Subversive action at the spiritual level offers an especially interest-ing example to study. This action is easily discernable in what is acknowledged as the “crisis of the Church”; furthermore, it is suffi-ciently related to our subject for us to dwell on it somewhat. We do not intend to examine either the origins, which are long prior to Vatican II, or the effects, which are multiple. In any case, it is cer-tain that the shaking of the pinnacle affects the entire edifice, and what is seen to occur at present at the ecclesiastical level is nothing other than the repercussion of what is happening in all of Western society.1 The slight decrease in vocations, the lack of interest in questions that do not concern human immediacy, the absence of religion’s direct hold over the mass of the baptized has already planted the “decoration” of this spiritual desert promised to Christ in the Second Advent.
Evil comes both from the outside and the inside. Outwardly, it is the result of the tireless offensive of militant atheism’s forces against the rock of the Church; inwardly, it is the result of doctrinal weak-ening that, with the best intentions, has too many Christians work-ing themselves unknowwork-ingly at destroywork-ing Christianity, or dowork-ing nothing to help it.
In the West, the ideological battle is fought against an established Church, but for whom the comfort of the establishment and past errors have dulled the fighting ardor, led to a certain caution. This battle took arguments from these same errors: the schism of Rome and Byzantium, the courts of the Inquisition—even if the number of victims was knowingly exaggerated—the fratricidal wars of a fra-ternal religion; and, behind all that, the heritage of the
Judeo-*From Return to the Essential, I, “Aspects of Subversion,” 3.
1The ancient texts of India had already mentioned the ruin of religion as major evidence of the Kali Yuga. The Vishnu-purana, VI, 1, alludes to the aggiornamento: “A simple ablution will be regarded as sufficient purification.” And then: “Men of all the castes will presumptuously imagine that they are the equals of the brahmans.
They’ll say: ‘Who gives authority to the Veda...?’” A theme taken up again by the Bhagavata-purana, XII, 24, following: “In the Kali Age, men are short-sighted (meaning: limited metaphysical intelligence), the Vedas are corrupted by the heretics.... He (Ashyuta, the master of the three worlds) is no longer honored by anyone....”
Christian attitude encouraging even more, with the initiative of the soldier, the jurist, and the administrator, the missionary conquest, the suppression of minority particularisms, the solidification of bureaucratic structures, and the intellectualization of the doctrine to the detriment of its interiorization. When Subversion decided to bring down the Christian institution, it was obviously these facts it evoked; it forgot to mention the efforts of the first monks’ work toward civilization, the figures of Saint Francis, Saint Bernard or Saint Benoit, the Rules and Orders of which they are the founders and their influence for centuries in the face of the spreading of bar-barity.
If nothing can be done against saintliness, there is more to be done against the intellectual notion of the Revelation and the dog-mas that will soon be replaced by the social, political and economi-cal “good news” spread by the multitude of new “apostles.” The latter organize everywhere, and in the name of the goddesses of Liberty and Reason, institutionalize “secular and mandatory educa-tion.” Following religious fanaticism, from which the past was not exempt, would then be free thinking, which, by appearing to give more respect to personal opinions, would influence and condition minds in such a way that they could only opt for agnosticism. Soon religion would only be tolerated as long as it communicated in a conventional and insipid language deprived of the invigorating breath of its origins; or, it would adopt the most relativistic inter-pretations of the Gospel, therefore, the most compatible with mod-ernist opportunism. Anything not understood would be accused of being prelogical, superstitious, obscurantist thinking, indeed Machiavellian inventions of a clergy whose only interest was in exploiting an ignorant people. Science would quickly be called to the rescue—however, it is itself subject to so many variations—to contest or demolish what would, in any case, continue to escape it so long as the esoteric and symbolic levels remained unconnected to the literal level.
