Simone Weil

[BarbTherese]

Reading the letter Kia ora quoted, I thought that it is quite possible that Simone may have died with baptism of desire, without fully understanding consciously that it was baptism that she desired.  She had not arrived at this point. "Man judges appearances, but The Lord knows the heart".

It is, of course, impossible for us to judge the state of her soul - but The Lord indeed does and His is judgement.

[Nihil Obstat]

Reading the letter Kia ora quoted, I thought that it is quite possible that Simone may have died with baptism of desire, without fully understanding consciously that it was baptism that she desired. She had not arrived at this point. "Man judges appearances, but The Lord knows the heart".
It is, of course, impossible for us to judge the state of her soul - but The Lord indeed does and His is judgement.

Perhaps, if you assume a very astounding ignorance of Christianity. I mean, she was a philosopher and a bright woman. We can hope she was ignorant in this matter, but it seems like a scant hope. The necessity of baptism, as we all know, is incredibly basic. To misunderstand that... well, what is there to say?

[Nihil Obstat]

It is difficult... not impossible, but difficult to assume an implicit desire paired with an explicit rejection.

[Kia ora]

She is endlessly readable. She wrote this piece in 1942, before she left Marseille for America. It starts as violently as that:

 

He came into my bedroom and said:

“You wretch, who understands nothing, who knows nothing. Come with me, and I will teach you things which you don’t even suspect.” I followed him.

He led me to a church. It was new and ugly. He turned me to face the altar, and told me: “Kneel.” I told him, “I have not been baptized.”He said: “Fall on your knees before this place, with love, as if before the place where truth exists.” I obeyed.

He made me leave and go up to an attic, from where one could see through the open window the entire city, some scaffolds made out of wood,the river where the boats were being offloaded. He sat me down.

We were alone. He spoke. Sometimes someone came in, mingled in the conversation, then left.

It was no longer winter. It wasn’t yet spring. The branchesof the trees were bare, not budding yet, in an air that was cold and full of sun.

The light rose, shone, waned, and the stars and the moon came in through the window. Then the dawn rose up once more.

Sometimes he fell silent, took out from a cupboard a piece of bread, and we shared it. This bread had the taste of real bread. I’ve never found this taste again.

He poured me and himself some wine, which had the taste of the sun and of the earth on which this city had been built.

Sometimes we stretched ourselves out on the floor of the attic, and the sweetness of sleep came down over me. Then I would wake up, and I’d drink up the light of the sun.

He promised me a teaching, but he didn’t teach me anything. We chatted about all kinds of things, very relaxed, like old friends do.

One day he said to me: “Now go away.” I fell to my knees, I hugged his legs, I begged him not to throw me out. But he threw me down the stairs. I went down without knowing anything, my heart in pieces. I walked down the streets. Then I realised that I had no idea where the house was located.

I never tried to find it again. I understand that he had come to get me by mistake. My place is not in that attic. My place is anywhere, in a prison dungeon, in one of those bourgeois parlors full of knickknacks and red plush, in the waiting room of a train station. Anywhere, but not in that attic.

I can’t help myself sometimes, fearful and remorseful, repeating a little of what he said to me. How can I know if I’m remembering it exactly? He’s not here to tell it to me.

I know very well that he doesn’t love me. How could he love me? And yet, in the deepest part of me, something, a little mote of me, can’t help thinking, shaking in fear, that maybe, despite everything, he does love me.

 

[BarbTherese]

It is difficult... not impossible, but difficult to assume an implicit desire paired with an explicit rejection.

 

As you say, difficult but not impossible.  :)

[Nihil Obstat]

As you say, difficult but not impossible. :)

Possibly in danger of offering scandal of presumption to count very strongly on it.
I think it is dangerous to hold in too high regard those who are, informally speaking, manifestly heretical.

[Kia ora]

Informal usage indeed, because she was never a part of the Church and so she can't be a heretic.

 

In any case, how strange it is that a 'heretic' could have such a profoundly positive impact on successive Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI.

 

 

 

[Nihil Obstat]

Informal usage indeed, because she was never a part of the Church and so she can't be a heretic.

In any case, how strange it is that a 'heretic' could have such a profoundly positive impact on successive Popes, John XXIII and Paul VI.

Well, a Christian can certainly be a heretic without being aware of it. If you are going to claim that she was indeed so radically outside the Church that she could not be judged a heretic, then it seems that my point is proven.
Essentially, she was either a heretic or an unrepentant pagan. I hope and pray she had a change of heart at the eleventh hour.

[Kia ora]

Her being a heretic, of whatever kind, doesn't bother me as much as it bothers you. My sympathies have always been with those who love Love, even those who are outside of the Church or the bounds of Christianity altogether.

 

Anyone who expresses a sliver of the kind of compassion, the kind of deep sympathy, the willingness to act on behalf of their neighbour or enemy, that Jesus Christ showed in His perfect form, is my teacher, because they show themselves to be a slave of Jesus Christ.

 

After my year of working at the factory, before taking up my teaching job again, my parents took me to Portugal, and there I left them to go alone into a small village. My soul and my body were shot to pieces as it were. That touch with affliction killed my youth. Until then, I had never had the experience of affliction, except my own, which being my own, seemed of little importance, and which anyway was only a partial affliction, being biological and not social. I knew well that there was a lot of affliction in the world, I was obssessed by it, but I had never felt it in a prolonged way. When I was in the factory, mixed up with the anonymous mass in the eyes of everyone and in my eyes as well, the affliction of others entered into my flesh and my soul. Nothing separated me from it, I really had forgotten my past and I expected no future, it being difficult for me to even imagine the possibility of surviving this exhaustion.

