A Catholic in 21st Century Paris

From OpenArt

I encountered Claude in a cafe on the Rue Mouffetard. He was sitting at a table in a back corner, a distinguished man in his seventies clad in black leather jacket and faded jeans. His beard was white, as was his longish hair; here was a man lined with the turbulence of Parisian life over the decades.

But I was specifically taken by the two newspapers resting on the table in front of him: L'Humanité and La Croix. He was reading neither, content to lazily smoke, gazing peaceably across the room. A blue cigarette packet marked with a swirling dancing silhouette lay crumbled next to his mug of coffee.

The paper of the Parti Communiste Français lying next to the daily newspaper of the Catholic Church?

What was that about?

It turned out that Claude was now retired, living alone in an apartment on the Avenue Émile-Zola in the 15th. He came here most days, he said, to think and to reconcile the many tumbling ideas in his head.

“I finally left the Party after the collapse,” he said, “in 1991. It was obvious that the dream was going nowhere. I keep in touch, of course,” and here he waved towards the PCF newspaper, ”though these days that’s just for nostalgics.”

“And La Croix?” I said gently, sipping at my own espresso.

He looked just a little embarrassed.

“It’s not what you think," he said, (what did he think I thought?).

“I'm not one of the sheep who replaces one failed utopia with another, who has come to believe that there's some power up in the sky who will save us. No, nothing like that at all.”

“But you are a Catholic?” I said.

“Yes, for some years now.”

“Why, if I may ask?”

“It’s complicated. I could give you simple answers. To start with, at some basic psychological level I rather like the Mass.”

I smiled at him over my coffee cup.

“Yes, you scoff, but it’s beautiful,” he said, “Always the same, always different. A hundred variations as the years roll by. The Mass is communal and reassuring; it feels good to participate.”

“Of course we all know that the Catholic Mass is mostly dedicated to making obeisance to a divine Jesus and asking for His Mercy,” I said.

“But how else is a global community of billions of people going to hold together for two millennia, without acknowledging the leadership of a Supreme Being. There has to be an indisputable leadership, a central theme: the alternative is everything crumbles away into schism. Surely we've all had enough experience of that?”

“So take yourself,” I said, “Do you believe in the literal existence of a Supreme Being? Jesus Christ, God, the Holy Spirit, the Holy Trinity?”

He smiled at me then.

“You’re young, you believe that things exist in such an absolute way. Do you believe in justice and love, oppression and resistance?”

“Of course,” I said easily.

“Point them out to me, show me where they live. What colour are they, how much do they weigh?“

He paused invitingly.

“Perhaps they all live in heaven?” he asked.

Touché.

“I get it,” I said, “As a Marxist, or former Marxist, you know that all those ‘things’ you mentioned are really social relationships, the social-expression of our underlying humanity. Our words reify, invent pretend-things out of the patterns of human desires, human lives.”

Claude simply looked at me with an enigmatic smile.

“OK,” I said, “Moving on, I can see where you’re coming from on the belief system, but why are you a Catholic? That was surely not necessary.”

“But perhaps it was,” he said, “The Marxist utopia has departed. We are to be left without hope in the face of global capitalism?”

“So you’re anti-globalism.”

It wasn’t a question: of course he would be.

“Not in principle. I’m against all those ideologies which make almost everyone merely instruments of ‘economic forces’, forces which always benefit a pretty invisible elite. They really only care about themselves, you know.

“Whether it’s wokeness, or no-borders globalism, or classic economic liberalism, the narratives are always tendential. Honeyed words, but underneath it’s always: ‘keep the masses atomised - and if that fails, diverted - so they don’t rock the boat’.”

The old class warrior took a deep drag of his cigarette and leaned back, his eyes closing; a haze of blue smoke surrounded him.

“In your Communist days,” I said, “you thought the masses would throw off their bourgeois ideological blinkers and embrace collective liberation through revolution. That’s gone away for you absolutely?”

“It took me a long time to see that Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ towering achievement was to overthrow a tottering feudal regime which was doomed anyway. Their Marxist ideology was operationally beside the point. Then they tried a direct road to communism in a situation of absolute scarcity. Marx had pointed out decades before that this was impossible, that it would just lead to a police state. A century later the left still has no answer as to what could replace the dynamism, the sheer coordination of global capitalism.”

I nodded: sadly, there was no arguing with that.

“So in the current state of the world,” he continued, “ I have become convinced there is no answer but to defend ourselves with what we have to hand, perhaps for centuries to come.”

I drained my cup, slightly incredulous at such defeatism. I worked daily for the triumph of socialism.

“You can't think the Catholic Church is the new Communist Party.”

“Of course not. It’s a community, open to all, where people reaffirm the basic truths of what it is to be human and are valued as such. Ends not means. It is a bulwark, a citadel, a place of refuge where human values can be affirmed and celebrated.”

“The Catholic Church is one of the most reactionary organisations on the planet,” I pointed out.

“So say its secular critics. I suppose they would say that, as it impedes so many of their projects.”

I raised my eyebrows but he quickly continued.

“Most Catholics don’t subscribe to the full authoritarian orthodoxy. It’s a cliché that the Church is broad. There are many points of view and many contradictions. For every Biblical fundamentalist there are those who understand the historical and symbolic nature of the texts, who see the many inconsistencies in what has always been a creaking theology.”

“Excuse me,” I said, “This is a church which is profoundly unhappy with science and progress, which is frightened to discuss the historical Jesus and the true nature of his teaching for fear of alienating the flock, which sacralises the most unlikely stories in its sacred books. Doesn’t that make you a complete hypocrite?”

“It makes me a member of a squabbling family, but one that is rooted in the deep history of human relationships, aspirations and solidarity.”

He stopped for a moment, as if dredging his memory.

“Ah, ‘There are many rooms in my Father's house’,” he said, crinkling his lips.

It was time to go.

“Claude, it’s been a pleasure talking to you. And I hope all of this deep thinking grants you peace,” I said.

I left some euros on the table and walked away. As I entered the street I looked back through the window. There was Claude, still sitting there, a broad smile on his face, his fist raised in clenched salute.