Pope Francis has just published an encyclical praising the great Christian philosopher of the early modern era, Blaise Pascal. Pascal is particularly important for Postmodern Conservatives because of his influence on Tocqueville. Tocqueville wrote that Pascal was one of the authors he read every day; Peter Lawler highlighted (in The Restless Mind) Pascal’s influence on Tocqueville specifically in the spiritual greatness he found even in the backwoods corners of America.
The encyclical really does highlight what is so great about Pascal, and also gives us some insight into Francis as Pope. He writes:
In reflecting on Pascal’s Pensées, we constantly encounter, in one way or another, this fundamental principle: “reality is superior to ideas”. Pascal teaches us to keep our distance from “various means of masking reality”, from “angelic forms of purity” to “intellectual discourse bereft of wisdom”. Nothing is more dangerous than a disembodied reason: “He who would act as an angel, acts as a beast”. The baneful ideologies from which we continue to suffer in the areas of economics, social life, anthropology and morality, keep their followers imprisoned in a world of illusions, where ideas have replaced reality.
This warning against angelism seems to me reminiscent of Pope Francis’ admonition that shepherds of the Gospel live with “‘the smell of the sheep’, shepherds in the midst of their flock.”
The encyclical is so good that many of my more traditionalist Catholic friends are saying it must have been ghostwritten by someone else, and that “Bergoglio” does not seem like the kind of mind who would appreciate a mind like Pascal’s. This is speculation- but I disagree with them (and of course, Pope Francis signed off on the encyclical one way or the other). Some evidence?
There are two other occasions I have found of Francis discussing Pascal during his Pontificate. These comments at Papal Audiences lead me to think he had more influence on this document than just signing off on a ghostwritten document.
Abraham’s experience is also attested to in one of the most original texts of the history of spirituality: the Memorial of Blaise Pascal. It begins like this: “God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, not of the philosophers and savants. Certitude, certitude; feeling, joy, peace. God of Jesus Christ”. This memorial, written on a small parchment and found after his death, sewn inside the philosopher’s clothing, expresses not an intellectual reflection that a wise man like him can conceive of God, but the living, experienced sense of His presence. Pascal even noted the precise instant in which he felt that reality, having finally encountered it: the evening of 23 November 1654. It is not the abstract God or the cosmic God, no. He is the God of a person, of a calling, the God of Abraham, of Isaac, of Jacob, the God who is certainty, who is feeling, who is joy.
How good it would be if each one of us, following the example of Saint Joseph, were able to recover this contemplative dimension of life, opened wide in silence. But we all know from experience that it is not easy: silence frightens us a little, because it asks us to delve into ourselves and to confront the part of us that is most true. And many people are afraid of silence, they have to speak, and speak, and speak, or listen to radio or television… but they cannot accept silence because they are afraid. The philosopher Pascal observed that “all the unhappiness of men arises from one single fact, that they cannot stay quietly in their own chamber”.
And so perhaps, we may not be inclined to call Pope Francis a “philosopher Pope” as Peter Lawler called St. JPII and Benedict XVI (both invoked in the Pascal encyclical)… but, I do think Pope Francis sees the value of wisdom coming from Christians like Pascal.
Even a stopped clock is right twice per day. The flock needs more than that from this pope.
Hopefully, the flock will get more!