Reflections on Pia Fraus in the Church
by Gustave Thibon
(Translated by Gerhard Eger)
[Rorate Note: Gustave Thibon was a French Traditional Catholic writer (1903–2001), and a prolific author, and wrote many essays for Itinéraires. He was known as a "peasant" philosopher. This essay appeared in the June 1970 issue of Itinéraires (Catholic periodical founded by Jean Madiran.]
Louis Salleron has recently put forward valuable insights into the issue of lying within the Church. Without any pretence of exhausting or resolving the debate, I should like to highlight some new points for discussion. I shall do this within the framework of what is nowadays called “interrogative philosophy.” [Note 1]
First question: to what degree can an institution that affirms it is divine in origin and end as well as necessary for the salvation of men fulfil its mission, insofar as it is a human and sociological phenomenon, without resorting to lying?
I hasten to clarify that this term encompasses, in my mind, not only lying as defined by the dictionary (a statement contrary to the truth, knowingly made with the intention to deceive), but a plethora of less clear-cut actions, such as, for instance, the assertion of things one is not certain are true, the concealment of certain truths (celare velum, dicere falsum), the excessive simplification of facts and problems, the lack of objectivity and impartiality in accounts and judgements, etc. These lies or half-lies do not, of course, concern the major tenets of the faith (which are, moreover, unverifiable) or of morals. Rather, they all have a common denominator: the demands of praxis, that is, the pursuit of success at the psychological and social levels. Let us note in passing that the vast majority of them are inspired either by the desire to adapt to men’s emotional and mental structures in order to lead them to God by what seem the shortest and easiest paths, or by the needs of the battle the Church has been fighting since her birth against opposing ideologies and powers.
In the first case, we are faced with dietary or medicinal lies, which consist in giving men only the dose of truth one deems them capable of bearing and assimilating, presenting it with garnishes or coatings of half-fictions that ease the adsorption of the nutrient or remedy. In common language this is known as “sugarcoating the pill.” Examples include certain conceptions of Providence, of holiness (I am thinking of hagiographic literature…), of the four last things, and of heavenly rewards. Evoking the marvellous always yields quicker and more reliable results than teaching the supernatural. Alfred Fabre-Luce wrote, “The world is full of invented miracles and neglected graces.” “Theology” speaks less to the imagination than the “theophany”…
In the second case, we encounter polemical or strategic lies. A Manichæan view of conflict (all good is on our side and all evil on our enemies) is the ideal weapon of psychological warfare. Rather than pondering the rights and wrongs of each party, one skews the scale to use as a sort of bludgeon to better club the enemy. I recall, for example, the propaganda pamphlets Catholics and Protestants distributed in my region at the time when the cold war between the two creeds still raged. Fervorous defences and violent attacks left very little room for the pursuit of truth, even in an area where such a pursuit would have required the most scrupulous prudence, namely, the analysis of psychological motives and the presentation of historical facts.
I have just used the term “propaganda.” Now, we know by experience that propaganda, whatever its object, has never been too concerned with objectivity. Can it be any difference for that higher form of propaganda called the apostolate?
Friedrich Nietzsche analyzed this phenomenon cruelly and at length, calling it pia fraus. Again, this expression covers a very wide range of actions, from outright lies (that is, the conscious and deliberate falsification of deeds and documents) to subtle distortions of truth such as making sweeping generalizations, ignoring context, judging on mere intent, extrapolating, conflating different matters, interpreting things hastily and misleadingly, etc. All of this can be attributed not only to “an excess of zeal,” but also to ignorance, credulity, and a lack of insight and critical spirit. One can even quibble endlessly with regard to the first element in this spectrum, that is, gross and blatant falsehood. For instance, Blaise Pascal asked whether the Five Propositions of Jansenism condemned in Rome were really contained verbatim in Cornelius Jansen’s Augustinus. One might answer that they were there in spirit if not in letter, since they followed from the totality of Jansen’s doctrine. Similar things might be said about Pius X’s condemnation of modernism or Pius XI’s condemnation of Action française, which have given rise to never-ending controversies.
