“I am in the Church”

Many Christians today give the impression that they do not feel at ease in the Church and that they only remain faithful to her with difficulty. I must say that my experience is contrary to theirs. The Church has never disappointed me. It is rather I who would be inclined to accuse myself of not having drawn profit enough from all that she had to offer to me. A theologian once wrote that he could understand Simone de Beauvoir leaving the Church as she knew it, as though it were necessary to wait until Vatican II to find a Church in which one could breathe!

The Christian environment in which I grew up was the same as Simone de Beauvoir’s. Its masters were Gilson and Maritain, Bernanos and Mauriac, Mounier and Garric. This environment was of an exceptional quality. And this would have sufficed to enable me to become devoted to it.

What draws me to the Church is not the sympathy that I feel towards the people who compose her, but what is given to me through these men, no matter who they are, that is to say, the truth and life of Jesus Christ. I am attached to the Church because she cannot be separated from Jesus Christ, because Jesus Christ freely gave himself’ to her, because I cannot find Jesus Christ in any authentic way outside her. That is the answer to those who say: “Why the Church?” Any search for Christ outside the Church is an illusion. It is to the Church alone, who is his spouse, that Christ gave the riches of his glory for distribution to the world. ... Apollinaire had more than instinct going for him, when he wrote in La Belle Rousse: “Pope Pius X, it is you who are of men the most modern.”

For what the Pope says has the youthfulness and freshness of truth. And what they say has always the tired and old-fashioned look of the pseudo-modern. They want to institute democracy in the Church at a time when she is in the throes of a crisis of authority, and secularism, when the world is crying out for the sacred.

I am attached to the Church because she cannot be separated from Jesus Christ

I cannot and will not understand--nor tolerate--the hypocrisy of those who say that they "love Jesus" but whose actions and inactions make it clear that they absolutely despise His body.

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