PENTECOST FROM FRANCE

In a column in the French daily Le Figaro Matthieu Rougé, professor at Notre Dame (Paris) and rector of St-Ferdinand-des-Ternes, discusses the meaning of Whitsun/Pentecost, in the context of a new and influential book by the philosopher Jean-Luc Marion. I have made one change throughout the article: he writes of “Catholics” but in France this usually means “Christians” as opposed not to Protestants but to atheists. So I have used “Christians” instead. 

PENTECOST: BE NOT AFRAID OF CHRISTIANS

What is the state of mind of Christians in France, this Pentecost? Some think of them as discouraged, weakened, disunited. However, at the end of an election year in which Christians have been both singularly denigrated and courted, the great philosopher Jean-Luc Marion has published a Brief Apologia for a Catholic Moment. A specialist in the works of Descartes and Heidegger (the fathers, one might say, of our modernity and our postmodernity respectively), Marion at the French Academy has the chair of Cardinal Lustiger. On August 5^th of this year it will be ten years since the “Jewish Cardinal” (as Maurice Druon acclaimed him at his almost-state funeral in Notre Dame) passed on. There will be celebrations and conferences to mark this anniversary in the coming autumn. Like his illustrious and charismatic predecessor, Jean-Luc Marion refuses the suggestion, and the temptation, of a Christian withdrawal.

Christians should not harden their hearts but help the people of our time go beyond “clichés and slogans: as if Christians were divided into potential unbelievers (good) and identity-hugging fundamentalists (bad), into uncertain humanists (acceptable) and enthusiasts for an alternative society (intolerable!).” In fact “they have a rock-hard belief that it is better to give than to receive . . .; that death can lead to life in fullness. They believe it because they already see it in their own experience and especially because they have seen it, in a certain sense, in the person of Christ.”

That which allows Christians to bear this witness is the gift of the Holy Spirit, celebrated on the feast of Pentecost. The spirit of their current life is less important than its Spirit! Like the Apostles of the first days, today’s disciples have received a Spirit of gentleness and strength, of creativity and unity, of lucidity and hope.

They are not torn between an imperative of goodwill toward all and the vigour of their spiritual and ethical convictions; between the legitimate variety of their choices (especially political) and the unity of their community; between a healthy severity vis-à-vis the ills of our age and a profound optimism concerning the direction of history. While such tensions are very real, the Holy Spirit allows them to conquer them by going deeper: the Spirit of God joins with the human spirit to lead it into a way of truth, of life, and of peace. That is the meaning of Pentecost.

It is more a matter of a force of the Spirit than a state of Spirit. For the Holy Spirit allows the Christian faith to hold to the memory of its roots without enclosing itself in a static conservatism. It is the source of a dynamic that allows us ceaselessly to reinvent – in the original sense of rediscovering – the Gospel logic of the love of truth and the truth of love.

Our country needs to get back the taste for, and the means of, serious and serene discussions, while at the same time rehabilitating the search for truth. We need at once to welcome and respect great diversities and clearly to acknowledge that which makes our unity. We must take care of both our memory and our capacity for invention; open ourselves up to vast new horizons without denying who we are. These paradoxical necessities many consider irreconcileable, but Christians know that they can accept their demanding unity. They know this, not as a source of superiority but rather as a grace and a responsibility.

But if Christians, inspired in the strongest sene of the word, are thus to contribute to the peace and the vitality of our polis, it is necessary that they should not be constantly denigrated. With John Paul II’s famous “Be not afraid!” in mind, Jean-Luc Marion remarks, “One has the impression that nowadays  it’s the French Christians who need to repeat these words to certain non-Christian Frenchmen who fear a return of clericalism.” Our age should not be afraid of Christians: their love of truth constantly in search of further depth, their ethical rigour, their link to the universal, can be salutary for our society.

As for France’s Christians themselves, sometimes “intimidated by their very existence,” they urgently need more intensely to live the Spirit of Pentecost, by strengthening their spiritual, intellectual and charitable commitments. That is the price, and a ridiculously reasonable one, of the hope to which they are to bear witness. Quoting Chateaubriant, the author of The Genius of Christianity in the wake of which he is working, Jean-Luc Marion praises “that Christian hope, the wings of which grow even as everything seems to betray it, a hope longer than time and stronger than misfortune.”   