This goes back to the eternal and insoluble question of the relationship between ends and means, the journey and the goal. Purists might say that lies, under whatever form they might appear, cannot be tolerated in the service to a God who is Truth. To which realists would reply that only those without arms never get their hands dirty. Without explicitly approving of lies, they would include them amongst the myriad imperfections inherent to activity in this world. “What matters more,” they might ask, “reaching the goal as quickly as possible or seeking truth and perfection in every detail of the journey? We would never reach the end if we waste too much time picking and choosing the means.” Surely it was in this spirit that Cardinal Baudrillart answered Salleron’s pressing questions about the false accusations against Action francáise, saying, “These are mere details.” Implicitly adding, “But look at the whole, and the results!” The quality and splendour of the banquet make us forget the cooks’ tricks…
These arguments grow very weighty when one considers the many saints whose moral sensibilities it would be absurd to mistrust, yet who never paid the slightest attention to certain alterations or omissions of the truth, such as the uncertain bases of this or that popular devotion, or this or that dubious collaboration between ecclesiastical authority and temporal power. Saint Teresa of Ávila spoke of “our holy king Philip II,” and the Curé of Ars never concerned himself with the historicity of the figure of Saint Philomena. He was happy to work miracles and conversions through her intercession; behind the imaginary saint, he encountered the supernatural God. And I do not think it is a stretch to say that it is not the saints who meticulously prune the calendar…
*
I neither approve nor condemn; I merely observe. It is not my place to define the boundaries beyond which the ends cease to justify the means. Abstract moralists, obsessed with visions of ideal perfection, have an unyielding tendency to narrow these boundaries, whereas men of action, enslaved by the standards of efficiency, succumb too often to the temptation to broaden them. The extent and limits of these existential ties between truth and error, good and evil, which so troubled Charles Péguy, vary according to time and place and are impossible to establish a priori.
Whatever the case, in today’s Church, the wind is blowing towards examinations of conscience and self-criticism. Nary a day goes by without one hearing denunciations of misdeeds that were the results of knowing or unknowing pia fraus: the prostitution of the invisible God to too-visible Caesars in Constantinianism, the hypocrisies of moralism and legalism, tendentious interpretations of Sacred Scripture, superstitious devotions, legends confused with history, etc. In short, demythologization and desacralization are in full swing…
Are we witnessing, as the purifiers of the faith claim, an unprecedented cleansing of the Christian conscience which, deeply imbued with the call to eternal truth, indignantly rejects the slightest alloy of illusion or lying in the present world? Or is it rather, alas, something simpler and more typically human: a weakening of faith trying to justify itself by dressing up as progress?
I do not search the reins and hearts, but many manifest signs (“by their fruits you shall know them”) lead me to think that the second option is more often proven true. History has, moreover, shown that feverish purifications almost always stem from the least purified motives. Men of my generation experienced this after the Liberation, at the bloody dawn of a “hard and pure” Republic. That second term was superfluous, and the first was only obtained by a long series of abuses and cruelties.
Nietszche said (I cite from memory, but I am certain of the sense) that no social formation, in its ascendant and conquering phase, had ever doubted its right to commit injustices and to lie. And André Gide said that, among true believers, faith dispenses from good faith. Setting aside the anti-religious biases of these authors, the fact remains that between two men of equal moral sensibility and information, he who believes wholeheartedly in the overall truth of his cause is less sensitive to details than he whose faith begins to waver. The former—often without explicitly asking himself the question [Note 2]—sees these impurities as a small price to pay for such an infinitely precious good, whereas the latter finds the price all the heavier the less the value he attaches to the goal. Uncertainty about possessing essential truths makes one allergic to accessory lies. A goal one no longer feels is certain justifies the means less and less.
Fatigue and failure are the great springs of scrupulosity and repentance. It is when one grows doubtful of victory that one realizes—and exaggerates—the harmful futility of war. “You gotta do what you gotta do,” thinks the pumped-up fighter. But the discouraged soldier sighs, “What’s the point?” And he masks his profound sense of defeat with the dignified façade of moral scrupulosity. This psychological law holds true across all levels and in every domain! “War is such a frightful thing!” exclaimed a German soldier I met in August 1944 on the path to their defeat. Would he have said the same back in 1940? It is when “morale” is highest that one thinks least of morality! I am also reminded of a lady who confided in me in a moment of clarity, “It was on the day I felt an overwhelming urge to confess everything to my husband that I knew I no longer loved my lover.” The ultimate example lies in the guilty conscience of so many of those who are dying who, as the Marquis of Vauvenargues put it, “slander their own lives,” resorting to those acts of “impenitent and criminal penitence” that Bossuet abhorred.
I can already hear the objection: “What right do you have to interpret so basely the attitude of Christians who find the presence of lies in the Church intolerable? You mentioned saints who seemed indifferent to the lies of their time, but were there not others saints who protested—sometimes even unto martyrdom—against the lies you think are negligible details? And is it not rather the cynics and the ‘politicians’ (in the pejorative sense Péguy gave this term) who, in the Church, have never worried about their choice of means and piled up lies?”
I reply: I do not make indiscriminate accusations and, where I do accuse, I provide my reasons. I have serious reasons to suspect (always in the line of Péguy’s famous antithesis) that certain lofty Christian consciences are hiding a simple and vulgar change of policy behind a mystical façade.
