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.