No More Learning

? FOLLOW-UP VISITS 2O1
Soon after, he began to make strong efforts to educate others about the realities of Communist China--by briefing people pre- paring for visits, writing magazine articles, and appearing at public debates. His voice rose as he described to me the "naivet6 of some people who refuse to recognize that persecutions exist in Com- munist China. " His sense of personal integrity was clearly involved in these matters--so much so, that on one occasion he sought out the leader of an official group of Communist Chinese visitors, described the brutality he had experienced in prison, and urged this man to request his government to admit (making use, if neces- sary, of some face-saving maneuver) that the "people it said were guilty were really not guilty. " Luca also continued to advocate a liberal course in future missionary activities, recommending more self-expression and local authority among indigenous groups. He could still admit that the Chinese Communists were "right" about some things, and that the missionaries had made mistakes; but his general tone when he referred to the present regime, as compared to his attitude in Hong Kong, had become more militantly critical and more consistently hostile.
He had remained concerned about the possible harm some of the statements in his confession might have caused to the Church and its representatives. He was especially troubled about the letter he had written under duress to a young Chinese Catholic girl de- nouncing his own organizational activities, and he had gone so far as to send a gift to the girl through a countryman visiting China in order to rectify the situation. He felt hurt when the gift was refused, although he knew that the refusal was based on the girl's concern for her own safety. Nor was he free of his old nemeses: he still had trouble managing his emotions whenever he wished to oppose a superior, and he had to maintain his vigilance against ever-recurring sexual desires. But in all of these matters, I felt, his conflicts were under much better control than when I had last seen him. Like so many of the other imprisoned Westerners, Father Luca believed he had become more spontaneous and more fluent in his self-expression as a result of his thought reform: "I am more free in my behavior. . . . I speak more easily in public and with other people/' His spiritual life, he felt, had become more routine and "plain," in contrast to its precious intensity during imprison- ment: "then I had to seek an opportunity. "
? 2O2 THOUGHT REFORM
When I asked him, near the end of our three-hour talk, whether any of the ideas of thought reform remained with him, he replied: "They come to mind, sometimes to be taken into account, some- times to be contradicted, sometimes to be accepted. " He elaborated upon those ideas which he at least partially accepted:
I agree that a way for the peasants to escape the moneylender when they needed credit was necessary. . . . Sometimes I have a feeling that a system of co-operatives can solve some of these problems, . . . Not necessarily the whole Marxist system. . . . I had already a theoretical idea of this before, but I have a more sensitive idea of it now.
In these ideas, as in all of his emotions, Father Luca was at- tempting to reconcile influences he felt he could not ignore with older respected values. He had found it necessary to repress much that was painful, especially those things related to feelings of guilt; and he had taken on some of the aspects of a conventional priest expressing the accepted ideas of the Church. Yet beneath, he fought a continuous struggle with his own most negative images of himself, and continuously searched for a personal synthesis. He had not been spared anxiety, but he had managed to make an effec- tive recovery without undue self-damage (had his prison injuries made this unnecessary? ) or excessive inner distortion.
Professor Castorp
At the time of my trip to Europe, Professor Castorp, the sub- missive scientist, was well established in a teaching position in another part of Asia. He had, in fact, begun to make these new arrangements within weeks after his release. He wrote me a long and humorous letter describing his experiences since leaving Hong Kong. He mentioned family matters, but focused mainly upon problems of resuming his work--which to him meant resuming his existence as a self-respecting human being. He too wrote a report of his prison experiences; but after he had completed this, he looked forward to returning to teaching and research in his more usual scientific areas.
