Ihe world of Pascalians is in turmoil. For a few weeks, the rumor has been circulating that, Monday, June 19, on the occasion of the 400th anniversary of the birth of Blaise Pascal, the pope will speak. At noon, very precisely. A short symposium on the author of Thoughts was even sparked for Monday afternoon in Rome. But what color will this Pascalian smoke be?
An apostolic letter as for the 700th anniversary of Dante’s death, against the backdrop of a pandemic? On March 25, 2021, Pope Francis praised “the prophet of hope”, whose work made it possible to “rediscover the lost or obscured meaning of our human journey”, an inspiration, a wonder, a lesson recalling that “the great poetry and faith can also flourish on devastated ground”. In December 2022, he had reoffended about Saint Francis de Sales. These letters are exhortations. Incentives. They draw a papal pantheon, beacons designated by the sovereign pontiff to serve as light for believers and non-believers.
In the smell of holiness
Or will there be more than one letter? Among Pascalians, we remember this interview given by Pope Francis to La Repubblica in 2017, when its founder Eugenio Scalfari asked him about the possibility of canonization. The response had been favourable: “Yes, he deserves it. Since then, radio silence. “The opportunity is too good, with this anniversary, to come back to the question to honor the last universal genius with Leibniz”, declares Gérard Ferreyrolles, professor at the Sorbonne, author of numerous works on Pascal, “especially since the popes have sometimes taken a stand by quoting Pascal, notably Benedict XVI in his commentary on the encyclical Faith and Reason”.
Admirable Christian, the scientist Pascal had, on this occasion, been cited as an excellent representative of a faith placed above reason but not against it. “He was one of the few Christians to support Galileo. As he said with humor, that the Holy Office has condemned the mathematician will not prevent this Holy Office from revolving around the sun. »
READ ALSOPascal: the legacy of a non-conformistSuch an eventuality, however, divides the Pascalians. The question was also the subject of an agenda of the Society of Friends of Port-Royal: should Pascal be canonized? Among his supporters, the same Gérard Ferreyrolles advances the following arguments: “His life is that of a saint punctuated by conversions, in the sense of a deepening of faith, especially during the episodes of 1646 and the Night of Fire, in 1654, the so-called “Memorial” experience. Furthermore, his Thoughts have converted many people, we receive many testimonies of this from all over the world. »
In their time, Jean Guitton, Paul Claudel, Julien Green, one of the martyrs of Tibhirine, Cardinal Poupard, expressed Pascal’s profound influence on their faith. For the 300th anniversary of his death, in June 1962, François Mauriac held a speech at the Sorbonne, The Debt to Pascal, where he declared that he owed everything to this man, his talisman, his amulet, his master from his sixteenth year, who had helped him to remain faithful to God, bearing witness to God by the mere fact that he had existed. But can such “conversions” work miracles?
For the cause
Thibaut Bagory has no doubt about it. This normalien from ENS Cachan, doctoral student at Lyon II – his thesis subject is “The surveyor being in Pascal” – founded the Society of Friends of Blaise Pascal (SABP) last November. “It has as its object, for spiritual purposes, to support the cause of beatification. This initiative was born out of a piece of advice delivered by Mgr Jean-Marie Dubois, promoter at the archdiocese of the cause of the saints for the diocese of Paris, who had not been hostile to this initiative. But the procedure requires the existence of an association.
“We are looking for a postulator, who will then be approved by the diocese in order to file a request for opening with the Conference of Bishops where opinions will be collected to find out if an investigation is appropriate”, specifies Bagory. “There has been for the moment no request for the opening of a cause, therefore no opinion from the Episcopal Conference, nor from the dicastery for the causes of the saints nor from the Archbishop of Paris, canonically competent”, replied Bishop Dubois.
READ ALSOBlaise Pascal: the scientist is behind God, but before the king! Bagory created a Facebook and Instagram account, BP1662 (date of death of the writer). In early June, he organized a dialogue at the Saint-Médard church in Paris between the philosopher Pierre Manent, author of Pascal and the Christian Proposal, member of the SABP, and Laurent Thirouin, pascalien emeritus, member of its supervisory board. The dean of this council is none other than Philippe Sellier, 92, long president of the Society of Friends of Port-Royal, who has trained many Pascalians.
