In the Closet of the Vatican

by Frédéric Martel

  The theme of chastity was a recurrent preoccupation among the homosexual writers that we have discussed, from François Mauriac to Julien Green, not to mention Jacques Maritain, but it reaches an insane level in Guitton.

  Coming from a middle-class Catholic family in which ‘you keep your distance’, Jean Guitton never discussed his private life in public, with the result that it remained mysterious for a long time. This puritan aesthete did not display his emotions, and even though he was a layman he did not speak of his amorous experiences. The witnesses I have spoken to confirm that Jean Guitton was not greatly interested in women. He thought they were ‘decorative’ or ‘ornamental’, as the misogynist characters in The Picture of Dorian Gray put it.

  But he did get married, late in life, to Marie-Louise Bonnet. In his autobiography, Un siècle, une vie (A Century, a Life), he devoted a chapter to his wife, which once again reveals a high level of misogyny: ‘I had been looking for an angel to keep the house tidy and do the dusting. The angel appeared in the form of Marie-Louise, who taught art history and home economics at a lycée in Montpellier.’ They lived ‘like brother and sister’, according to the expression he is supposed to have used, and when his wife died prematurely, Guitton remained a bachelor.

  A detail that did not escape Florence Delay. The novelist, who was elected to Guitton’s ‘chair’ at the Académie française, had to deliver, as tradition required, his ‘eulogy’ on the day when she entered the hallowed halls. One unusual thing: Florence Delay, even though she was praising the deceased, made multiple allusions to his legendary misogyny: ‘What would he have thought about being succeeded by a woman, when he considered us incomplete!’ Neither did she take his late marriage any more seriously: ‘Some people are surprised or amused that M. Guitton, apparently devoted to monastic chastity, or more philosophically to Kantian celibacy, wrote an essay on human love – even before his affectionate autumnal marriage to Marie-Louise Bonnet. It’s that human love which includes the love that flows from disciple to master, and from master to disciple.’ Ah! how elegantly put!

  If the new academician had been more mischievous, or more ironic, she might have alluded to a famous remark by the sexologist Alfred Kinsey, a contemporary of Guitton. The author of the famous Kinsey Report into the sexuality of the Americans, the investigator stressed, scientifically for the first time, the high proportion of homosexuals in the general population. So widespread was it that homosexuality ceased to be an anomaly, a sickness and a perversion. And Kinsey added slyly that the only real remaining perversions were three in number: abstinence, celibacy and late marriage! Guitton was perverted three times over!

  If he had little love for women, and never mentioned the fair sex, which was invisible to him, Guitton did love many men ‘as friends’. Starting with Cardinal Poupard, who had a long correspondence with him (over two hundred handwritten letters, which have not, as I have said, been published, will perhaps bear witness to this one day). His masculine passions were also directed towards his students: notably to one of his young pupils, a certain Louis Althusser, ‘so fair and handsome that he could have been his apostle’ (a daring Florence Delay, once again!).

  Jean Guitton’s relationship with Pope John XXIII, whom he knew under the name of Roncalli when he was nuncio in Paris, also seems atypical, and ‘loving friendship’ may have played a part in it.

  Similar to this was the relationship that he formed at a young age with Giovanni Battista Montini, the future Pope Paul VI. Their closeness was the subject of incomprehension and rumours. A theologian as influential as Father Daniélou didn’t hesitate to say that ‘the pope [Paul VI] committed an imprudence in putting Guitton on the [Vatican] council’. Others mocked the holy father for ‘falling for a second-rate writer, a minor literary figure’. Finally, there was a recurrent joke about him in the Vatican, one of the former directors of Radio Vatican tells me: ‘Guitton can’t be classed among the laymen on the conclave because he has no children …’

  When one reads the very exalted Dialogues with Paul VI, the book of real or imagined interviews by Jean Guitton with the pope (with a preface by Cardinal Paul Poupard), one is also struck by the strangeness of the dialogue between the holy father and the layman about abstinence and about what they call the ‘love plus’ between Jesus and Peter, which ‘includes a frightening imperative’.

