Catholic for You, Not Me: A Lesson about Vichy

Last updated on: August 8, 2019 at 12:19 pm by John Mark N. Reynolds

Catholic for You, Not Me: A Lesson about Vichy 2019-08-08T12:19:13-04:00 John Mark N. Reynolds

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Imagine a religious right run by a serial adulterer and a political opportunist.

In 1940 the United Kingdom had fled Europe in a miraculous escape from a military debacle. France, the winner of World War I, had fallen apart and Hitler was touring Paris. If France was to survive, then reality had to be faced: the future of Europe was German. The only other option was Stalin in the Soviet Union, and at least in 1940, this seemed no better to many in France. When Hitler allowed France to keep her fleet, which the British promptly destroyed, and a rump of the country pending a peace treaty, an armistice with Germany looked sensible.

And after all, there were two German nations: the crazy folk in the Nazi Party and the gentlemen in the Armed Forces. The occupation of Paris began more as German tourism than brutality, the Germans treated France like a defeated, but respected foe and not like Poland, a nation they despised. In 1940, doing a deal with Hitler seemed practical. Petain, a Marshall of France and hero of Verdun, was willing to stay in the country and see what could be done. He presented this as an almost Christ-like sacrifice.

Pause and consider Petain. He had been blessed with an excellent Catholic education, but personally had become an agnostic. This was convenient as he was a series womanizer. Yet Petain liked Catholic rituals and wanted the masses to do their Catholic duty, even as he married a mistress, a divorcee. Even in this he was a horrible hypocrite, keeping her from public events where practicing Catholics might be offended. This had the benefit of allowing the old man to keep his options open as well. He was willing to defend Catholicism, just not live it.

Petain, like the decadent conservative France of the 1930’s, venerated traditional values while ignoring them. This hypocrisy, this double game, must have made cozying up to the Germans, the enemies of France, easier. After all, if one was for free France, what did it matter if one must also turn the nation into a puppet of the Nazis? Petain and his followers retained the worst of French religious vices.

If Catholic France had a history of sin toward the Jewish people, Petain and his government was fully onboard. The Vichy regime, the rump of France Petain was allowed by Hitler, cultivated the vices of the Church, mouthed the virtues, and ignored both in practice.

If Chesterton is right that hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays virtue, then in normal times a nation can survive some hypocrisy in the governing class. If the populace does her duty, then the virtue of the citizens can compensate for the rot of the rulers. Facing the Nazis, this was not enough. France needed a Joan to counter the wicked king and got a gangster politician enabling a senile sybarite in Petain.

The folk were shell shocked from World War I and weakened by twentieth century decadence. Petain called up old values, while not living them, but compromised with the enemies of the Church: the Nazis and all their works. The German army and aristocrats had made the same bargain and their own lies, hypocrisy, and shame ate them up. The fallen noble man cannot defeat the narcissism of a tyrant without shame. In the end, German aristocrats ended up indistinct from the Nazis, just as Vichy did.

There is no compromise with devils.

All of us sin and must repent. The Vichy government made a deal with the devil to go on pretending values they did not practice. The Vichy compromise looked to the arc of history and guessed badly, but that was not the main problem. The leadership demanded the citizen do what the President would not and that double game failed France as it will fail any republic foolish enough to try it.

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Having started badly, I hope to finish well. Lord Jesus Christ, son of God, have mercy on me as sinner.

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