We started by reflecting on the “virtues” of St. Vincent de Paul as propounded by Louis Abelly, his first biographer. In this article, we begin with Vincent’s “faith.”
“Faith is the foundation of the other virtues, and the strength of the spiritual edifice rests mainly on this mysterious foundation,” Abelly starts.
“Just as the trees buffeted by winds and shaken by storms put down deeper roots, we may say the same of Monsieur Vincent’s faith. God permitted him early in his life, to be tried with temptations and trials relating to this virtue.” And St. Vincent emerged more humble, more enlightened and stronger in his faith.
The Catechism tells us that there are three essential dimensions to the virtue of faith: knowing, doing, entrusting. Faith consists of three things: (1) knowledge (What should I know?); (2) action (What should I do?); and (3) trust (What shall I hope for?).
On the second dimension, St. Vincent’s faith was truly a faith in action. He showed it throughout his life — it was not a faith only in the head and the heart but, as he always told his followers, faith and love should be expressed with “strength of his arms and sweat of his brow.” He preached the faith of Jesus and the apostles to the poor and empowered them so that they themselves became teachers and evangelizers. That is why they are our masters; we are their servants. He said: “The poor have much to teach you. You have so much to learn from them.”
On the third, St. Vincent’s faith was also an “entrusting faith.” Abelly cited the temptation against Vincent’s faith early in his life. His trials prevented him from saying the creed. So, he wrote the creed on a piece of paper and pressed it on his heart every time the temptation came. “He begged our Lord to accept this gesture,” Abelly writes, “so that every time he is tempted he placed his hands over his heart, as a sign that he rejected the temptation, and that he was once again resolved to live until his last breath in the faith of the church.” Vincent’s act of faith in God was so strong that regardless of his emotional-psychological state, he never wavered. Some authors described what happened as some sort of “nervous breakdown,” yet Vincent tried his best to keep on.
I would like to reflect lengthily on the first element — the knowledge dimension of St. Vincent’s faith. What should we believe in and how should we defend the contents of our faith?
On this aspect, Abelly and other authors discussed the saint’s complex relationship with Jansenism. It must have been an attractive theology because many theologians and churchmen — some of whom were St. Vincent’s close friends and confreres — were drawn to it.
But when this heresy of the time was condemned by Rome (1653), he spoke to his community:
“We must thank God for the protection he has given his Church, especially in France, to purify it of the errors which threatened to throw it into such great disarray. God has given me the grace to discern between error and truth… I well recognize that this judgment comes purely from God’s mercy.”
Jansenism — a heretical theological movement in France and the Low Countries in St. Vincent’s time — took its name from its founder, Cornelius Jansen, a Dutch theologian and bishop of Ypres. His main ideas were written in a book entitled “Augustinus” (1640), which he wrote in Louvain, Belgium, while he was teaching there. Jansenism’s core beliefs were fundamentally Augustinian but pushed to their extreme forms. For example, it upholds the radical corruption of human nature due to original sin, the doctrine of predestination, and extreme rigorism, e.g., the practice of not receiving frequent Communion but only in the last years of one’s life, or at the point of death.
Why was Jansenist rigidity attractive in 17th-century France? There were many intersecting social and political factors. First, it had elite backing through the influence of the spiritual school of Port-Royal and some intellectuals like Blaise Pascal, many of whom were known to St. Vincent. Second, it was an assertion of moral purity reminiscent of the Protestant Reform, in contrast to the moral laxity of the Jesuits, who were mostly confessors of the nobility and monarchy. Third, Jansenist Augustinian theology was a middle way for Catholics to assert the moral purity of Calvinists without wanting to become Protestants. Fourth, it was also a reaction to the absolutism, excesses and moral permissiveness of the monarchy of the Ancien Régime.
It was St. Vincent’s friend — Jean Duvergier — the abbot of Saint-Cyran, who placed him in contact with Jansenist ideas in France. For easy reference, we call him “Saint-Cyran.” They became friends because both belonged to the circle of Pierre de Bérulle, the spiritual director of Vincent de Paul. But later, their differences surfaced and the friendship cooled off due to theological and pastoral reasons.
In the beginning, St. Vincent was still trying to convince Saint-Cyran of the danger of his ideas, for instance, his practice of deferring sacramental absolution to a penitent for months until one had fulfilled the penance given him. Or that the Council of Trent was wrong because it changed Church doctrine; or a “just man” needed only to follow the inspiration of the Spirit and need not follow any law of the Church, etc.
But Saint-Cyran rejected Vincent’s advice and thought that the latter was not really a theologian. Despite this, St. Vincent did not give up on him. When Saint-Cyran was arrested and faced a doctrinal trial, Vincent testified at the witness stand that he was “a good man, one of the best I have ever met.”
Despite this friendship, St. Vincent defended the faith of the Church against the Jansenist heresy. His values clashed with the theological beliefs of Saint-Cyran and the Jansenist followers.
First, Vincent’s missionary work and spirit did not harmonize with Jansenist rigidity regarding the sacrament of penance and the withholding of absolution. We have to remember that the Priests of the Mission had been preaching missions and encouraging all people, especially the poor, to go to general confessions. Jansenist moral rigidity was an exclusivist position dismissive of the situation of the poor. It restricts God’s mercy to the privileged, predestined status of some Christians.
Second, Vincent’s vision of the poor person as the image of Christ is totally opposed to the Jansenist pessimistic theology that human nature is totally perverted and corrupted by original sin.
Third, Saint-Cyran also acted to destroy the Church by not believing in the Council of Trent. “Not only was he unwilling to submit to the pope’s decision,” Vincent wrote, “but he did not even believe in the council.” If we have people today who deny that the Holy Spirit inspired Vatican II, we already have the same denialists for the Council of Trent among the Jansenists. For St. Vincent de Paul, it amounted to disobedience to the authority of the pope and the councils.
St. Vincent asserted: “All my life I have dreaded being present at the start of anything heretical… I have always been afraid of falling into the errors of some new doctrine without realizing it. Yes, I have been afraid of this all my life.”
St. Vincent’s defense of the Catholic faith against Jansenist heresy went beyond mere theoretical debate and differences in theological positions.
Deeper than that, it was founded on something more basic drawn from his experience among poor people: the universal love of God for all, Jesus’ preferential love for the poor, and his unconditional forgiveness for all sinners expressed through our missionary outreach, especially to the margins that the dominant society tries its best to exclude.
To listen to and learn from the faith of the poor is paramount to St. Vincent’s faith — something that the Jansenist heresy seems to neglect. St. Oscar Romero expressed this same intuition centuries later: “There are many things that can only be seen through the eyes that have cried.”
Father Daniel Franklin Pilario, C.M., is the President of Adamson University in Manila. He is a theologian, professor, and pastor of an urban poor community on the outskirts of the Philippine capital. He is also the Vincentian Chair for Social Justice at St. John’s University in New York.