Professor Castorp at first was impeded by physical difficulties with his teeth, gums, and hearing, poor memory, easy fatigue, and worst of all, the loss of his former "pleasure and delight in solving
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somewhat complicated problems. " But gradually his enthusiasms returned, and he was able to look at his diminishing difficulties with his usual acceptance and detachment: "It may be . . . that a racehorse just has to race to keep fit, and if you put him in a stable for a long time, he does not race well any more in spite of good food. " He was apparently following his long-standing pattern of blending with his new surroundings in his individualistic and somewhat withdrawn manner, and had already become an expert in the local geography. He retained his interest in thought reform and in problems of imprisonment; he also continued to feel some apprehension about the possibility of being captured again by the Communists. Characteristically, he made no mention of ideological issues; rather, he was concerned with practical matters. The letter, on the whole, confirmed my earlier impression of good recovery, and suggested that Professor Castorp had quickly and actively resumed his pre-thought reform identity.
Bishop Barker
I saw Bishop Barker (the elderly Belgian "priest, doctor, soldier") at an unusual but not inappropriate site--the Catholic shrine at Lourdes. He had led a pilgrimage there, and he suggested it as the most convenient place to meet, a suggestion which I welcomed. Now about seventy, he was an impressive figure in bishop's purple, his eyes alert, his movements quick, and his goatee pure white. In some ways he seemed more removed from other people (he ex- plained this as a continuation of his deepening religious sense), but at the same time he clearly enjoyed the adulation he received everywhere he went in Lourdes. As I observed him one day, taking part in a large Church processional, marching among other high Church officials in the privileged place behind the Holy Sacrament --his step slow and dignified, his lips moving in prayer--I thought that he had indeed come far from the deep humiliation of his thought reform.
During the years since I had first seen him, Bishop Barker had continued his two crusades: his personal attempt to direct all of his emotions into a continuing Catholic religious experience, and his broader effort to spread his message about Chinese Communism and about reform techniques. He had spoken before many groups,
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always bent upon "stirring up the audience to reform their inner life. " He would stress both the power of the Communists and the need for sacrifice in order to "overcome" them. At the same time he 'emphasized that he was still "using the material of thought reform to deepen my own religious sense. "
His ideological interests--and in fact his major life interests-- had become limited to Communism and Catholicism, and he con- cerned himself with political questions only when they were related to one or both of these. He had retained his strongly anti-Communist position; he admired John Foster Dulles and Konrad Adenauer as the two men "best against Communism. " There was, at,the same time, some suggestion of ambivalence toward Americans: when I told him that my spoken French was far from fluent, he immediately replied, "No matter--your dollars speak for you all over the world. " This was not a remarkable statement, of course, but it must be viewed in relationship to Bishop Barker's previous tendency to express unconsciously retained reform influences. His interest in thought reform continued only so long as he could discuss it in his own crusading Catholic idiom. When I questioned him about specific post-release feelings related to guilt and shame, he became evasive and suggested to me that the conversation was becoming a strain. He did tell me that if he were to be imprisoned again, he would "not give in at all," since the Communists distort any admission a prisoner makes. He had carried this attitude a step further, however, and he implied (and almost believed) that he had not given in at all during his actual prison experience.
Thus, another one of my subjects was astounded to hear Barker say, during a brief meeting, that he had "not confessed anything. " The Bishop did not say this to me, but he did limit his prison ref- erences to stories of outwitting his jailers and frustrating their in- tentions. After relating one of these anecdotes, he would quickly change the subject to his varied experiences during his long stay in China, again presenting himself in a heroic light and only oc- casionally permitting himself an admission of fear or nervousness.
He also delighted in telling me of his Catholic religious life-- of his greeting his guardian angel the first thing every morning, and of his feeling that in prison he needed an additional guardian angel and his calling upon the archangel Raphael. He asked me to attend one of his Masses; and--with minimal encouragement--he launched
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into long discussions of theological symbolism. At the same time he enjoyed bringing up questions of morality and sexual behavior, presenting always a conventional Catholic viewpoint, but curious about a psychiatrist's opinions as well.
