Against the Robots

When I started this blog, the idea of ​​writing about the liturgy came to me very quickly. Not to claim the status of an expert, but to share my experience of what represents the heart of a Christian's life. There were therefore two paths that had to converge: I had to recount the Mass (and its benefits), and then share the journey that had revealed it to me.

Part 2: Christianity, King of Communities – At the Foot of the Altar

When I lived in London, the thought of spirituality constantly preoccupied me. My quest was essentially a perpetual search for inner life. This beating, pulsating heart could only be flesh and blood. That was my intuition. Twenty-five years later, I am certain of one thing: not to let this heart beat and throb without giving it sufficient time, attention, and affection. To continually seek to deepen the mystery that surrounds it. Anything that hinders this dialogue, anything that interferes with this connection, provokes my deepest contempt. This burning intimacy has perfect enemies, woven by the modern world, enemies like communitarianism and syncretism.

What gives a transformative journey its value often boils down to what it brings to the person who experiences it, how it manages to change their perspective, how it allows them to evolve, to be transformed, and to become a new person. When I arrived in London, I had been educated by the Jesuits and the Marists, and yet I knew very little about Catholicism. Religious instruction in Catholic schools had shrunk dramatically since the 1970s. But I would be wrong to blame only religious instruction to gain your approval and feel that you agree with me. I, myself, ego, was perhaps not very attentive to what was being said, not through a lack of faith, but through a lack of conviction in learning my religion. If I come seeking something without reflecting on what I will give, I risk missing the essential point. The essence of this article is contained in these last three sentences. Seemingly innocuous, yet compelling thought to take shape and dismantle itself. And that's precisely where my thoughts were headed: did inner life equate to cutting oneself off from the world? I think (in retrospect, I had no idea about this twenty-five years ago) that inner life equated to cutting oneself off from oneself. First and foremost. After all, there are no pressing needs to say "I" except in contact with others. What would be a need for individuation in relation to oneself, or in relation to a god? Only a god, or a demigod, could want to distinguish themselves from another god. An all-powerful god already knows everything about me.

In London, I was fleeing from whatever hindered my inner life. The first victim of this flight (which in this case was more like a struggle, an "agonism," as Unamuno would say) took the form of community. I had a feeling that community denied this sacred intimacy. Community forced syncretism; it asked me to share my intimacy and trade it, in whole or in part, with others; it wanted to destroy it, trample it underfoot, shatter it. I quickly developed an aversion to community and syncretism. They forced me to break with what I loved. I saw this two-headed hydra, I saw right through it, and I understood its game, its perfidy, its desire to force me to accept its ultimate form: communitarianism. Syncretism, the agreement of the lowest common denominator, the need—so far from obvious, so obviously perverse—to find an agreement, this agreement which, beneath its benign veneer, so often appears as the cornerstone when it is about to become the crack in the structure, this agreement of unequal equality, this democracy as the modern world calls it, provoked my deepest aversion. Even today, I mean, after so many years, I refuse to engage in syncretism. But in a community, how can one act otherwise? How, except by provoking open warfare? I believe I need this space in order to remain a Christian, so that I don't have to compromise constantly. There is no misplaced pride here, but rather a willingness to accept one's limitations. Community can be tempting, but it always has a propensity to transform into communalism. Once all the ideas of each party have been filed down and refined, combed through the agreement, each will be nothing more than a group whose common veins will soon be bubbling with the will to power.

Let's argue that the syncretism of the community bestows a quality upon those who previously lacked it, but it diminishes those who possessed a stronger personality. I confess I don't know if syncretism has any use other than a political one. It's possible, for example, to say that Christianity invented the most perfect democracy, but Christ never, ever, displayed the slightest syncretism. And for good reason: He came to lay the foundations of a new world. The confrontation becomes clearer: purity and syncretism face off. Community leads to syncretism, which leads to communitarianism. By reducing the individual to their role within the group, it forces them to give greater consideration to what they haven't rejected; it condemns them to cling to what unites and forget what divides. The group doesn't even need to threaten them; the individual knows the importance of reaching an agreement. Otherwise, they have no choice but to leave the group.