A situation that is more radically tragic for the Eastern Church, that refuses unprincipled compromises, is passionate about faith-fulness to origins, and also maintains, perhaps, a certain taste for martyrs. Here, the hard method replaces insinuations.
It can be said that Subversion’s persecutions apply to the letter the phrase from the Book of Revelation: “He who would not wor-ship the statue of the Beast should be killed.” Without even
men-tioning the material destruction of thousands of churches—who still remembers that by dynamiting the temple, man dynamites him-self, since the temple and man are analogically built according to the same plan?—the physical suppression of tens of millions of Orthodox seems to have saved, at least in the Christian East, this
“honor of God” too often scorned in the West. The twentieth cen-tury will have broken all the records as far as properly-attested-to persecutions, and for which only a certain Western spinelessness pretends to reduce or ignore the polymorphous horror.2 One of Subversion’s titles of glory will have been to add to the classic methods of torture that act exclusively on the body, the entire range of psychic torture, capable of depersonalizing the individual and turning him into the antithetical shadow of himself. The chemicals which alter or destroy the conscious managed to prove a contrario that the believers in God were abnormal, since the State, expression of normality, did not believe; thus, it was an act of humanity and public health to cure them by making them deny their faith! As for the psychiatric cohabitation of the believers and the mentally ill, its only aim was that of confusing folly and faith in a diabolical carica-ture of the “folly of the cross”: once the believers have in turn gone mad by contamination, it is easy to show that the believers are crazy.
In the face of such refinement in sadism, one has every right to won-der who the real madmen are, the victims or their torturers.3
And in truth, the easiest way to kill a people is by killing its faith.
By eliminating this, hope is eliminated, and when men are deprived of hope, the means to the end are even easier: they die from with-in, become everything one wants, even embrace those false hopes of enchanted tomorrows. However, if the witnesses of the Spirit can be killed, the Spirit that they bear within cannot. It is well known
2Among the many testimonies, we will cite the one from Alexander Solzhenitsyn, consecrated to The Gulag Archipelago. The history of underground Churches could be inscribed with this verse from Ovid (Metamorphoses, VI, 202): Quodque licet tacito venerantur murmure numen (“All they can do is whisper in low voices their prayers to the divinity”).
3One cannot help thinking of this apothegm that is astonishingly relevant to our time: “A time will come when all men are mad, and when they meet someone who isn’t, they will say: ‘You’ve lost your senses!’ And it is only because he will not resem-ble them” (Abba Antony, Apophthegms of the Fathers of the Desert). This is echoed, under different heavens, by Ramana Maharshi: “Since the world is mad, it thinks you are mad.”
that the blood of martyrs always incites more, that resistance is organized, that any spiritual doctrine finds renewed vigor in the caves of torture, in the catacombs of silence. This was true of the first Christians who, under Nero, Decius and Diocletian, were hand-ed over to the beasts and the torches, and it was still true until recently for the Christians of an East where the sun rose secretly.
But it was also true for the Hassidim who were dragged to cremato-riums, for the Tibetans massacred in Lhasa, and in general, for all peoples who, when fleeing from under the screaming wind of ter-ror of the “Dark Age,” still embrace the word of salvation, the sylla-ble of eternity. All hits strike the knowing, none strike Knowledge.
If the fierceness and duration of torment is astonishing, it is because Knowledge, even disfigured, always forgives ignorance, and that is what ignorance cannot forgive it for.
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The destruction of Christianity from the outside would still be rela-tively slight if it were not coupled with an inward destruction, to which consciously or not, both clerics and laymen contribute.