I had the impression that Bishop Barker, keenly aware he was living in his declining years, was attempting to assume a final iden- tity stance which would permit him to feel that his life had had value and meaning. In struggling to maintain the self-image of the hero--to which he had aspired since early childhood--he was still fighting off the inner voice which accused him instead of being the weakling. This underlying threat of despair made him much more comfortable in reaching for others' souls than in probing the psychological conflicts of his own. In dealing with thought reform experiences, he had not only intensified his tendency to repress and to deny: he had taken the next step, that of confabulation. Cer- tainly, during thought reform and in the rest of his life, as well, he had in many ways come close to realizing his heroic self-image; yet to believe this and to maintain a sense of self-esteem, he had to resort to grossly distorted reconstructions.
Miss Darrow
This leaves only Miss Darrow (the missionary's daughter) whose apparent conversion had, when I last saw her, already begun to wear off. From occasional correspondence, as well as from contacts with people who knew her, I learned that her pattern had continued to be very similar to the one she had shown when I interviewed her; but since these interviews had taken place in Canada three months after her release, they were able--much more clearly than the Hong Kong encounters--to indicate long-range tendencies. She was con- tinuing her gradual adaptation to Canadian life, and also continu- ing her painful and guilt-ridden reality testing. She remained much more sympathetic to the Chinese Communist regime than most other subjects, but she was able to be increasingly critical of its distortion and its oppression. She was indeed realizing her (self- fulfilling) prophecy of becoming the "left-wing liberal"--willing to co-operate with various groups and individuals interested in study- ing thought reform but strongly opposed to right-wing propagan- distic exploitation. In her personal and professional life, she im-
? 2O 6 THOUGHT REFORM
pressed friends and colleagues with her unusual intelligence and perceptiveness. She still suffered from the sense of being the "be- trayer" when she was critical of the Chinese Communists, especially when she contrasted her change in view with the still uncompromis- ingly "reformed" ideas of her male friend. Her older and closer female friend had continued to offer much emotional support, and an interlude of physical illness had supplied a helpful moratorium; but Miss Darrow continued with her step-by-step search, still plagued by her ever-present susceptibilities to guilt.
? CHAPTER 11
FATHER SIMON:
THE CONVERTED JESUIT
In the course of my follow-up visits, I was intro- duced to a priest who had experienced prison thought reform, but who had not been a subject of my original Hong Kong study. A French Jesuit, he was teaching science at a small Catholic school near the Franco-German border. My interview with him was not, strictly speaking, a follow-up visit; but it proved to be an un- usually interesting encounter. This Catholic Father, three-and-a- half years after his release, was still seeing the world almost entirely through "reformed" eyes. He had come closer to a true conversion
experience than had any of my original subjects,
The interplay between Father Simon and the colleague of his
(also a subject of mine) who introduced us was a good indication of what was to follow. This other priest explained to Simon that I had tried to meet him in Hong Kong, but had been told that he
(Simon) did not wish to see me. Simon irately denied this, insist- ing that he had never been approached, and accusing his clerical colleagues in Hong Kong of preventing a meeting between us be- cause they were embarrassed by his views. (Actually, it is difficult to say just who had prevented me from seeing Father Simon in Hong Kong; it is quite probable that neither he nor his fellow priests felt very enthusiastic about my interviewing him. )
207
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In Europe, however, Simon was clearly interested in talking with me, A thin, tense man in his late fifties, he quickly gave me the impression that he had a great deal to say about matters which he did not feel free to discuss too openly in his present environment. Indeed, his first words were pointed expressions of criticism directed at fellow priests who published strongly anti-Communist writings or presented what were in his opinion distorted views of prison thought reform. And when I asked him how he felt about his im- prisonment, he answered without hesitation: "It was one of the best periods of my life. " Then he explained that thought reform was valid because it was effective: "People claim that the Com- munists tried to introduce false points of view into your brain-- but this could never work; it is only because they introduced true things . . . that it works. " He went on to say that, "As for free- dom of speech, I had more . . . in jail than I have right here," explaining that while he was in prison, "I accepted all of their points of view--political and economic, everything," then adding as some- thing of an afterthought, "except for a deadlock on the religious point of view. "
Father Simon wasted no time in making it clear just where he stood. I could not help feeling amazement during these first few minutes of our interview, as I heard this Jesuit priest express only praise for Communism and only criticism for the actions of his Catholic colleagues. Although I knew the general principles of thought reform, I wondered just how this had been accomplished.
