Roman Catholic Modernists Confront the Great War

C. Talar, L. Barmann, C. Talar, L. Barmann

• Publisher: Palgrave Pivot
• Year: 2015
• ISBN:
  9781137527363
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology of Religion
• Index: Social Sciences

This book project traces the thought of several Roman Catholic Modernists (and one especially virulent anti-Modernist) as they confronted the intellectual challenges posed by the Great war from war from 1895 to 1907.

1

Introduction

C. J. T. Talar

Abstract: The Introduction lays out the major questions that guide this study, situating Roman Catholic Modernism and some of its major representatives in relation to those questions. It identifies the figures that are the subjects of the volume’s chapters and suggests the wider context of writings on the war from others who were involved in Modernism.

Talar, C. J. T. and Lawrence F. Barmann (eds.). Roman Catholic Modernists Confront the Great War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. DOI: 10.1057/9781137527363.0004.

Over the period roughly coinciding with ‘La Belle Époque’ (1890–1914) a number of Catholics, ecclesiastics, and layfolk, engaged in a series of initiatives aimed at intellectual and structural renewal of Catholicism. Their reformist aspirations were founded upon the conviction that it was necessary that the Church overcome the mutual hostility between itself and modernity that had been characteristic of much of the nineteenth century. To the degree that rapprochement were successful, it would be to the betterment and benefit of the Church. A Catholicism impervious to the advances of the modern world risked losing its ability to communicate its message to contemporaries who were formed by that world. A Catholicism that continued to speak in the abstract accents of Scholasticism would lose cogency and credibility, increasingly becoming an object of antiquarian disinterest. Yet a successful rapprochement could also work to the betterment and benefit of society. Catholicism retained its potential to be a potent moral force in society, all the more essential for a society undergoing the traumas of democratization, industrialization, and urbanization. To come to terms with modernity meant coming to grips with historical consciousness, with the subjective element in human knowing, with modern political and social conditions—all of which would mean far-reaching changes in Catholicism.

The degree of transformation that was called for came to be viewed as corrosive of Catholicism, and the initiatives for reform were labeled ‘Modernism’ and condemned under that rubric in 1907. In 1910 an Oath against Modernism was imposed, to root out any lingering Modernists outwardly conforming but inwardly deviant. Up until the outbreak of the Great War sanctions continued as aftershocks of the 1907 condemnation.

Aspirations for reform imply a certain optimism about their attainment. Modernists’ hopes were in the main supported by an evolutionary optimism that suffused the Zeitgeist. The century had seen remarkable technological advances—in communications, in transportation, in medicine and public health—contributing in their way to a faith in the future. A growing mastery of nature, together with hopes for an increasing understanding of the dynamics of society and ability to intervene positively in those dynamics reinforced a belief in progress. The dark side of technological advances, their destructive potential, was much less appreciated and would come forth in force over 1914–18.

The confrontation between optimistic faith in ongoing progress and the massive loss of life in the war, the effects of the horrors of warfare upon the survivors, the material devastation and loss of cultural patrimony was acutely felt by many of those who had invested efforts in ecclesiastical and social reform. Questions thus naturally arise: how did those who were confronted by the death and suffering of the war, in some cases very directly, reconcile their experiences with their Modernist faith? How did they deal with the massive counterfactual of the Great War to religious beliefs that had looked to a future filled with promise? They had aspired to embrace modernity; how did they react when that embrace turned so deadly?

International in scope, Modernism had its center in France, but representatives in England, Italy, Germany, and the United States. Hence, when confronted with the reality of war, nationalism as well as religion played its part in their public and private reactions. If France notably mobilized its intellectuals in service of the war effort, other countries did the same. In the essays that constitute this volume, the enlistment of Alfred Loisy (1857–1940) and Lucien Laberthonnière (1860–1932) in France, and Joseph Sauer (1872–1949) in Germany will be examined. In England Friedrich von Hügel (1852–1925) and Maude Petre (1863–1942) contributed writings on the war. While nationality remains a factor, the focus here will be on religion. How did the religious convictions that characterized these figures as Modernists have an effect on their perceptions of Catholicism during the war? One aspect of this that emerges in these essays is differing perceptions of the papacy. Beyond Catholicism, how did their Modernist religious convictions (as those had evolved since its condemnation) have an impact on how they viewed the future prospects of humanity? And how did the clash of nations affect the friendships and acquaintanceships among those who were networked by reform efforts during the years of Modernist aspirations?