UNDERDOGS UNDER GOD

            All over the Western world, the Near East, the Middle East, what in Britain is known as South Asia, Australia and elsewhere, there is a marked rise in various forms of populism. I remember asking my father, when I was a teenager, why populism was such a Bad Thing. After all, we believe in democracy, which means rule by the people. So why is finding out what people really think and want, and ruling accordingly, not to be countenanced? And my sainted father (whose intelligence, good sense and limpid explanations I still miss 12 years after his death) patiently explained that people in the mass and their ideas (feelings, usually) in the raw all too easily constitute a mob; and that proper democracy provides the filters of representation and time: elections and the interval between them. It also entrusts the actual responsibility of governing to those who, we hope, are better educated for the task.

            He was right, of course; and yet the problem of populism, and the problems that underlie populism, remain. Most obvious among is the frustration, even the anger, that fuels this current. A French journalist recently showed that in his country this anger, which pushes an increasing number of people to the far-right National Front, aligns with a certain demographic: the “petits Blancs”, the “little white people”: those who have little education, who are in the front line for job loss, who have small and precarious incomes, and who see not just the world but their world changing from year to year. (NB: in other parts of the world, these look different – the “Arab Street”, for example – but their feelings are the same.) They don’t understand the changes and even when they think they understand them they don’t like them. Their children or grandchildren don’t do well in school, but nobody accords them the indulgence and the extra help that (they feel) the children of dark-skinned immigrants get. And when they express these frustrations, the “cultural elite” – not just the politicians, but the intellectuals, academics, and media -- just looks down on them, calls them reactionary or fascist, and basically tells them to shut up. The political Left and Far Left, which used proudly to represent the underdogs, no longer represents them, so they drift off to the Far Right which at least tells them it’s listening and that they aren’t always Wrong.

            What can be done about this? The first thing, from a Christian point of view, is to recognise that they are people, that they are God’s children, that they are hurting, and that they are in need. When we do that, we realise that the next thing is to listen, without impatience and without arrogance. Once we have listened, we can perhaps begin a conversation, since they will have noticed that we don’t look down on them. And in such a conversation, certain points can perhaps be gently raised. Example: almost everyone who dislikes a certain group of people – an ethnic group, a nationality, a social class, a professional group – will make an exception for one or two individuals, or families, from that group that they know personally. That’s a start. Perhaps some volunteers running ultra-cheap and cheerfully friendly courses on specific and practical modern-world problems would help: these already exist, here and there. Priests and ministers can help, by on the one hand showing that the Others are images of our Saviour, who died for them, and on the other hand being extremely firm about certain kinds of behaviour among their congregations. (In the Central African Republic, the Catholic Archbishop and the Imam work together closely, but I haven’t yet heard the former thundering against the murderous militias who call themselves Christians.)

            As for the problems of the economy and job losses, they too may need an approach that allows for some additional values. To cite my father again, his field of interest and research was “the Social Responsibility of Business”. (He was both an economist in a multinational and a university professor.) Nothing could be more topical in this day and age. The business of business is business, true: but as a French thinker wrote recently, perhaps today’s business people should be more involved in politics. Then they could help work out a model of society that manages to maintain well-run corporations without “downsizing” at the drop of a share, and that can create new technologies that do not always end up replacing manpower. That, as the World Council of Churches has long recognised, merits the creation of serious thinking on “Church And Society” which, if goodwill can be created on all sides, could replace the corrosive antagonisms that pollute the air.

            Sometimes the underdogs are not (only) who we think they are, or who the media have selected for the role. And charity, i.e. love, should go where it is needed.

Lord, make me an instrument of Your peace;

Where there is hatred, let me bring love;

Where there is offence, let me bring pardon;

Where there is error, let me bring truth;

Where there is doubt, let me bring faith;

Where there is despair, let me bring hope;

Where there is darkness, let me bring light; 
And where there is sadness, let me bring joy.