If "War is hell," why do we keep doing it?

Monte Cassino before & after

Even after a waterlogged visit to Assisi, twenty of us could not be put off by visiting Monte Cassino. Bob Schaefer had suggested the visit since it was a short bus trip away and the site where Saint Benedict wrote his Rule for Monks. Having worked at a Benedictine school in Northern California, it was a natural for me to go. It was a fascinating, but unsettling experience. First, it was bombed into oblivion during World War II and then was rebuilt exactly as it was before its destruction. This gave (for me) a strange sense of the place being just a little too new (Pope Paul VI re-consecrated it in 1964) and, as it was rebuilt for over 200 monks (only 20 currently live there and a few look as if their Medicare card has expired), the whole thing felt as if it had outlived its useful life (obviously, as an historical artifact, it has much to say about monasticism, the preservation of culture and the horrors of war). The recently elected Abbot is young – mid-forties – which made the conventual mass we attended even more unusual. The high altar (obviously) had been installed exactly where it had been before the bombing – which placed it between the monks’ choir and the nave of the church where lay people could assist at Mass. Rather than relocate the altar, the Abbey has chosen to celebrate liturgy facing the monks and with the priest’s back to the people. It was all very reverent and prayerful and felt as if we had travelled back in time.

*The Church & a portion of the town of San Pietro Infine 60 years after the

bombing

From there we travelled to the ruins of the Medieval village San Pietro Infine (we actually visited to two WWII cemeteries – but there’s only so much you can say about dead people – especially when it’s raining). San Pietro, on the other hand, was a profoundly unsettling experience. Complete destroyed by Allied bombing over ten days (the Germans had fortified their position there, preventing the Allies from travelling up the spine of Italy), the villagers chose to leave the town as it was and rebuild in the valley below. The effect of this was to visit this eerie place where time had stopped. A recently opened museum at the site highlighted the horror of the villagers who hid in the caves below the town. It was a sobering experience for all of us – even as Italy favored us with one of the few brilliantly sunny days of our time together. By the time we returned to the Motherhouse I had resolved that my day trips for the remainder of my time in Rome were over – for the next two weeks, if it’s not in Rome, I’ll have to make a return trip to see it.