Simone Weil As We Knew Her

Description

WARNING: Simone Weil was a Gnostic neo-Cathar whom John XXIII ("Oh yes, I love this soul!") and Paul VI both considered important influences in their intellectual de formation.

Y ear of Three Popes p. 2:

He [Paul VI] was theologically formed by reading [Liberal] Maritain, [ecumaniac/Protestant] Congar, and [nature≡grace] de Lubac, and intellectually [de]formed by [Jansenist] Pascal, [novelist] Bernanos, and [Jew-neo-Cathar] Simone Weil.

Weil wrote a letter circa 1940 in which "she spoke of her admiration for the Catharist movement and used the word adherence as opposed to curiosity" (Joseph Marie Perrin, O.P., Simone Weil As We Knew Her pt. 1, ch. 6, fn. 2).
Like the Cathars, Weil

1. rejected the Old Testament, (Cathars rejected the Old Testament in part because they thought the material world and marriage, cf. Gen. 1:28: "be fruitful and multiply", are evil.)
2. was a dualist, (cf. #1 above.)
3. was a revolutionary, anarchist, and Trotskyite, (Cathars were also revolutionaries, being against oaths, the bedrock of feudalism and medieval society.)
4. starved herself to death, a "virtuous" act Albigenses/Cathars called the endura.

During this octave of the feast of St. Dominic, may he intercede for the extirpation from the Church of Modernism, the synthesis of all heresies—including those of the neo-Cathars and Albigensians!

Ses écrits contiennent de nombreux blasphèmes contre la foi catholique, S. Thomas d'Aquin, etc.
Par exemple:
Lettre à un religieux:

Donc l'affirmation de saint Thomas que celui qui refuse son adhésion à un seul article de foi n'a la foi à aucun degré, est fausse, à moins qu'on ne puisse établir que les hérétiques n'ont jamais eu la charité du prochain. Mais ce serait difficile. Autant qu'on sache, les « parfaits » cathares, par exemple, la possédaient à un degré très rare même parmi les saints.

et

Les Samaritains étaient à l'ancienne Loi ce que les hérétiques sont à l'Église. Les « parfaits » cathares (entre autres) étaient à quantité de théologiens ce qu'est le Samaritain de la parabole au prêtre et au lévite. Dès lors, que penser de ceux qui les ont laissé massacrer et ont encouragé Simon de Montfort ?

Cette parabole aurait dû apprendre à l'Église à ne jamais excommunier quiconque pratique l'amour du prochain.

Elle rabaisse Sainte Thérèse:

Des saints d'une très haute spiritualité, comme Saint Jean de la Croix, ont saisi simultanément et avec une force égale l'aspect personnel et l'aspect impersonnel de Dieu. Des âmes moins avancées portent leur attention et leur foi surtout ou exclusivement sur l'un de ces deux aspects. Ainsi la petite sainte Thérèse de Lisieux ne se représentait qu'un Dieu personnel.

N'est-il pas évident qu'elle était pleine de haine de l'Église?

In 1941 Simone Weil was introduced to Father Jean-Marie Perrin, a priest of the Dominican order whose friendship became one of the most significant influences on her spiritual development. It was for Father Perrin that she wrote her 'spiritual autobiography', contained in Waiting for God, and to him that she later wrote 'Letter to a Priest'. When Weil requested work as a field hand, Perrin sent her to Gustave Thibon, a farmer and Christian philosopher. From 1941-2, Weil stayed with the Thibon family, working in the fields by day while writing by night the notebooks which posthumously became Gravity and Grace and other seminal works. Perrin and Thibon met Weil at a time when her interior life and her creative genius were at the height of their glowing maturity. During the short but deep period of their acquaintance with her, they came to know her as she actually was. Their accounts of this time reveal her to us in the bare parlour of the Dominican convent at Marseilles where, after waiting her turn among a stream of refugees, she discussed her personal problems with Father Perrin. They show her to us in the vineyards of Ardèche, and on the stone seat by the fountain overlooking the Rhone valley where she read Plato to Thibon, her host. First published in 1953, and now newly introduced by Patricia Little, this unique portrait depicts Weil through the eyes of her friends, not as a strange and unaccountable genius but as an ardent and very human young person in search of truth and knowledge.

Surrexit Dominus vere, alleluia!