Minimalism, torpor, disregard of the sacred aura, alteration of the Scriptures under the pretext of adaptation to the current way of thinking create adequate conditions for this kind of demolition.4 Cleverly maintained ambiguities and uncertainties trouble the souls of the faithful only as much as is needed. Sometimes, a supposed animal origin of humanity will come to “scientifically” contradict the story of Genesis; sometimes the calculated existence of other men in other areas of the universe will relativize Incarnation. Doubt is cast successively on the sacerdotal minister, the value of the sacra-ments, the dogmas of the Trinity and Christology, and the real pres-ence in the Eucharist. Religion becomes the most discreet of the possible humanisms, shows gratitude towards the temporal authori-ties that are hospitable to it, makes a pact with them, fights for their
4As an example of the disregard of the sacred aura, notice the use of applause (resurgence of the pagan amphitheater), which turns sanctuaries into community arts centers or political assemblies. As an example of an error in translation, the replacement in the Apostle’s Creed of “consubstantial with the Father” by “of the same nature of the Father,” is a formula that reintroduces the heresy of Arius.
points of view. Vague considerations of a moral, social and senti-mental nature nourish the ordinary content of the sermons, suc-ceeding only at further distancing from the Church those whose demands and aspirations are of another order. Even the attitude becomes perverted: certainty is presented as a suspicious need for security; doubt is hailed as criteria for sincerity. Behind the attempts at ecumenism that all too often would like to reconcile the irrecon-cilable, the house continues to split. The conservatives maintain an obsessional stubbornness at keeping values that no longer neces-sarily coincide with the needs of the era, a tense blockage to any adaptation and validity of other religions that are obstinately ignored, and the conviction that anything that is not fundamental-ism is sulfurous heathenfundamental-ism; for the progressive, who love conces-sions, the severing of the very principles that religion is based on are sacrificed by pretending to renew it or restore it to the asceti-cism of its beginnings (in reality, to the destitution that reigns once the Spirit has departed), because the intention of impoverishment is not a vow of poverty.
Once the sources of its esotericism had been lost or denied, it gradually became impossible for the Church to give complete and satisfactory responses to the essential questions: after having for-gotten “knowledge,” religion could only refer the faithful to “faith.”
This had a twofold consequence: those who refused the mystical attitude of “faith”—pistis—without, however, being in a position to attain “knowledge”—gnosis—organized the fight against a faulty spirituality that was charlatan-like in their view, demanding to believe without proof; as for the believers, deprived of decisive arguments, they were won over by the limitations of open-examination and dis-cursive reason, were entrenched in the dogmas, satisfied with spheres that had less and less to do with religion, and that were, indeed, even unfamiliar with its competence. Yet, to situate the deep meaning of a religion in the external is to situate oneself on the outside of this religion; being married only to one’s times is to divorce from eternity. What’s more, beyond trial and error, one must not exclude the active and occult influence of certain pressure groups whose interest is in the eradication of Christianity, if not to say the spiritual thing itself.
While Christianity insists on the notion of the “human person,”
at a time when psychology confirms the uniqueness of each indi-vidual and the therapeutic necessity to recount everything in
minute detail, confession becomes hurried and voluntarily collec-tive. The Last Supper appears to be a “fraternal meal” at a “common gathering,” even though it is a ritual and sacred meal: the Eucharist is an “act of giving thanks” making Christians participants with the three Persons of the Trinity; it is “hierogamy,” the Sacrament of the union of Christ and his followers, reunited in the mystic Body. The loss of the meaning of a transcendent mystery reduces Mass to a simple friendly meeting where the music, vague imitator of primi-tive trances, becomes more chthonic than celestial, excites passions instead of calming them in a humbling silence; where the word replaces the chant, when in fact it should be actualized, vitalized by ritual or psalmodic recitation, and become manducation of the divine Word—the whole in an abstract decor (especially the stained glass windows): veritable nonsense in the religion where the
“abstract” becomes precisely “concrete” by Incarnation.5Even more serious is the liturgical celebration before the people, during which, in every Church traditionally turned toward Jerusalem, the priest henceforth turns his back on the East.
