« Intellectuels catholiques » ? Réflexions sur une naissance différée

Abstract

"Intellectual Catholics"? History of a Postponed Birth, Etienne Fouilloux. How can it be explained that French catholic intellectuals did not have an official body before the 1945 creation of the Centre catholique des intellectuels français (CCIF) (Catholic Center of French Intellectuals) ? The first obstacle was French. At the time of the Dreyfus affair, the Catholics took objection to the word "intellectual, because it was associated with a Dreyfusard fight that the majority of them didn't share. This incompatibility continued in the period between the two wars, in spite of a renewal marked by the flowering of Catholic-inspired intellectual journals, in spite also of the waves of conversions from 1880 to 1930. On the Catholic side, the inheritance of the modernist crisis discredited any autonomy of Catholic thinkers with regard to the religious Catholic authorities. Theologians were relegated to the role of the training of Catholic elites and of the explanation of pontifical texts that kept them outside of intellectual debate. While the condemnation of the Action française in 1926 released the stranglehold and gave the floor to "civil theologians", it was after 1945 that the church became aware of the wrongs that this marginalization was subjecting it to. The involvement of Catholic intellectuals in public debate showed the interest of hearing a Christian voice without in-volving Rome directly. The intellectuals fully in the 1950 fights, but the reciprocal suspicion between them and the religious authorities inherited from previous decades never disappeared.