The members of the SABP, students, teachers, call themselves the “pascalins”, a name given to the disciples of Pascal who edited his first texts after his death. Two Wednesdays a month, they meet in prayer at the Parisian church of Saint-Étienne-du-Mont, where Pascal was buried. This Sunday evening, before the mass led by the Archbishop of Paris in honor of the writer, they will come to pray in small groups. Usually, they disperse in the Latin Quarter, which was the parish of the thinker, to carry out a marauding in favor of the homeless. The concern for the poor, cardinal with Pope Francis, is at the heart of their argument. “We are following his lead,” Bagory says.
poverty love
“Pascal evolved in a purification of hierarchies”, summarizes Laurent Thirouin, professor at Lyon II, “the search for God to which he devoted himself, the intelligence of his religious questioning, is striking for someone who has exercised such intellectual sovereignty. A search that Voltaire had mocked in his time on the mode: what a shame to waste his time looking for God when one is such a genius, France missed its Newton. “Certainly, the organization of the Société des coaches à cinq sols that he had co-founded had been thought out to help the destitute of Blésois, victims of a terrible food shortage in the winter of 1661”, explains Laurence Plazenet, who has just established, with Pierre Lyraud, a remarkable edition of the complete works of Pascal (ed. Books, 2,000 pages).
“This love he had for poverty led him to love the poor with so much tenderness that he was never able to refuse alms”, writes his sister Gilberte in her Life of Monsieur Pascal, which follows all the codes of hagiography. On the verge of death, he wanted to have a poor man by his side, then die in the hospital for the poor. “He loved poverty because Jesus Christ had loved it, but he did not love the poor”, nuance Vincent Carraud, another expert emeritus of Pascal’s work.
READ ALSOBlaise Pascal: no to tyranny! Carraud is opposed to such a project of canonization. He is one of his adversaries, who consider the eventuality incongruous and inopportune. “I do not deny that he was a great Christian, I revere Blaise Pascal, but if sanctification relates to man, I will recall the Saint-Ange affair where he denounces a Capuchin from Rouen who thinks badly according to him certain points of faith, I will recall that, to better refute the Jesuits, he lends them false quotations in his work The Provincials. »
It is indeed not the least of the Pascalians’ surprises to see a Jesuit pope highlighting the author who dealt the Company the harshest blows, destroying their casuistry with his work. “When Jules Ferry entered public education, he put three provincials on the rhetoric program, commented on by Paul Bert, a very anticlerical spirit. Pascal was “canonized” by the IIIe Republic to fight against the Jesuits and the royal authority with which he associated the Jesuits”, reminds us of Simon Icard, author ofJansenist apocalypse (Deer, 2023).
Catholic recovery
“In the literary pantheon of the XVIIe century, Pascal was one of the few authors saved by the Republic, before being picked up in the 1920s by Catholics under the influence of the philosopher Maurice Blondel,” recalls Vincent Carraud. Catholics who have never ceased to defend the spiritual value of his work and his life. To put Pascal back on the forecourt of the Church, it was also necessary to clean him of his Jansenist label – Jansenism having been pursued and eradicated by the royal and Catholic hierarchy. “To repatriate him to the Catholic bosom, we recently wanted to demonstrate that he was not a Jansenist, that, in any case, Jansenism did not exist, that the Jansenists were only disciples of Saint Augustine, which is incorrect. »
And Simon Icard, like Laurence Plazenet, recalls that Pope Francis, in a speech to the Curia, presented, eighteen months ago, the Jansenist resistance as an example of demonic pride. Now, he would like to beatify one of his figureheads. To what end? Jansenism no longer exists. “The pope has the right to initiate canonization files that do not follow the long procedure, he has a reserved domain, what is called an equipollent canonization”, specifies Laurence Plazenet.
The risk of the label
Even among academics in favor of this canonization, we agree that we risk, by haloing Pascal with the crown of a saint, to “chapelize” him. “We are aware of the current intellectual tensions”, recognizes Laurent Thirouin. “To canonize him would classify him, would take away from him any form of universal authority. Pascal’s power lies in his unassignable character, even if, some object, I reason in narrow French, who only looks at his country. To make him a saint would make him known all over the world. »
“Pascal is no longer studied in high school and it is already difficult to teach him without ideology at the faculty”, regrets Laurence Plazenet, director of the Center d’études Blaise-Pascal in Clermont-Ferrand and who pleads for a secular vision of the author of Thoughts.
As with any cause, fierce opponents clash with fervent defenders. But Pascal also has realistic supporters. If on the principle, they are for, on the opportunity, they wonder. More than for a canonization, Laurent Thirouin prefers to plead for a news of Pascal that he teaches to the younger generations. “This scientist has an admirable way of accepting reality, without being in denial. It is a spirit that knows how to look. He is also a great specialist in dialogue, determined to speak to people who do not share his convictions. All his work is thus a dialogue with Montaigne, a model to imitate but from which he moves away, because he dislikes the nonchalance, the acceptance, the accommodation of his predecessor. Pascal had found the method to prevail over those who thought otherwise: to give them the floor so that they collapse on their own. »