Father Simon was brought up in a hardworking middle-class fam- ily in a French provincial town. Since his father owned a small busi- ness enterprise, he now felt that "I was born on the wrong side of the fence. . , . My education was entirely on the capitalistic side. " He had learned in prison that "I lived from a salary taken from workmen," but defended his parents as having done the best they could, limited as they were by "the ideas of their surroundings. " Simon described the religious influences in his family as very strong: two sisters trained as nuns, and two uncles became missionaries. A conscientious boy who always "had the feeling that life was some- thing serious," he had wished to become a priest from the age of eleven, and had made his definite decision when he was fifteen. He attributed his religious inclinations to his mother's influence; his father--an austere, distant, and highly-respected figure--had
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originally opposed his decision to enter the priesthood. As in the case of Father Luca, his mother's intercession helped him to carry it through.
He received extensive training in science, philosophy, and theol- ogy. This work included three years of study in the United States during his early thirties, and it is significant that he returned to Europe something of a convert to the American way of life, so much so that he sometimes irked his colleagues (several of whom I had spoken to) with his expression of his new allegiance, and his insistence that French science was nothing compared to ad- vanced American developments. He had retained these sentiments over the twenty years he spent teaching science in China; but they were soon overshadowed by his enormous attachment to China it- self. Although a distant and reserved man, he sought always to enter deeply into Chinese life. He organized scientific trips during which he traveled and camped outdoors with a small group from his uni- versity. "For two or three weeks . . . I lived entirely among stu- dents. . . . It made life more human . . . and the students found me as a man they did not know before. "
In other ways too, he tended to be different from and sometimes at odds with his colleagues. One described him as "very independ- ent in judgments . . . liked to be against things . . . enthusiasms strong but changeable . . . apparently cold, but really passionate. "
He was at the same time extremely diligent in his work, and utterly conscientious in his religious life. As one friend expressed it, "I often broke rules, but Simon never did. "
Thus, before his contact with the Communists, he was a man strongly susceptible to some forms of environmental influence, and at the same time capable of stubbornly resisting others. He possessed a powerful conscience and an accompanying susceptibility to guilt, both related to early family struggles; and much of Simon's life was involved with which influence he should follow as the "good" one, and which he should resist as the "bad. " In his various experiments with identity, however, it was his sense of being the conscientious enthusiast which prevailed over each of a number of different en- thusiasms.
During the early years of Communist rule, he was proud of being the only foreigner permitted to integrate his scientific work with the government program. At the same time, he was extremely criti-
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cal of the Communist movement, and strongly opposed the regime's attempts to spread its influence within his university. He expected to be arrested because he had been accused with others (falsely) of using a radio for espionage purposes.
Simon admitted to me that the early period of his imprisonment was "hard. " But he avoided any mention of specific brutality and claimed that he had been deprived of sleep for only one night. He preferred to "explain" the Communist approach ("According to their method they take advantage of the first shock"), and implied that their techniques were necessary because he had so extremely opposed them at the beginning. I was able to learn some of the missing details, however, from another European who had shared the same cell with Simon for a while: "Simon had been interrogated three days without sleep. They said he hadn't been giving any in- formation. The inspector, when alone with him, spat in his face ten times. " This same informant said that Simon had been un- usually stubborn in his resistance: "a daredevil. " In both versions, however, it was clear that Simon was extremely fearful of being shot.