Much could be said about contemporary Christianity’s socialist attempt. Undoubtedly, the economic situation of certain milieux and numerous underdeveloped countries justifies an intervention of the Church in the name of justice and charity. As Thomas Aquinas, who cannot be accused of progressivism, had already writ-ten, “the use of a minimum amount of possessions is required for exercising virtue.”6 Moreover, there is something “social” about Christianity: one clearly insists on helping one’s neighbor, the sick and the unfortunate, on the notion of “sharing,” even more than on the notion of “giving.” One is reminded of the word of the founder:
“For he that is the least among you all, the same shall be great.”
Poverty is a prerequisite for passing through the “eye of the needle”
(that is to say the doors of Heaven). It is often recalled that the sole owner of richness is God, man being simply the manager of grounds that do not belong to him.
5As much as abstract art has its place in Islam where God cannot be depicted, except by the geometric iridescence of a multiplicity near to the Principle, it has no place in the religion where God, coming out of his impersonality, makes him-self out as a body and a face.
6The words of Ramakrishna echo back: “Religion is not for empty stomachs.”
However, such “socialism,” if there is “socialism,” owes nothing to Proudhon, Marx or Engels. Possibly having Buddhist origins, it greatly inspired Christianity from the beginning, through Asia Minor. What’s more, reducing the message of Christ to a simple
“socialism” tinted with devotion is impossible, just as is reversing the order of the precepts of love; the love of one’s neighbor does not come before the love of God. Tackling social issues does not require being Christian: it is enough to be a socialist. In fact, it does not seem that a politico-social interpretation of the Gospel is defend-able if it is admitted that the latter is supposed to be essentially a guide for inner life. The absence of any political directive in the Gospel is even a sort of implicit warning against the divisions creat-ed by political passion. Wanting to mix politics and religion is once again, as India would say, to work for the confusion of the dharmas.
We cannot love only men and forget the divine priority without frus-trating men, God and ourselves at the same time. But the ultimate blindness consists of taking the message from the ideal City (and, as it happens, ideological), for the message from the Heavenly City of Jerusalem, of which it is the opposite; because the Prince of this world is capable of “seducing the chosen themselves,” Christians believe that technology and socialization are the irrefutable signs of a new effusion of the Spirit.7 Must one be reminded that Christ refuses to serve two masters at the same time and that his Kingdom is not of this world; that the “kingdom of God is within you,” and that the builder of the real Jerusalem is not man at all, but God?
It must still be added, from the Christian point of view, that the
“meaning of History” is not the assumption of the economy, politics and power of the state; it lives in the Coming of the “Kingdom of God.” To say that History has a meaning is the same as saying that it has an end; and the end of History—the accomplishment of which Christ died for—is the union of man with God. This end of History is transcendent to History; it would not know how to come within the sole temporal level, it demands a separation from the natural world and a transfiguration of a human life into a divine life. In this
7The Spirit, undoubtedly, will return to the world, and such is the meaning of the heavenly Jerusalem; but the new cycle will start off on completely different facts from those that are fashionable today, the best of which can improve man’s practi-cal condition, but remain remarkably incapable of transforming the “inner man”—
the citizen par excellence of the new Jerusalem—because that is not of its “order.”
sense, no Church has to adapt to the world; the duty of the Church is to adapt the world to God. Christ did not say to have a revolution, and evangelization will follow, but to seek first the kingdom of God and these things shall be added unto you.
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All of this not only brings about the collapse of religion (which is sometimes blocked by the miraculously favorable initiatives and the invisible influence of anonymous supplicants in the last deserts or the house next door, in the heart of the city), but the establishment of a counter religion, the one of Man. Already, at the doctrinal level, it is surprising to see certain omissions in the “mandatory basics” of
All of this not only brings about the collapse of religion (which is sometimes blocked by the miraculously favorable initiatives and the invisible influence of anonymous supplicants in the last deserts or the house next door, in the heart of the city), but the establishment of a counter religion, the one of Man. Already, at the doctrinal level, it is surprising to see certain omissions in the “mandatory basics” of