Coronavirus: Live Streaming Accents Latin Mass Glory

By Enza Ferreri 

This article was published here: Coronavirus: Live Streaming Accents Latin Mass Glory 

Many Non-Catholics may not know that on 3 April 1969, under Pope Pio VI, a liturgical revolution occurred with the promulgation of a new form of Mass, known in Latin as Novus Ordo Missae (New Order of Mass), replacing the Vetus Ordo Missae, the Ancient Order. 

The latter was the Tridentine Mass (named after the city of Tridentum, Trent, in north-east Italy), the form of the Eucharistic celebration promulgated by Pope Pius V in 1570 at the request of the Council of Trent during the Counter-Reformation period and maintained, with minor modifications, in subsequent editions of the Roman Missal. 

Although called a “liturgical reform”, this represented a radical change of four centuries of worship. It followed and was promoted by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II in short, 1962 - 1965), that at that time had recently been concluded and which did a lot to change the Catholic Church as had been known until then. 

While the Tridentine Mass is in Latin, the universal language of the Universal Church, the new Mass is in the vernacular, the local language. 

Many alterations were introduced, concerning the text and form of prayers, readings from the Scriptures, rites, use and type of music and more. 

A fundamental modification concerns the orientation of the celebrating priest, previously towards the altar, and after the reform towards the congregation. 

Why mention all this now? 

Because the coronavirus lockdown, with the impossibility of attending Mass in person, has put me in a position to watch it live-streaming in online videos. 

During the Easter Triduum I repeated that experience several times, always choosing the Ancient Rite, except once, when by mistake I watched a video of the New Mass. The close sequence of the two with a distance of a few hours between them gave me an opportunity to compare the two liturgical experiences in a way that I'd never come across before. 

And I saw differences that had previously escaped me. 

It’s two entirely diverse experiences. 

They were both from churches in Italy, the Latin Mass from the Church of Santissima Trinità dei Pellegrini, Rome (pictured above). 

One, the Tridentine Mass, worships God and the other celebrates man, reflecting the analogous change in outlook brought by Vatican II Council. 

The former brings you closer to the spiritual realm. 

I’m not the only one to have noticed this peculiar gift that, in all the mayhem and panic, the Covid-19 quarantine has given us. I’ve discovered that Catholic writer and philosopher Peter Kwasniewski has also published two articles about it. 

The celebrant’s ad populum orientation towards the people, which may seem a way to bring everyone together as a community and increase the participation of the faithful, is not the right thing for a Mass, where priest and congregation should not look at each other and focus on one another as if it were an assembly or meeting, but instead both should look at and focus on God. 

We’re not celebrating each other, we’re celebrating the Lord. 

Symbols and rituals have meaning. The sense of Mystery, Sacrifice and Communion with God must be there.

PHOTO CREDIT By Lumen roma - Opera propria, CC BY 3.0, Collegamento

Coronavirus Italy. Prayer to Mary from Rome Rooftops

By Enza Ferreri

This article was published here: Coronavirus Italy. Prayer to Mary from Rome Rooftops


We've previously posted about how Coronavirus Italy consecrates many of its cities to the Virgin Mary.

And, when Italians in Coronavirus times were not allowed to go to church to attend religious services because of the self-isolation lockdown imposed on them, the church was going to them.

This is what the Parish of Santa Giulia Billiart in Rome has done.

In Tor Pignattara, a historic working-class – now rediscovered by the middle class - district (“borgata”) of South-East Rome whose origins started in the Early Middle Ages, every day at noon, bells ring and a Marian song rises from the Parish of Santa Giulia Billiart.

It is the signal, the “voice of Mary” calling the aerial congregation across the roofs to prayer. The windows open, small balconies fill up to join the Supplication to Our Lady of Pompeii from people’s own homes.

On the rooftop terrace of the parish church complex, surrounded by the apartment blocks above it, the three priests who guide the community in the Tor Pignattara area, don Manrico, don Eugenio and don Luca, appear.

Wearing the purple stole, they recite the prayer in front of a microphone that through speakers sends the invocation to the inside of apartments. Then a brief reflection. Follows the leave-taking, accompanied by greetings bouncing from one window to another, until someone asks his neighbour: "What have you cooked for lunch?"

Tor Pignattara is home to six thousand people, of whom one third are – you might have guessed it - Muslim. In recent years, like so many other European cities’ suburban areas, it has undergone a population replacement.

