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# Benedict in the City
- URL: https://thedailyeudemon.com/benedict-in-the-city/
- Published: 2025-05-15T06:09:00.000Z
- Updated: 2025-05-15T11:09:54.000Z
- Author: Eric Scheske
- Tags: Current Affairs, Religion, History

My Kindle’s a cluttered attic, stuffed with a few books I pick at like a vulture when the mood strikes. Nothing I’d sink into, just odds and ends for those moments when the world’s noise gets too shrill.

One of them’s E. Michael Jones’ *Benedict’s Rule: The Rise of Ethnicity and the Fall of Rome*, a slim volume that’s less a book than a Molotov cocktail lobbed at the ruins of our so-called civilization. Jones argues that Benedict, that old monk, didn’t just save the West after Rome’s imperial carcass collapsed: he and his followers scooped up its soul as the toga-clad bureaucrats fled. There’s a twist, of course, something about “the rise of ethnicity,” but so far, it’s a tale of Rome’s rot and the monasteries that rose from its ashes like stubborn weeds.

Jones kicks off with a gut-punch parallel: Rome’s fall mirrors America’s slow-motion implosion. Just as Rome hollowed itself out chasing far-flung provinces, America’s rotting from the inside while its overlords obsess over deserts and jungles half a world away from Akron. The proof’s in our urban wastelands—those inner cities where hope’s been paved over by neglect and the flickering neon of dollar stores.

Jones has a knack for making you pause, even if his ideas sometimes skid close to the third rail. Is he an anti-Semite? I don’t know, and I haven’t dug into the evidence. If I swore off every book that might harbor a dangerous thought, I’d have to burn my own journals . . . and half my brain.

Here’s the kicker: Jones thinks monks could save us again. Not in some misty-eyed medieval rerun, but right now, in the boarded-up heart of our cities.

He points to Father Groeschel’s grey friars, those tough-as-nails Franciscans who brought a pulse back to the South Bronx. Jones’ plan is dirt-simple: hand over a few abandoned parish buildings in Philly, Detroit, or Baltimore to a couple of Benedictine monks. Let them turn those crumbling shells into monasteries, oases where young Catholic couples could live cheap and lean, guided by a 21st-century take on Benedict’s Rule. It’s a vision of life rooted in discipline and community, not the strip-mall sprawl of our consumerist fever dream.

**Read the rest**

[Benedict’s Rule and the Last Stand for America’s CitiesMy Kindle’s a cluttered attic, stuffed with a few books I pick at like a vulture when the mood strikes.![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ea/fd/eafdb338-c9b6-4f87-8363-78ab94cc3a18/content/images/icon/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fc315bb6b-5fa8-4df7-91ee-a59bfcb565b7-2Fapple-touch-icon-180x180-25.png)Eric Scheske's SubstackEric Scheske![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/ea/fd/eafdb338-c9b6-4f87-8363-78ab94cc3a18/content/images/thumbnail/https-3A-2F-2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com-2Fpublic-2Fimages-2Fdc70dd4a-93ed-4f19-9021-b1316c98cc24_1024x608-1.png)](https://open.substack.com/pub/scheske/p/benedicts-rule-and-the-last-stand?r=1mwuz7&utm%5Fcampaign=post&utm%5Fmedium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true)