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Simone Weil: Patron Saint of Outsiders

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Timothy John Calvert OP
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Extract

I owe you the truth, at the risk of shocking you, and it gives me the greatest pain to shock you. I love Christ, and the Catholic faith as much as it is possible for so miserably inadequate a creature to love them. I love the saints through their writings and what is told of their lives— apart from some whom it is impossible for me to love fully or to consider as saints. I love the six or seven Catholics of genuine spirituality whom chance has led me to meet in the course of my life. I love the Catholic liturgy, hymns, architecture, rites and ceremonies. But I have not the slightest love for the Church in the strict sense of the word, apart from its relation to all these things that I do love.. .All that I can say is that if such a love constitutes a condition of my spiritual progress which I am unaware of, or if it is part of my vocation, I desire that it may some day be granted to me.

Simone Weil (1909-1943) spent the last six years of her life considering whether it was God’s will that she be baptised into the Church. In her many discussions with priests, she sought to translate her mystical experiences of Christ, who had come down to take possession of her, into an acceptance of the Church as Christ’s Body on earth. It is widely believed that she died without the sacrament of baptism, the Church being an obstacle to her faith in Christ, and not a refuge for that faith.

Type
Research Article
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 81 , Issue 951 , May 2000 , pp. 177 - 183
Copyright
Copyright © 2000 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

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References

1 Weil, Simone, Waiting on God (NY, 1976), p.49–50Google Scholar.

2 The coroner's report into her death.

3 Weil, Simone, Waiting on God (NY, 1976), p.62Google Scholar.

4 ibid., p.67.

5 ibid.

6 ibid., p.68.

7 ibid., 68–9.

8 Perrin, and Thibon, , Simone Weil As We Knew Her (London, 1953), p.35Google Scholar.

9 Petrement, Simone, Simone Weil (NY, 1976), p.456Google Scholar.

10 ibid., p. 456.

11 Nevin, Thomas, Simone Weil: Portrait of a Self Exiled Jew (Chapel Hill, 1991)Google Scholar.

12 Elliot, T.S, prologue to The Need for Roots p.x.

13 Perrin, J.M., op. cit., p.47.

14 ibid., p.73.

15 ibid., p.53.

16 Waiting on God, p.80.

17 Connaissance surnaturelle, p.380. Quoted in Cabaud.

18 Perrin, J.M., op.cit., p.78.

19 Allen, D. and Springsted, E., Spirit Nature and Community, (NY, 1994)Google Scholar, Chapter one, ‘The baptism of Simone Weil,’ p.S.

20 She claims that she had not mentioned it earlier, due to a request by Weil's mother that she remain silent until both she and Weil's father were dead.