Jesuit On Carmel And George Bernanos

The spirit of Carmel has been more notable in Chile over these last days.  And despite my loyalty to my Jesuit confreres, I have to admit that there is a special urgency to the holiness of Carmel.  For attention to the Church’s esteem for “unaccomplished,” contemplative lives helps to disambiguate two ideals so easily confused in our age: Christian holiness and philanthropic moralism—with the latter being understood more or less as the duty to reduce human human suffering whenever possible. The Chilean Church’s seemingly disproportionate joy over these feasts of Carmel reminded me of a letter written by Georges Bernanos (pictured) that I ran across some years back (and that has haunted me ever since). Therein the French Catholic novelist explains why he made Fr. Donissan, the saintly protagonist of Sous le Soleil de Satan, so humanly unimpressive.  For Bernanos, the human “foolishness” of this “saint of Lumbres” was necessary precisely to expose the attempted reduction of Christianity to philanthropic moralism

Link (here) to read  the full post by scholastic Aaron Pidel, S.J.