dressed in their national costumes. Soft classical religious music played in the background. The food was very good. One critic described "beef filet flambé with cognac, toasted goat cheese coated with mustard and almond slivers, and duck filet in Grand Marnier sauce with puff-fried potatoes." (Definitely not primitive Franciscan ascetics.) Before closing, you might find yourself in the middle of a little Biblical ballet or a song.
Imagine a girl telling her family of her new calling: I want to serve Jesus and crepes Suzettes. Despite its reputation for rigidity, the Roman Church houses vast aviaries.
Enough to make a Cathar roll over in his grave, no?
When I was studying there at the Pontifical Gregorian University, a famous French priest-scholar came to visit and one of the brethren asked if he'd like to go to L'eau vive. He replied cooly, "I prefer not to mix dining with evangelization." Ah, those European sophisticates.
The group is one of many "secular institutes" in Roman Catholicism, a new and official, though largely unknown, form of consecrated life which not only allows but requires its members to mix traditional religious vows with a non-traditional life in "the world". It strikes me that this is what a lot of groovy American nuns really want to be, although the demographics of these new groups are very traditional in faith, very devout and orthodox. In that respect, the postVatican II ecofeminist socialist nuns would be an oddity among oddities..
“Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!”
I took my parents there in 1973 and the waitresses, all from this religious group, were dressed in their national costumes. Soft classical religious music played in the background. The food was very good. One critic described "beef filet flambé with cognac, toasted goat cheese coated with mustard and almond slivers, and duck filet in Grand Marnier sauce with puff-fried potatoes." (Definitely not primitive Franciscan ascetics.) Before closing, you might find yourself in the middle of a little Biblical ballet or a song.
Imagine a girl telling her family of her new calling: I want to serve Jesus and crepes Suzettes. Despite its reputation for rigidity, the Roman Church houses vast aviaries.
Enough to make a Cathar roll over in his grave, no?
When I was studying there at the Pontifical Gregorian University, a famous French priest-scholar came to visit and one of the brethren asked if he'd like to go to L'eau vive. He replied cooly, "I prefer not to mix dining with evangelization." Ah, those European sophisticates.
The group is one of many "secular institutes" in Roman Catholicism, a new and official, though largely unknown, form of consecrated life which not only allows but requires its members to mix traditional religious vows with a non-traditional life in "the world". It strikes me that this is what a lot of groovy American nuns really want to be, although the demographics of these new groups are very traditional in faith, very devout and orthodox. In that respect, the postVatican II ecofeminist socialist nuns would be an oddity among oddities..
1 comment:
I had always sung that jingle
“Wherever the Catholic idol shine,
There’s always slaughter, and obedience that's blind.
At least we've always found it so.
Dies Irae Bartholomeo!”
More seriously, these things are among the substance of Catholic Christianity -- although Straussians urged us Protestants to convert to the RCC for the Thomistic political philosophy and judicious statesmanship. Just like in Canticle for Liebowitz.
In any case, good for Leo Vive! Perhaps there's a foursquarishness to it that Europeans won't like -- a foursquarishness contributed to American Catholicism by Methodists et al. ...
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