Op-Ed by Top French Philosopher Michel Onfray: "I'm an Atheist, but the Latin Mass is Our Patrimony: Francis is Destroying It; He is Doing What He Was Elected to Do."

Michel Onfray is, by far, the most popular philosopher in France in our days. Take note: we are not saying he is the best or the most reliable, but he is indeed by far the most popular, the one who sells most books, the most influential, and probably the top intellectual figure in the society that practically invented the notion of the "public intellectual.""

An atheist (and formerly a rabid anticlerical), Onfray has, with age, become visibly more concerned with the collapse of Western Civilization. So, when Francis published his document with the intent to ultimately abolish the Latin Mass, Onfray was scandalized, and moved to write the following article for the greatest French daily, Le Figaro:

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Michel Onfray: "The Latin Mass, a Liturgical Patrimony"

Le Figaro

July 19, 2021

OPINION - The writer and philosopher, despite being an atheist, sees in the Catholic Church and her rites the heartbeat of our Civilization. He explains why the decision of pope Francis to restrict the Latin Mass disturbs him.

I am an atheist, as is known, but the life of the Catholic Church interests me because she sets the heartbeat of our Judeo-Christian civilization, in very bad shape. Because, if God is not of my world, my world is one that was made possible by the God of Christians. Whatever may say those who think France started with the Declaration of the Rights of Man, which is as stupid as believing that Russia was born in October 1917, Christianity has shaped a civilization that is my own, and which I believe I can love and defend, without guilt, without apologizing for its errors, without waiting for a redemption after confession, contrition, and kneeling. It is mad how those who despise Christianity acting as if it didn't happen are as impregnated with it as a baba [au rhum] is with rum!

 

Benedict XVI was a philosopher pope, trained in German hermeneutics and phenomenology. He also read French Catholic authors in the original language. His Jesus of Nazareth (2012) is inserted in the history of German idealism, notably the Hegelianism that we call "of the right", to distinguish it of the "left", that led to a young Marx.

 

Pope Francis does not have this theological level, far from it. But he is not deprived of the jesuitical cunning that made him, coming from the Society of Jesus, choose as pontifical name the one that is as opposed as possible to the intrigues and vestibules of power where the Jesuits love to be, that is, that of Francis of Assisi. Jorge Mario Bergoglio, a chemist by training, comes from Peronism; Joseph Ratzinger, a trained theologian, from anti-Nazism.