Fr. M.D. Philippe: If we want to understand the very special temptations of the devil on today's people, I believe that it would be important to realize that all this has largely been prepared. It is not something which suddenly happens. It is very true that it shines forth today: the visible manifestations of the devil, of the tempter, come about in many ways today. But that was largely prepared in advance: it is one of the things which struck me very much, as a philosopher studying the ways in which philosophy, for 150 years, has deteriorated so much; formerly philosophers were wise men who reminded people of their finality, who reminded people of the profound sense of their life, which showed people where their true happiness was to be found, while trying to push them aside from all seductions. Today, we have seen the birth of diverse forms of atheist ideologies which have somehow put shadows into our contemporary philosophical culture. When people, using a philosophical dialectic, reject God and affirm: "God does not exist", they want by the same fact to exalt themselves and they do it in diverse ways to exalt themselves in their wrong paths; if people forget God, if they reject God, they exalt themselves and pretend that they are the masters of all, the dominators. Therefore they don't want to look for happiness outside of themselves, or in a collective way, in a massive way, while losing their own personality.

If we truly wanted to understand what happens in today's world, to understand this secularization of our culture, it would be very interesting to see these diverse forms of atheist ideologies which, always imperatively reject the existence of Christ, of a Savior, and the existence of a Creator: God no longer exists, God has never been, God has been dreamed of by us who projected in the beyond something of our desires. For them, the human being in fact ought to look at himself and to understand that there is like a certain infiniteness in him. Feuerbach, one philosopher who very deeply marked this research of atheist ideology, is the first one to show that the human being is made for the infinite; when he pretends that there is an infinite being, infinitely good, infinitely intelligent, it is in reality he himself who possesses such infinity. There have been other forms of atheist ideologies: one is the atheist ideology developed by Freud who has also so much impressed upon our world because he shows that the human being is indeed not really very much. While folding back in their unconscious, people become incapable of knowing the reason why they have been made. There is also atheist positivism which rejects God, but still wants people to be religious, in a religion which is solely at the service of mankind. If we look carefully at these atheist ideologies, we can order them within seven great modalities. What impresses me as a Christian -and not as philosopher-, is to see that these seven atheist ideologies are like anti-Christianity, anti-Beatitudes. All of them go against the great message of Christ: the Evangelical Beatitudes. Christ tells people that they can have happiness on earth, a happiness of peace, of joy, of mercy. There is indeed a marvelous happiness in being merciful and good for men who are the littlest, the poorest, in being attentive to the miserable, attentive to those who can no longer endure. In front of these Evangelical Beatitudes, we can say that there are like seven great forms of anti-Christianity. And these seven great forms of anti-Christianity are present in these seven atheisms which started in the last century, and which flourish in today's world. I am only looking at some of them, because I don't have the time to develop these seven forms of atheism, but it is quite impressive to study them. Today the human being is exalted by science, by a scientific research which seeks to respond to all his questions. If we cannot yet heal men of all his sickness, scientists will say that it is because science is not advanced enough, but that very soon it will be able to achieve it. Science wants to dominate human life: birth, even conception, and then death. There is another form of human exaltation in Nietzsche: to him, thanks to their creativity, people ought to make a new world which will be their world, which will no longer be the world of the Creator, Nietzsche says that with a great forcefulness: when we find ourselves facing the desert, facing the sea, the ocean, facing the mountain, we say: "God", we think of the Creator, we instinctively think of the Creator, we are impressed by the silence. When we are in a town, then we always say: "man", because the Creator is hidden by this world shaped by us, hidden by technique, by our science, by an art which is not always what leads toward God and which often leads us back to our own drama, and sometimes even leads us to despair. God is absent from this culture in which we are. We often speak today of the pollution of the atmosphere, and it is true, in certain towns, that pollution can even become tragic. The other day, I was going to Geneva, and they told me that Geneva is one of the most polluted towns of Europe. This is not astonishing since Geneva is in a basin, with an enormous human density. Some people start even asking themselves if it might be necessary to stop all cars, in order to decrease pollution. But there is a really more serious pollution than that: it is the pollution of our culture. Today's culture is polluted, since it no longer allows people to discover what is greatest in them: this religious attitude, this mystery of adoration by which they are carried towards God, by which they are oriented towards God, and recognize His presence. Our whole culture leads the human being towards himself; but it is a human being who is mutilated, who is not in his full development. I appreciate that there are still places where culture remains what it should be, where there is still something very great, and we will come back to this. But, in general, we feel very well that our culture doesn't manifest the human being in all his dimensions. It is easier to communicate to people dramas, murders, the whole negative aspect of evil, than to communicate all that is positive in their heart, their need of happiness, their prayer. We are in a world which is more and more polluted in its culture in relation to what good, love, religion, represent in their profound sense. Our culture shows us grimaces of all these positive aspects, which constantly obstruct us and make it very difficult for us to rediscover the source, to go back to this source from where we come, that is to rediscover the mystery of the Father and the mystery of the Creator. I believe that there are like two great breakdowns in today's culture. The splitting up with respect to the Father is easy to understand: Freudian psychology has not ceased showing that the father, to the extent that he exercises authority, is someone who hinders the child from developing. He is a hinderer, someone who pulls the child away from his mother, this source which would be able to make him bloom. He is as the one who, because of his authority, comes to make ruptures. We have confused authority and power, and we have confused the father source of love, with the father exercising his authority on the model of the famous pater familias.