Let me explain. A man who presents himself as an unconditional lover of truth, whatever it may be and whatever the cost (for example, even if it shakes the faith of the simple or overturns the social order) can only be taken seriously if he consistently shows the same aversion to all forms of lying, including and especially those that align his own opinions and passions. However, we immediately notice two things oddly distant from such an ideal:
1. These foes of lies seek the truth in the fringes of religion, to the detriment of the central truths.
2. Even in these fringes, their passion for the truth remains one-sided, hemiplegic, one might say.
Regarding the first point: I was recently talking with a young progressive cleric. His conversation was nothing but a torrent of indignant complaints about lies and hypocrisy in the Church—that is, the pre-Conciliar Church, which, to hear him, might well have been the kingdom of the Antichrist. He criticized everything, from the perfidious translation of the Vulgate and devotion of Saint Anthony of Padua to the criminal indifference of Christians to social injustices and to the suffering of underdeveloped countries, passing, inevitably, through sexual morality, a source of inhibitions and neuroses, and the psychological ambiguities of clerical celibacy. Elements of truth and genuine generosity floated like flotsam in this flood swollen with utopias and preconceived views. But concerning the great truths of the faith and the unchanging pillars of religion, not a word. And when I pressed my interlocutor on the dogmas of divine transcendence, original sin, redemption, the four last things, and the real presence in the Eucharist, he replied that these were notions that “no longer speak” to modern man, and that the essential thing was to “embody” the Gospel by collaborating in everything that might promote individual growth and social harmony.
And so, here we have Christians who focus all their attention on the temporal consequences of Gospel truths while allowing their foundations to be undermined. The slightest defects in the water supply and plumbing outrage them, but they care little about the neglect, diversion, or pollution of the source. This contradiction is easily explained: man is made for absolute truth, and those who do not find it where it is (in heaven and the eternal) are doomed to seek it in vain where it is not and never shall be: on earth and in time…
But where does the worst offence to truth lie? In the alteration or ignorance of historical, psychological, and scientific truths, which the purifiers denounce with such zeal, or rather in indifference to theological truth? Does the truth revealed by God deserve less respect than human truths, which are, like man himself, imperfect, changing, and subject to constant doubt and revision? One would like to ask the following questions to all those clerics who are so punctilious when it comes to the means but so neglectful with respect to principles and ends: Do you still believe in the core truths of Christianity? If so, why does your faith not give you the courage to preach them, “in season and out of season,” as the Apostle says, in all their strength and glory, defending them steadfastly against those who deny or distort them? And if you no longer believe, why does your unbelief not give you the courage to admit it publicly and to leave the house whose foundations you reject? In either case, at least have the decency not to flaunt your horror of hypocrisy…
Regarding the second point: Even when it comes to psychological and social matters, aversion to lying is subject to strange lapses. This aversion is especially impassioned regarding the wrongdoings of the past, and everything that today is seen as representing the past, but is practically non-existent when it comes to the massive falsehoods disseminated by propaganda imagined, rightly or wrongly, to prefigure the future.
To put it bluntly: there is hypersensitivity to right-wing lies and insensitivity to left-wing lies. Pia fraus, intolerable in the service of tradition, is suddenly acceptable as a tool of the Revolution. I have seen Catholics fuming with indignation when discussing certain methods of apostolate used in the last century in the missions, only to be filled with excitement at the tales of the exploits of Fidel Castro’s missionaries in Latin America.
Thus, the same lie denounced as poison in one context is embraced, in a higher dose, as a cure in another. “The abuses of capitalism in Latin America justify these methods,” I have been told by way of explanation, “You cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Fine. That is exactly what Machiavelli would say. But by saying this you reveal that you do not find impure means repugnant a priori. And your selective outrage would lead one to believe men in the past broke eggs without ever managing to make an omelette…
The matter seems very clear. This is not an unprecedented spiritual ascent, but a reversal, a fall of Christian faith and hope from heaven down to earth. The process unfolds in two stages:
a) As a man’s faith wanes he becomes all the more demanding, irritable, and quick to criticize details the less enamoured he is with the whole. A familiar story. The faintest smell of cooking is unbearable to someone without an appetite, and a lover who once overlooked his beloved’s flaws sees nothing but those imperfections once his passion has cooled.
b) Thereafter, disappointment becomes exaggerated and twisted in order to justify abandoning old beliefs and embracing a new faith that seems fresh and full of promise. Throwing two thousand years of tradition overboard does not happen without some pangs of conscience, but these are soothed by denigrating tradition in the name of evangelical purity, until the Gospel itself, after having been used as a tool to liquidate the Church, is relegated to an outdated “phase” of evolution. The defector always needs excuses and alibis to escape the reproaches of his conscience and the scorn of his peers; he finds them in impossible standards and slander. Betrayal is justified by tarnishing the betrayed cause. Give the dog a bad name… It was in the name of ideal justice that the Ass was condemned in La Fontaine’s fable “The Animals Sick of the Plague.”