From Syncretism to Communalism:
During my stay in London, I spent a long time observing the communities I encountered. There were many, because London, like any good Anglo-Saxon city, had always practiced a form of apartheid. Not with each other, but with some and others. The city was divided into Chinatown, India, Africa, and so on. People mingled during the day, but were confined to their own quarters at night. I was a foreigner, and therefore less susceptible to this way of life. But that was to forget the power of the city (which has never truly ceased to exist since antiquity). Foreigner or not, little by little, on a microcosmic scale, London forced communities to create and recreate themselves. Among the foreigners, groups of Italians, French, and Japanese formed. Uprooting, in any case, leads to community, because it circumscribes isolation and organizes solitude. I remembered my town in Brittany, which, ten years earlier, had already shown symptoms of this. The Caribbean community, the North African community (a tiny one at the time), the Armenian community, and the Turkish community (equidistant)... In the late 1970s and early 1980s, for these communities to thrive, they lived in hiding ^. Communalism advanced under the radar, perhaps a little less so in the Parisian suburbs than in the provinces, but it was only a matter of time. A few bars, a few restaurants, vague neighborhoods here and there, often on the outskirts, out of sight; not unknown, but ignored, feigned. The secret was called discretion. No demands. Few incidents. Before the advent of SOS Racisme, but also the National Front, community didn't require taking sides, or only very sparingly, to settle age-old conflicts or resolve a specific dispute. If syncretism is present, it doesn't overflow or disrupt civil peace; it doesn't hinder "living together." The communities live withdrawn into themselves, their members coming together as if in an oasis where memories abound. As soon as they step outside this structure, the members of the community become individuals and fade into the background. And if ever their appearance or accent prevents them from blending in, they mitigate this handicap through their fervent integration—politeness, friendliness, a desire to do more—we are witnessing the process of integration. They manage to be other, even ^two . They are still themselves, but they are also a little more ^. This "more" is like a tunic for winter evenings. Some might call this "more" a collection of rags, like something old and desolate that doesn't deserve the slightest attention. But these same sneers also call politeness, or even education in general, a mere collection of trinkets. Outside the community, every individual is equal to every other individual: they can be insulted or find themselves caught up in a brawl for at least as many reasons: because they have a big nose, because they have short hair, because they wear blue clothes, because they don't smoke… All these reasons are at least as valid as racial ones. Moreover, for anyone who knows a little about quarrels, insults are often just a pretext for pushing someone to the limit, for having an opportunity to become violent, to give free rein to their violence ^. Communalism thus seizes upon a good reason to revolt and to call upon the will to power by picking up the insult and turning it into a symbol. Communalism makes a symbol out of nothing because it wants to imitate life. Communitarianism gathers insults, normalizes them (meaning: makes them acceptable), legalizes them (meaning: enshrines them in law), and proclaims them (meaning: displays them like a badge of honor to be followed until the next elections). This process can be summed up in one word: syncretism. A political act, declared as such, deliberately chosen. A worm in the apple, which will grow and, in our modern democracies, will mean apologies from the authorities, strong emotions at all levels of society, the implementation of special and unequivocal measures, pledges to definitively resolve the problem with the most drastic measures possible, a desire to put an end to this problem forever—a problem that should no longer exist in an age of such great technological advancements…

Does the syncretism that naturally arises within a community also signal its end? From syncretism to communitarianism, it is the community that dies. Syncretism gradually erodes all differences, and while it accepts their continued existence, it sanitizes them. Syncretism becomes the gold standard; it regulates everything, it decides which qualities are worth noting.

The End of Individuality, the End of Particularity.
There is a certain courage in joining a community. There is a resignation in finding fulfillment through communitarianism. It is cowardice. It is the establishment of ease, baseness, and the sewer system. A community consists of several people who breathe together, who want to breathe the same air because they know each other and recognize certain commonalities. They may want to be together for many reasons: because they have the same skin color, because they speak the same language, because they share the same passion. A priori, community could even be an antidote to envy. But as is often the case in human history, where a good idea has disastrous consequences, community is prone to excess. There is always a world of difference between what is seen before and what is seen afterward! A world that humankind has never properly considered. I mean, from any perspective other than its own. And this excess is called communitarianism. While communitarianism may appear to blend into the community by adopting its characteristics and building upon them, it operates through self-interest. Its fundamental goal is to create envy. Communitarianism understands that an individual who finds themselves in a community feels stronger, more readily, accompanied by like-minded individuals, to let a certain will to power flow through their veins, ready to make itself heard, to thunder, to demand. Methodically, communitarianism rubs salt in the wounds: failures, bullying, and humiliations accumulate and sharpen anger. Communitarianism thrives on being against. Communitarianism creates antagonism to forget the natural and inherent agonism of life. It fans the embers of revolt, reopens old wounds, and rekindles past suffering, all for the sole purpose of creating revolt and ever more anger. Against. These techniques, commonplace today and used primarily by socialism in all its forms, but also, conversely (like the flip side of the coin), by capitalism, revel in the passion of envy by elevating suffering to a pedestal and converting it into anger. As if there were no other way.

Syncretism is a remedy for exchange. It adopts the guise of exchange to extract information and turn it against the individual, thus assimilating them into the group. The individual becomes part of a whole that transcends them. They become a crowd "ill-suited to reasoning... very suited to action." Gustave Le Bon in The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind.