Since the mid-90s, Tor Pignattara has received many migrants, especially from Bangladesh, India, Pakistan, China and Africa. But the most numerous are the Bangladeshis, hence its nickname “Banglatown”.

This Christian service initiative in Tor Pignattara was born as a spiritual response to the “flash mobs” which in these lockdown times animate Italian balconies around 6pm, when Italians normally go out for a “passeggiata” in the main street, and which have been seen in the media around the world.

"In times of difficulty Rome has always turned to Our Lady and invoked her protection” says the parish priest, Don Manrico. Interviewed by Avvenire, the Italian Bishops’ Conference newspaper, he explains that the three priests asked themselves: "Why, alongside moments of relaxation to share together, not propose a collective religious rendezvous?" Hence the Marian noon prayer, the special hour of devotion to the Virgin, the 10-15-minute-long bridge between homes.

The parish priest says that they want to stay close to the community and not let people feel alone but allow them to express their faith in a simple but intense way.

The parish remains a point of reference for the neighbourhood: “We are almost a village within the metropolis. When the rumour circulated that Rome churches were closing, many told us that they felt lost. Our church is always open. And we priests are inside or in the churchyard. Even if few are those who enter, the community perceives it as a beacon in the midst of darkness.”

SOURCES
Avvenire
With thanks to Corrispondenza Romana

Islamic Forced Conversions - Past and Present

Raymond Ibrahim, a scholar of Islam and Islamic history who has a particular focus on Muslim persecution of Christians, has on his website - for which I also write - a new article, Islamic Forced Conversions — Past and Present, highlighting the astonishing similarities of past atrocities, which many people in the West believe to have been consigned to distant history (belief largely due to the mainstream media's "carpet non-coverage" and total neglect of these everyday slaughters, massacres, beheadings, torture and discrimination), to current ones.

His piece was inspired by last Sunday’s canonization by Pope Francis I of the 813 Martyrs of Otranto, Christians from the South-Eastern Italian town of Otranto killed by Muslim Ottomans for refusing to convert to Islam in 1480. Their elevation had been decided by Francis' predecessor, Pope Benedict XVI, in one of his last acts before resigning.

This canonization concerned the largest number of people to be elevated to sainthood at once in the history of the Catholic Church.

Muslims, and their tireless allies and apologists in the liberal media, cannot leave the Holy Father alone even when he is just doing his job, like canonizing new saints. And something as small as a symbolic hint and an indirect reference to current persecution of Christians, without any mention of specific countries or even Islam, can be enough for a Muslim website to say: "He did not mention any countries, but the Vatican has expressed deep concern recently about the fate of Christians in parts of the Middle East, including Coptic Christians in Egypt. The pope’s canonization is expected to raise anger among Muslims over linking Islam to violence."

And the NBCNews website faithfully echoed: "The choice of some of the new saints was also striking, touching on the already-fragile relationship between Christianity and Islam... So why risk creating yet another inter-faith row with a celebration which some in the Muslim world may be seen [sic] as a provocation?".

These comments are a reminder, if necessary, that things have not changed in Muslim intolerance towards Christianity, as Raymond Ibrahim explains in his new article:

The lost history of Christians forced to convert to Islam—or die—is reemerging, figuratively and literally. According to the BBC: “Pope Francis has proclaimed the first saints of his pontificate in a ceremony [last Sunday] at the Vatican—a list which includes 800 victims of an atrocity carried out by Ottoman soldiers in 1480.They were beheaded in the southern Italian town of Otranto after refusing to convert to Islam.”

The BBC adds in a sidebar: “The ‘Martyrs of Otranto’ were 813 Italians beheaded for defying demands by Turkish invaders to renounce Christianity. The Turks had been sent by Mohammed II, who had already captured the ‘second Rome’ of Constantinople.”

Historical texts throughout the centuries are filled with similar anecdotes, including the “60 Martyrs of Gaza,” Christian soldiers who were executed for refusing Islam during the 7th century Islamic invasion of Jerusalem. Seven centuries later, during the Islamic invasion of Georgia, Christians refusing to convert were forced into their church and set on fire. Witnesses for Christ [Amazon USA] , [Amazon UK] , lists 200 anecdotes of Christians killed—including some burned at the stake, thrown on iron spikes, dismembered, stoned, stabbed, shot at, drowned, pummeled to death, impaled and crucified—for refusing to embrace Islam.

