Thursday, September 10, 2009

Où sont les Mugniers d'antan?

The Catholic Church's almost certainly illegal, six-figure involvement in efforts to repeal Maine's same-sex marriage law has certainly highlighted in my own mind my complicated family history with the Roman faith. My parents were married in a Catholic church in 1950, but my mother was an inactive Presbyterian and did not convert. I know my parents were required to receive religious counseling and my mother promised to raise her children as Catholics--a promise she made, as we joked in my family, with one hand and fingers crossed behind her back. My father, who came from a devout Catholic family, had received a Catholic secondary education and had a brother in the priesthood, was quite a thorough backslider at that time and was not moved to press the matter.
I have thought long and hard about why my parents got married in a Catholic church--there is no one living to ask now--and I have concluded it was for my dad's mother's peace of mind. She was a very devout, and had been disabled by multiple strokes. I expect it was very important for her, and hence a kindness.
Despite my mother's crossed fingers, I was baptized Catholic by my uncle, John L. Farrand, Societatis Jesu. Mostly blood triumphed over dogma, I think. Since I was a couple of months old at the time, I had little say in the matter, other than screaming lustily--Uncle Jack was very generous with the baptismal H2O.
Uncle Jack's over-enthusiasm at the baptismal font was uncharacteristic of his kindly, broad-minded interest in and acceptance of the world and, indeed, of his Christianity. According to family legend, my mother grilled Jack early in their acquaintance about what she felt was beyond her grasp in Catholic dogma. Limbo, for example--how could God judge little babies so harshly? Oh, I don't believe that anybody is actually in Limbo, said Jack. What about Purgatory? I don't believe anyone's there either, said Jack.
If my mother had pressed on to inquire about Hell, she would have drawn Jack into repeating his likely source for this line of thinking: a remarkable French priest named Arthur Mugnier. Since Uncle Jack was a lifelong teacher and dévoté of French language and culture, particularly concerning the work and life of Marcel Proust, I am sure he had read French sources about Mugnier (although Mugnier's remarkable journal, covering cultural life in Paris from 1879 to 1939, was not published until 1985, and still awaits translation into English). Abbé Mugnier was the darling both of the old aristocracy of the Faubourg St. Germain in Paris, and also of decadent fin de siècle writers and artists. He was an intimate of Proust, and converted Joris-Karl Huysmans (a naturalist and decadent novelist) to Catholicism. Mugnier was welcome in these diverse corners of French society because he was truly humble, very intelligent, passionately interested in literature and art, and, most importantly, he cared for people as they were, always hoping they would go on to see and to do good.
There are many touching and revealing stories about Abbé Mugnier. Edith Wharton tells several from her own experience:
"I was administering the Sacrament to a dying parishioner," Monsieur l'Abbé said, "and at that moment the poor woman's pet canary escaped from her cage. He flew down, lighted suddenly on her shoulder, and pecked at the Host" [presumably on the woman's tongue, as she struggled to swallow]. "Oh, Monsieur l'Abbé --and what did you do?" said Ms. Wharton. "I blessed the bird," he answered with his quiet smile.
Another is about the plump and rather vain actress who confessed to him (at a soirée) that she spent time gazing at herself naked in a full-length mirror. "Is it a sin?" she asked. "Non, madame," answered Mugnier, "it is simply an error."
These anecdotes, of course, tend to diminish, even to trivialize their subject, as all anecdotes risk doing. While Abbé Mugnier enjoyed the company both of the cultural avant garde and of high society (and was honest with himself, in his journal, in acknowledging this personal vanity), he did not shirk responsibility for the poor and sick in his parish. Wharton also tells this story:
Another day he was talking of the great frost in Paris, when the Seine was frozen over for days, and of the sufferings it had caused among the poor. "I shall never forget the feeling of that cold. On one of the worst nights--or rather at three in the morning, the coldest hour of the twenty-four--I was called out of bed by the sacristan of Sainte Clotilde (his parish), who came to fetch me to take the viaticum to a poor parishioner. The sick man lived a long way off, and oh, how cold we were on the way there, Lalouette and I--yes, the old sacristan's name was Lalouette ('the lark')," he added with a reminiscent laugh.
The play on the name was irresistible, and I exclaimed: "Oh, how tempted you must have been, when he came for you, to cry out: ' 'Tis not the lark, it is the nightingale'..." I broke off, fearing that my quotation might be thought inappropriate; but with his usual calm smile the Abbé answered: "Unfortunately, Madame, we were not in Verona."
While many might find Wharton's witticism callous--Abbé Mugnier and his sacristan had suffered physically and had been on their way to give the last rites to a dying man--Mugnier's answer is an acknowledgment of the quotation and perhaps the kindest of rebukes, but remarkably devoid of condemnation.
Wharton tells another story: "Once, in another vein, he was describing the marriage of two social "climbers" who had invited all of fashionable Paris to their nuptial Mass, and had asked the Abbé (much sought after for these occasions also) to perform the ceremony. At the last moment, when the guests were already assembled, he discovered (what had perhaps been purposely slurred over), that the couple were in some way technically disqualifed for a church marriage. "So," said the Abbé drily, "I blessed them in the sacristy, between two sterilized palms; and of course I could not prevent their assisting at Mass with the rest of the company."
Did the assembled company even know that the good Abbé Mugnier did not marry the couple? One wonders. In any case his exertions are wholly focused on saving them disgrace in front of their invited guests, despite their having deceived him.
Uncle Jack seems to have taken another leaf out of this particular page of the Abbé Mugnier's pastoral playbook. He married my father, a widower, to a divorced Catholic whose first husband was alive. They weren't married in a Catholic church, of course; but Jack signed the marriage license. And I heard him bless the marriage publicly, at my dad's home.
Since I did not learn about Arthur Mugnier until after my uncle Jack had suffered a severe stroke, I did not have an opportunity to ask him whether Mugnier was an important influence on his own sense of what it meant to be a good Catholic and a Christian. But I can attest myself to the fact that I never heard Jack utter a single word in judgment of another person, even when baited or even mocked by others, including my father. Jack's limited free time was largely taken up with visits from former students, who clearly relished his company.
I am very glad that Uncle Jack has passed out of this life and not lived to see what his church is doing this year in Maine. And I also wonder what would have happened to Arthur Mugnier, had Bishop Richard Malone been lord and master of his diocese.

Tuesday, January 6, 2009

Cat Wisdom

"I always sail on French ships. None of that nonsense about women and children first."
--W. Somerset Maugham

Où sont les Mugniers d'antan?

The Catholic Church's almost certainly illegal, six-figure involvement in efforts to repeal Maine's same-sex marriage law has certai...