He went then from extreme resistance to complete compliance, and his own story makes clear the psychological features of this reversal. Even after he no longer feared death, his desire to remain in China profoundly influenced his behavior:
I thought that I was one of those with the best chance to stay. I had received instructions from my superior to try to stay. I realized that if I did not change my mind, I would have no chance at all to stay. I decided I would try to see what was right, and if doubtful, I could try to adopt the Communist point of view.
Simon was helped along this path by a fellow Jesuit in the same cell who taught him how to begin his confession.
But he recognized that his own sense of guilt had played the most important part: "My position changed when I said, 'I am guilty'. " While unconscious guilt was undoubtedly present all along, his sense of being criminallyguilty developed after about one year, and was accompanied by a strong compulsion to confess. "I made a list in French . . . for my own use of ten points which I should never mention. . . . Sixmonths later I had told everything. . . . I was then ready to tell everything about myself and anyone else. "
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His list had, of course, been his unconscious preparation for what was to come. When he made it he decided that "if I put together all these faults I had been accused of . . . I could say I was guilty. "
When I asked him what he had to feel guilty about, he first an- swered evasively, "We had plenty of things. " And then he did describe one of them--an occasion soon after World War II when Catholic chaplains from the American Army brought an intelligence officer to see Simon and some of his colleagues, "and then we told them plenty of things. " But, as if realizing that this might not be in itself so damning, he added, "What we did any foreigner would have done, but we should have been more careful. " Then, as if to justify further his guilt, he explained that "In jail we didn't ac- cuse only our crimes, but rather the intention of our crimes"; he went on to describe how he had contemplated (but had never carried out) telling an American missionary who was leaving de- tails about Communist work on an airfield, realizing that this in- formation might be passed on to an official American group.
I had no way of knowing whether this idea had really occurred to Simon before his imprisonment, or whether it was a product of the guilt-stimulating pressures of imprisonment itself. Either way, it was part of his need to find evidence of both wrongdoing and wrong-thinking so he could rationalize, in thought reform terms, his own psychological state: "Every time I found a crime I had committed, I was glad to find it.
" But among a myriad of trivial self-accusations, the encounter with an American intelligence officer was undoubtedly a true source of psychological guilt, as it violated Simon's deepest sense of what a missionary should do and be.
His guilt established in his own mind, Simon moved on to the next step--complete enthusiasm and complete trust:
One of the prisoners suggested writing diaries--only about our change of mind. . . . Every day we gave the cell chief our diary. We had the feeling we were living in a glass house--but we had no bad feelings at all. Our souls were entirely open. It was complete confidence. We could trust the government.
Simon's attainment of mutual trust and harmony with the Chi- nese realized a long-desired goal, a goal which he felt had before this always eluded him: "I never had a good chance to live among the Chinese except the last three years in jail. " During this period
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he held nothing back from his colleagues and cellmates ("I was glad to get rid of all I had on my mind and to speak very frankly"), and his statements included extensive denunciations of the behavior of many of his colleagues, both in and out of jail,
He was transferred during his last year to a jail where he was permitted to do manual labor. His guilt had led to a feeling of tranquility: "I was more quiet. I thought I am guilty and deserve it. " Once he was happy in jail, his main fear was that he would soon be released. He knew that jail was a safer place for him than life in China on the outside; and contact with his own colleagues in Europe seemed least safe of all:
When I was in labor camp during the last year, I was glad to be there. I was afraid to be out, because if allowed to stay in China I would have much trouble. If I came out, there would be trouble with my Order. . . . When I received my sentence, I wrote immediately to the head of the court, "I do not ask for a reduction in the sentence, but I would like you to cross out the clause about being kicked out of the country. "
By this time, he was, more than any of my subjects, identifying himself with his reformers. He took pride in bringing others around: "There was one fellow we worked on for two full days. At first we couldn't get to him . . . but finally we did. " Much impressed with individual Communists, he set them up as his standard, and always compared himself unfavorably to them: "We worked hard--but could not beat them. . . . They worked all of the days, and had meetings at night. . . . And they were very enthusiastic about their work. " He could justify in his mind even their curbs upon religion: "They said that outside of jail there is religious freedom, inside no. . . . That was tough on us, but we had to follow regulations"; and he was grateful for a slight relaxation in this area: "At the end,
for instance, I was allowed to say my breviary. "
He emphasized that in all this he had become increasinglyim-
pressed with the sincerity of the Communist officials, and illustrated this with their attitude toward their false accusation about the radio:
At the beginning, I thought that this was a pretext to arrest me. They wanted to take over our university and used this as their pretext. Later I found they really believed it. They were in good faith. . . . Then they dropped it, and they believed me.