  Now we know this language all too well. It is the language of early Gide and late Mauriac, of Julien Green too, of Henry de Montherlant, and finally of Maritain. It is the language of guilt and hope for the ‘civilization of love’ (to use the famous expression of Paul VI). It is the language of Plato, whom Paul VI had made acceptable once again by abolishing his place on the Index, on which he had been placed alongside Montaigne, Machiavelli, Voltaire, André Gide and many others.

  Once again, let’s not exaggerate. It is possible that Jean Guitton experienced these discussions in the ‘Maritain style’, quite innocently and naively, without realizing the part probably played by gay inclinations and sublimation. Besides, Guitton stated that he didn’t understand anything about homosexuality. That might paradoxically indicate a homophilic affective orientation, truly unconscious in this case.

  Apart from Marie-Louise Bonnet, the only woman we find in Jean Guitton’s entourage is ‘Maréchale’ de Lattre de Tassigny, the widow of a senior French military officer, about whom a persistent rumour, particularly within the army, suggests that he was bisexual (the writer Daniel Guérin stated as much in his book Homosexualité et revolution, and the writer Jean-Luc Barré, who published the work of Maréchale de Lattre de Tassigny, thinks so too).

  Between the death of the Maréchal de France in 1952 and her own death in 2003, at the age of 96, the ‘Maréchale’ lived surrounded by a flock of homosexuals in her Parisian salon. Jean Guitton, mischievous and always cheerful, according to a witness, was a loyal visitor: he was ‘always accompanied by handsome members of the stronger sex and effeminate cuties’. Another witness confirms that Guitton was always ‘surrounded by ephebes and ‘gitons de passage’’.

  Here was a man who lived like a priest, who chose not to have children, married late, and, throughout his life, had intense homophilic friendships, surrounded by desirable young men. Was he a ‘restrained’ homosexual? It seems likely, and there has been nothing so far to indicate the opposite. Yet here we must find another word to define this kind of relationship. Guitton suggests one, imperfect though it might be: ‘companionship’. Let us listen to him here, in his own words, in his book Le Christ de ma vie, in which he converses with Father Joseph Doré, the future Archbishop of Strasbourg: ‘There’s something superior to man’s love of woman, and that is companionship. David’s love of Jonathan, Achilles’ love of Patroclus … A Jesuit can have a companionable love for another Jesuit which is superior to the love that this man would have felt had he been married … In companionship – it is often misunderstood, because of homosexuality – there is something quite unique and extraordinary.’

  A magnificent confession, a game of mirrors in which the reference to David and Jonathan is chosen deliberately by a man who cannot ignore the homoerotic charge of this explicitly gay code (the main homosexual Catholic association in France already bears this name).

  Jean Guitton, like Jacques Maritain, tries to invent a language to grasp masculine complicity without reducing it to sex. Here we are at the heart of what is called – the expression has been more enduring than Guitton’s mediocre ‘companionship’ – ‘loving friendship’ (‘amour d’amitié’).

  It’s an old concept, and it’s important, just for a moment, to trace its genesis, which is so central to our theme. The idea of ‘loving friendship’ is rooted in the thought of classical Greece, in Socrates and Plato, later systematized by Aristotle. Via Cicero and St Augustine, it passed through late antiquity and into the Middle Ages. We find the idea of it, if not the letter, in Saint Aelred of Rievaulx, a twelfth-century Cistercian monk who became the first ‘LGBT saint’ (because he never
hid his loving relationships). A century later, at a time when the idea of ‘homosexuality’ didn’t yet exist (as we know, the word would not be invented until the late nineteenth century), the Middle Ages re-appropriated this concept of ‘loving friendship’. Thomas Aquinas distinguishes ‘concupiscent love’ (amor concupiscentiae) from ‘loving friendship’ (amor amicitiae); the former seeks the other for personal and selfish gain; the latter, on the other hand, privileges the good of the friend, who is loved like another self. These days, even though it’s imperfect, we would call it ‘platonic love’.

  The idea of ‘loving friendship’ was then used to define the relationship between Shakespeare and the young man called the ‘Fair Youth’ in the Sonnets, Leonardo da Vinci and his young pupil Salai, or Michelangelo and the young Tommaso dei Cavalieri. Love? Friendship? Specialists today think that in this precise case it was probably a matter of homosexuality. On the other hand, what are we to say of the writers Montaigne and La Boétie, for whom the expression ‘loving friendship’ was also used? We should guard against misrepresenting a relationship that was perhaps never sexual, and which a famous phrase of Montaigne may sum up more accurately, because it defies rational explanation: ‘Because it was him, because it was me.’

