This is a fascinating dialogue from a non-polemical point of view on Jansenism. At the same time, a historical examination of this sectarian movement in French Catholicism is very sobering in the light of contemporary experience.

Some aspects of Jansenism, characterised by sectarian fanaticism, were quite horrifying – like the Convulsionnaires of Saint-Médard. We might see some comparisons with the modern Pentecostalist and Charismatic movements. This Wikipedia article gives a number of very useful bibliographical references.

I have already touched this subject in this blog, notably in Jansenism and Jansenism Revisited. The links to articles from a “romancatholic.org” site have now been deleted. Frankly, Jansenism is interesting from a historical point of view, but something that is quite irrelevant today.

The video tends to gloss over the distinction between the Old Catholic movements of the eighteenth-century Netherlands and the nineteenth-century German and Swiss opposition to the Ultramontanist movement and Papal Infallibility largely inspired by Ignaz von Döllinger.

The entire period of the post-Tridentine Church and the history of the Jesuits need careful and extensive study. It is not merely a story of Popes and Jesuits, but also the secular powers of Europe, especially the Kingdom of France which was toppled in 1793 by yet again another fanatical and cruel movement.

Sometimes, a cyclical view of history enters the picture and the worst excesses of Jansenism are pinned onto modern rebel and traditionalist movements. I have come across some horrible attitudes in French, American and English traditionalist Roman Catholicism. Some of the crankier personalities go so far as to call themselves Jansenists. They sometimes associated themselves to the Feeneyites around the polemics surrounding the meaning of Extra Ecclesiam nulla salus. The problem is what is meant by the Church, whether it is a totalitarian pseudo-state led by the Pope or a mystical and sacramental Communion of the baptised. This problem was not solved in history, nor at this present time. There are some crazy cults around identifying with Catholicism, but more inspired by narcissistic personality disorder than by historical or theological considerations.

However, it is abusive to use this term, even as an analogy, in regard to most traditionalist Roman Catholics.

Studying this part of history will be harrowing to many of us, leaving us with the question of whether the creation of humanity was no more than a very bad joke! I have no real answer except each one of us being ourselves and living with the immanent spirit of God.

I am about to begin a real study of Sophiology as a foundation of much of the Christian idea to which I have aspired through Romanticism and Idealism. I will begin with the good Dr Michael Martin in America and the great Russian Orthodox priest Sergei Bulgakov. It won’t be easy, and many unhealthy tendencies rose out of this idea too. It is about time that at least a few Christians began to search for what God really is and does and what Christ taught!