New light under the old bushel
Englund, Steven
NEW LIGHT UNDER THE STEVEN ENGLUND OLD BUSHEL WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE FRENCH...
...He lives in Waupaca, Wisconsin...
...sit in judgment of government and its actions...
...rather, his role in the perhaps Lustiger's recent reassertions of the church's right to international arena has increased steadily over the decade...
...in any other era, he would be France's lead- for his part, continues to deny taking any role in Valadier's ouster, ing churchman...
...None among the former is greater nor potentially more Desenchantement du monde (1986)-holds that Christianity has significant than the sort of prophetic witness he gave recently emancipated the world from any need for religion, including as Chubb Lecturer at Yale...
...A lay associate of Cardinal Lustiger's said re- pilot on the bridge...
...The on his behalf their reputations and compromising the church's traditions, sodalities, and individuals that are lumpable under good name...
...It is a (Maritain called them, "minorites de choc prophetiques") to stance and a temperament one also finds alive and well in some criticize its idolatries and mythologies...
...in a country where there are now 25,000, etc...
...self...
...The case has been appealed and may be year as Paul Touvier et l'eglise (Fayard), is reasonably well revised...
...Jews, Communists, and sundry reporary French history...
...did it systematically persecute people for religious, racial, or Le Monde called Decourtray's initiative "unique in contem- political reasons...
...Catholicism in France has come a to stigmatize both as "improperly Catholic...
...This said, John Paul II's neoconservatism has una wide variety of religious institutions and orders...
...or an anticlerical republican on the lam...
...Commonweal 23 April 1993: 11 porters, who had hardly broken out the champagne before pub- and apolitical" or by saying that in them "devoutness replaced lic indignation (2,000 articles in under six months) engulfed intelligence...
...Julien Gouet or Duquaire to abet a Touvier, of has lasted till now, one that has unquestionably tarnished the staunch right-wing Catholic past and family, and not a Communist image of the French church...
...The cardinal, ation as Lustiger...
...The clearest message of 1992 was the majority's demand Change was in the air: for the first time in more than half a for active government, engaged to relieve America's disconcentury, a presidential election was not framed by war, present tents and reclaim the future...
...Catholic Aid, the French equivalent of Catholic Charities, Roman church...
...Though he would alarchbishop of Paris, recently told ways have important sympathizers in government (notably in a rapt audience of scholars and in- the interior ministry, which controls the police), Touvier's printellectuals at New York University, "is not our language or cul- cipal protectors and allies were Catholic clerics: monks, priests, ture but our common history in Christianity...
...surprisingly sprang from clergy active in the resistance, "lost generation," have left the cloth...
...In his capacity as head of "information" for the militia throughout the entire Rhone Valley, Touvier participated directly in crimes and repression, including ordering (and probably personally assisting in carrying out) the execution of reSTEVEN ENGLUND is a free-lance writer who specializes in French history and culture...
...Charles De Gaulle stubthe NYU meeting...
...Valadier makes mincemeat of Gauchet, systematically In a speech titled "Let My People Go," this convert who still demonstrating in two long "letters" how the faith of Christ is considers (and occasionally calls) himself a Jew, talked about far more at home in contemporary, pluralist, consumerist, secthe Judaism he finds implicit in Christianity, and vice versa...
...Analyzing dained twenty last year, a bumper crop), and a quite spectacu- what he sees as the universal-not the familiarly tribal-core lar groundswell in degree and vitality of lay involvement in church of biblical Judaism, Lustiger argued that the supposedly sinlife at all levels...
...This article is adapt- the ship of state...
...is preferable to rumor...
...cialists in French wartime history, led by the distinguished schol- While much has changed since then, the specter of Vichy ar and lay Catholic, Rene Remond...
...We might fol- more profoundly conciliar in his optimistic take on church and low...