Fr. John-Mary: Father, can I ask you a question? You are about to speak of the many ways by which we try today to free ourselves, in a certain way, from God. But isn't it normal for us today to feel this necessity to proclaim our liberty, our dignity, because we have often been told of God as of someone who was dominating us and was an obstacle to our freedom.

Fr. M.D. Philippe: Surely and, as I already said, it is really necessary to understand that atheist ideologies were not spontaneously born. Atheist ideologies are like a sort of mysticism which wants to free people. You see that today -freedom of woman, freedom of man-as we want to free the human being in all his dimensions. It is very true that there has been a whole understanding of the mystery of God which put power firstly and forgot about his paternal authority. We have not discovered the true face of the Father; I believe that this caused the breakages that Freud showed us, and which have a certain foundation in reality. Freud has not invented that all alone; he saw that there could be terrible turnings back arisen from our first education, when the father had not appeared in all his tenderness and in all his love. This appears perhaps much more in America than in Europe. In Europe, it is really necessary to say that the father, heir of the Latin, Roman pater familias, still often appears as the one who has authority and who wishes to impose himself. Freud was not born in America, he was born in Europe, and therefore he reflects this background. If we had time, it would be worthwhile getting into all this. It is clear that the image of God that we have been given has often been an image of an all-powerful God. Because of that, we have confused - even the theologians, which has struck me very much - power and authority. Some years ago, I had to give a little talk on authority; I had not enough time to prepare it, and I had hurried through dictionaries of Catholic theology. Under the item "Authority", there was nothing; but under "Power", there was everything. So I told myself: "that's the way it is; it's unrealistic, it doesn't say anything about authority and puts everything under power". This confusion dates from the 14'th Century, and theologians repeated it. That seems to be of small importance, but it is terrible, because authority is a service. The father who loves his child is there to help him. Therefore he shows his trust and his tenderness, he constantly helps his child, and isn't going to impose himself. Power, on the contrary, imposes itself; it is exercised from the exterior, and is only exercised because it has an efficacity. There again, it is efficacity which has gone first and which has put aside love. It is there that you see what evil is. I am looking at these atheist ideologies, because they manifest evil. But if I look at where these atheist ideologies come from, I can see that they arise from a philosophy which was born, - it must really be said - from a decadent scholasticism where the philosophy had no longer kept any realism. It had become a kind of idealism, in fact a false idealism; it had some models which were no longer related to the reality. As such, the father has earned a model for himself. The mother has perhaps remained closer to her child, she has less exercised this power, she has remained closer to him because of her love. There has been like a separation at the very heart of the family, for which we pay today the consequences. This is therefore something which, I believe, is quite terrible, because these theologians have projected the power of man on God. They haven't seen enough the mystery of the Father, although Jesus came, in the first place, to speak to us of the Father. Because of their confusion between authority and power, the Creator has, by the same token, no longer been looked at in his true light. They have looked at creation above all as a manifestation of efficaciousness, as an artistic realization, and they ended up trying to explain creation on a purely scientific basis. They forgot that creation was a work of love, and that, if God created, it was by pure love, and in pure freedom. It is not therefore only the scientific approach which can speak to us of creation. Creation is something much greater, something which goes much farther. It is only love in its overabundance, it is only love in its freeness which can make us enter into this mystery of Creation. I believe that these are the two great breakages which exist today, and which completely hide the mystery of God from our human standpoint: we have hidden the Father while reducing him to power, and we have reduced the Creator to an artist. We have only looked at the all-powerfulness of God, without looking at Wisdom and of his Love.

