L’affaire de La Vigie. Le cardinal Amette suspect d’indulgence pour le modernisme

Abstract

In the years following the publication of the Encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), intransigent French journalists made a specialty of denouncing in their newspapers men and institutions they considered complacent with regard to modernism. In March 1914, Cardinal Amette, Bishop of Paris, in agreement with his Council of Vigilance, felt that he had to lay blame on the director of one of those broadsheets : La Vigie for the excesses of his denunciations. The latter informed Mgr. Benigni, who in turn rapidly presented Cardinal De Lai with a case against the Bishop of Paris, who was indirectly requested to justify himself. The latter’s spirited reaction against the accusation of being lax in the struggle against modernism constrained the Secretary of the Consistory to make a strategic diplomatic retreat. The dual illumination of Parisian sources and Roman sources thus sheds light on the fact that a firm reaction could constrain Rome to take its distance vis-a-vis the pressure exerted on the bishops by ...