  The expression ‘loving friendship’ was also used to describe the relationship between Father Henri Lacordaire, one of the restorers of the Dominican Order in France, and his ‘friend’ Charles de Montalembert. For a long time the Church covered its face over this subject by insisting on calling a ‘friendship’ what is now known to have been homosexual (the inestimable correspondence between Lacordaire and Montalembert, recently published, reveals not only an exemplary dialogue about French liberal Catholicism, but also the explicit relationship between the two men).

  The concept of ‘loving friendship’ therefore covers infinitely varied situations, and has been used indiscriminately through the ages for a broad continuum of relationships that run from pure manly friendship to actual homosexuality. According to the specialists in the subject, of which there are many at the Vatican, this concept should only be applied to chaste homophilia. It is not an equivocal feeling that tends to maintain the confusion between love and friendship, but an authentic and chaste love, a perfectly innocent relationship between two men. Its success in the homophilic Catholic milieu in the twentieth century is explained by the fact that it stresses the virtues of the loved one, more than carnal desire, which is carefully denied; it allows us not to sexualize affection. Finally, the most conservative – and most homophobic – cardinals like the American Raymond Burke, the German Joachim Meisner, the Italian Carlo Caffarra or the Guinean Robert Sarah, who have themselves taken a vow of chastity, firmly insist on homosexuals limiting themselves to relationships of ‘loving friendship’, meaning chastity, to avoid committing a sin and going to hell. In so doing they revealed themselves.

  From Jacques Maritain to Jean Guitton, this world of ‘loving friendship’ constitutes a subterranean influence of the Second Vatican Council.

  Jacques Maritain did not take part in the council himself, but had an important influence on it because of his friendship with Paul VI. It was also true of other influential theologians like the priests Yves Congar, Charles Journet, Henri de Lubac and Jean Daniélou. The last of these is the most enlightening: the French Jesuit, a renowned theologian, was called as an expert to the Second Vatican Council by John XXIII, before he was appointed cardinal by Paul VI. A friend of Jean Guitton (they co-authored a book), it was thanks to Guitton that he entered the Académie française. Rather progressive, Daniélou was one of the close friends of Paul VI.

  Much has been made of Daniélou’s death, as sudden as it was extraordinary, on 20 May 1974, in the arms of ‘Mimi’ Santoni, a (female) prostitute on the Rue Dulong in Paris. The cause of death was probably a heart attack brought on by orgasm. A version contradicted, of course, by the Jesuits, who, in response to the scandal prompted by the affair at the time, put forward their own version of the facts, which was immediately picked up by Le Figaro: the cardinal had come to give the prostitute money to help her, and died ‘in the epectasis of the apostle meeting the living God’.

  It’s a version confirmed to me today by the Italian cardinal Giovanni Battista Re, who was ‘minister’ of the interior under John Paul II: ‘We used to read Jean Daniélou a lot. We liked him a lot. His death? I think he wanted to save the prostitute’s soul, that was it. To convert her, perhaps. In my view he died in the apostolate.’

  Cardinal Paul Poupard, a friend of Daniélou (they also co-authored a book), confirms to me, raising his hands to heaven, that this generous cardinal, so humble-hearted, with a heart of gold, came to redeem the sins of the prostitute. Perhaps even to try, gallant man that he was, to free this loose-living girl from her sorry trade.

  Apart from the laughter that these explanations provoked at the time – Daniélou was entirely naked when the ambulance arrived – for our purposes the essence of the case lies elsewhere. If Daniélou was really a practising heterosexual who was clearly not part of ‘the parish’, his brother, on the other hand, was clearly homosexual. Alain was a celebrated Hinduist, a specialist in the divinized eroticism of the ecstatic East, in yoga and the worship of Shiva. He was also a friend of François Mauriac and the choreographer Maurice Béjart. His homosexuality, which had been common knowledge for a long time, was recently confirmed by his autobiography and by the publication of his brother Jean’s Carnets spirituels. We know that Alain lived for a long time with the Swiss photographer Raymond Burnier.

