August 25, 2004
Doxies
That old, timeworn notion of a consensus fidelium a lot of us got brought up on doesn’t get much press these days. Rather is it those oxymoronic cousins Anglican and biblical orthodoxy, the current darlings of the breakaway crowd, that we hear about more often.
Our doxies just don’t line up like some might wish, but then along comes a “lesser feast” like today’s Louis, king of France, 1270 AD, and we’re reminded that there is something — and someone — else to which the church might direct its attention.
Those who know about such folk say that Louis was a man of unusual purity of life and manners… sincerely committed to his faith and to its moral demands. It is said that the one word that summarizes his character is integrity.
Coincidentally, he also “crusaded” in the Middle East, but only because such was expected by the piety of his time and actually what he did was of little “historical consequence.” What really mattered was that he was unusually free of the bigotry of his age, had an intelligent interest in theology, and was primarily concerned to put Christian ethics into practice in both his personal and his public life.
If it weren’t for the consensus of the faithful that reminds us of these distant kin of ours and honors them (even though this one was French!), we’d maybe be prone to think that there isn’t any other way but ours.