The wheat and the chaff

Abbé Pierre was one of those tutelary figures who have lastingly inspired many of us. A figure of courageous commitment against poverty, she remained in the hearts of the French an object of pride and recognition. But here it is: the recent revelations of violent and inappropriate acts committed by Abbé Pierre on a certain number of women in his close circle, have come to unbolt this statue also from the pedestal where we had placed it. And the effect provoked is that of an inner collapse for many.

Growing in coherence and lucidity

We must first pay tribute to the victims who dare to put words to what happened. Who take their place in the history of the Emmaus movement, which is never the business of a single man, however charismatic he may be. This work of truth is painful first of all for these wounded people. Our pain in the face of this personal desolation can only be a notch below. It invites us to get back to work. To this long work of a whole life to grow in coherence and lucidity.

Because if a man like Abbé Pierre – a member of the Resistance during the Second World War, a politician committed to human rights, a virulent campaigner to remind the emerging consumer society of the number of abandoned people forgotten at the side of the road – can be caught red-handed incoherence, what can it be like for each of us? The Christian faith obliges us, we who have the sad experience every day that the wheat and the chaff are so deeply mixed, to dare to take upon ourselves a share of this sin. And if we can, to dare to ask for forgiveness, too. This is not a question of misplaced guilt or infantile miserabilism. It is a question of recognizing that if the experience of evil is part of individual stories, it also spreads in the collectives that we form.

Lessons to move forward

If only we could finally learn some urgent lessons from these painful stories. For example, by ceasing to look in our circles for tutelary figures on whom we can pour out all our unconscious expectations of security, pride, truth. Since Simon Peter’s betrayal, the Christian faith has taught us that we do not follow the Apostles, but Christ himself who could not be caught red-handed in his inconsistency. This is where he saves us from our own failings. From our own losses.

Certainly, the Catholic world offers our humanity inspiring figures of holiness who have gone before us, bearing through the witness of their lives, the burning sign of the Gospel. But overloaded with Sulpician and romantic varnish, these saints are often stripped of their personal flesh as if, at each moment of their life, everything was already pure. Is it not urgent here too to emerge from this spiritual illusion? It is because they assumed their share of incoherence and sin and they did so before this Christ who dazzled them with his grace and his forgiveness, that these men, these women, these children were able to let pass into the broken shards of their lives a light of compassion, peace and justice that comes from God.

All that glitters is not gold

In the media world that consumes everything that is shown at full speed, Christians sometimes let themselves be taken in by shortcuts that prepare for disasters. Such a priest, such a clairvoyant, such a person, who speaks well, who shines humanly, who astonishes by his talents or his audacity, are too quickly canonized during their lifetime. They become “characters” of the religious nativity scene used wisely, there to support fundraising campaigns, here to guarantee the reliability of a work or a project. The world of Catholic media, on the front line, can no longer pretend when it uses these characters to make its “front pages” that will guarantee it good sales.

But the questioning can go even further. Isn’t it sad to hear friends who knew Abbé Pierre well now whisper in half-words that Abbé Pierre had a long-standing reputation for wandering hands? A few modest counter-fires had been put in place, but without emphasizing the seriousness of this flaw. But having become essential in an indispensable and in many ways prophetic charitable organization, the commander remained on his pedestal. Here we are, each of us sent back to our share of collusion with the indefensible. In our families, our parishes, our workplaces, what is our part in putting words to unacceptable situations?

Behind the abbot, a man

And since the time has come for necessary introspection in the face of the enigma of the life of this man who died nearly twenty years ago, perhaps we could exercise our discernment more for the living? Because, it must be said again: Abbé Pierre does not exist as such. He is the fruit of circumstances transformed into an epic tale, an accommodating, almost symbolic construction, which ignores many of the rough edges of a life.

For who was Henri Grouès, his real name, who was six years old at the end of the Second World War, who was a boarder in a Jesuit school in Lyon and who speaks of a “love at first sight” for God, during a pilgrimage to Rome? Who is the one who will become Brother Philippe among the Capuchins that he wanted to join from the age of seventeen and that he will leave eight years later due to fragile health? Who is this young abbot barely appointed to Grenoble when he is mobilized in 1939, before being hospitalized for pleurisy, then taking part in the Vercors and Chartreuse maquis? Who is this man who protects Lucie Coutaz who will become for forty years his right-hand man and the true linchpin of the Emmaüs movement? Who is this “Abbé Pierre”, code name of the Resistance, curled up under his French beret and his large cape given to him by a Paris firefighter, who became a member of parliament for a while, before becoming a simple worker priest again, fighting for the status of conscientious objector during the Algerian War? Who is this abbé who founded a secular movement with an evangelical name, Emmaüs, founded in 1949 and who admits to having prayed throughout his life to “die young”? Who is this man who received a national and ecumenical tribute upon his death, but who had himself buried in a small village in Seine-Maritime, refusing the expected honors of the Pantheon?

Such a “career” and such a journey can be impressive. They were also, in many ways, too heavy a burden for one man. Because, it is not enough to assume a prophetic posture, however worthy it may be. There remains, in the depths of each of our hearts, much work to be done to unify what we really are, between our emotional life, our psychological needs, our poorly healed sufferings, our poorly assumed contradictions. It must now be recognized: Henri Grouès was also able to do harm in his life as a man not yet unified.

The admiration that makes you blind

This is a sad but necessary reminder for each of us as recent revelations multiply concerning, for example, another religious figure, the Jesuit artist Marko Rupnik who, he and his team of artists, covered so many churches and chapels with his figurative mosaics, all the way to Lourdes, while having behaved unacceptable towards a certain number of women and nuns. Neither art, nor charitable works, nor fine speeches must be a screen any longer.

We do a disservice to those we canonize too quickly or admire with naive credulity. We love their image more than what they are, brothers and sisters on the way. And, like us, poor people who need to be lifted up. Yet we had been warned that the wheat and the chaff will be mixed together for a long time throughout our lives. And that it will take time to sort things out.