The rule of Saint Benedict as a model for modern society, that needs to rediscover the value of time, authority and participation, if it wants to give a sense to life. In a lecture held today at the Benedictine University of Saint Anselm in Rome, the archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, Primate of the "Church of England" and the leader of 77 million Anglicans, explained that the Benedictine rule contains the recipe to "give the right pace to life, the one that will make men free to walk towards joy for which they have been made, in a community that is fully immersed in the material world". "Life in the West is lived as if just two things were important: we give to work and pleasure the wrong meaning, and both regularly appear in inhuman and obsessive forms", said the archbishop, who will meet the Pope on Thursday for the 40th anniversary of the epoch-making visit of the Anglican Primate Michael Ramsey to Paul VI. "Time is an undifferentiated continuum in which we either work or consume. Work does not follow a daily or even weekly rhythm but is a matter that lasts twenty-four hours, occasionally interrupted by a very feverish form of entertainment". (to be continued)
