Everything Begins in Mysticism

 From Robert Royal at The Catholic Thing:

Long before the term “political correctness” became a media shibboleth, for instance, Péguy noted how certain attitudes were becoming obligatory at political demonstrations: “If you don’t take that line you don’t look sufficiently progressive. . .and it will never be known what acts of cowardice have been motivated by the fear of looking insufficiently progressive.”

Coming from a young socialist – until he experienced being “canceled” (avant la lettre)  by the party’s nomenklatura – this reflects the unwavering honesty and decency of a man who refused to lie just because it reflected badly on his own party. He paid the price: poverty (a heavy burden for someone with a wife and four children) and marginalization by former friends.

This all occurred over the closing of Catholic schools and monasteries by the anti-Catholic French President Émile Combes, in theory because of the Church’s role in the Dreyfus Affair. Péguy was not a Catholic at the time, but it was simply clear to him that the injustice against Dreyfus (a false charge of treason) didn’t justify another injustice – against Catholics.

His most famous words are particularly relevant to our current situation: “Everything begins in mysticism and ends in politics.” (Tout commence en mystique et finit en politique.) What he meant is that every powerful movement begins as a spiritual force, and then is “incarnated” in concrete action. This already reveals a rare depth of heart, especially in public affairs: the France of Péguy’s day was divided, much as we are, between conservatives and progressives. But he recognized related ideals – mystiques – in the best republicans and Catholics.  

Few know the warning, however, that immediately follows: “The interest, the question, the essential is that in each order, in each system, the mysticism not be devoured by the politics to which it gave birth.” Many politicians privately mock this sort of idealism – either regarding it as impractical or using it for personal or partisan purposes. But, says Péguy, it’s the mystique that provides whatever real life there may be in public affairs. And it’s the mystique that’s really practical, that gets something done.

Public life becomes fruitless – and sterile – owing to the practical atheism of all the parties, “the world of those who have no mysticism and boast of it.” In that perspective, the two camps suffer from the same disease: “The movement for de-republicanizing France is profoundly the same movement as the movement which de-Christianized her.”

It took some time to arrive on our shores, but it’s clear that in America, too, we’ve reached a point where the abandoning of our religious traditions threatens our political order, and vice versa.

But Péguy’s work extends far beyond politics. He’s a sort of French Chesterton, throwing off lines of great penetration seemingly without effort:

• Kantianism has clean hands because it has no hands.
• Tyranny is always better organized than freedom.
• Homer is still new this morning, and nothing perhaps is as old as today’s newspaper.

(Read more.)

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