This blog was written in late February, 2020, before the world's attention was diverted to the Covid-19 pandemic. I am going ahead with this post, because the issues are as relevant as ever, even in these new and challenging circumstances.
For many who moved in circles of devotion to Jean Vanier, the news of his sexual involvement with some women who came to him for spiritual accompaniment has been devastating. One correspondent confessed to being “rocked” by this revelation.
I understand this reaction, even though I am not as surprised as some. This has nothing to do with Jean Vanier but because I have a dark view of human nature. The doctrine of original sin has had an inexpungible influence on my thinking since I heard a lecture on it by Reinhold Niebuhr in 1950.
But even knowing that “the old man continues to fight against the new man,” one could indulge the hope that some saints might come close to winning the battle. From reading the L’Arche summary report, it seems that we are dealing with a theoretical justification of sexual activity that seems to be a bizarre Christian version of Left-hand Tantric Buddhism – the use of forbidden things as a means of spiritual liberation (although there are contradictory paradoxes here: Whereas the Tantric pursues the forbidden, including sexual expression, in order to attain a salvific goal, the Philippe/Vanier axis apparently used spiritual teachings to achieve a forbidden end).
There is a persistent question: Were Vanier and Philippe sinister liars exploiting theological ideas to satisfy their own sexual desires? Or did they truly hold to the truth of their sacral/carnal theology? In some respects, the Christine history of theological reflection could have provided them with justificatory clues (subsequently distorted as these clues may have been).
I’m not referring here only to the celebrated Song of Songs. When I read in the testimony that Philippe proclaims “the transcendence of the prophetic mission regarding the norms of morality” I heard Kierkegaard and the “teleological suspension of the ethical.” When Philippe declares “that when one arrives at perfect love, everything is lawful, for there is no more sin,” I hear the antinomianism of the Dutch Schwarmerei of the sixteenth century Protestant reformation. These “enthusiasts” felt they were beyond accepted moral rules – especially sexual ones – because they had been saved by God’s grace and justified by faith.
The clearest evidence of the church’s sexual theology is in the institution of marriage. The marriage liturgy of the United Church of Canada’s Book of Common Order on which I was raised explains human marital relations – which includes, of course, the sexual component – as a symbol of the union between Christ and His church. But then it seems that, fearful that it had opened the door to neo-paganism, the church (all churches) retrenched and circumscribed the link between sex and spirit by restricting sex to marriage. This was a restriction to which Philippe/Vanier evidently did not acquiesce, either out of clandestine and manipulative sexual desire or a genuine conviction that the church erred in this regard. A question that remains to be addressed is: What moral difference would this make?
Where Vanier/Philippe went wrong, in the light of traditional theology, was not in their disavowal of a dualistic Manichaean theology of sex (which would be the standard Christian theological position) but in their disregard of those ancillary rules of sexual fidelity and exclusivity.
Regardless, given the power imbalance between themselves and the women who sought spiritual accompaniment, with the subsequent erosion of the autonomy and agency of these women, these men crossed a line that should never have been crossed.