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 213
Thus he had, during the course of his imprisonment, run the gamut from opposition to merger: "When they called me at the beginning, it was a fight--at the end it was a chat with a friend. "
Simon related this story to me in a simple, straightforward manner, impressing me both with his conscientiousness and his naivet6. At times he seemed totally unaware of the degree to which he had been manipulated. But at other times, I felt that awareness of this manipulation--as well as of the inconsistencies of the Com- munist position--had intruded upon his consciousness, and that he was hard put to fend it off. This inner struggle became more evident as he told me of his experiences after his release.
Tense and agitated upon his arrival in Hong Kong, Simon had found himself in total disagreement with everyone and everything around him. His situation was aggravated by his compulsion to ex- press these antagonistic feelings:
I couldn't control myself . . . when I was in jail, I could read Chinese newspapers for an entire month with no reaction, but when I came out, after every paragraph, I jumped . . . when someone told me something I thought was wrong, I had to speak.
At that time, he was convinced that because of his "change of ideas" he would not be able to remain in the Jesuit Order: "I don't mean I thought I would leave, but that I might be kicked out. " He thought he might have to become a secular priest (one who be- longs to no special order) and "find a bishop who would take me. "
His Jesuit colleagues, however, felt differently. Appalled at his behavior and attitudes, but for the most part sympathetic to him as a person, they were intent upon tiding him over what they con- sidered to be a crisis and winning him back to a more acceptable set of views. One of them with whom I had talked in Hong Kong had even asked my advice about the problem. He had decided--partly in response to pressures from other colleagues and partly because of his own convictions--to apply to Simon what he called "shock therapy. " By this he meant confronting him with the disparaging material that had been published about him in Chinese Com- munist newspapers and magazines, including accusations and con- fessions of heterosexual and homosexual behavior. (Simon had been accused of committing a "sexual crime" [homosexual act] during his imprisonment; although this was probably a false accusation, it
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could well have touched off latent fears and impulses and stimulated a good deal of confession material. ) Simon's Jesuit friend had hesitated to use his "shock" approach because he had noted that on the few occasions when he had attempted to bring up the sub- ject of prison confessions, Simon had become silent and fearful. I felt he had good reason to hesitate, and advised him against the "shock therapy/' However, influenced by the fact that Simon was leaving for Europe in a few days, and believing that others in the Church might be less understandingabout the whole problem than he was, the Jesuit had disregarded my advice and gone ahead with his direct but gently-administeredconfrontation.
He felt at the time that his shock therapy had been effective, since Simon had responded with surprise and a certain amount of anger directed at the Communists. But like many therapists, shock or otherwise, he had been premature in his evaluation; for soon Simon overcame his resentment toward the Communists through a rationalized analysis of the situation, which he also gave to me:
The Communists have two different departments, justice and propa- ganda. Justice wants to know the truth. Propaganda wants to amplify everything. . . . For justice, I still have the document of condemna- tion . . . based on the true facts. . . . Some expressions are rather ambiguous, but what they charged me of, I have admitted. . . . What they wrote in the newspapers [for propaganda] is entirely different.
