Beyond the mists and mysteries.
I was still pondering some of the criticisms leveled at Gina by her detractors, but she was too modest and uninformed about religion to engage in polemics, and that bothered me.
Always alert, I didn’t really know why I had ordered a book by the great novelist Guy des Cars, whose works I had read forty years earlier, but one of his books had particularly struck me. As if by magic, I went to my library this morning, and it was this book that caught my eye.
The Cathedral of Hate
Guided once again, I went straight to the chapter that would allow me to convince a few skeptics and, without a hangover, express my thoughts, against all odds.
The chapter is titled:
THE WORK
Moreau had just entered the only place where he had any chance of meeting André Serval’s principal collaborator and designated successor: the Bagneux cemetery. After inquiring with a caretaker about the various burials scheduled for that day, he followed the central path. He walked on, occasionally glancing at an inscription whose banality was disconcerting. For the first time since embarking on this strange, investigative reporting project, he was able to reflect.
The cemetery paths were deserted. The sounds of the big city reached them only in a very muffled form: it was almost silent. A few sparrows and pigeons from Paris hopped around the graves, some of which, abandoned, were covered in moss and overgrown with grass. Others, on the contrary, seemed overly adorned with flowers, giving the impression that wealthy families—whose names were complacently displayed on the plots—had hired organizations specializing in the monthly decoration of graves, before which none of the survivors would take the time to pay their respects.
“Why do people in France have so little respect for their dead?” the journalist wondered. “Why do they transform these resting places into sinister necropolises? Why don’t they imitate the South Americans, whose cemeteries remain cheerful?”
During a reporting trip to Chile, he discovered that, in this young country, cemeteries are places for strolling, where the whole town comes on Sundays and holidays.
The cult of the dead there is exalted with joy, bathed in sunshine: children play by the graves, students stroll along the paths reciting poetry, and lovers exchange tender vows in the shade of a tomb. A strange and joyful poetry hangs over each necropolis: the deceased must not feel forgotten there, since the living continue to associate them with the essential moments of their lives.
Moreau had written an article on this subject, but the newspaper where he was working at the time refused to publish it, claiming that French readers would be shocked to learn that a cemetery was not necessarily a somber place. A few years had passed, and as he walked between the rows of graves in Bagneux, the young man suddenly felt an irrational need to breathe new life into a city cemetery.
He longed to unearth the countless secrets buried beneath each slab, to reveal them to the indifferent, and to redress, through his articles, an oversight that seemed unjust to him. He also remembered that fairy tale where a woodcutter’s children were abandoned one night in a cemetery… Perched on the fence wall, casting their dark shadows against a turbulent sky, cats meowed at the moon… The willows and cypresses, caressed by an icy wind, took on the ominous appearance of ghosts with enormous arms… Huddled together, the little ones were afraid and trembling… One of them let out a heart-rending cry… But this child’s cry worked a miracle: the cats stopped meowing, the evening wind died down, the trees regained their stillness, and the graves seemed to disappear forever beneath the flowers. “You see, there are no dead people!” said the eldest child.
“You see, there are no dead people!” “The child of the fairy tale was right,” Moreau thought… There would never be any deaths if the living took the trouble to often resurrect them in their memories… He had to resurrect in the minds of millions of people the prodigious figure of the man who had dreamed of building a cathedral.
This is the answer Gina almost gave, mentioning churches ⛪️, without specifying (Catholic) because the other Protestant churches wouldn’t have this privilege of welcoming souls in distress, whom they, moreover, condition by sending them to await the resurrection of Jesus in the tomb. Lacking a rite of liberation for souls, they condemn them to the hell of the afterlife.
These were the souls conditioned to feel aversion for the Catholic Church, whose lamentations Gina heard as she passed by the cemetery.
Why this comparison? It stems from what was mentioned above, and also from the following question: why do the French place so little importance on their dead?
It’s because in this country, the population is predominantly Catholic, and the rites of liberation are beneficial to the souls of the deceased, who follow the path the officiants suggest: incense, the sprinkling of holy water, and above all, the sound of the bell 🔔 (The Firmament) which helps them depart from the mortal world they have just left to reach the true FIRMAMENT.
I am neither accusing nor excusing anyone.
I have simply expressed my understanding based on my observations and experiences.
Please comment below.
THE TRUTH WILL SET YOU FREE. 🙏