We remember Stalin’s brutal question: “ The Pope, how many divisions ? “. He wondered what power the Catholic Church could have. By revisiting a 2000-year history, the fractures over the centuries and current modes of operation fifty years after Vatican IIa sociologist tries to answer.
The Church has long been opposed as an institution governed by its tradition and Christ the bearer of good news of love spread by his charisma. But then, if there is such opposition, why does the Church last ? If there is such a contrast, why are billions of television viewers waiting for the little white smoke, which rises in St. Peter’s Square, during the election of a pope ? And why are three million young people surrounding the new Pope Francis, on Copacabana beach, during the JMJa few months later ?
The question fascinates ; in particular those who wonder why Lenin was not Saint Paul and why the world did not become communist, as it could become Christian. This is perhaps to respond to the Trotskyist activist who notes with envy that the Catholic Church is “ the last true operational International still alive » (p. 13) that Olivier Bobineau addresses this issue. The result is mixed.
History of the Church
While histories of the Church often run several volumes and run into thousands of pages, Olivier Bobineau manages to offer stimulating shortcuts at key stages and places. In the first part, we will find a genealogy: of the communities of the first century and of the triple Jewish, Greek and Roman influence. The third part invites us to repeat historical journeys, but more segmented, on: the election of the pope, the appointment of bishops, the status of parish priests, the mass, confession and canonizations. We thus see an organization being put in place from the initial base.
We may be surprised at the emphasis given each time in the first centuries of the Church, on all these themes. In this regard, the second millennium is passing much faster than the first. At the same time, this bias is fully consistent with the author’s demonstration. On the one hand, he seeks to see if “ the device » has drifted from the initial message. On the other hand, he seems to consider that the whole has been fixed since Pope Gregory VII (1075). Since this Gregorian era, “ the empire of the popes » would be installed and this until today. This would have caused divisions with the Orthodox, then with the Protestants.
Anthropology of the gift
To decipher this apparent divide between a powerful apparatus that has been created and a message of love that serves as its justification, the author then mobilizes different reading grids, coming from certain currents of sociology. In other words, what he then proposes is a reading of the Church at the risk of the social sciences. At the start of the first part, he reuses the late Jacques Lagroye and his Foucauldian reading of the regimes of truth in the Church. In the second part, he turns his back on Luc Boltanski, whom he had happily used in his thesis to move towards the Anti-Utilitarian Movement in the Social Sciences (MAUSS) which claims to be based on Mauss’s anthropology of the gift. Finally, he closes this part by engaging in a debate with certain Marxists (mainly Lourau or Löwy). At the end, it leads to the idea that the Church represents a “ dialectic without synthesis “. On one side, there would be the pole of love, grace and giving. On the other side, there would be the Church. Between the two, meeting and overcoming would seem impossible.
Sociology offers many other ways of reading tensions within Catholicism (Béraud, Gugelot and Saint-Martin, 2012). Theologians are also getting into it, including in terms of internal power (Lorent, 2013). Olivier Bobineau’s book has the merit of consistency. On the other hand, we are often bothered by our approximations and amalgamations on key notions like “ agape ” Or “ grace “. He certainly has the courage to seek to precisely define the content of the Christian message, in order to better see if the Church is faithful to him. This is indeed essential for his research. But the source of the misunderstanding perhaps lies precisely in the sometimes approximate understanding of the message in question, on essential points such as: love, freedom, truth, authority.
Sociology of management
Ultimately, the expected conclusion is that of a Church driven by “ up », centralized and dominating. The pope is then presented as a sovereign pontiff who reigns unchallenged as emperor of faith and law. A billion souls seem to owe him obedience, since he is God’s representative on Earth.
Logically, it would be necessary at least at one time to test the opposing hypothesis, that of a Church of “ down “. If only to ensure the solidity of a vision that is otherwise systematically one-sided. Olivier Bobineau follows this approach in two or three places. When he studies the functioning of the first Christian communities, when he takes stock of the notion of Church “ mystical body » (p 127) or when he cites the great Vatican constitution II “ Lumen Gentium » (p. 183). We then see it: at Ieras in XIeas in XXe century, it is the doctrine of the Church itself which highlights a free people marching towards God and not an army subservient to an earthly leader.
Of course, we must not be satisfied with these intentions, in matters of history and sociology. We should therefore reread the history of the Church and its functioning by adopting at one point this other perspective, oriented towards the faithful who walk both in freedom and in communion. In short, we should consider the hypothesis according to which the tradition of the Church is also, or even above all, constituted through the experiences of each individual and the historical trials of a people on the move. It was the attempt, quickly forgotten, by Michel Clévenot.
To take two emblematic examples of such an approach, by “ the bottom »:
– Was it the Emperor Constantine who made the world become Christian by making this religion official (Veyne’s thesis) or did he make this religion official because the people had already largely become Christian (Baslez’s thesis) ?
– Is it Benoit XVI who was in a hurry to beatify his venerated predecessor or was it the people who cried out “ Santo Subito ! » (“ Holy right away ! “) since the death of Jean-Paul II ?
The proverb “ Vox Populi, Your Dei » seems here to join the deep intuition of a Church which is also built from below and on a daily basis, beyond the so-called summits of power. We are then far from the proposed version of a hegemonic apparatus, with a dominant pope.
In his conclusion, Olivier Bobineau states that “ the Roman instituted apparatus cannot be fashionable, nor dependent on an event, nor dependent on people » (p 205). This definitive formula turns out to be very external. From a more comprehensive perspective, by striving to reconstitute from the inside the system of beliefs thus restored, a Catholic would specify that it is quite the opposite. Rather, the assertion becomes that: the Church is fashionable to the eternity of God, dependent on the event of Christ’s coming, and dependent on the persons of the Trinity. The synthesis, deemed impossible according to the author, between the vertical axis of power and the horizontal axis of human relations is then not only possible but achieved. This is what the Cross symbolizes.
But to stay in a purely sociological or historical perspective, it is appropriate to note to what extent the functioning of the Church can seem confusing, even literally astonishing, when it is reread in terms of power. It is only a question of: subsidiarity, preference for the poor, universal destination of goods. We only talk about elevating the humble, overthrowing the powerful, with the first being the last.
As for the figure of the pope, we must remember that Peter, the first pope, is the one who refused to let Jesus wash his feet, before understanding that he would have to do the same with the first Christians. He is also the one who denies his Master three times, before understanding that he does not have to be afraid. His recent successors give the example of two freedoms for the same truth: Jean-Paul II which remains until old age, illness and death ; Benoit XVI who leaves gently to let another continue. Don’t both show, each in their own way, that the power exercised here on earth is only valuable if it is a service? ?