About 1 Cor 15:44, notice that, unlike the “Platonic forms,” strictly speaking, Hebraic-minded Catholic St. Paul still speaks of a “body” (σῶμα) while referring to what is “spiritual” (πνευματικόν). Plato’s intelligible forms are not bodies. St. Paul subtly avoids the (unbiblical) dualism, possessing a revealed grasp of a reality pertaining to what is shown in Our Lord Himself, raised from the dead (on this very day!). Fascinatingly, the Greek and Aramaic terms he uses highlight very well this crucial subtlety (also a reference to the bodily subtlety St. Thomas talks about in regard to the glorified body, in ST, Suppl. q. 83). For, notice further, he technically uses ψυχικόν (Aramaic נפשניא, literally based on the Hebrew word “soul,” נפש) to describe what St. Jerome renders by “animal” (correctly so, provided one sees and understands the meaning of anima , which is not quite the “natural” we get in the regular English translations of verse 44). Thus, St. Paul is presenting a revealed anthropology wherein the body is already a “souled” (lit. ψυχικόν, from ψυχή, “soul”) body, insofar as it is indeed a body anima -ted by a soul. But this body ultimately becomes a “spirited” (lit. “spiri-ted,” πνευμα-τικόν --> Aramaic, רוחניא) body, i.e. a body with literally spiritualized (glorified) properties (being a raised, ἐγείρεται/surget body).

In John 1:13, the underlying plural (αἱμάτων) is in fact a Semitic grammatical feature, cf. in the Psalms (and elsewhere in Scripture), for ex. in Psalm 59/58:2 (lit. “men of bloods,” דָמִים is literally a plural).

Spiritual adoption is indeed a great and truly astounding gift to us, incomparably greater than any biological filiation (God being by essence spiritual Himself, and intending for us to be like Him, Gen 1:26-27, 1 John 3:2). Whereas the worldly culture around us appears to be increasingly concerned and hyping about DNA tests, genealogy research, and all manner of naturalistic, ultimately vain pursuits…

Carissimi, nunc filii Dei sumus : et nondum apparuit quid erimus. Scimus quoniam cum apparuerit, similes ei erimus : quoniam videbimus eum sicuti est.

From what I've read, σῶμα is more akin to "person" (or how we as a body-soul composite are manifested), and σάρξ is more akin to "body".

The over-interpretation of σωμα to mean “person” (a concept which, from its underlying Greek image, πρόσωπον, would fit well in modern psychology to mean something like “psychological mask”) reflects its more contemporary philosophical extended applications, departing from the primary ground its scriptural meaning stems from. The term literally refers to corporeality , in the physiological sense, corpus , as St. Jerome simply has it (who does not use the word persona to translate σωμα).

σαρξ literally and rather strictly means “flesh” (not “body,” the difference being even more crucial in Aramaic, on account of the powerful and very coherent polysemy of the word for “flesh,” בסרא, which also means “Gospel,” lit. “announcement” --> the latter truly being what the Gospel primarily is and therefore means, and so also, by definition, the very flesh of God Incarnate, announcing His divinity dwelling therein), as in (John 1:14): και ο λογος σαρξ εγενετο…; and in (John 6:52): πως δυναται ουτος ημιν δουναι την σαρκα φαγειν; and again in (John 6:55): η γαρ σαρξ μου αληθως εστιν βρωσις. Undoubtedly, σωμα and σαρξ are closely related, but are not identical.

St. Paul, a master deeply versed in Hebraic, Aramaic, and aspects of Greek culture, subtly spells out the revealed doctrine, keenly drawing the proper distinction befitting the consistent biblical anthropology, which is nowhere dualistic, à la Plato, and latter, as we see with the rise of the degenerate moderns (from Descartes on). The reality signified by σωμα refers to an organic, living unit composed (1 Cor 12:24) of many members (hence, the analogy St. Paul uses through 1 Cor 12-27). But its core ontological quality is irreducible to σαρξ alone, which it is nevertheless essentially made of. While human σαρξ itself is in fact different from and ultimately more than regular animal meat. That is why he uses, even when speaking about the so-called “natural body,” the word ψυχικόν, translated (in English) “natural.” The problem is, it does not strictly mean “natural.” The qualifier for non-glorified bodies is this term, ψυχικόν, literally “souled” (ψυχή), “soul-like” (ψυχ-ικόν) bodies. The natural man already has a body differentiating him from the animal kingdom, based on its psuché -like nature, i.e. an organized whole with a specific life animation, that of the rational soul (cf. Gen 2:7, which highlights the distinction between all living souls, and the breath of/the animation of rationality). The glorified body is the supernaturalized σωμα ψυχικον, made of σαρξ and rationally animated, after it has been raised (εγειρεται). As such, it is then become a σωμα πνευματικον, a spirit-like body made of glorified σαρξ and possessing specific properties (clarity, subtlety, agility, and impassibility).

Qui manducat meam carnem, et bibit meum sanguinem, habet vitam aeternam : et ego resuscitabo eum in novissimo die.

Veni, Domine Jesu...