Charles De Koninck at the Crossroads of Catholic Moral Thought: The “Common Good” Controversy and its Echoes in the Americas

Abstract

Though Charles De Koninck was the first French-language philosopher based in Canada to be known internationally, his is no more a household name in French than in English Canada – except in Quebec City. There, on 25 February 2006, three full pages of the Saturday issue of the local daily newspaper Le Soleil were devoted to a presentation of the “De Koninck Dynasty” of scholars, intellectuals and professionals, who have made their mark at Universite Laval, in the Quebec City area, throughout the province, and beyond. The genealogical chart that covers the front page of the section shows the exponential spread of this prolific Catholic family over three generations of illustrious citizens, from the initial germ cell of a young Flemish couple who came to Quebec in 1934, when Charles De Koninck, having completed a dissertation on the philosophy of Sir Arthur Eddington at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, was invited by Universite Laval to help set up its new Faculty of Philosophy. De Koninck’s wife, Zoe Decruydt, is now in her nineties; De Koninck, who would have been one hundred in 2006, died in 1965 at the height of his glory. At the time, the philosopher was in Rome, a lone lay expert called by Pope Paul VI to actively participate in the deliberations of the Second Vatican Council on two burning social issues facing the Roman Catholic Church: freedom of conscience and birth control. This father of twelve was strongly in favour of the latter, and is said to have been on his way to deliver to the pope some impregnable Scholastic arguments for allowing