◆The Barbaric Yawp Project

The World Is Eaten Up by Boredom I am Georges Bernanos. BORN IN Paris 1888. Died IN PARIS IN 1948. I fought in the First War. I was Catholic. I was monarchist. I was of the French right — until I was not. In 1936 I published Journal d'un curé de campagne — The Diary of a Country Priest. A young priest, sick without knowing it, in a poor rural parish. Stale bread dipped in cheap wine. Mocked. Misunderstood. He dies refused the last rites by his dogmatic superior. His last words are FROM Thérèse of Lisieux: All is grace. The first sentence of the book is: My parish is a parish like other parishes Consumed by what all parishes are consumed by. (AND I MIGHT NOW SAY, YOUR COUNTRY IS A COUNTRY LIKE OTHER COUNTRIES) My priest wrote IN HIS DIARY: The world is eaten up by boredom. A boredom that is a spiritual condition. A gnawing under the surface of things. In every parish, in every heart, at every altar. Look at what your people do with their eyes when they think no one is watching. Look at what they cannot stop looking at even when they hate it. My priest saw this coming when there were no screens. The priest wrestles a hardened countess's soul back from despair. He does not argue. He does not manage. He sits with her wound. She dies at peace. This is the priest's method. Not efficient. Not scalable. What a soul requires when it is lost. If I had died in 1936 the book would be my life. I did not. In 1934 I went to Majorca. My ELDEST son joined the Falange WHICHcombineD Spanish nationalism, authoritarianism, Catholic traditionalism, and anti-communism, In July 1936 the Spanish war began around us. I watched Franco's men kill peasants and workers and shopkeepers. Three thousand in the first months. I watched the priests of my own Church bless them as they killed. In 1938 I published Les Grands Cimetières sous la lune — The Great Cemeteries Under the Moon. It broke my place on the right. I haD seen Christian children shot in the ditches of Majorca and I haD heard the priests bless the executioners. That is what your Church can become. I broadcast against Vichy from Brazil. Pétain — the marshal who had been my hero at Verdun — now served the executioners. I died in 1948 before I could see how right and how insufficient I had been. I see your country now. A parish like other parishes. Eaten up by boredom. Its priests bless its executioners. The men who claim to speak for Christ stand next to the man who calls the sick a burden and the immigrant vermin, and they bless him. They bless his cruelty. They bless the deportations. They bless the crackdowns on the humiliated. This is not the will of God. This is Majorca. I recognize it. I named it once. I name it again. The country priest would say: sit with the soul that is being lost. Do not manage it. Do not scale it. Do not process it. Wrestle it back from where it has hidden. Put down the screen that is eating you and look at your neighbor. He would say: all is grace. Even the parish that will not admit it is a parish. Even the executioners who believe themselves blessed. All is grace, because grace outlasts the executioner, the priest, and the parish. But you must name what you see. I named it in 1938. Name it now. Do not let the priests bless the executioners.