...In the last anal- many are legitimate "sites of spiritual invigoration [ressourceysis, the cardinal cleaves to a pessimistic and rather old-fashioned ment]," but that others not only show signs of gnosticism and notion of church-against-the-world, while the Jesuit evinces antisocial illuminism, they also fall politically close to Lefebvregreat confidence in the gospel's continuing pertinence and style integrism, and to that extent risk recreating the old dualstrength as leaven in secular society...
...In a way, by beThere is a growing sense in many French Catholics that cer- coming Christians, [African-Americans] considered themselves tain familiar and demoralizing statistics (e.g., Mass attendance as Bene Israel, children of Israel...
...Valadier writes of the latter that entation to the world and the church's role in it...
...Peter Hebblethwaite was cently, "Lapsed Catholics and nonbelievers are no longer so right when he singled out the vision of the Jesuit, hostile or suspicious...
...W hbile most Frenchmen, including Catholics, The volume is marred, however, by a tone of self-congratu- would probably not be surprised by lation and a tendency to employ apologetic arguments...
...There is a strong to its real nature, must accept not to be everything...
...I continue for crimes against humanity, the three judges quashed the case to believe that a well-documented and publicized wrong, ad- on the wholly questionable grounds that the state Touvier mitted in truth and courage, is preferable to suspect inno- served (Vichy) was not, technically, a totalitarian regime nor cence...
...Even in 1988, opinion had tendor rumored...
...He'd never get used prophet, shares with Valadier, the postmodernist intellectual, to saying private Masses," said his priest-secretary...
...The organization's aim was to turn Vichy from a merely authoritarian into a totalitarian state, which would stand side by side with the Reich in the new Nazi Europe...
...The fragility of French In an effort to cleanse the church, and possibly to further loosen Catholics' democratic education, as of their commitment to the it from any antimodernist and pro-Vichy associations, in 1991, Republic, were familiar political realities in pre-1945 France...
...On Valadier's reading, pluralist society a large extent remains the apologetic one of us-against-them stands "more than ever in need of minorities of conviction" that is so reminiscent of pre-1945 French Catholicism...
...of our time and not being true to their apartness," Lustiger told This grace proved slow in arriving...
...society than the cardinal, Valadier is an extremely subtle man Undeniably, the inimitable archbishop of Paris stands at the whose thinking is wonderfully unpredictable...
...Rhetorically, the high point of the Democratic campaign was Mario Cuomo's attack on Bush for relying on WILSON CAREY MCWILLIAMS, a frequent Commonweal contribu- "the invisible hand of some cyclical economic god" to save tor, teaches political science at Rutgers University...
...Lustiger, the antimodernist rial job too removed from human contact...
...Charles Duquaire, secreCatholicism has proven far from unifying, as even the last few tary to Cardinal Jean Villot, Vatican secretary of state (1969years have shown...
...Catholicism that "seeks to project its identity and specificity in The charismatic element, he adds, often leads to religion as a a marginalism raised to a proper characteristic...
...of the black Africans in the New World...
...This unit was a semi-Fascist Pretorian Guard that reported directly to Vichy premier (and archcollaborator), Pierre Laval...
...some years ago, from the editorship of Etudes...
...voters were restless...
...Undoubtedtian/Jewish/Moslem/ unbelieving Europe), is now, or perhaps ly Touvier's greatest paladin, who "literally adopted Paul ever more shall be...
...The report is clear: Touvier was no mere felon Catholic activists...
...In short, a mutual critique of modernism...
...The report's best feature is (French citizens shipped off to forced labor in German World its unflinching portrait of Touvier: a man who remains to this War II factories) whose Catholic faith led them to underground day (at age seventy-eight) unrepentant for his wartime actions, activism and sabotage inside Germany...
...ever has united, us Europeans," After liberation, Touvier fled justice, narrowly escaping trial 6 6 Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the and hanging for his role during the war...
...The Touvier matter became an "affair" that that led Msgrs...
