The disillusionment of a left

In 2015, when I was elected to the presidency, I wanted us to lead a collective reflection in order to define who we were. Our response was one sentence that has become our motto: “Les Poissons roses is a platform for Christian reflection on the left. »

We have positioned ourselves as Christians in our various works. Perhaps we did not sufficiently know how to “live” as Christians among ourselves. With our partners committed to the left (Social Weeks of France, Civic Pact, Democracy and Spirituality, New Life, Refoundation), we have observed real strategic disagreements on the nature of our commitment (with a view to political action or to developing files?) and our spiritual positioning (claiming ourselves as Christians, as inter-spiritual or as trans-political, trans-spiritual?).

What does it mean to be “on the left”?

Finally, the “left”, if he testified to the refusal to remain in the deadly orbit of the PS, to our desire to attach ourselves to the personalist inspiration of Emmanuel Mounier, if he wanted to mark that all the Christians do not lean to the right, was hit by the eruption of Macronism. This is evidenced by our inability to define, both in 2017 and in 2022, a single position before the first rounds of the presidential elections.

But what does it mean to be “on the left” today? We differ in our reading of Laudato si’, considering that the ” everything is connected “ links the ecological crisis, the social crisis (the cry of the Earth and the poor) but also the ethical questions. On societal issues, we differ from other groups close to us who, precisely, refute the “Christian” label. We are thus putting ourselves in the way of the changes desired by a large part of the population, endorsing negative positions, now misunderstood; especially since the legitimacy of the Catholic Church, following the cases of pedocrime, is heavily tainted.

A permanent big gap

Our reflection on societal questions leads us to be conservatives on all these subjects which have become the marker of the reformist left. The social democratic left has abandoned the social struggles, leaving the RN to take over. We therefore live in a permanent big gap. The experience of the 2022 elections leaves me with a bitter taste.

While I have long fought for a presence of Christians on the left in the political field, I now have the feeling that we have no place in the current debates; nor on the right, because I feel no affinity with Christians who joined an Éric Zemmour or who are tempted by the RN, neither with the Republicans who remain very liberal on the economic level, nor with a macronie with a variable face but which responds to the societal demands of our compatriots, nor with a Nupes, marked by LFI and a posture of systematic opposition, which stifles in its arms the leftovers of the PS and the seeds of the Greens.

A bit disillusioned

This was my state of mind, a bit disillusioned, before the weekend of reflection that we experienced at the Campus of the ecological transition last November. The desire expressed by each participant to continue the adventure of the Pink Fishes, their lucidity in the face of the difficulties encountered, their desire to bear witness to the spirit that drives us, even if we are in the minority, their commitment to reconstituting a collective, have drawn a path.

This path goes through the reaffirmation of our motto, supplemented by two verbs that give direction and define the ambition that could be that of Pisces roses now: “The Pink Fishes remain a platform for reflection of Christians, on the left – witnessing and influencing. » A beautiful program!