The mere thought that, supposing I were baptized with any sentiments other than those that are fitting, I should ever come to have even a single instant or a single inward movement of regret, such a thought fills me with horror. Even if I were certain that baptism was the absolute condition of salvation, I would not run this risk, even to save my soul. I would choose to abstain from it until I became convinced that I was not running this risk. One only has such a conviction when one thinks that one is acting in obedience. Only obedience is invulnerable for all time.

On the strength of this scruple — and others — Weil was never baptized, choosing instead to maintain her solidarity-through-solitariness. (In the first letter she asserts that to enter the church would compromise her solidarity with humankind as a whole; in the second letter she asserts that to enter the church would be an unfortunate social participation, impinging upon her vocation of alienation. The two sentiments are identical I think.) I can’t point to a similar result in my own life — I was baptized despite a fear that I might someday look back and discover I had participated in the sacrament for illegitimate motives. I would defend my different response to this fear by arguing that the sacraments are a kind of embodied looking which imply far more of solidarity with humankind (in dependence on God) than of an exclusive solidarity with the “pious.”At any rate, one of the themes present in Weil’s reflections reminded me strongly of another unconventional Christian I recently encountered in literature: Graham Greene’s “whiskey priest.”

This character is featured as the protagonist of The Power and the Glory, a story of negative sainthood. The whiskey priest is a drunkard, a sinful cleric who even broke his vows of chastity, creating an illegitimate daughter. But he lives in a time of persecution, when the government is forcing all priests to renounce their vocation and faith or to suffer execution. The whiskey priest regrets his impiety, castigates himself as unworthy of his office, but nonetheless serves as a vehicle of grace to the individuals whose paths cross his own — he is possibly the only priest who has not fled or renounced. The crowning illustration of his astounding negative spirituality occurs when he accuses himself of uncharitableness because he cannot find it in himself to love all people to the degree that he loves his illegitimate daughter — he is unworthy to be among the pious, to be in the church as Weil would say — but his practical selflessness in continually risking his life demonstrates a powerful and deeply Christ-like love for everyone with regard to whom he accuses himself.

In both the case of Weil and the case of the whiskey priest, the Christian theme of solidarity appears in contrast to the exclusivity of religion. Weil feels that though the social solidarity she so profoundly feels is only an imitation of true religion, nonetheless it would be better for her to maintain that inadequate solidarity than to practice an impurely motivated religion:

Foolish as the theory of Durkheim may be in confusing what is religious with what is social, it yet contains an element of truth; that is to say, that the social feeling is so much like the religious as to be mistaken for it. It is like it just as a false diamond is like a real one, so that those who have no spiritual discernment are effectively taken in.

And later:

I have the essential need, and I think I can say the vocation, to move among men of every class and complexion . . . It is because I long to know them so and love them as they are. For it I do not love them as they are, it will not be they whom I love, and my love will be unreal. I do not speak of helping them, because as far as that goes I am unfortunately quite incapable of doing anything as yet. I do not think that in any case I should ever enter a religious order, because that would separate me from ordinary people by a habit. There are some human beings for whom such a separation has no serious disadvantages, because they are already separated from ordinary people by their natural purity of soul. As for me, on the contrary, as I think I told you, I have the germ of all possible crimes, or nearly all, within me.

The whiskey priest, likewise, feels that he is a failure as a priest, as one of the pious, because he cannot maintain a moral fervor for correct internal passions or to achieve self-discipline, while yet evincing a more-than-pious (or truly pious) selflessness that does not seem adequate from his perspective even while it compels our respect and convicts our hearts.

It is not incidental, in light of this shared contrast, this shared negative spirituality, that both the whiskey priest and Simone Weil must be understood in light of Marxism. The whiskey priest’s thoughts and actions are explicitly contrasted throughout the novel with those of a religiously devoted Marxist captain. One of Weil’s original and continuing influences was Marxism. — The anti-religiosity (or true religiosity) of both characters takes the form of a spirituality of suffering, a direct answer to Marx’s accusation that Christianity is an opiate. Far from it. Both the whiskey priest and Weil imitate Christ in rejecting the wine-and-vinegar-filled sponge. They are Christian by virtue of their solidarity with the suffering of the world rather than by virtue of some anodyne they could dispense for that suffering. But this answer bears out the real truth of Marx’s accusation as well. It is by contrast to the exclusivity of commonplace and organized piety that both solidarities define themselves.

One final thing should be mentioned about the spirituality of suffering. Both Weil’s looking and the whiskey priest’s acting are related to Christ’s example not by imitation but by attention. They perceive in themselves a radical lack of righteousness.  Yet in some strange way this very lack becomes the proof of their vocation from God to the unrighteous. In this way, attention, comparison, and the attendant guilt are transformed into imitation. As Christ became sin to represent humankind, Weil and the whiskey priest remain sin to represent Christ.

The most shocking line from Weil’s two letters best summarizes the theme of a spirituality of suffering that I’ve been trying to draw out:

If it were conceivable that in obeying God one should bring about one’s own damnation while in disobeying him one could be saved, I should still choose the way of obedience.