“From Notre-Dame to Ajaccio, our country has just proven to the world that French fervor, far from being buried, is damn alive”

Arnaud Bouthéon is an essayist. He published Like an athlete of God, sports and Christian manifesto (2017, Savior).

Staggering in its beauty, Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral is now offered to humanity, at the end of an epic five-year project. As a wink, for the conclusion of the octave of thanksgiving for the rebirth of Notre-Dame, Pope Francis wished to honor the Corsican popular fervor, whose joyful turbulence could contrast with the cold protocol of the powerful of this world gathered in the Parisian setting. Far from opposing each other, these two events shed light on each other and three small lessons can be learned from them.

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The first lesson is that of identity. It could be that this word which had become so abrasive and made you complicit in the worst extremisms, could now regain some respectability. The popular and patriotic success of the Olympic Games had initiated this rehabilitation. Indeed, sporting jubilation is based on the meeting of the assumed identities of champions and supporters, united behind a flag, benchmarks and dreams. So when the Corsican cardinal, with his Navarre accent, mentions that “identity is a blessing”it produces a triple effect: it consoles millions of anonymous people a little lost in a world of fractures and confrontations; he joins those who feel guilty for not wanting to witness their planned disappearance; finally, it comforts those who think that local identity is not a leprosy but a form of communion, security and sustainability. In this momentum, without doubt, the next and happy pantheonization of the historian Marc Bloch will strengthen this collective awareness. Ten years ago, an American friend told me : “in France, you are so close to such a powerful spiritual and cultural reality that you no longer see it”. Also, we can hope that the resurrection of Notre-Dame, combined with the celebration of Corsican piety, will act together as a salutary shock of resuscitation for millions of blind, drowsy or anesthetized French people.

The resurrection of the cathedral and the celebration of the cultural and spiritual fervor of Corsica, open avenues for a cultural and spiritual renewal for our country.

Arnaud Bouthéon

The second lesson is that of transmission and more precisely of the desire to transmit our reappropriated identity. On the site of the charred cathedral, the presidential leadership imposed an exceptional organization and law in the service of a public and personal commitment. National talents have freely assembled to serve the beauty of the monument and beyond, to honor a heritage received and intended, very simply, to be returned to humanity. The testimonies of the companions, these intermediate bodies of colleagues similar to those of the Corsican hymns and processions, evoke these virtues of humility, endurance and excellence to serve a reality whose superiority they all confessed. They served to transmit and were only the anonymous artisans of exemplary know-how and interpersonal skills, which could contrast with that of star creators, claiming to want to “push the lines”, while carrying around some useless misunderstandings. . This is the whole distinction between seduction and education: se-ducere which predates around the ego and e-ducere which leads freely “outside”, with disinterest. These millions of gestures summoned by the generosity of inspired patrons, allow visitors to now be captivated by the “grande bellezza”, this ineffable beauty.

Finally, the final lesson of the sequence is that of openness and attraction. The resurrection of the cathedral and the celebration of the cultural and spiritual fervor of Corsica, open avenues for a cultural and spiritual renewal for our country. “What does not regenerate degenerates”said Edgar Morin. The Pontiff's two messages to Our Lady are explicit. The first concerns the universal destination of this property which is the aptly named Notre-Dame Cathedral, “refuge of fishermen, comforter of the afflicted” so that this setting can welcome people from all over the world free of charge. The second message is the wish for renewal for the Church of France. The evangelization of a country always unfolds along a triple path: that of a path of goodness through works of mercy and consolation, that of a path of beauty, through the celebration of a culture that moves and brings together ; that of a path of truth, through the intimate summoning of faith and reason to try to approach this mystery of the heart of man.

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In 2005, while visiting the great arch of La Défense, the American essayist George Weigel noticed that the tourist manual praised the monumental size of a building which made it possible to contain and enshrine the Notre-Dame de Paris cathedral. From this observation was born a little book, The cube and the cathedrala singular meditation on the evolution of our Western societies in their relationship to religion, around this opposition between this cube, symbol of atheist humanism, and the cathedral, manifestation of Christian humanism. By evoking in Corsica, an open secularism based on the public expression of popular religiosity, Pope Francis sends a postcard to the continent intended for the last secularists promoters of an atheistic humanism. Under cover of the best feelings, they will have for fifty years gently orchestrated the diffusion of this “waste culture” denounced by the Pontiff – and whose after-effects, amplified since the Covid crisis, are nothing but loneliness, violence, addictions, desolation morality and existential crisis. A useless bulwark against Islam, the atheist humanist is its promoter despite himself, in his inability to respond to the thirst for grandeur and transcendence. Faced with the quest for religious identity, a Christian reaffiliation is confirmed in church squares, in a welcome and demanding manner.

In a few months, our country has just proven to the whole world that this French fervor is not yet buried: better, it is damn alive.

Arnaud Bouthéon

In this unprecedented context, a certain responsibility now falls to the Catholic Church. Clerics and laity are united in the face of this challenge: to love and serve the world in order to “interpose Christianity” into it, to use Péguy’s beautiful expression. The needs for fraternal formation and support are unanimously expressed here and there. The Gospel is hardly spread by proselytism or propaganda but by attraction. The landmarks of our Christian heritage are now ardently sought after, particularly by younger generations. The very human balance of power teaches us that when things are swaying, we “leans on what resists” to use Andrieux's expression to Bonaparte. Faced with this expectation, the Catholic risk is threefold: that of complicit and demagogic dilution; that of a pious guardianship of an identity magnified but frozen in its past; finally, that of the comfort of the enclosure to count and contemplate oneself.

The Christmas celebration celebrates the mystery of the incarnation of a creator God who chose to become man, to join our misery and deify our humanity. In return, men worked to bring glory to this creator, by mobilizing their talent and their genius. It is driven by this fervor that the builders of cathedrals offered humanity these jewels of goodness, beauty and truth. In a few months, our country has just proven to the whole world that this French fervor is not yet buried: better, it is damn alive.