On the stale air of our societies

“We are told that the air of the world is unbreathable. I agree with that. But the first Christians found each morning at their door an atmosphere saturated with vices, idols, and incense offered to the divinities. They were for more than two hundred years relegated, slandered and marginalized by the current of the social river which carried them away and rejected them altogether. Do you think that the grace of their baptism kept them away from urban life almost in its entirety? They renounced taking part in major civic performances, such as the entry into office of a magistrate, or the triumph of a victorious general, because none of these ceremonies could be inaugurated without a sacrifice of incense offered to the emperor, divine character. The grace of their baptism kept them away from the thermal baths, a morning meeting place highly prized by the Romans, because of the nudity of their bodies and the shamelessness of their attitudes. They also gave up circus shows because of the scenes of cruelty that made them the main subject. But these early Christians formed a society, and this society by force of spirit broke through the shell of ancient paganism. Their earthly hope was limited to the desire not to die before seeing Christ return on the clouds, and they were the founders of Christian Europe. »

Dom Gérard, in Tomorrow Christianity

Speech by Donoso Cortes (1850)

“Regular armies are the only thing today that prevents civilization from losing itself in barbarism.
Today we see a spectacle new in history, new in the world: when, gentlemen, did the world see, except in our day, that we are heading towards civilization through the arms and towards barbarism through ideas? Well, the world is seeing it as I speak. This phenomenon, gentlemen, is so serious, so strange, that it demands some explanation on my part. All true civilization comes from Christianity. This is so true that the whole civilization has been concentrated in the Christian zone. Outside this zone there is no civilization, everything is barbarism. And this is so true that before Christianity there were no civilized peoples because the Roman people and the Greek people were not civilized peoples. They were cultured people, which is very different. “Christianity has civilized the world by doing these three things: it has civilized the world by making authority inviolable, obedience a holy thing, self-denial and sacrifice, or better, charity a divine thing.
In this way Christianity civilized the nations. Well (and here is the solution of a great problem), the ideas of the inviolability of authority, the sanctity of obedience and the divinity of sacrifice, these ideas no longer exist in civil society. : they are in the churches where we adore the just and merciful God, and in the camps where we adore the strong God, the God of battles under the symbols of glory. And because the Church and the army are the only ones which have preserved the notions of the inviolability of authority, the sanctity of obedience and the divinity of charity, they are also the two representatives of European civilization. "I don't know, Gentlemen, if your attention will have been drawn like mine by the resemblance, the quasi-identity between the two persons who seem to be the most distinct, the most opposite, the resemblance between the priest and the soldier. Neither of them live for themselves, neither live for their families. For both, it is in sacrifice and self-denial that their glory is found. The soldier's job is to ensure the independence of civil society. The office of the priest is to watch over the independence of the religious society. The duty of the priest is to die, to give his life as the good shepherd for his sheep. The duty of the soldier, like a good brother, is to give his priestly life, the priesthood will appear to you, and indeed it is, like a veritable militia. If you consider the sanctity of the military profession, the army will seem to you a veritable priesthood. What would the world be, what would civilization be, what would Europe be if there were no priests or soldiers? »

The abandonment of Benedict XVI

Ocean

"Eli, Eli Lama Sabachtani?" 1 he renounces the function of Pope, it is an earthquake that shakes the world and which strikes Catholics. The most eccentric noises run and each to question the causes of this decision which, even if it is not unique, causes stupor. Personally two feelings live in: abandonment and sadness, his pilot fish, not to say desolation. Abandonment looks like an echo that continues to reproduce and increase, like a heady complaint.

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The death of intimacy

sick tree

Everywhere, on the Internet, in newspapers or on television, personal experience is displayed, expresses and wants to be reference. This indecency is based on an inversion of values. It is based especially and everywhere on the idea of ​​the same. The idea of ​​the same thinking: "I lived this, my experience reflects a universal feeling. I mean what I experienced. I ask myself as an essential witness ”. It is confusing the universal and the general. What is forgotten, misunderstood is the difference that lies between each man; And each man is singular. Not singular by his sexual orientations or by his manias, but intrinsically. This is an old new concept at the beginning of the 21st century. By his experience, by his culture and by his nature, each man shows a facet of man, and each facet is singular. Create in the image of God . Now it is impossible for us, if not by looking at men and considering them as all singular, to embrace God. The forgetting of God brings back to the same. Everyone goes there from their contine which, even if it can say the tragic of an existence, is only a contine because it does not even begin to say the tragic of man.

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A short history of Envy, from hero to scapegoat

4The modern world keeps presenting us with scapegoats. Lance Armstrong, Richard Millet, Jérôme Kerviel, John Galliano, to name but a few, each in a field, with completely different causes and reasons, have recently embodied the scapegoat, the justly punished culprit, the impediment in a circle put back in its place. The scapegoat is linked to egalitarianism, itself linked to envy. From hero to scapegoat, only the desire does not change. The modern world has the spectacle in its blood, the scapegoat has a cathartic function there.

