It is not my business to think about myself

It is not my business to think about myself. My business is to think about God. It is for God to think about me.

(post script) I know that, if at this moment I had before me a group of twenty young Germans singing Nazi songs in chorus, a part of my soul would instantly become Nazi… 

I am afraid of the Church patriotism existing in Catholic circles. By patriotism I mean the feeling one has for a terrestrial country. I am afraid of it because I fear to catch it… I know, I feel quite certain, that any feeling of this kind, whatever its object, would be fatal for me.

There were some saints who approved of the Crusades or the Inquisition… If I think that on this point I see more clearly than they did, I who am so far below them, I must admit that in this matter they were blinded by something very powerful. This something is the Church seen as a social structure… 

Nothing ever said or written goes so far as the devil’s words to Christ in Saint Luke concerning the kingdoms of the world: “All this power will I give thee and the glory of it, for that is delivered unto me and to whomsoever I give it.” 

It follows from this that the social is irremediably the domain of the Devil. I am well aware that the Church must inevitably be a social structure, otherwise it would not exist. But insofar as it is a social structure; it belongs to the Prince of this World.

Simone Weil (January 19, 1942) Letter to Father Perrin