Remembering and Expecting Saints

"It is always dangerous to draw too precise parallels between one historical period and another, and among the most misleading of such parallels are those which have been drawn between our own age in Europe and North America and the epoch in which the Roman empire declined into the Dark Ages. Nonetheless certain parallels there are. A crucial turning point in that earlier history occurred when men and women of good will turned aside from the task of shoring up the Roman imperium and ceased to identify the continuation of civility and moral community with the maintenance of that imperium. What they set themselves to achieve instead - often not fully recognizing what they were doing - was the construction of new forms of community within which the moral life could be sustained...If my account of our moral condition is correct, we ought to conclude that for some time now we too have reached that turning point .What matters at this stage is the construction of local forms of community within which civility and the intellectual and moral life can be sustained through the new dark ages which are already upon us...We are waiting not for a Godot, but for another - doubtless very different - St. Benedict." - Alasdair MacIntyre, After Virtue.