A priest’s diary

I’ve had his little book on my tablets for years. It had been passed to me by my uncle Serge Giguère so that I could take a look at it. It is a diary of the late Raymond Roy, a worker priest, his work published in semi-private, with the means at hand, by Les Éditions de l’Autrement (it still exists?), in 1996.

It was by sorting through the few books I still have left that I came across the booklet which is part of a larger whole.

I believe that the priest in question had had a tormented life, fighting against some ethyl demons. Anyway, I reread some passages. The writings date back to 1995, in the middle of the referendum campaign. If some pages can be ignored, some others are beautifully hemmed (from an encounter with former confreres ordained at the same time as him: Seven of my confreres are "extinguished," as petrified, showing no bleeding wounds, mute, forbidden for the future, and incapable of guilt. And further on, concerning a baptism ceremony held at the same time as the famous women’s march in Quebec City in 1995: The "big baptism" I was celebrating in the morning seemed to be a contradiction to this slogan "Bread and roses." A hundred guests, under the control of a visibly matriarchal will, paraded through all the "gadgets," balloons, videos, receptions, and dresses ordered by overconsumption.)

I wonder what happened to these texts. Are they part of the now dried-up rivers of meaning that will have carved the cliff of our collective unconscious? It puts my own writings into perspective. We are so few things; we are our life, we are our future in perpetual precariousness.