Catholicism, or the Unrivaled Community:
There would thus be courage in belonging to a community and a resignation in accepting communalism. Accepting communalism resembles cowardice, or more precisely, resignation; or first and foremost, a resignation that leads to resignation, to cowardice. For a Christian, all resignation is tinged with cowardice, with a renunciation of their mission.

Joining a community also means seeking the same and finding the other. That's where courage lies. There's also courage in wanting to transcend oneself; and it's necessary to reach out to an unknown person, especially when that person is an established group. So, there is indeed courage in joining a community. But there's also an ease. The ease lies in this search for the same (which may bring the other, but it's only a possibility, a coincidence). What community doesn't find fulfillment in reunions? What community can do without being together? The community must breathe the same air, agree on the same themes (or feign agreement to cement the group). As is often the case in human endeavors, a certain soul is needed to prevent the downside from taking over. Communalism is the worm in the fruit of community.

To my knowledge, only one community is exempt from gathering for more than 90 minutes a week. And even then, its members don't exchange words. This doesn't mean that some members of this community don't spend more time together each week, but it's by no means an obligation. This is the Christian religion. While it's impossible not to consider it a community, it's also the only one that cannot transform into communalism. It brings together completely different people who, if they didn't have God to draw them upward, toward something much higher than themselves, toward the summits, might not get along, might even wage war on each other in one way or another. And Catholics achieve an even more extraordinary feat by extending this community to the dead and to all the living across time and space with the communion of saints! Of course, if the Christian religion hadn't suffered from communalism, it wouldn't have three denominations. However, no other community can boast of being so uninvolved in lobbying, of uniting such diverse people, and of holding them together around an idea that surpasses anything imaginable. And it seems clear to me that if an institution like the Church has existed without fail for over 20 centuries, despite all the attacks (both internal and external), all the infamies (both external and internal), it's due to the diversity that composes it, which, for many, inspires and reveres its well-deserved name of Catholic, universal.

The Family as an Antidote to Community:
When I was in London, I would sit at a prie-dieu, see other people in the same position as me, and know that we came from the same family, or even siblings. Yes, the same family. What does this mean? That family is an antidote to community? How many people surrender themselves to community to forget their families? From one family to another…

The family has this virtue of being a melting pot and of not allowing itself to be transformed into a communalism. This is also the family's difficulty: a melting pot is fertile ground for bacteria. Especially since, within the family, the bonds are inalienable. The family is a cabinet of curiosities that is not open to the public. Intimacy and modesty are logically its two pillars. But since original sin, everyone knows that tragedy dwells in the world. The ancient Greeks perfectly analyzed this process of evil arising from good: the person who tries to do good and who falls, a victim of their fate, their destiny, their clumsiness, and their pride—always their pride. But let us leave aside what we have perverted. Let us leave aside the misdeeds, the shameless and excessive family. Let us leave that aside, because we are Catholics, and no, we are not politicians. A politician would come here to collect the spoils, gather the facts and the rumors, and place all the evil and corrupt things that the family, too, can create—for it is human, and the human condition is imperfect—into another crucible, a crucible he intended to be edifying. Armed with what he had gathered, he would teach us, after a marvelous and effective syncretism, that the family is, in fact, the worst thing the world has ever known! He would thus raise, in less time than it takes to write this, an army of family supporters against an army of supporters of its destruction. How beautiful war is to wage! What power one feels in its creation!

In Search of Lost Humility:
During my wanderings in London, I remember the groups I encountered: communities of French, Italians, Japanese… Small, juxtaposed groups. All these communities shared a common characteristic. Their skin was thick and rough, like those spiky fish that roam the oceans without ever fraternizing. The communities didn't clash, but they protected one another. A community that protects itself already reveals a fear of the other. A fear of what is not itself. A community that protects itself is one step away from transforming into a communitarianism that is a cult of sameness.

The individual who enters a community comes to give what they are, to discover what they are not, to express their state and share it, to find common ground, of course, but also to discover different feelings in people who, while sharing an ethnic or cultural origin, are nonetheless complete beings and therefore capable of being, and surely are, infinitely different from them. This is indeed exchange we are talking about, isn't it? We are indeed talking about an individual transforming into a person, aren't we? We are indeed talking about this very particular alchemy that consists of adding a culture to nature and making it a being subject to free will, aren't we? We are indeed talking about this alchemy called civilization, which proceeds from the nature and culture of a people and gives them their history, aren't we?

