10 September, 2011

Pope Benedict on Péguy

This is a short but interesting commentary by Pope Benedict on a performance of the play «Mystère de la Charité de Jeanne d’Arc», which had been written by Charles Péguy, a member of that strong movement of modernist Catholic authors in France, somewhere around the beginning of the 20th century.

It's also nice to see recent papal commentary regarding the role of Joan of Arc and the reasons for her sanctity. Especially since her vocation is currently dismissed even among many Catholics as imaginary and her virtue reduced to her "strong moral conviction"...The rather Reformation-esque opinion that sincerity is the only criterion of sanctity is the commonly accepted one. While the pope does not address this opinion directly, his statements certainly are not framed in such a way as to cast doubt upon the validity of her visions or of her mission to confirm the dauphin's heritage and to end a hundred years of bloodshed by driving the English out of France.

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