...Consider, likelihood that Lustiger could have been named Vatican sec- he quietly concludes, our justified outrage when the church loses retary of state a year or so ago, but he turned it down for sev- its courage to judge the state (e.g., Pius XII on the Jews...
...Under the command of Joseph Darnand, soon to be Vichy minister of order, the Milice amounted to a French counterpart to the German SS, whose protection and sympathy it enjoyed...
...the world" or to envelop society and government, as in Notwithstanding this caveat, I would repeat in closing the Carolingian times...
...In other eras, they ways since Villot wrote Pompidou on Touvier's behalf...
...As such, it is unbiblical...
...The commission's report, published last sisters might demur...
...Equally annoying is the report's os- has changed French Catholicism once and for all...
...Semitism for the Christian is thus a form of self-hatred...
...Live up to your words...
...The French clergy is even further ahead of its made the church his debtor, could so easily and enduringly, win flock on many questions than the American bishops are ahead the trust and active sympathy of numerous ecclesiastics from of theirs...
...These days, however, Lustiger is away a lot...
...Don't and interesting theologies in the contemporary world...
...There are many examples of this, but perhaps gular story of the Jews' continuing reemergence from bondage the most "mediatique" [media-attracting] has been the resur- lies at the heart of that other great biblical faith, Christianity...
...In 1943, a young man from Chambery named Paul Touvier was named to an important post in the paramilitary French militia...
...and, above all, he would find a cu- two highly learned, so-French clerics...
...The certainly were regarded as "proper" by a host of Catholics, in Vatican II "revolution," though being rolled back in many areas, and out of Roman collars...
...In 1992, confidence did not point driven by worries and without much confidence, con- Americans to the future, it drew them to the past, and the elecvinced that they had more things to fear than fear it- tion, a vote for change, was also a hope for renewal...
...Words like "repentance," pathy with prevalent forms of French republicanism...
...This time, the tide was unmistakable: proclaimed themselves a "new" party...
...Clearly, Valadier I doubt this is so because he is more uncritically appreciated approves some of the archbishop of Paris's stands, including abroad than at home, though that is true...
...I CLINTON'S NEW WILSON CAREY McWILLIAMS POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY RENEWING THE LANGUAGE OF EQUALITY n last fall's election, most Americans allowed them- ity, looking for old landmarks and fixed stars in the strange new selves to be drawn by hope, but they went wistfully, world they confronted...
...deaths exceeding ordi- Jews and African-Americans have had so much in common for nations to the point that in thirty years there will be 8,000 priests so long...
...Charles them harmoniously, and believe that this has prevented the vol- Molette, archivist of the Eglise de France...
...the great brunt of active collaboration and solidarity came from Center stage in France has, for some time now, been hostconservatives who, in virtually all instances, were out of sym- ing a highly visible spiritual rebirth...
...He may have a point-the clergy has cer- bornly believed Touvier deserved no better than "twelve bultainly been hoist on the petard of "relevance...
...When, last spring, run of the archdiocesan archives and instructed them that Touvier appeared before a court to learn if he would be tried "Truth, whatever the cost...
...While disappoint us...
...If, on the contrary," the Jesuit writes, Commonweal 23 April 1993: 13 "one agrees to look closely and with goodwill at the values and in French Catholicism in light of the above, one may say that principles that structure our contemporary world, he will see whether or not the Remond volume succeeds in distancing the that they furnish the bases for a Christian renewal," even as church from the ghost of Vichy-and I would say on the whole that very renewal will prove critical and transformative of those it does-the mentality that permeates the book nevertheless to values and principles...
...And this may be why American below 3 percent in numerous dioceses...
...One knows what abbots, bishops, mothers-superior, men in parochial, diocesan, Lustiger means: there was a time, around the ninth century, when national, and international office, all gave him asylum and sucEurope (well, Western Europe) was united, sort of, in the cor...
