Few people in the western Christian world now seek permanent retreat into a monastic order. A life of such intense voluntary hardship, chastity, poverty, and repetitive liturgical worship holds scant appeal for rich young men and women in the twenty-first century. But what we surely can recognize today is the rise of vastly rich and powerful international institutions and corporations that exercise enormous soft power, and whose leaders have the ear of the world’s political grandees. We are at ease with the idea of voluntarily adapted “orders” for life designed to improve our individual and
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