Rural village church of Vaylats, France. The statues were massive, perhaps 10 feet in height. Erected in 1895 with a style influenced by the Sacré Coeur de Montmartre. Photo: K. Buck
Fragmentary:
Like the Pyramids along the Nile …
Like the Sphinx …
These are things I have remarked to myself, privately till now, in these travels through France.
For how often it has felt like I behold the relics of a long-lost civilisation.
True, many of these weather-beaten crucifixes along the roads are barely a century old.
These worn, fading statues of Our Lady are also relatively recent…
Is my analogy not somewhat excessive then?
To compare such monuments to the remains of a civilisation from three thousand years ago?
I do not know.
Even if only one or two hundred years separate Catholic France from modern Republican France, it seems to me that the French who erected these signs of love are so very, very remote from the French of today.
I find a rural church – one of the more beautiful I have seen in my life, in fact.
It is even open, thank God.
It was only erected in 1895, but one can feel that vast, gaping chasm which separates the French of today from those who built this glorious edifice.
One can feel it particularly as one reads the inscription I see placed there above the door:
To Jesus in the Host
Their King, Their Saviour, their adored host
The inhabitants of Vaylats, making with joy all the necessary sacrifices, have erected this church
as a humble monument of their faith, their religion and their love.
Again this is 1895. Not the Middle Ages …
But the French who sacrificed for this church are almost beyond the comprehension of the vast majority of their descendants.
The Catholic Church: is it not still active in France?
Well yes, barely …
But it exists in a form that would be scarcely recognisable to those humble inhabitants of Vaylats …
In the churches here, when they are open, you will find the publicity for the modern Church.
And it is not so very different from the publicity for the modern world.
Much of it, indistinguishable from advertising to support a third world charity say …
To help the misery of the third world is a good thing, no doubt …
The sheer horror and misery …
In the Vaylats church
But this is the Church!
None of this modern publicité is about the Vertical, the Transcendent, the Mystery …
Humble peasants of Vaylats in 1895 you would have no idea as to what happened to the Church of
Your King
Your Saviour
Your Adored Host …
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[...] Allow me to illustrate, dear Reader, by quoting from something I have said elsewhere at this site about ‘the lost civilisation’ of Catholic France: [...]