...Strongly content of actions of certain clerics by calling them "dolorist backed by France's leading cardinals, Decourtray in Lyon and 12: 23 April 1993 Commonweal Lustiger in Paris, the benefits of this sort of renewal include a of the strongest statements yet offered by a churchman of his slight upswing in Mass attendance and vocations (Lustiger or- rank on the topic of the Jewish-Christian relationship...
...Contributors complained of having too little time to re- Meanwhile, a new embarrassment to the French bishops has search and write their respective sections, let alone integrate arisen with the publication last month of a book by Msgr...
...Commonweal, April 25, 1986): for a Catholic, Paris (and inReviewing the Touvier matter and the recent spiritual renewal deed France in general) is an exciting spiritual place to be...
...Perhaps because of de- as it were, foredenounced the totalitarian regimes of the twenrisive criticism, Lustiger and the pope no longer speak of tieth century, Valadier writes that "when the church rises up "Europe" in the faintly medieval terms of respublica christiana...
...NEW LIGHT UNDER THE STEVEN ENGLUND OLD BUSHEL WHAT'S HAPPENING IN THE FRENCH CHURCH...
...Yet no election has so 61 percent voted for the differing, but undeniably activistic often or so pervasively been compared to the American past: persuasions of Bill Clinton and Ross Perot...
...he's a lousy More may be said about the strange meeting ground of these administrator, and knows it...
...Arguing that Pope Pius IX in some regards foresaw and, loquy of Western European bishops...
...But De Gaulle's successor, Georges Pompidou, ness" carries its own risks...
...rection of France's youth movement, in part a response to a di- Where the "good news" is proclaimed, the Jew is present...
...done...
...It was not simply "mistrust of politics or naivete" their celebration...
...Cardinal Albert Decourtray, the remarkable archbishop of "Apolitical dolorism" may well be, and often was, an effective Lyon, took Lustiger's advice and assembled a group of spe- form of politics...
...It won't Molette's findings nor wish to see Toudo, for example, to put the wartime militia's deeply held anti- vier escape conviction, the problem of Semitism on the same footing with its late bouts of anticleri- Vichy no longer preoccupies the Eglise calism (it threatened a few unsympathetic bishops), and then de France as it once did...
...It should not therefore see itself as a countersociety, mea- it sets itself up as a rival to the modernity that it hates and missuring its success according to how well it manages to "disqualify trusts...
...against the limitless pretentions of the state, it is not necessarthe conference is now more like an informal club whose main ily because it aims in its turn to lay hands on the state in a topurpose seems to be to make its members aware of the prob- talitarian manner, but rather to show that an authentic state, true lems and opportunities of Eastern Europe...
...For a brief time the ed Catholic Europe has been (let alone Christian, or Chris- Catholic philosopher Gabriel Marcel stood by him...
...Then again, "apart- lets in the ass...
...His latest ideas center of this renewal, though he is the first to give the credit do not permit the facile and provocative contrasts with Lustiger's to Lyon...
...Famous for its clergy-baiters, France has also known her cler- Pompidou's action proved bittersweet for Touvier and his supgy-manipulators...
...be good...
...engaging questionably made itself felt in France, as everywhere else...
...don't reflect the reality, which is that a "greened" French Catholicism is alive Crucial as Cardinal Lustiger's ideas are for setting and well...
...the world, epitomized by the worker-priest movement-are still While it is true, as the report claims, that some of the aid present but are no longer the defining force of the French church proffered Touvier (mainly of a basic human sort: shelter, food, (not least because too many priests of the 1960s, the so-called etc...
...Molette produces some who has never sought anything less than complete vindication, disturbing evidence to show that the largely pro-Vichy French and who has demonstrated an uncanny knack for engaging cler- episcopacy gave little or no sympathy or support to STO ics in his cause...
...The [French Catholic] clergy has been ir- 79), who successfully rallied the unusually cautious Villot to responsible in following too blindly the devices of the society campaign for a presidential pardon for Touvier...
...Antirect appeal from Pope John Paul...
...It appears he argues, is neither self-sufficient nor, still less, a perfect so- modern, it imitates modernity in certain regards, but at bottom ciety...