Fr. John-Mary: But how is it that we can speak of the mystery of Creation, with all that science brings us today on the origin of the universe, of the human being and of life?

Fr. M.D. Philippe: We touch there an extremely interesting and important problem. I am not able to fully study it, because it is not directly the subject. But it is very fine to evoke it. It is very true that it is difficult to speak today, in a correct way, of Creation. For that reason, many theologians no longer want to speak of it; such an attitude is indeed the easiest one, but they don't have the right to do that, because Believers, in their Credo, say that they believe in a Creator God. It is even the first affirmation of our traditional Credo. We believe in God, the Creator of the visible and invisible world. So, what does that mean? I think that it is necessary to come back to the source and have a new look on the Creator. We ought not to be too impressed by what science can tell us, because science will never be able to tell us about this absolute beginning in time, which creation is. Science remains in conditioning, science remains in becoming, science remains linked to time. Now, to be able to speak of Creation, it is necessary to understand that creation comes from God; it does not come from men. It is therefore not an evolution theory which will be able to speak of creation, because evolution remains all the time in the order of becoming, in the order of the conditioning of human life. Creation begins with God. It is therefore necessary to have a look on God, on his Wisdom, on his Love, to be able to speak of Creation. In today's world, we see very well that God has been put very far away; there is no longer any place for him, in our culture. We push him aside. There is a silence of God which is indeed quite extraordinary. So, if we no longer speak of God, we are no longer going to truly speak of creation; but people feel however that there must really have been a beginning, that our universe is not infinite, but limited; therefore it ought to have a beginning. So they try scientifically to give a sense to this beginning: the Big Bang is such a modern attempt. If we look closely, such a theory tries to give a meaning to the beginning of becoming, but not to the beginning of the absolute, not to the beginning of spirit and of being. Therefore, we can say that the problem of creation is completely spoiled: theologians are afraid to speak of it because of scientists, but scientists can only speak of it in their own way; they cannot do it otherwise. So there is like an emptiness which explains why, in today's world, adoration is very little lived by Christians. We no longer recognize this basic, radical link of our dependence on God. We are afraid to recognize this dependence because we see this dependence as suppressing our liberty, as making us tied up beings. In fact, this dependence on the Creator, as we will try to understand it, is the source of a true liberty, because it is the source of a true love. It is the source of a knowledge which ought to go even farther.

God created our spirit; our spirit comes directly from God and it is made to go even farther in the research of the truth; our spirit is especially made to discover that there is in us something which goes beyond all knowledge. We are capable of loving, of loving a human being who is close to us, whom we have chosen, of loving all other people, and we are especially capable of adoring. Adoration is an act of love, it is not firstly an act of dependence. While recognizing this dependence, our love can blossom out. This is something which is extraordinarily deep in us: there is in us something which is a resemblance with God. From there we can rediscover how man is the image of God.