It is possible, however, that this incident did play a part in Simon's gradual realization that the Communists were not com- pletely truthful:
That's one point on which I have changed a little. Then [when in prison] I had the feeling that the Communists never lied. I feel now that although there are more lies on the other side, the Communists also lie--although they are more clever and more skillful. . . . If the Communists only told the truth, it would be awful for us.
Despite this small concession, he remained acutely at odds with his fellow priests. He looked upon them as "reactionary," and they tended to view him as one who had been convinced (and deceived) by the Communists because he was "doctrinally unsound" in his Catholic theology. One priest used him to illustrate the point that it is the "technicians" among Catholic priests who are likely to be most affected by thought reform, rather than those who are more
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strongly grounded philosophically. Another, who had been de- nounced in prison by Simon, referred to the latter's behavior as a "twist of conscience. . . . He is a very conscientious man, and when he reported against me he was being very conscientious in another way. "
The Jesuit organization seemed to have more tolerance for his point of view than Simon had anticipated; but he felt that in re- assigning him to a teaching position, they had expected him even- tually to "become normal again/' He made a point of expressing his Communist sympathies clearly to his superiors, and he finally reached a modus Vivendi with them in which they accepted his right to hold any beliefs he pleased as long as he did not proclaim them too loudly to the outside world. He accepted this restriction as part of the principle (emphasized by both the Communists and the Catholics) that an individual priest cannot separate his actions from his responsibilities to his order; at the same time he indicated that he would like to express his views publicly through writing or speak- ing "if I were free. "
He was--emotionally and intellectually--much more distant from his colleagues than before. He had always viewed himself as "rather cold toward other people/' and this isolation was increased "because I live with people who don't share the same idea. " When I asked him if he had been influenced by any of his colleagues since his return, he replied, "There couldn't be much influence because their ideas are so contradictory to mine. "
He was so much alone with his thoughts that his only oppor- tunities to express himself came during long automobile trips he made to preach in outlying areas. These trips were arranged by a local organization, and on them he found release in talking to the driver, usually a businessman volunteer: "I know they don't share my opinions, but it is very enjoyable for me. " Sometimes his com- panion, when he first heard that Simon had been through interest- ing experiences in China, would enthusiastically invite him to speak before a local club--to which Simon would reply, "Let us talk together for a few more minutes and then see whether you still wish me to speak before your group. " The invitation was never repeated. Simon concluded that "they don't want their members to hear that kind of stuff. "
Toward the end of our three-hour talk, he described to me his
? 2l6 THOUGHT REFORM
attempts to achieve an inner synthesis between his older Catholic and newer Communist ideologies. He claimed that this attempt had begun even before he was imprisoned, when he had envisioned a political party "entirely Communist but with Christian prin- ciples" (although at the time he supported his fellow priests against the encroachments of the Communist regime). Like other priests among my subjects, he felt that he had reinforced his own spiritual life through his imprisonment: "The fact of feeling guilty is good Christian humility/' But unlike the others, he believed that the Communists themselves possessed the Christian virtues ("I feel that most of the Communists are humble"), a strong expression of praise from a Catholic priest.
He claimed that through his experience he felt himself closer to the Catholic religion "because, in one way I am nearer the truth. " His facial expression became animated and enthusiastic as he de- scribed to me the way in which he had improved his inner life:
I have had more experience with introspection. With all of the methods of criticism we go very deep into the subconscious. I remember in jail . . . everyone told their faults against the discipline, then we decided to get deep into the reasons. Then others would say, "This and this is the reason/' We would say, "No, no, no--that's not it/' Then at night you would think they are right, and as soon as you realized this, the fault was corrected at once. . . . This is very important for the re- ligious life. . . . A very powerful tool.
