Le Figaro's Must Read Article On Pope Benedict And His Trip to France (Translated)

Great piece here translated by the Ratzinger Forum

The extraordinary equanimity of the 'man in white'

by Chantal Delsol

Translated from 15/09/2008

Editor's Note: An attentive member of the audience at Benedict XVI's address in the College des Bernardins on Sept. 12, philosopher Chantal Delsol says she was struck by the power that emanated from this Pope when he recalled what Europe owes Christianity.

Every time a Pope visits France, a more or less similar scenario unfolds. A great part of the media holds forth loudly, while the faithful mobilize. Today, much more than with the last visits to France of John Paul II, it is the difference in style and tone that I find remarkable: aggression versus serenity. Intellectuals and politicians have filled the pages of the major newspapers with vehement indignation: denouncing any alliance between the throne and the altar; accountability for 'millions of euros' purportedly drawn from the public coffers to receive a person who neither a political star nor an exotic celebrity [Too bad, he's not the Dalai Lama!]; an obsessive reference to the Crusades; scornful evocations of Christian churches for which the State pays not one centime to support.

And facing them, a small man in white walks on, surrounded by the roar of the crowd, without ostentation nor glory. He is calm. One sees in his demeanor the perseverance and the knowledge that the road is long but that he will never lack strength. He greets people modestly. He is a pilgrim, in short. Someone passing through. He looks at the old world and notes, without bitterness nor acrimony, its loss of impetus, its emptiness, its fatal scorn. Leaving the building, he stops to kiss two babies, then gets into his Popemobile. The faithful regroup around him in fervent joyful crowds.

Young people chant Latin. It has been drummed into them that Latin meant 'reactionary'. But that did not stop them, and obviously, they had simply ignored all the media sermonizing. This small man gifted with a great brain (and no one can deny him that) goes to the microphone in front of an audience made up of Paris's elite. Of course, he knows exactly what they reject about him. But he is neither a soldier (unlike his predecessor who seemed like a guerrilla come down from the hills - and at the time, we needed one like him), nor a politician.

No polemics, then. Nor any aggressiveness. He knew exactly who were in the audience: Many of them had defended Marxism until the fires burned out, and continue, with Sartrean bad faith, to identify the Church only with the Inquisition. Many of them are against the idea of truth itself and confuse tolerance with relativism, consider God the enemy of the human species and have tried to make their naive readers believe that Europe has no identity except to be secular and fanatic about it.

He greets them with a neutral expression, as if he were about to give a lecture on Balzac's syntax. Then serves them with a lesson of high pedagogy (adapted to their way of understanding, of course - they cannot argue, as they do of George W. Bush - that he is an idiot) on the search for God. On Paul's 'unknown God', and on the empty pursuit of God. On the fact that it is not simply a question of looking for God, but of allowing oneself to be found by God - well aware that he is in a land where one rejects God even more than simply ignoring him. And he speaks bout freedom which, if it is claimed to be the mere absence of bonds and restraints, risks becoming arbitrary or lead to fanaticism (this last being the only word which the newspapers could find as a news hook - finally, a 'hot' term, or at least, one that can seem to be!).

He evokes those monks who, in their search for God, ended up laying the basis for Western culture. And this was a way of addressing those who behave like snotty brats claiming to owe nothing to no one. As if to say, "What would you be without this tradition on which you spit on now?

You would not even have the words... Because it is this tradition that has conferred on you the freedom to spit." But all this, in a quiet murmur, in a French that reminds us of Alsace. He knows quite well that sitting in the audience was the former President of France on whose insistence the European Union had taken out any reference to the Christian roots of the continent in its founding documents. He also knows that in this nation, anyone who speaks of the identity of one's culture is soon accused of wanting to provoke the clash of civilizations.

But he manifestly ignores all that. Like a professor, he describes that past from where we all came and which made us who we are, a past which we no longer want. He describes this identity with a kind of scientific neutrality: This is all part of history, and one cannot erase the past. And our negationist frenzy suddenly seems ridiculous. The appeals for 'vigilance' have been building up to defend , they say, a secularism under threat (I mistrust this so-called 'vigilance' which is never vigilant of itself but only of what it considers the excess of others!). Indeed, if secularity means excluding religion from the public sphere so that it can only be expressed in individual consciences - that is to say, only in the sculleries - this typically French secularity does not have much future left. For one simple reason: Catholics no longer have a complex about being Catholic.

They now profess themselves as much as other religions and currents of thought. And that French secularity which is vengeful and aggressive will give way to the secularization of civilized countries: distinguishing between the Cross and the Sword, rather than suppressing the Cross even in a place that has emptied itself of God. And this is the calm message that this modest figure and voice left us: We exist. Christians exist. We exist far more than just in the sculleries and in silent consciences. We influence those who govern, we offer educative models, we propose a way of life and a way of thinking.

No one can relegate us. We represent the oldest and most durable institution that has ever existed in history. We built this continent. If the 'vigilantes' of secularism today can claim the rights of man, which are now inalienable for all, it is because the monks of the 13th century followed in the steps of a God who upholds human dignity. The Church not only founded what we are, but what will remain of us even after we no longer wish to exist. But we don't claim anything beyond being who we are. Let the 'vigilantes' be assured: the Church has no powers.

It can boast no armies but the heavenly host of angels who threaten no one, least of all, non-believers! I am reassured by this 'powerlessness' as much as the secularists. One knows that the Church, like any other institution, can abuse its power by transforming its priests into domestic and political petty tyrants. I love this disarmed Church,threatened by absenteeism, weakened, and borne along by hope rather than by satisfaction.

It is a 'disarmament' embodied as well by this fragile and humble man in white. France at the start of a new millennium, An old country whose elite for the most part hate Catholicism, and where a part of its people are rediscovering their religious roots as they find they need to give a sense to their life. I look at a young employee on the Metro Friday morning who picked up one of those free newspapers of the sort that would hammer home the hate message: Your money is being wasted to welcome this country bumpkin of a pope! He reads the tirades, lays down the paper, and goes home, prepared to get up at six the next day to find a spot at the Invalides, where he will at least catch a glimpse of the white cap of the pilgrim Pope.