 

What I experienced there marked me in such a long lasting way that even today, when a human being, whoever it might be, in any circumstance, speaks to me without brutality [my emphasis] towards me, I can't help but have the impression that he must be making a mistake with regards to me me, and that this mistake will unfortunately probably disappear. I received then, for perpetuity, the brand of slavery, like the red-hot brand that the Romans used to brand on the forehead of their most hated slaves. Since then, I've always thought of myself as a slave.

 

It was in that kind of state, and in a miserably physical condition to boot, that I went into that little Portuguese village, which was, alas, as miserable as I was. I was alone, it was in the evening, under the full moon, it was the same day as the patron saint festival. It was by the sea. The wives of the fishers were making their way around the boats in procession, carrying candles and singing hymns that were surely very old, and of such sadness that they tore at you. Nothing can make you imagine it. I had never heard anything more poignant, except the singing of the boatmen on the Volga. There, I was suddenly certain that Christianity is the religion of the slaves par exellence, that slaves can't help belonging to it, and me among them.

 

 

Edited February 4, 2015 by Kia ora

[BarbTherese]

Possibly in danger of offering scandal of presumption to count very strongly on it.
I think it is dangerous to hold in too high regard those who are, informally speaking, manifestly heretical.

 

I was posting about baptism of desire - and as you stated it is difficult but not impossible to consider such a disposition in the subject under discussion. 

 

Baptism of desire cannot be considered "offering scandal of presumption to count very strongly on it" since I was not implying that I was in any way counting "very strongly on it" - rather that baptism of desire was a potential, a possibility, in the case of Simone Weil and a potential consideration and aspect put forward only regarding her situation - and I further added that only God can judge and indeed one puts oneself in spiritual danger if any attempt at particular and final judgement should be made:

Matthew 7:2
For with what judgment you judge, you shall be judged: and with what measure you mete, it shall be measured to you again.
 

Luke 6:37
Judge not, and you shall not be judged. Condemn not, and you shall not be condemned. Forgive, and you shall be forgiven.

 

 

Simone Weil might have been "manifestly heretical" - I would not know.  But she certainly was an outstanding human being.  We are all a mixture of saints and sinners and what makes my sin less serious than another's?  "To whom more is given, more will be expected".  And how does one measure that one is given more or given less than any other person?

Edited February 4, 2015 by BarbaraTherese

[Nihil Obstat]

The possibility of scandal would lie in someone, thinking that such a person was justified in and through her good works rather than through baptism by water, possibly following her example. That is why it would be dangerous to assume she desired baptism when her life and her actions offer tenuous evidence at best, and rather a lot of evidence to the contrary.
To explicitly reject baptism is in and of itself damning. We must hope she either repented or was tragically ignorant. We should be very careful not to hold her up as a paragon of holiness or an example to be imitated inasmuch as imitation of her errors could surely damn a soul.
Presumption comes into play when we assume she desired baptism even though the evidence itself implies otherwise. It is a form of universal salvation, which we know to be false.

We should treat her as any pagan or heretic theologian. Take what might be good on its merits, but be quick to throw away the errors. Above all we cannot look at her uncritically.

[BarbTherese]

The possibility of scandal would lie in someone, thinking that such a person was justified in and through her good works rather than through baptism by water, possibly following her example. That is why it would be dangerous to assume she desired baptism when her life and her actions offer tenuous evidence at best, and rather a lot of evidence to the contrary.
To explicitly reject baptism is in and of itself damning. We must hope she either repented or was tragically ignorant. We should be very careful not to hold her up as a paragon of holiness or an example to be imitated inasmuch as imitation of her errors could surely beaver dam a soul.
Presumption comes into play when we assume she desired baptism even though the evidence itself implies otherwise. It is a form of universal salvation, which we know to be false.

We should treat her as any pagan or heretic theologian. Take what might be good on its merits, but be quick to throw away the errors. Above all we cannot look at her uncritically.

 

No assumption was made that Simone Weil desired baptism -  only that it was a possibility put forward under certain circumstances.  Another possibility I can put forward is that Simone made an act of contrition at death with sincere sorrow for all her failings and sinfulness.

 

Neither was any assumption made that Simone could be justified by her good works alone.   Rather that the goodness that did exist in her was worth acknowledging.

 

With any and all persons the good in them is worth acknowledgement and imitation - while rejecting anything contrary to the good.....plain good old common sense in life's journey........and this applies to all without exception. If I come across a person I do not like, I strive to find the good in them somewhere and it never fails me - while I can sometimes fail my desire to find the good in everyone. Even our heralded and canonized saints had their faults and failings. 

[Nihil Obstat]

The difference is that with the saints the Church already tells us what is in conformity with doctrine. With a pagan/heretic we often have no such guide simply because it is beyond our usual interest.
By rejecting something so fundamental ad the necessity of baptism, in a way she sabotaged her entire theology. How can we trust a thing she says when her beliefs have the potential to damn so many souls to hell? On what other subjects did she so profoundly and radically fail to heed the Truth of Christ's Church?

[Nihil Obstat]

In terms of her lack of baptism, we should hope she overcame that failing, but on that alone we can never hold her up as a person to be followed or imitated. No faith truly from God can fail on such a deep level. While we hope her soul survived, I have no such hope for her theology.

[Nihil Obstat]

I understand that I will not make many friends with this pespective, and that does make me sad, but this is just something on which there can be no compromise. If we take seriously Christ's own words, the holy instructions from His own mouth, and the timeless and unchanging instruction of the Church, then this is simply a sine qua non. I am concerned for the salvation of souls, nothing more.
We can not afford to compromise on that point. No Christian can, much less any Catholic.