I felt his alternation in this statement between first person sin- gular and plural, and the second and third persons, was more than a matter of a European speaking English (his English was, in fact, fluent), and really reflected his alternating images of himself as a member of the Communist-oriented group, as the target of its criticism, and as a spiritually-active European Catholic. He in fact emphasized that it was not possible to use this kind of group criticism in his present circumstances, and that he was forced to apply this "tool" himself--and so, in effect, assumesimultaneously all three identities. He believed that Communism and Catholicism should maintain their interchange of techniques and that Catholi- cism should seek to benefit from the Communist improvements "Lenin borrowed many things from religious orders, but amplified them a lot. . . . If we can get them back from Lenin, that is all right. "
? FATHER SIMON: THE CONVERTED JESUIT 217
Yet he could not avoid recognizing his inevitable conflict, as a Catholic priest, with the Communist creed. When I asked, for in- stance, if he were troubled by the problem of materialism--a point of bitter controversy, at least theoretically, between Communism and Catholicism--he replied, "No, but it means I can never be a Communist/' and went on to say:
My conflict with the Communists came when I said, "For me religion is first, Communism is second/' If I had been able to write a blank check and say that anything the Communists do about religion is OK, then I could have stayed. That much I could not have done. . . . I trusted them very much, but not that much. . . . If not for this prob- lem of religion I would have followed the Communist Party entirely, without any restriction.
He added that during his last month in jail he wondered, "Do I not go too far? " and then decided, "I shall never have an uncondi- tional surrender. I shall never sign a blank check. " Now he con- cluded, not without some sadness, that because of this unwilling- ness, "for the Communists I am still an enemy . . . since if you don't accept them entirely, they consider you an enemy. "
When I asked him whether he would consider such a black-and- white judgment on the part of the Communists to be at all unfair, his answer was what could be expected--but its implications were nonetheless striking:
No. To understand Communism you must compare it with Catholic belief. If with Catholic belief, you don't accept one article of faith, you are not a Catholic. If you don't sign a blank check, you are not a Catholic.
Simon had no objection to the demand itself. When I asked him whether he was willing to make this "unconditional surrender" to Catholicism, he replied:
Of course. . . . I like Communism and Catholicism, but Catholicism always comes first. In case of conflict, I will stay with Catholicism.
World politics were, of course, another matter. As far as Com- munist activities in general were concerned, Simon said, "I am not even against a revolution--of course as mild as possible, but you cannot always do anything about that. " And about the return of
? 2l8 THOUGHT REFORM
General de Gaulle to power during 1958, he offered a remarkably candid opinion:
W ell, give him a chance. See what he can do. I was rather against him at first because I thought he was reactionary. Then someone said that Moscow was not against him because they thought he would break NATO. Since then I have not been so much against him because Mos- cow had that opinion. If Moscow stands for de Gaulle, then I am for de Gaulle.
But in discussing thought reform, he made a statement far more significant than he realized:
The way you look at it depends upon whether you feel that their opin- ions are true or false. If you say they are false, then it is all brainwashing stuff. If you think them true, they help you. I saw cases of serious offences--even some real crimes--completely changed. . . . With the habit of introspection you can very quickly see whether someone is tell- ing the truth.
Here Simon, quite unintentionally, let his inner doubts out of the bag, implying with this slip that he and others like him were not guilty of "real crimes/' but of something else that must be dis- tinguished from them.
He ended the interview--just as he began it--with praise for the 'Very powerful" and "wonderful" thought reform methods, and denunciation of those Catholic priests who he felt had presented distorted views of Communist China.
Why did Father Simon go so far that his conversion strains the meaning of apparent? It is interesting to compare him with our other apparent convert, Miss Darrow. The two are very different kinds of people; and yet there are striking similarities in their emo- tional reactions. Both responded very strongly to the opportunity to merge with the Chinese people; both experienced an unusually strong sense of guilt, and a strong need to be absolutely sincere with their captors; both eventually achieved a greater harmony with their prison environment than with any they had previously known, and were loath to surrender it for the anticipated pain of "freedom.