  The relationship between the Daniélou brothers is interesting because it allows me to state today that Jean was sympathetic to Alain’s choice of lifestyle, and that he supported him in his homosexuality. He wanted to shoulder the weight of Alain’s sins and take care of his soul.

  Cardinal Jean Daniélou went further. From 1943, he went to celebrate a mass for homosexuals every month. This fact is well established (in Alain’s autobiography and in a detailed biography devoted to the two brothers). It appears that this mass, which also included the famous Islamic specialist Louis Massignon, a Christian who was also homosexual, continued over several years.

  The key point here, then, is not the death of Jean Daniélou in the arms of a prostitute, but the organization by a high-profile cardinal, a renowned theologian close to the pope, of regular masses intended for the ‘salvation’ of homosexuals.

  Did Paul VI know about this? It’s possible but not certain. The fact remains that this largely homophilic, or pro-gay, entourage was part of the history of his pontificate – the quintessence of the ‘code Maritain’.

  ‘Anyone looking at this sequence of pictures will wonder what connection we might have with this people, with their vigorous faces …’ On the occasion of the fifth centenary of the birth of Michelangelo, an astonishing ‘gay-friendly’ homage was delivered on 29 February 1976 by Pope Paul VI to the Italian sculptor in St Peter’s basilica in Rome. With great pomp, the holy father sang the memory of the ‘incomparable artist’ beneath the majestic dome that he designed, right next to the sublime Pietà, which this ‘boy who had not yet reached the age of 25’ brought out of this cold marble with the greatest ‘tenderness’.

  A stone’s throw away are the Sistine Chapel and its vault, painted with its manly throng, of which Paul VI praises the angels – but not the Ignudi, those firm-bodied naked ephebes with their insolent physical splendour, which he passes over in silence. Also cited in the pope’s speech are ‘the world of Sibyls’ and ‘Pontiffs’; but no mention is made of Michelangelo’s naked Christ, nor of the saints in their birthday suits or the ‘confusion of nudes’ of the Last Judgement. With this deliberate silence, the pope is once again censoring the pink flesh that one of his predecessors had once castrated by covering the genitals of the naked men with a modest veil.

  Paul VI, now swept away by his own audacity, grows heated, moved to tears by the confusion of bodies and the play of muscles. And ‘what an eye!’ the pope
noted. That of the ‘young athlete who is the Florentine David’ (entirely naked, and beautifully proportioned), and the last Pietà, called the ‘Rondanini’, ‘full of sobs’ and non finito. Clearly, Paul VI is lost in wonder at the work of this visionary of ‘secret beauty’, whose ‘aesthetic delight’ is a match for ‘Hellenic perfection’. And all of a sudden, the holy father begins to read a sonnet by Michelangelo!

  What connection, indeed, ‘can we have with this people, with their vigorous faces’? Never in the history of the Vatican can such ‘girly’ praise have been bestowed in such a sacred place on such a boldly homosexual artist.

  ‘Paul VI wrote his own speeches by hand. All the manuscripts have been preserved,’ I am told by Micol Forti, a cultivated and energetic woman who is one of the directors of the Vatican museums.

  Paul VI’s passion for culture was to some extent part of a political strategy. In Italy at the time, culture was sliding from the right to the left; religious practice was already in decline among artists. While for centuries the Catholics had dominated culture, the codes, the art networks, that hegemony had vanished in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Paul VI still thought it wasn’t too late, and that the Church could recover if it could only find out how to cruise (or woo) the Muses.

  The witnesses I interviewed also confirm that Paul VI’s commitment to culture was at the same time sincere, and based on his personal inclinations.

  ‘Paul VI was a “Michelangelo addict”,’ I am told by a bishop who knew the holy father.

  In 1964 the pope announced his plan for a big collection of modern and contemporary art. He launched himself into the great cultural battle of his life, to win back the artists.

  ‘Paul VI began by apologizing on behalf of the Church for having paid little attention to modern art. And then he asked artists and intellectuals from all over the world to build up a collection for the Vatican museums,’ Micol Forti goes on.