The events of May 1968 in France – when young Left-wingers brought the country to a standstill and nearly toppled General de Gaulle – are now regarded as a legendary aspect of modern history. Coincidentally or not, they had echoes of political change in Prague, Northern Ireland and the United States, as well as social disturbance and anti-war protests in Britain.
Fifty years on, we’re still analysing why 1968 was such a significant year and what it meant (and why individuals felt drawn to the demonstrations, wittily described in the Catholic Herald recently by Peter Hitchens).
But there is a French viewpoint that the events of 1968 arose from a spiritual crisis, and that the young Marxist and Maoist activists chucking cobblestones at the police were animated by a sense of “alienation” of the spirit. That’s the analysis put forward by the French Catholic writer Gérard Leclerc, in his 1968 retrospective Sous les pavés, l’Esprit (“Underneath the Cobblestones, the Spirit”).
Leclerc is much influenced by the late philosopher Maurice Clavel, who thought that 1968 “was a reaction against man’s profound sense of ‘nothingness’ ”. It was the experience of a society in search of meaning, aspiring to “being” rather than “having”: a society seeking to discover God. The year 1968 was “the end of an age”, for Clavel: the age of a humanism which had lost its sap. May 1968 “reveals a fracture, signifying an ontological exhaustion of the values of the modern world”.
You could, indeed, see the significance of May 1968 that way: that there was a disturbance in the zeitgeist of the world. And, as Leclerc points out, the Catholic Church itself was undergoing profound changes at this time – the publication of Humanae Vitae prompting so much discussion, and dissent, within the Church.
And so many of the ontological and existential questions which were part of the 1968 scene remain relevant to today’s ideas: equality, liberation, imagination, alienation, demonstrations and the rise of celebrity and “the showbiz society” (la societé du spectacle).
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James Wood, a Catholic actor, tweeted in protest against the New York Met’s “Catholic-themed” gala, when various silly billies turned up wearing gem-encrusted mitres, crucifix-garlanded designer frocks, angel feathers, halos and Nativity scenes embedded in headgear.
No other religion would be mocked like this, Mr Wood wrote indignantly. “If this kind of group insult toward a religion were aimed at Islam … we would have another Charlie Hebdo [the Parisian massacre] on our hands.”
The Manhattan soirée marked the launch of a Metropolitan Museum of Art exhibition called “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination”, in which Donatella Versace was closely involved. The Vatican cooperated with the exhibition by providing examples of beautiful vestments.
The launch evening was surely over the top, with Rihanna, Madonna and Sarah Jessica Parker, among others, seeking to outdo one another in a display of outrageous kitsch. The Daily Mail agreed with James Wood. “Would they mock other religions like this?” it asked.
Personally, I would take a more relaxed view, perhaps echoing Oscar Wilde’s dictum that “Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery”. Some of the costume displays were daft, but the fact that every participant could identify, even in parodic form, something they saw as “Catholic style” is an implicit acknowledgement of what they call “brand recognition”.
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The beautiful (13th-14th century) cathedral at Beauvais issues this thoughtful welcome in English to visitors: “No matter who you are, God welcomes you with your joy and your pain, your success and your failure, your hope and your deception*. Whoever you are, welcome!
“You follow generations of people who loved this cathedral, and built it, who made it beautiful and prayed here. Respect the cathedral, go quietly.
“If you believe, pray. If you are seeking, reflect. If you doubt, ask for light. If you suffer, ask for strength. If you are joyful, give thanks. May you dwell in that joy!
“In the Lord’s house you can also meet brothers and sisters … May your visit here warm your heart and give pleasure to your eyes – whoever you are, God welcomes you. And may you have the grace to welcome God too.”
* This should have been translated from the French as “disappointment”; “deception” doesn’t mean the same in English as in French
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