Free of Faith

By Michel Dessart

About the Book

Free of Faith IS AN ESSAY ABOUT THE USELESSNESS OF GOD ONE DISCOVERS WHEN MULLING OVER EVIL, LIFE, UNIVERSE, AND MORALITY.

This essay first presents a personal experience of submission to God and religion, rejection of priesthood celibacy, and vanishing faith. This experience is prolonged by a philosophical approach to All-Without-God. Evil is the finitude of living beings. Origin and evolution of life do not require the existence of God. The history of the universe can be viewed independently of God. Men and women must acknowledge their human condition and assume their generational responsibility, which essentially consists in fighting the criminal evil that humans are responsible for.

About the Author

Michel Dessart devoted some part of his youth organizing Sunday meetings and holidays camps for young parishioners. Later, in his professional life, he was known as a fair leader, be it as a division chief or a director.

He was involved in two strong communities, the purpose of which was to prepare their members for the Catholic priesthood. In the first, a university seminary, he obtained a bachelor’s degree in philosophy at the University of Louvain, with a thesis on Aristotle’s “Treatise on Soul”, which won the first prize of the Inter-University Contest in philosophy.

In the second community, in Rome, he had to spend four years to study the Catholic theology. However, after two years, he quit because he refused to commit to the ecclesiastical celibacy.

He taught in Belgian schools and undertook economic studies at the University of Liège. Then, as a researcher at the National Fund for Scientific Research, he studied the possibility conditions of a European monetary policy. His Ph.D. thesis in economics was crowned by the Royal Academy of Belgium.

Recruited by a large bank in Brussels, he became an economic adviser in Côte d’Ivoire and Senegal. Then he joined an international institution in Washington D.C. He was a well-known consultant-trainer in many African countries. He authored several economic books and papers.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Dorrance Publishing Company
• Release date: May 26, 2023
• ISBN: 9798889255222

Book preview

Prologue

Opening my eyes to the uselessness of God has been an experience worth sharing. I would like to retrace my itinerary from the God-In-All of my youth years to the All-Without-God of my maturity when it became clear to me that evil, life, and the universe do not require God and that humans must develop a life morality independent of God.

God-In-All. In my early years, I put God at the center of everything. When I was fifteen or sixteen years old, following what I’d thought was a divine call, I decided to become a priest. At the age of eighteen, I entered the seminary, with the teaching in a diocesan school as likely horizon. At the age of twenty-two, I was sent to Rome to study catholic theology for four years.

God-In-Retreat. Two years before I was ordained a priest, I left Rome and the seminary. I was then convinced I did not have the calling. I was twenty-four years old. Once elapsed the constraint of celibacy, my faith withered, devoid of any desire to spread it. My diminished faith accompanied me for a while before disappearing. Then I started a long professional career in which God had no place.

All-Without-God. It has dawned on me God is not necessary. Everything is without God, at least without the God of the traditional religions, without the God creator and architect of the universe, without the anthropomorphic God who congratulates himself or who gets angry, and especially without the God-providence who claims he takes care of his miserable creatures. My journey ends with three personal certainties. Firstly, evil is the finitude of the living and does not require a God nor a devil. Secondly, life, which has evolved from marine nano-bacteria to the prodigious human brain, needs no God. Finally, it is without God that the universe has unfolded its long history, from the shapeless magma of the original big-bang to the immense cosmos, of which humans are a tiny but outstanding part.

In the absence of God, humans must themselves develop a morality of life which, without God, rests on the double acceptance of the human condition and the responsibility towards the future generations. Humans are essential links in the uninterrupted chain of life. They must be concerned about what will happen to their descendants. They must continue to mitigate the effects of natural evil, but also they must reduce the criminal evil they are responsible for.

Part 1

God-In-All

---

Chapter 1: Rome - The Belgian College

Chapter 2: Faith and Calling

Chapter 3: Rome - The Gregorian University

Chapter 1

Rome - The Belgian College

Around noon in summertime, in the streets of Rome, one sees only dogs and Belgians.

These are the words of old Luigi, who has been a servant at the Belgian College for over thirty years. For the dogs, I could not verify, but for the Belgians, it is a pleasant allusion to the college residents’ amazing endurance to the heat when, after lunch and without undressing their long black cassock, they play palla in one of the four alleys of the sun-crushed garden.

Two months ago, Luigi fell ill. Since he failed to recover, the rector had him hospitalized for a few weeks. Luigi is alone in Rome, but the residents of the college visit him regularly. Today, I’m going to see him at the public hospital located near the Termini station. I bring him two or three bars of milk chocolate. We will talk about the college, but also about his family he hasn’t seen for a long time. He still has an older sister who has had several children, including a boy killed by the mafia when he was eighteen. Our visit always brings a great joy to Luigi, but we should be careful not to arouse the envy of the old, abandoned patients whose beds, with their once white sheets, are neatly lined up in the large hospital hall.

For long, Luigi has maintained the college by himself, sweeping the hallways and lounges, shining the shoes placed in front of the doors at night, serving and cleaning the tables of the dining room, and raking leaves in the garden. Recently, a young Calabrian joined him. He has a three-year-old boy and a beautiful wife with jet black hair. The rector took great care of them and arranged an apartment for them under the roof of the adjacent house, which separates the college from the nearby church.

In September 1960, after a long train journey that has begun in Liège, Belgium, I arrive in Rome when the Second Vatican Council has just been announced, while the Dolce Vita is blossoming. On one side, the rich Vatican City and, on the other, the thrilling Via Veneto, heart of Rome, with its luxury stores and flashy bars. However, it is to the Belgian College, located at 26 Via del Quirinale, that my steps lead me. As I pass through the doorway of this austere building, I join up some twenty-five compatriots who have come to Rome to study the Catholic theology.

Why do I come to Rome? Obviously, in the recent years, I have not led my own life. At the age of fifteen, I decided to become a priest, but left the choices of the seminary, the studies, and the stay in Rome to others. I accepted others took those important decisions instead of me because I believed those to be in line with my calling.

However, when I arrive in Rome, the approaching commitment to celibacy begins to worry me seriously. My faith in God is not in question, but I wonder about the life that will be mine if I continue in the present path. It is not that I don’t have time to think, but I’m not asking myself the right questions in a radical way.

If he were available, Luigi would show you around the college. He knows the austere building very well, a former 17th century monastery bought in 1844 by the Belgian episcopate to house theologians. The second floor of the building is reserved for the rector, but