Bernard Besret

Bernard Besret (born March 16, 1935 in Saint-Hervé ) is a French author and Daoist . He was a Roman Catholic clergyman, theologian, Cistercian , council advisor and religious reformer.

life and work

The way to Boquen Monastery

Jean-Claude Besret grew up in Loudéac and Saint-Brieuc in an anti-clerical milieu and lost his mother, who was a primary school teacher, at the age of 14. From 1950 he discovered in the books The eternal philosophy of Thomas Huxley and the mountain of the seven levels of Thomas Merton his appeal to spirituality and entered 1954 in the (known him since 1952) by Alexis Press , founded Trappist reform monastery Boquen one.

Studied in Rome

In the autumn of 1955 he was sent to Rome ( Papal Athenaeum Sant'Anselmo ) to study theology and, through his teacher Cipriano Vagaggini (1909–1999), instead of the historically backward-looking reform of Alexis Presse, discovered the possibility of reform through the life of the Gospel in following Christ ( "Calcutta plutôt que Boquen!", German: more Calcutta than Boquen!). In his doctoral thesis, he examined the two contradicting spiritual life plans, escape from the world and engagement within the world, in his doctoral thesis Incarnation ou eschatologie? (published 1964). He experienced the transition from Pope Pius XII up close . to the aggiornamento of Pope John XXIII.

The Clairvaux project

Alexis Presse, who had been encouraged by Abbot General Sighard Kleiner since 1953 to dare to repopulate Clairvaux Abbey , commissioned Besret in August 1959 with a feasibility study, which came to a negative result in 1960. Since the Abbot General insisted on the project, Besret recommended the establishment of a museum in the old buildings and the construction of a modern monastery nearby, for which he immediately bought a piece of land. Tranvouez has worked out that three different views clashed on the matter. The press was about the return to the medieval class, Kleiner about the upgrading of the underrepresented General Observance of the Cistercians in France, and Besret about innovation in the direction of a modern lay monastery. The press and Besret agreed in their critical attitude towards the church, but in terms of content they went in opposite directions.

The council advisor

In order to discipline Besret, the press temporarily withdrew from Boquen and made Besret temporary prior, but then came back and sent Besret back to Rome, where he was appointed assistant to the Abbot General on November 3, 1962 and theological advisor in early 1963 of the Bishop of Arras, Gérard-Maurice Eugène Huyghe (1909–2001). As such, he was instrumental in drafting the Decree Perfectae caritatis during the Second Vatican Council .

The Boquen Reformer

When he was called back to Boquen by the terminally ill Alexis Presse in October 1964 and was appointed prior a second time, he rebuilt the monastery church, adapted the medieval lifestyle of the convent to modern needs and oriented the community on the path of progressive utopia A sign of a “critical, lyrical and political” Christianity that could be perceived as a European variant of liberation theology and that divided the community. All professed retreated to the island of Saint-Gildas in Trégor . Besret stayed behind with the novices and postulants and practiced the opening of the monastery to lay people and visitors of all kinds, who, attracted not least by the prior's charism, came in large numbers.

the Prophet

The hierarchy's growing displeasure with Besret's undogmatic Christianity came to a head when Besret, on August 20, 1969, demanded a reform of the church in prophetic rhetoric beyond the reform of monasticism. In mid-October 1969 he was deposed by the Abbot General, held a mass in the presence of 5,000 believers and then made way for Prior Guy Luszenszki of Lérins Abbey , who was appointed by the Abbot General as his successor, but who quickly understood that Boquen was doomed without Besret, and called him back as supervisor of the monastery activities. From 1969 to 1973 he published papers and gave numerous lectures.

From Boquen to Daoism

After Besret had already received a death threat from right-wing extremist church circles at Pentecost 1971, which, according to his own admission, had destabilized him for years, he withdrew from Boquen in 1974 in order to found a spiritual center in Plougrescant in the form of a Société coopérative et participative , but then left at the invitation of a university to New York, later to Mexico. From 1982 to 1984 he worked for the Rennes city ​​administration , from 1984 to 1998 under Maurice Lévy project manager at the Cité des sciences et de l'industrie in Paris. In 1997 he converted to Taoism and in 2010 opened a Taoist cultural center on Mount Qiyun Shan in the Chinese province of Anhui .

Works

• Incarnation ou eschatologie? Contribution to l'histoire du vocabulaire religieux contemporain 1935–1955 . Cerf, Paris 1964. (Foreword by Marie-Dominique Chenu )
• Liberation de l'Homme. Essai sur le renouveau des valeurs monastiques . Desclée de Brouwer, Paris 1969.
• Boquen here, aujourd'hui, demain: Texts de la conférence prononcée à Boquen le 20 août 1969 . Éditions de l'Épi, Paris 1969.
• Le Printemps de Boquen, ed. by Alain Rivière. Éditions de l'Épi, Paris 1969.
• Boquen en crise . Epi, Paris 1970.
• Propos sur la liturgy . Edition de l'épi, Paris 1970.
• Clefs pour une nouvelle Eglise . Seghers, Paris 1971.
  • (German) When the night shines like day. Real utopia of a new church. Lahn-Verlag, Limburg 1972.
  • (Catalan) Cla us per a una nova Església. Montserrat 1972. (Foreword by Joaquim Gomis 1902–1991)
  • (Dutch) Sleutels tot een nieuwe Kerk. Uitgeverij Tor, Amsterdam 1973.
  • (Spanish) Claves para una iglesia nueva. Sigueme, Salamanca 1974.
• (with Bernard Schreiner) Les Communautés de base . Grasset, Paris 1973.
• De commencement en commencement. Itinéraire d'une déviance. Entretiens avec Marie-Thérèse Maltèse et Ernest Milcent . Éditions du Seuil, Paris 1976.
• Confiteor. De la contestation à la sérénité . Albin Michel, Paris 1991, 1996.
• Lettre ouverte au pape qui veut nous assener la vérité absolue dans toute sa splendeur . Albin Michel, Paris 1993.
  • (German) Dear Brother Pope. Open letter to John Paul II who wants to blow absolute truth in all its glory on our ears. Walter, Solothurn and Düsseldorf 1994.
• You bon usage de la vie. Albin Michel, Paris 1996.
• Conditions d'un développement de la culture scientifique et technique à Rennes et dans sa region . APRAS, Rennes 1983.
• Manifestos pour une Renaissance . Albin Michel, Paris 1997.
• Esquisse d'un Evangile éternel . Seuil, Paris 2003.
• A hauteur des nuages. Chroniques de ma montagne taoïste . Albin Michel, Paris 2011.

literature

• Danièle Hervieu-Léger: Le temps des moines. Clôture et hospitalité . PUF, Paris 2017, pp. 464–509.
• Béatrice Lebel: Boquen. Entre utopie et révolution. 1965-1976 . PUR, Rennes 2015 (foreword by Étienne Fouilloux, * 1941, afterword by Bernard Besret, review , French)
• Yvon Tranvouez: "Boquen-Clairvaux et retour. Un projet avorté de refondation monastique (1959–1962)". In: Revue d'histoire de l'Eglise de France 92, 2006 pp. 193-220.

Web links

• Information on Bernard Besret in the database of the Bibliothèque nationale de France .
• Literature by and about Bernard Besret in the SUDOC catalog (Association of French University Libraries )