In conclusion: The Revolution taking place within the Church today is not progress towards the truth, but a transfer of lies, moving, as certain diseases do, from the periphery to the centre, gnawing away at the substance of the faith. We must—and this warning applies to most revolutionary ideals at work in the modern world—be sufficiently clear-sighted to discern the true motives beneath false pretences, lest we succumb to the specious allurements emanating from decay masquerading as rebirth.
*
One last thing. “You have denounced,” one might object, “the lies inherent in modernism and progressivism. Does this mean that traditionalists (or, as they are called today, integralists) offer spotless mirrors of the truth?”
God save me from such cheap Manichæanism! I have only pointed out the evil that, in the current context, seems to me the most widespread, virulent, and dangerous. Men on the right have their shortcomings, blind spots, and biases. Like others, they fall sometimes for the temptation of using bad faith for a good cause, but no one can deny that the whirlwind of madness and self-destruction blowing through the Church today comes from the left, not the right…
And, to bring this issue of lying to a close, we must allow ourselves to be guided in our thoughts and actions by two certainties.
The first is that lying will endure as long as man’s frailty and malice, that is, until the Last Judgement. Omnis homo mendax, Scripture says. And I do not believe that the passage of time acts like an eraser removing the consequences of original sin.
The second is that, as disciples of a God who is Truth, we must combat lies in all their forms and disguises. And without expecting a definitive victory here on earth, because the Prince of this world is also “the father of lies.”
But there is a hierarchy of truths: material truth, spiritual truth, metaphysical truth, and, at the summit, supernatural truth—and our rejection of lying must respect this hierarchy. For example, lies used as a psychological tool in apostolic missions (I think back to the missions preached in my childhood by the Redemptorist Fathers…) or those that consist in allowing wildly imaginative minds to endlessly weave legends, are infinitely less serious than the sort of indifference to the supreme truth that contributes or consents to the undermining of a dogma. Hence the need to give absolute priority to eternal truths, adhering to them with all our soul, and drawing from them the standards and criteria for our actions in a temporal world where everything is mixture and ambiguity. Quid hoc ad æternitatem? Without this anchor in absolute truth, all relative truths become blurred and devour each other.
In the final analysis, the problem of lying in the Church boils down to the adaptation of means to the end. The end is one: obtaining eternal life for souls. The means are multiple, encompassing all aspects of the temporal realm. It is evident that the more attached we are to this end and imbued with its purity, the less we will succumb to the temptation of using questionable means. Saint Louis and Saint Joan of Arc were temporal leaders, and I am not aware that they sinned through an excess of Machiavellianism. In extreme cases, this attitude can lead to martyrdom—which is still a means, and often, as history proves, the most efficacious of all. Without this internal purification, all attempts at external purification fail or, worse yet (and history bears eloquent witness to this as well), lead to greater impurity.
“Serve God first,” Joan of Arc used to say. If one wants to give truth to men, one must seek it at its source, through the prayer, self-denial, and solitude required for such an ascent. For this problem, like all essentially human problems, has but one solution, encapsulated in a single word that we must not be afraid to repeat, however outdated it might be in this century enslaved to fashion: holiness.
NOTES:
1. Louis Salleron, “Une question de conscience: vérité et mensonge dans l’Église,” Itinéraires 135 (July–August 1969).
2. What did so detached as mystic as Saint John of the Cross think about Philip II’s semi-theocracy, the tribunals of the Inquisition, the strange methods of apostolate used in America, etc.? Did he even pay the slightest attention to these issues? His only care was to go to God and lead the souls under his charge to Him. One might argue that, given the slowness and rarity of communications in the sixteenth century, he did not protest against these abuses for the excellent reason that he was not informed about them. But someone like [the Dominican friar, Bartolomé] de las Casas, for example, who lived in America, reacted vigorously against the mistreatments inflicted upon the Indians. Fair enough: each one pursued his own vocation until the end and occupied himself with what concerned him directly. Today, the opposite is happening. Thanks to advances in information, we are seeing an incredible expansion of moral conscience. We are reminded endlessly that we are concerned (pardon the fashionable solecism) with all the misfortunes and injustices of the universe. And from being “concerned with” to being “responsible for” there is only a small step one readily takes. I would gladly see progress in this abrupt expansion of conscience to a global scale if it did not almost universally coincide with the neglect of immediate personal responsibility. It seems as if moral sensitivity grows in proportion to the distance and the inability to intervene effectively: hypersensitivity in the periphery, insensitivity at the centre. One example among many: I know a country priest whose conversation sputters endlessly about Vietnam, guerillas in Latin America, the black problem in the U.S.A., etc., and who neglects the basic duties of his position: catechism, confessions, sick calls… Engrossed to such a degree by global issues, how could he not forget his village and belfry?