If history is shocking, the fact is, today, Christians—men, women, and children—are still being forced to convert to Islam. Pope Francis alluded to their sufferings during the same ceremony: “As we venerate the martyrs of Otranto, let us ask God to sustain those many Christians who, in these times and in many parts of the world, right now, still suffer violence, and give them the courage and fidelity to respond to evil with good.”

Consider some recent anecdotes:

In Pakistan, a “devoted Christian” was butchered by Muslim men “with multiple axe blows [24 per autopsy] for refusing to convert to Islam.” Another two Christian men returning from church were accosted by six Muslims who tried to force them to convert to Islam, but “the two refused to renounce Christianity.” Accordingly, the Muslims severely beat them, yelling they must either convert “or be prepared to die. . . . the two Christians fell unconscious, and the young Muslim men left assuming they had killed them.”

In Bangladesh some 300 Christian children were abducted in 2012 and sold to Islamic schools, where “imams force them to abjure Christianity.” The children are then instructed in Islam and beaten. After full indoctrination they are asked if they are “ready to give their lives for Islam,” presumably by becoming jihadi suicide-bombers. (Even here the historic patterns are undeniable: for centuries, Christian children were forcibly taken, converted to and indoctrinated in Islam, trained to be jihadis extraordinaire, and then unleashed on their former Christian families. Such were the Janissaries and Mamelukes.)

In Palestine in 2012, Christians in Gaza protested over the “kidnappings and forced conversions of some former believers to Islam.” The ever-dwindling Christian community banged on a church bell while chanting, “With our spirit, with our blood we will sacrifice ourselves for you, Jesus.”

Just as happened throughout history, Muslims today regularly “invite” Christians to Islam, often presenting it as the only cure to their sufferings—sufferings caused by Muslims in the first place.

In Pakistan, a Christian couple was arrested on a false charge and severely beaten by police. The pregnant wife was “punched, kicked and beat” as her interrogators threatened to kill her unborn baby. A policeman offered to drop the theft charge if the husband would only “renounce Christianity and convert to Islam,” but the man refused.

In Uzbekistan, a 26-year-old Christian woman, partially paralyzed from youth, and her elderly mother were violently attacked by invaders who ransacked their home, confiscating “icons, Bibles, religious calendars, and prayer books.” At the police department, the paralyzed woman was “offered to convert to Islam.” She refused, and the judge “decided that the women had resisted police and had stored the banned religious literature at home and conducted missionary activities. He fined them 20 minimum monthly wages each.”

In Sudan, Muslims kidnapped a 15-year-old Christian girl; they raped, beat and ordered her to convert to Islam. When her mother went to police to open a case, the Muslim officer of the so-called “Family and Child Protection Unit,” told her: “You must convert to Islam if you want your daughter back.”

Indeed, because Christian females are the most vulnerable segments of Islamic societies, they are especially targeted for forced conversions. In 2012, U.S. Congress heard testimony about the “escalating abduction, coerced conversion and forced marriage of Coptic Christian women and girls [550 cases in the last five years alone].Those women are being terrorized and, consequently, marginalized, in the formation of the new Egypt.”

As my new book Crucified Again: Exposing Islam’s New War on Christians [Amazon USA] , [Amazon UK] , documents, wherever there are large numbers of Muslims—whether in the Arab World, Africa, Asia, or even in the West—Christians are being persecuted. Forced conversions are the tip of the iceberg, and certainly not anomalies of history.

Pope Canonizes Otranto Christian Martyrs Murdered by Muslim Turks

Pope Benedetto XVI announced that he will leave his ministry at 8pm on February 28.

He made this announcement during a consistory for the canonization of the martyrs of Otranto beheaded one by one by the Ottoman Turks.

Antonio Primaldo and his companions, 800 Christians, were murdered for hatred of their faith by Muslims during the Turkish siege of the town of Otranto, in South-East Italy, on August 13, 1480.

As the Qur'an commands, these infidels were offered the choice to convert to Islam or be killed. When they refused to convert, the martyrs of Otranto were massacred.

The Qur'an is obeyed and applied in the same way now as it was in 1480. The only difference between now and then is in the power and military force Muslim armies had then but now now. Let's make sure that it remains this way in the West.