In the era of modern democracy, everything goes through Twitter or Facebook. The real information is there. Not being there is tantamount to disappearing, to maintaining a life in the shadows, a shadowy life. On social networks, the height of modern democracy is allowed: rub shoulders with the idol, live with the idol, to the rhythm of the idol, knowing everything about her, seeing her when she gets out of bed, embracing good evening; only tactile contact is missing. This proximity transforms the role of the idol that has always been known, it changes it forever. If the idol were a simple statuette, it would not speak, it would not respond, it would only occupy the place left to it, it would gather on its effigy all the mental images that the brain can produce. The modern world does not know the mental image, it is beyond fantasy. He hates what is hidden, let alone what is secret. Hence the often-used phrase: fantasy come true. The fantasy - phantasmata , the mental image for the ancient Greek - cannot be, must not be, a reality. Otherwise horror awaits. Otherwise we can only pray while waiting for everything to return to its place. There is a possible wildness in rubbing shoulders with the idol too closely. Through this proximity, the modern world has undertaken to create a cathartic lever to control consciences. The idol can be a hero or a scapegoat, it can serve the society of the spectacle and its soft dictatorship. It also allows you to fill in boxes: hero, scapegoat, fallen, condemned, victim... A sheet of cigarette paper separates these qualifiers. Against a background of moralism, society shows its cards and distributes the good or bad points. All areas are affected, but some are more “popular” than others. The scapegoat allows you to get a makeover, to deceive, or to affirm your responsibility and your incorruptibility. But no one should be fooled by such schemes. The society of the spectacle is a simulacrum of society based on intrusion, indecency and denunciation.

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Christian testimony

When I started this blog, very quickly the idea of ​​writing on the liturgy came to me. Not to claim specialist status, but to share my experience about what is at the heart of a Christian's life. There were therefore two paths that had to merge: It was necessary to tell the mass (and its benefits), and then entrust the journey that had revealed it.

Part 1: Which mass for which Church? - In front of the church

priests in cassocksDuring 1987, I thought my time had come. My life was falling apart. Life never falls apart, it will take me a few years to figure it out; either it stops, or it is transformed. My life was therefore transformed, violently, intensely, it offered me the enantiodromos as the Greeks say. The enantiodromos is this road which splits, which separates, which becomes two, and confronts us with a choice. The enantiodromos allowed me to understand what freedom was. It was an unprecedented situation, I was about to realize it. This crossing where life takes a completely unexpected turn marks the passage from childhood to adulthood. This moment has no age. I mean you can experience it at any age. What you shouldn't do is not live it. Not understanding what differentiates the freedom experienced in childhood from the freedom chosen in adulthood. Because the choice made, we become another; the experience reveals to us and gives a framework and foundations to the personality.

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In the heart of darkness, life

The-Tree-of-Life

After seeing "Tree of Life", I have long forbidden myself to write about this film. Two forces clashed in me. Subjugated by poetry, by the state of bliss in which I was plunged, I was afraid of disturbing the surface of this work. I got so tangled in the mystery of this film that I did not understand the negative reactions and was unable to have a critical mind 1 . "Tree of Life" is based on a book from the Bible, "Le Livre de Job". And this dark book speaks of the life and relationship of man to God. Which is present in many books in the Bible. But Job's book begins with a dialogue between God and Satan who play man. The impression that this inaugural dialogue leaves us is strange. Of course, the start dialogue would not be entirely from the same era as the central story. No matter in fact, the impression left is during the book. How can God play with his beloved creature? A hasty conclusion reports on the improbable of the situation. In truth, once the bark has been removed, Job's book delivers the heart of the relationship between God and man. And "Tree of Life", the film of Terrence Malick, has this same ambition.

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A year that ends...

Over a year that ends, we often take a stealthy look. Do not dwell too much. You never know how many things that we forced to bury the memory could once again appear, like these impromptu, malpolated and irritating "pop -up" windows on the internet. The exercise that can be carried out is to concentrate very strongly to extract important events; The events that will understand why they have counted so much; How they proved to be decisive. It is also important not to lose sight of the moment when the event appears.

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In the shadow of Ernesto Sabato

When Ernesto Sabato died on April 30 at 99, he repeated the words of Maria Zambrano: to die this elusive action that is carried out by obeying, happens beyond reality, in another kingdom . In his house in Santos Lugarès ("holy places" near Buenos-Aires), Ernesto Sabato obeys this last injunction. He prepared for a long time. In Resistance , his moving literary will published in 2002, he wrote: I forgot great sides of my life, but, on the other hand, certain meetings, moments of danger and the names of those who have drawn me depressions and Blepitum still piles in my hands. And yours too, you who believe in me, who have read my books and go help me die.

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Monsignor Centene...

The Vannetais are well off people. The homily of Monsignor Centène in the Saint-Pierre de Vannes cathedral last Sunday is invigorating. This is not the first time that the homilies of Monseigneur Centène have been cited on Catholic sites, and given the quality of these, it is not about to end.

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