De bons pasteurs. Le rôle de Jacques Maritain et Marie-Alain Couturier dans la reconversion de Julien Green

Abstract

This article examines the way in which, over a period of some thirty years, the philosopher Jacques Maritain and a Dominican priest, Marie- Alain Couturier, helped Julien Green resolve the conflict between his homosexuality and the teaching of the Catholic Church. It provides also an account of the distress experienced in what was a deeply personal spiritual struggle, belied by the brief and factual account of his reconversion given by Green in Chapter XVI of Ce qu’il faut d’amour à l’homme. In so doing, it enables the profession of faith with which that work ends to be better understood.