In other parts of the world, Christians are still massacred by Muslims for their faith. Nothing has changed in Islamic doctrine, only the relationship of strength can be a defence for whomever Muslims consider their enemies.

An observation about the different use of the word "martyr": in Christianity, unlike in Islam, martyrs do not kill.

Never Say Muslim Paedophile in Rochdale on the BBC

Last night I watched on the BBC the political debate programme Question Time. One of the questions from the studio audience to the panel of politicians, media people and other commentators was about the scandal provoked by the sexual abuse of white underage girls by Muslim men in Rochdale, Northern England.

Everyone in the programme uttered the usual platitudes and was ready to condemn the local police and social services for failing to act, but everything that was said, without exception, points to this: all the people participating in the debate are conniving with the cover-up, by sharing the very same ideology and fear - call it political correctness if you like - that caused it in the first place and, if they had been in the same position of responsibility as those police and social services, they would have done exactly the same.

How do I know that? Because, during the whole discussion, the words "Muslim" or "Islam" were not uttered even once. It must have been a feat.This is the final total score of expressions used in reference to the perpetrators or in association with what they did:

Asian males: 1

Catholic Church: 1

Catholicism: 1

Church: 1

People involved in this case: 1

People: 1

The accused involved: 1

Islam: 0

Muslims: 0

If you looked at those numbers without knowing what happened, you would guess that it was something to do with the Catholic Church - which obviously had nothing to do with it, but the mainstream media are always happy to drag it into any scandal, true, partially true, false, imagined, dreamed at night, it doesn't matter.

Labour Party's Deputy Leader Harriet Harman was particularly pathetic in her use of the most tortuous arguments to deny that the police had fear of accusations of racism or Islamophobia with consequent possible punishments as their motivation not to investigate and prosecute.

Buffoon, sorry, comedian Steve Coogan made a display of periphrases and circumlocutions, and every few words stopped in his tracks. Here is what he said when asked to explain the police's behaviour, complete with ums, pauses and hesitations:

"I think that that there's there's um... um... one thing that... We don't know the full facts, so we don't know. There's the inference that um... has been made in some quarters that it may be about the um... um... um... the religious dimension um... to this of the accused involved um... and whether um... because of sort of religious sensivitives um.. there may have been recalcitrance on the part of the police. Now, that's always a political hot potato, everyone you know wants to talk about is the perception of mysogyny in certain religions, and I'd say that that is true um... of certain aspects or certain people within Catholicism and um.. and also you know um... other religions, I don't think that any religion has a monopoly on this."

If these people couldn't even bring themselves to say the word "Islam" or "Muslim", so paralyzing is the taboo of accusing this doctrine or its followers in their mind, imagine whether, had they been in the shoes of those services whose duty was to investigate someone they can't even name, the outcome could conceivably have been different.

The show was a cover-up pointing the finger at another cover-up.

Christian Theory of Just War and International Law

The "just war" theory was developed over the centuries by Christian philosophers and theologians, chiefly Saint Thomas Aquinas (the doctor angelicus), Saint Augustine, the School of Salamanca.

This doctrine asserts that the use of force should not be completely ruled out since peacefulness, when we are confronted by a grave wrong that could only be stopped by violence, is a sin. There are cases when defence of oneself or others may be a necessity.

But, because war is one of the worst evils endured by mankind, the use of force should always be subject to strict conditions, including the following.

War should always be defensive.

There should be a reasonable chance of success. If failure is a certainty, then it is just an unnecessary spilling of blood.

War is only legitimate as the last resort, all peaceful means of achieving the war aims, like dialogue and negotiations, must be exhausted first.

There must be a just cause and purpose. A just cause would include self-defence, protection, prevention of an even greater evil and preventive war against a tyrant who is about to attack, but not self-gain, power, revenge, greed or pride. There was no just cause when Hitler invaded Poland in 1939 with the purpose of obtaining land, or in the Boer war in which the British immigrants rebelled against the Afrikaans as a feebly disguised attempt to annex South Africa to the British Empire.

Law and order must always be restored, and it is obligatory to go back to normal life after the war.

It is imperative to use proportionate force, namely that the response be commensurate to the evil. Use of more violence than strictly necessary would represent an unjust war. Civilians must be spared. This was not the case in the bombing of Nagasaki or Hiroshima, when thousands of non-combatants were killed.

There are moral limits to action in war. It is not permissible to kill hostages or attack innocents.

