currently reading:

‘Well, as I was saying, the world is eaten up by boredom. To perceive this needs a little preliminary thought: you can’t see it all at once. It is like dust. You go about and never notice, you breathe it in, you eat and drink it. It is sifted so fine, it doesn’t even grit on your teeth. But stand still for an instant and there it is, coating your face and hands. To shake off this drizzle of ashes you must be for ever on the go. And so people are always “on the go.” Perhaps the answer would be that the world has long been familiar with boredom, that such is the true condition of man. No doubt the seed was scattered all over life, and here and there found fertile soil to take root; but I wonder if man has ever before experienced this contagion, this leprosy of boredom: an aborted despair, a shameful form of despair in some way like the fermentation of a Christianity in decay…

Naturally I keep these thoughts to myself. But I am not ashamed of them. I even believe that they’d be easy enough to communicate, too easy perhaps for my peace of mind—that is to say, for the peace of my conscience…

Our superiors are no longer official optimists. Those who still profess the rule of hope, teach optimism only by force of habit, without believing in what they say. You need only raise the mildest objection and you find them wreathed in knowing deprecating smiles; they beg you to spare them. Old priests are not taken in. For in spite of appearances, provided you use the same official terms—terms which are in any case hard and fast—the themes which inspire official eloquence are no longer the same, and our elders would never be able to recognize them…

By nature I am probably coarse-grained, for I confess that I have always been repelled by the “lettered” priest. After all, to cultivate clever people is merely a way of dining out, and a priest has no right to go out to dinner in a world full of starving people…

For those who have the habit of prayer, thought is too often a mere alibi, a sly way of deciding to do what one wants to do. Reason will always obscure what we wish to keep in the shadows. A worldly man can think out the pros and cons and sum up his chances. No doubt. But what are our chances worth? We who have admitted once and for all into each moment of our puny lives the terrifying presence of God? Unless a priest happens to lose his faith—and then what has he left, for he cannot lose his faith without denying himself? He will never learn to “look after number one” with the alert common sense—nay, with the candour and innocence of the children of this world. What is the use of working out chances? There are no chances against God.’

— Georges Bernanos, The Diary of a Country Priest (1937)