I have been trying to find a way to understand the extended
period of time, several hundred years, when the teaching and practice of the
Catholic Church regarding hospitality was defensive and inward-looking.
I see and understand four patterns of hospitality in our
history: first a national response in the Old Testament, then (second) a personal
response in the New Testament, and then (third) a church response in the
Patristic era and Middle Ages – then a gap, a puzzle – and then (fourth) a
global response starting with Pope Leo XIII and confirmed by Vatican II.
What happened between the third and the fourth? I am not
sure, but I think perhaps I have a handle on it.
The third pattern, from the early Church up through Aquinas
and beyond, had an architectural face. Beginning with St. Jerome, monasteries
built guest houses to welcome strangers. What most people did about the grave responsibility
to welcome strangers was to delegate the responsibility to clerics and monks,
especially monks. Aquinas says it’s mortally sinful to neglect the six precepts
of the Lord, including the command to welcome strangers; but most people
fulfilled that solemn duty without giving it much thought, by supporting
monasteries which had a variety of responsibilities. And so, I suspect, caring
for strangers was not a significant part of the daily life of most people.
So what happens if monasteries disappear – not totally, but
mostly?
I wonder if the interim pattern – for several hundred years
ending in 1891 – began with the Reformation and Counter-Reformation. I wonder
if the wars between Christians taught us (Christians) to regard outsiders with
suspicion. Instead of a more or less united Christian society offering the
hospitality of a monastic guest house to strangers, we (Christians) became
accustomed to the idea that people of a Christian denomination other than our
own might be deadly threats. We didn’t have 400 years of constant warfare, but
we did have 400 years of tension and suspicion with periodic outbreaks of open
warfare.
A detail of this huge split in Christianity was that
monasteries were suppressed in many places – particularly in England, but
elsewhere as well. The pattern of
offering hospitality through our monasteries was broken – and – key! – was not
replaced. To be sure, some personal service continued, but it was limited, and
was/is in fact re-named: sheltering the homeless.
One architectural expression of the new pattern of “hospitality”:
monastic guest houses disappeared, and Catholics built priest holes to hide
fugitives from their Protestant neighbors.
I do not mean to blame a worldwide disruption of Christian
thought and practice regarding hospitality on Protestants. There was a split on
Christianity, with plenty of wrong on both sides. One un-noticed (as far as I
know) casualty of this war was monastic hospitality. And it wasn’t replaced.
The Reformation and Counter-Reformation taught Christians to
be defensive – even among or perhaps especially among other Christians. That
was bad enough. But also, the previous pattern of hospitality was shattered and
not replaced – gone, and largely forgotten, for hundreds of years.
Or so I suspect.