Is acculturation a form of syncretism?
There are different kinds of syncretism. Japanese syncretism allows Shintoism and Buddhism to coexist without harming either. It is in no way a hybrid: Shintoism and Buddhism exist side by side, and it is a matter of compromise—not of compromising one's principles.
Another form of syncretism, similar to acculturation, takes on a much more positive character. Syncretism draws closer to what it appears to oppose: truth. Acculturation adopts syncretic characteristics. Acculturation is syncretism plus one, in this case, truth. Catholics know it well, its advantages and disadvantages, because it was the foundation of the Jesuits' strategy for centuries. The Jesuits thus practiced acculturation by absorbing customs and traditions and "pushing" them in the right direction: God. In a Jesuit's discourse, the interlocutor is almost as important as the content of the discourse. There has been much speculation about the method, but the results have been surprising. The Jesuit is infinitely less concerned with Christianity than with converts ⁵ </sup> In the era of glorious Rome, legions returning from foreign lands installed the new pagan gods of their victims in their pantheon, a way of integrating these new pagans more easily. But before Christianity, everything was purely political for the Romans, and syncretism reigned supreme, serving as the cement of the Fatherland (who would criticize the Romans for their syncretism when it was so thoroughly the seed of Europe?). Acculturation offers exchange. Acculturation raises questions because it requires not a denial of one's position, but a rethinking of it in light of the other person. Acculturation is based on syncretism, which, when practiced well, fosters humility, a fundamental quality in any encounter.

Humility, Guardian of Goodness.
Humility is the most perfect antidote to envy. Nothing combats this cancer of envy better. The source of evil always draws from pride; it can never run dry. Humility compels us to chart a course and follow it. This path toward others, without preconceptions, by humbleing ourselves, most certainly represents humility. Humility is a journey within and beyond ourselves. It is drawing from within the strength to break with pride, to stifle it, and to go toward others without prejudice. This natural empathy must be one of the primary qualities of a Christian: he calls it by the beautiful word compassion. It is an empathy animated by faith.

I have always found communalism impossible. I have always found it impossible to allow myself to be confined within a group and lose all privacy because that group had to take precedence over everything. Unfortunately, I have encountered communalism everywhere I have gone, every day of my life, on almost every street corner. Communalism so effectively obscures the truth and so quickly allows one to believe oneself powerful. The difficulty for a Christian is obvious: asking someone who has encountered the truth not to be intransigent with error! And the problem with truth is that everything else is error. And everything else is a vast continent. Sin is an error, the sinner is in error, but we know the difficulty of calmly explaining error and making it understood. In our time, everyone thinks they possess the truth. Everyone thinks they are right. Welcoming the sinner and rejecting sin is the challenge of the Christian. The profound nature of Christianity, the word of Christ, forbids it and serves as a guide against the temptation to enter into communalism.

But communalism is always lurking; at any moment, we feel like slamming the door on the other person. Why talk to someone who doesn't understand that Mass is a sacrifice? Why talk to someone who rants and raves about the Pope being an imposter? Why speak with a secularist who believes religions are the root cause of all wars? From one extreme to the other, there's the same desire to end the discussion. Truth is like tradition, the glue that holds a family together: when you come into contact with it, you can't help but believe you possess it. To believe you own tradition is to corrupt it. It's to embrace communalism.

How can we proceed so as not to lose our soul and, likewise, not to condemn without appeal? What is our faith if it resembles a club? And can the club even be a hypothesis? During those long months in London, I was often in contact with communities, but I ignored them and fled from them just as often ^. Certainly out of pride. I was quite handsome in my twenties. But equally out of humility. This could have been overlooked. A humility that draws from within, that seeks itself, seeks that other within that speaks in the inner life, that boy who had already lived very fast, like a character in Nimier's novel. This is where the boundary is drawn: if sins are white or black, a person has access to an infinite range of tones. We must always seek the person beyond ^sin .

When I first entered Corpus Christi Church, I was at the end of my time in London (see Christian Witness — 1). I had passed by this church many times, but I had never truly touched it. I hadn't earned it. In this church on Maiden Lane, just behind the neon lights of the Strand theaters where I worked evenings, I found myself stripped bare, rid of all superfluity. Before the beauty of the rite, before the revelation I received, I discovered the profound meaning of my faith. It was at that moment that I understood that the Mass was the sacrifice of Christ, the triumph over sin and death. I was truly beginning my journey, the vocation of every Catholic Christian: I was going to follow Christ's entry into the world, his life, his teachings, his death, and his resurrection. What the Mass tells us: the history of salvation. But for this, I had to continue my undertaking of nakedness and purification: Asperges me, confiteor and infinite beauty of the Mass of the Extraordinary Form: introibo ad altare Dei ^8. Like Abraham, obedient at the foot of the altar, ready to sacrifice his son at God's command. Ad Deum qui laetificat juventutem meam (To God who fills my youth with joy). At the most sincere moment of confession. Just before the ascent to the altar. The ascent to God.