Just war must be waged and authorized by a legitimate, properly instituted authority like the state.

Even when legitimate governing authorities declare war, their decision is not a sufficiently just cause to start a war. If the people oppose a war, then the war is illegitimate. The people have a right to depose an authority or government that is waging, or is about to wage, an unjust war.

The just war theory later developed into international law theory, founded by jurists like the Italian Alberico Gentili and the Dutch Hugo Grotius.

This codified a set of rules which still today frames the fundamental principles of war and international law.

It is interesting to note how much our current legal and moral ideas owe to our Christian traditions.

New Archbishop of Glasgow Under Fire for Comments on Homosexuality

Or rather for telling the truth.

A conservative Catholic just appointed as archbishop of Glasgow has been condemned for appearing to link the death of a Labour MP last year with his homosexuality.

Philip Tartaglia, whose appointment as the next archbishop of Glasgow by Pope Benedict was made public on Tuesday, suggested the premature death of David Cairns, a former minister, was connected to his sexuality, when he spoke at an event this year.

Cairns, himself a former Catholic priest and a widely respected Scotland Office minister, died unexpectedly aged 44 last year from complications from acute pancreatitis, shocking his family, friends and colleagues.

Tartaglia is an outspoken critic of Scottish government proposals, due to be published imminently, to legalise gay marriage and is also tipped as a successor to Cardinal Keith O'Brien as head of the Roman Catholic church in Scotland.

Currently bishop of Paisley, Tartaglia suggested at a conference on religious freedom and equality at Oxford University in April that there may have been hidden or unexplained links between Cairns's premature death and his sexuality.

In response to a question from an audience member about the suicide of a gay author in the US, the bishop said: "If what I have heard is true about the relationship between the physical and mental health of gay men, if it is true, then society is being very quiet about it.

"Recently in Scotland there was a gay Catholic MP who died at the age of 44 or so, and nobody said anything, and why his body should just shut down at that age? Obviously he could have had a disease that would have killed anybody. But you seem to hear so many stories about this kind of thing, but society won't address it."

Tartaglia's remarks were condemned by Cairns's partner, Dermot Kehoe, and Tom Harris, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, blogger and a close friend of Cairns, who became the first former Catholic priest to sit in the Commons after winning Inverclyde in 2001. Harris said the bishop's comments were "ill-informed tripe".

Kehoe, who was Cairns's partner for nearly 15 years, told the Scotsman: "This is genuinely very upsetting and painful for David's family and friends. I can't believe that someone who claims to be a man of God and is seeking to give moral leadership should speak from such a position of ignorance.

"I don't care what his views on gay marriage are, but to bring in my dead partner to justify those views is wrong."

Harris wrote to Tartaglia, describing his remarks as "hurtful and ill-informed" and urged him to reconsider them.

His letter says: "I was privileged to be one of David's closest friends. His friends and family have spent the last year trying to come to terms with his tragic loss from complications arising from acute pancreatitis.

"Your public assertion that David's illness might in some way be connected to his sexuality and lifestyle was not only unsupported by any evidence, but was, I fear, unworthy of your position as a leader in the church."

A spokesman for Tartaglia said: "Responding to a question from an audience member, Bishop Tartaglia agreed that the health risks of same-sex behaviour were largely unreported.

"He mentioned the premature death of a young high-profile gay MP in this context. There was no intention to cause offence and he regrets that anyone may have been upset.

"In the case of the MP concerned, his funeral was conducted in the Catholic church and pastoral support offered to his family and friends." [Emphasis added]

The archbishop was addressing a real problem that the mainstream media don't want to face. Regardless of specific cases, medicine considers anal sex - when is the last time you even heard or read this expression? - to carry more risks than other sexual activities. Even the ultra PC NHS says so.

An additional problem is that many deaths related to AIDS - of which the main way of transmission is from man to man, at least in the West ("In 23 European countries, the new cases of HIV in men who have sex with men rose 86 percent between 2000 and 2006.") - are from diseases resulting from the weakening of the auto-immune system due to AIDS.

How Catholic Monks Made the West Rich

Why is the West richer than other parts of the world? What creates wealth?

The scientific journal Science Nordic reports that a new PhD thesis tries to find an answer to these questions, very topical in times of bailouts and double-dip recessions and very challenging for economists, in Medieval history.

