Courage in the "Dark Disorder"

[stevusmagnus]

"Back in February of 1973, the late, great French thinker, Jean Ousset—author of Action, the definitive guide to Catholic action—wrote a letter to a Catholic who having witnessed the auto-demolition of the Church in France, had lost his Faith. Originally written in French, Ousset’s letter was translated into English by Michael Davies who noted at the time that Ousset “depicts the current dark disorder as a call to action rather than a cause for despair.”

This little known letter by Jean Ousset is as relevant today as when it was first published, perhaps more so, given that faithful Catholics in 2009 are subjected to a daily barrage of scandals and blasphemies never conceived of in 1973. Far from justifying despair in us, however, the darkness we see all around us is a subject for meditation, really—for action!—for as bad as things have become in Europe, the Americas and all across the world, we can see through Hell’s very refusal to give up the fight against the Cross that the triumph of Christ the King is inevitable. If through Catholic action we can keep despair at bay no matter how futile our efforts may seem, given the diabolical might of the opposition, we will see the triumph of the Immaculate Heart

By publishing Ousset’s letter we encourage our readers to accept the standard of hope which he handed down and which Catholics of his generation managed to hold aloft even in that dark night in the Church that was the early 1970’s. As Michael Davies put it, “action is the antidote to despair.” We must resolve to act, then, to fight and to keep hope alive during this time of dark disorder. Such is our sacred duty as inheritors of the noble Catholic legacy. Besides, as Ousset points out, there’s nothing new under the sun—including darkness and disorder in the Catholic Church. MJM

We have received a letter from one of our subscribers. The following extracts from the letter will suffice for our present purpose.

I notice from the last issue of Permanences that my subscription is now due, but in spite of my keen interest in your work, I do not intend renewing it. My reasons for this are that the incoherence of the religious situation in France, the attitude and statements of certain clerics, the views expressed in the ‘Catholic’ Press, a press highly recommended from our pulpits, the widespread pandering to Teilhard, the scandal caused by the silencing of the clergy in the Pax affair—have all contributed to my total loss of Faith.

As a Catholic layman, I do not accept as my official representative at the Council, the TV commentator, Dubois-Dumes, who spoke on the ‘love letters of a Portuguese nun.’ The outbursts against Cardinals Pizzardo and Ottaviani by the psychologist, Fr. Oraison, quite nauseate me. The blackest disorder exists in the Church where even a non-insignificant prelate dares to speak of ‘over-bloated’ pontiffs. The virulent attacks on all the teachings of Pope Pius XII continue unabated. All this utterly disgusts me. Of what avail is it for you to remain silent and pretend not to notice the daily antics of this scandalous clique. They will get you immediately when the opportunity presents itself, and your efforts will have been in vain; they will finally crush you. Have you forgotten the she-goat in Daudet’s story, ‘La Chèvre de Monsieur Seguin’, the young she-goat who, in spite of having fought the Wolf throughout the night, was nonetheless devoured at the break of dawn?

For my part, I no longer wish to be involved in all these absurdities.

Sir: We admit that all this is true; what you have done is no longer rare. Others besides yourself have described the tragedy of the Church in France, and it is for this very reason that we have been impelled not only to reply to your letter, but also to publish our reply.

It is not a pleasant task replying to your letter, especially as an adequate reply would demand an entire volume, and even then one would not be certain of finding the exact answer to your own personal problem.

Remain silent? I could never accept such a solution, not, I assure you, because I want to run after a lapsed subscriber, but because the warm feelings you have for us, so evident in your letter, call for more than a prudent, disillusioned silence. In my opinion they call for a reply as brutal as the anger which consumes you. Moreover, a reply would be needed if only to point out that anger is a bad counselor, for you are, beyond doubt, eaten up with anger.

You say you have lost the Faith. From your letter, I very much doubt this; it is a revolt against the very object of our Faith – the Church. And the proof is that Faith (in the strict sense of the anti-Modernist oath, adherence to teaching, etc.) is more lucid, more intense in you than it is in certain pious people, those “yes-men” who have no real knowledge of what they believe, and therefore swallow anything and everything they read in the papers sold at church doors nowadays.

Your sin appears to me to be against Hope. Not hope as the world knows it, a hope full of foolish optimism, stimulated by some passing aspiration, but the true Christian virtue of Hope, the theological, serene virtue which has no illusion, but is stronger than death or the worst of scandals; Hope nourished by sound doctrine AND by an adequate knowledge of Church history.

Now even though a sin against Hope can prove as disastrous in its results as a sin against Faith, one does not react to a sin against Hope as one would to a sin against Faith.

I can only compare you to a soldier who would be willing to abandon the love and service of his country because he could no longer endure the hardships, or because he could no longer accept the laxity to be found among far too many of his superior officers…"

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[dmorgan]

Thanks Steve.