...As a Jacques de Compostelle, Chartres, and elsewhere have stunned coda, Lustiger noted that the Jewish story is present in "the lot the bishops for their youthful zeal and magnitude...
...eral reasons: his work in Paris is still in medias res...
...Colorful pilgrimages to St...
...This latter theory-fashionLustiger is coming to know himself, his strengths and his lim- able in Parisian circles since the publication of Marcel Gauchet's itations...
...Nor have outsiders failed to see the new light under the course of the French church, he is not the only the old bushel...
...he only thing that could unite, or sisters as well as of Jews...
...ularized society than it ever was in the mercifully departed days The address was a kind of contranationalist tract for our time, of "decoratively Christian society" (Maritain's phrase) which studded with erudite references, in which Lustiger made one Gauchet takes as the norm...
...It filled crucial and distasteful political functions, systematically employing torture, denunciation, and assassination on French citizens...
...savings and loans, and the administration took it for granted 14: 23 April 1993 Commonweal...
...On the contrary, they seem to be saying Paul Valadier, to be one of the most searching to the church, `We're genuinely interested in your message...
...The French tentatious grapplings with the question of clerical motive: "the episcopal conference today freely denounces causes like Le true mystery lies in puzzling out the reasons why a man, whom Pen's while taking a radical stand on such hot social issues as nothing recommended for church benevolence, who in no way immigration...
...Still, one is more impressed with how disunit- paid him a monthly stipend until 1989...
...on the lam but a consummate artist of the clerical confidence game...
...Vraiment...
...The church, show, as football, with its own stars and stadiums...
...France's own "common history" in Touvier and his family," was Msgr...
...It was a hard year Americans wanted assurance of comparability if not continu- for laissez-faire...
...by no means all) of the evangelizing and spirit-raising initiaWhere Lustiger and Valadier differ profoundly is in their ori- tives going on in France today...
...The French church has recently hoping to stanch disaffection among liberal Catholic voters by conjured with both demons...
...Even conservatives, of course, now accept a ed from The Election of 1992: Reports and Interpretations, which also considerable degree of economic intervention: Ronald Reagan includes essays by Gerald M. Pomper, F. Christopher A rterton, Ross promised a "safety net," the Reagan and Bush administrations K. Baker, WalterDean Burnham, Kathleen A. Frankovic, andMarjorie committed billions to protect depositors in failing banks and Randon Hersey...
...We confess that we have not completely plumbed the rubric "Catholic Action"-meaning church immersion in the secret [of why...
...recovering conservative ones, signed the pardon in 1971...
...The work is a study ume from achieving the kind of lasting academic merit they of the wartime "martyrs" of the Service du Travail Obligatoirr and the cardinal had wished for it...
...Copyright © 1993 by Chatham House Publishers...
...Decourtray gave them free still has the capacity to torment the French...
...new concerns and con- ed to side with the candidate who, on any given issue, supported stituencies made themselves felt and the victorious Democrats the use of public power...
...In his latest Lustiger continues to stand in the small handful of the pope's work, Lettres a un chretien impatient (La Decouverte, 1992)closest cardinal-advisors, in which capacity he takes important a book urgently deserving of translation into English-Valadier parts both on and off stage-e.g., the decision to remove the produces a strikingly original rereading of the "Syllabus of ErCarmel from Auschwitz or his role in the newly organized col- rors...
...It is thus "continuing conversion," "spiritual formation," "evangelization," disingenuous for the report to try to explain away the political and "charismatic renewal" describe the new emphasis...
...Both projects, on Valadier's reading, lead words with which I closed an earlier profile of Cardinal Lustiger to "questionable, to say the least," developments...
...Valadier mistrusts a ism and antimodernism which have served the church so badly...
...itself...
...Decourtray's misfortune is to be of the same gener- which the French press sometimes like to draw...
Vol. 120 • April 1993 • No. 8