And it discovers that it was the Roman Catholic order of Cistercian Monks that left a long-lasting legacy of cultivation of the virtues which made the West prosperous.

...One of the clues the thesis follows begins in France in 1098, when a breakaway group of monks formed a new monastic order. We’ll get back to that, but first we need to delve a little deeper into the underlying factors of wealth and growth.

Here, the economic literature points to three factors: institutions, culture and geography.

The idea is that some countries have established institutions that form a good breeding ground for education, savings and technological progress – or they have simply been blessed with a culture or a geography that has formed a productive environment.

“We’re still no wiser as to exactly which dimensions of culture, institutions, geography and climate are of importance here,” says Jeanet Sinding Bentzen, of the Department of Economics at the University of Copenhagen, who has just defended her PhD thesis Why are some countries richer than others?

“In my thesis, I look at some of these deep explanatory factors to see if they can help explain the differences in income.”

Economic success may be due to diligence and moderation

The German economist and sociologist Max Weber, widely considered as one of the founders of social science, highlights what he calls ‘The Protestant Ethic’ as being particularly beneficial to capitalist prosperity.

'The Protestant ethic' is basically about working hard, saving money and reinvesting the profits.

In the article "Religious Orders and Growth through Cultural Change in Pre-Industrial England", which forms part of Bentzen’s thesis, she and her research colleagues seek to examine to which degree societies with a culture of diligence and moderation were actually enjoying more economic success even before the Industrial Revolution.

Big differences in the world

Before the Industrial Revolution there were only very small differences in countries' prosperity.

But the revolution brought with it a shift to mechanised production, which resulted in great increases in productivity and efficiency.

With this revolution, it was mainly European countries that saw massive increases in their production output. Today these countries are way ahead of certain other countries in the world.

This difference in the timing of the Industrial Revolution can explain much of the difference between rich and poor countries today, the researchers believe. It is therefore interesting to study factors affecting the timing of the Industrial Revolution.

Population density is an indicator of a society's wealth

To measure a country's economic success today, economists often use the gross domestic product (GDP) per capita – the country's total production performance.

There is, however, no reliable GDP data per capita dating back to before the Industrial Revolution. For that reason, economists often use population density as a measure of a society’s prosperity.

This is because virtually all societies back then lived with an absolute minimum of economic security and survival, which meant that any additional income resulted in more survivors – which resulted in an increased population – while lower income led to fewer survivors.

“So we wanted to study to which degree countries that valued diligence and moderation also had a greater population growth,” she says.

So how do we measure such diligence and moderation?

“The proportion of Protestants in a society might be an indicator of these values, but the problem here is that it wasn’t a coincidence that some countries converted to Protestantism. It could well be that a society which for instance had higher levels of education had a greater tendency to convert to Protestantism, while at the same time achieving greater economic success, despite Protestantism.”

Cistercian monks highlighted as a good example

This prompted the researchers to go as far back as to the point that has previously been identified as a possible origin of The Protestant Ethic: when the Roman Catholic order of Cistercians was founded in France in 1098.

The order was formed by a breakaway group of Benedictines which advocated a stricter obedience to the Rule of Saint Benedict.

To allow as much time as possible for prayer, the Cistercians streamlined their work and minimised their consumption.

“Cistercians were known to be extremely diligent and frugal – the exact virtues that Weber ascribed to Protestantism,” says Bentzen. “Weber himself highlighted the Cistercians as early forerunners of the Protestant Ethic.”

The monks left fundamental values in society

Having looked at statistics covering 40 counties in England, the researchers concluded that regions with many Cistercian monasteries experienced a higher population growth in the period 1377-1801.

What’s even more striking is that the influence that monasteries had on population density was the same before and after 1600.

The fact that all monasteries were closed down during the Reformation in the year 1500 also shows that the monasteries had an influence on society several centuries after being closed down.

So it appears that it wasn’t only the monks’ excellent abilities to e.g. use watermills that have been passed on to posterity. Rather, it was something more inherent and fundamental.

“We are cementing that the monks passed on their cultural values by showing – based on the European Values Study – that European regions with several Cistercian monasteries still to this day value diligence and moderation more than other regions,” says Bentzen.

“Our study of monks shows that societies that had a culture where diligence and moderation were highly valued had an advantage when the Industrial Revolution started. All else being equal, countries with high levels of work ethic will, historically speaking, achieve greater prosperity.”