How the obsession with obedience has produced violence in the Catholic school – Liberation

In the wake of the Betharram case, numerous testimonies of violence on former students from other Catholic educational establishments continue to flock. We can hypothesize that the central place granted historically to obedience in religious establishments from the Catholic counter-reform could have played a major and lasting role in the matter.

The two elite teachers from the Catholic counter-reform under the Old Regime-the Jesuits for the sons of the family, the Brothers of the Christian Schools for the Sons of the People-were particularly illustrated by still methodically using bodily punishment in the 19th century, the Jesuits treated their staging. « Among the physical suffering to which we were submitted, the most lively was the one that caused us to the ferrule, this palette of leather applied to our weak hands with all the force of the regent. To receive this classic correction, you had to go kneel near the pulpit ” (Balzac, Louis Lambert, Le Book de Poche, 1968, p. 58-59). It was because there was a cardinal virtue among the Jesuits, namely obedience (Perinde ac cadaver) (1): Hence the kneeling that accompanies the punishment of the suffering body in the administration of the ferrule.

But the brothers of Christian schools are not outdone either. They have a theocratic conception of society, that of « ultra-royalists » who want to restore