Liberalism, Catholicism, and the Abbé Grégoire

Abstract

With the convening and accomplishments of the Second Vatican Council liberal Catholicism seems triumphant in the Catholic Church. Despite continuing controversy over such agonizing problems as birth control, it would appear that the Church has forthrightly and definitely decided to reconcile itself as fully as possible to modern society. From this present perspective, the historian may well need to reexamine certain aspects of the rise of liberal Catholicism and to reassess the work of certain of its pioneers and the frustrating obstacles they encountered. No longer on the defensive, the partisans of liberal Catholicism may want to reclaim those they have ignored or rejected. One curious figure who seldom if ever has been given credit for his role in the emergence of liberal Catholicism is the Abbé Henri Grégoire, priest and politician during the French Revolution and patriarch of the schismatic Constitutional Church.Liberal Catholic historians have tended to shy away from too much attention to this puzzling and perhaps embarrassing figure, leaving him to the attacks of conservative Catholics or the enthusiastic devotion of neo-Jansenist sectarians. Secular liberals who have generally preferred to face a Catholic Church which was unequivocally reactionary have pretended to see Grégoire as an excentric of little significance.