On the eve of the war the figures examined here were in a variety of situations in relation to the Church. Loisy had been excommunicated in 1908 and was teaching in the area of History of Religions at the Collège de France. He had given up his Catholic faith, but retained a belief in a religion of humanity. Laberthonnière had been silenced, forbidden to publish anything. He served as editor of the Annales de philosophie chrétienne, until the volumes of that periodical under years of his editorship (1905–13) were placed on the Index, apparently at the instigation of Action Française. He remained in the Church, but continued to hold positions that set him at odds with some of his co-religionaries, as is evident in the essay that appears here. Maude Petre had incurred the sanction of being deprived of the sacraments in her diocese, over her refusal to take the Oath against Modernism. Friedrich von Hügel had narrowly escaped censure and continued his contacts with religious intellectuals, although some of those had become strained over events surrounding the condemnation of Modernism. Maurice Blondel’s work did not figure in the antimodernist syllabus Lamentabili sane exitu,¹ but there is an allusion to his method of immanence in the antimodernist encyclical Pascendi dominici gregis.² Blondel (1861–1949) likewise was saved from any direct sanction. Nor did Sauer incur any. In short, although cast into a system by the Vatican condemnation, Modernism was far from a monolithic entity and the diversity of its onetime adherents is reflected in their responses to the various issues raised above. To further that appreciation of diversity within Catholicism, one of the resolute adversaries of Modernism is also included here: Canon Henri Delassus (1836–1921). Delassus achieved notoriety through his polemics against Americanism, Modernism, and the Abbés démocrates, stigmatizing those through their supposed links to the Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. In the pages of the Semaine religieuse de Cambrai and in single- and multi-volume works Delassus carried on a decades’ long campaign against the enemies of Catholicism and of France.

It should be noted that the figures included here are but a sampling of a much larger population. In France, the two bishops who became associated with Modernism, Eudoxe-Irénée Mignot (1842–1918) and Lucien Lacroix (1855–1922) wrote on aspects of the war. Through his associations with liberal clerics, most notably for his support for Loisy, and for the tenor of his own publications, Mignot had come under suspicion of Modernism by the Vatican. This naturally strained his relations with his fellow bishops. In 1914 and in 1916 he issued pastoral letters relating to the war.³ At several points Mignot had considered tendering his resignation as archbishop. His confrere, Lucien Lacroix actually did so, resigning from the see of Tarentaise in 1908 to teach history at the École pratique des hautes études. Over 1915–19 he published 22 installments, of 24 pages each, under the umbrella title of Le Clergé et la guerre de 1914.⁴

Associated with Mignot as his vicar-general and actual author of some of the writings published under the archbishop’s name, Louis Birot (1863–1936) was a Republican, a Dreyfusard, and was engaged in the social questions of the time. During the war he served as a chaplain volunteer and left a journal published only in 2000.⁵ Félix Klein (1862–1953), who became enmeshed in the controversy over Americanism, and who became further suspect over his association with Loisy, also served as a chaplain.⁶ His La Guerre vue d’une Ambulance (1915) was translated as Diary of a French Army Chaplain, while Les Douleurs qui espèrent (1916) appeared as Hope in Suffering.⁷ The former volume records his impressions and observations regarding the war in August 1914 and from September through December of that year his experiences with the wounded in the hospital at Neuilly. In the first entry a note of hope is sounded: ‘The only thing that reassures us somewhat amidst this bewildering dizziness, is the idea that out of this trial, as out of others, for those who so will, there will arise the good of a moral order all the more precious that it has cost so much.’⁸ Already by October a note of disillusionment is patent:

The climax is reached: engines of war come alike from the earth, the air, and the waves; and there are others that travel underground to blow up trenches, towns, barracks, forests, everything where human life is found. Science is mistress of the world!

Forgive me if I let a cry of bitterness escape my lips!⁹

As the title of the second volume implies, it contains more reflective essays. After an initial section that recalls the deaths of particular individuals and the grief of family members Klein turns to questions of theodicy, of sacrifice and atonement—themes that as Claus Arnold notes in his essay came to occupy German Christians as well.

Pierre Batiffol (1861–1929) used Cardinal Mercier’s pastoral letter, ‘a doctrinal declaration and the condemnation of a system,’ to assign moral responsibility for the war and counter arguments by German Protestants and Catholics in favor of Germany. In elaborating on these themes he claimed to be only commenting on the letter and stating openly what it could not. Interestingly, toward the end of his article Batiffol invokes a comparison with Modernism: ‘And if Modernism was for a moment the bringing together of all heresies, may it be fitting to say of the assembly of prideful acts, brutalities, and sophisms that there is Germanism?’¹⁰ A response by a Roman theologian to his article elicited from Batiffol ‘A un Neutre Catholique’ in which he defended the positions taken in the article and pointedly observed, ‘We do not ask [Catholic neutrals] to give up their national neutrality, we are asking them to give up their moral neutrality, not to remain impartial at the obstruction of the sacred rights of the weak.’ In this regard Catholics are seen to have a special responsibility.¹¹

George Fonsegrive (1852–1917) wrote on philosophy and on social issues, while also editing La Quinzaine, the periodical in which Édouard Le Roy’s controversial article, ‘Qu’est-ce qu’un dogme?’ appeared in 1905. During the war Fonsegrive contributed ‘Kultur’ et civilisation to the series Pages actuelles. In common with many other French writers on the war he positions ‘civilisation’ as embodying universal values while ‘Kultur’ is provincially, nationalistically, and militaristically German. He views German Kultur as a kind of betrayal of the ‘other Germany,’ that represented by Leibnitz, Schiller, Goethe, and Bach, Mozart, and Beethoven. The Germany that is militarized, Prussianized, must be defeated in order to liberate elements of German science, art, literature, philosophy, and music that are representative of civilization.¹²

Émile Poulat termed the liberal Protestant Paul Sabatier (1858–1928) part of Modernism’s ‘third order.’¹³ Sabatier’s war writings represent an instance where a relationship did not survive because of what appeared on the printed page. As Claus Arnold’s contribution to this volu...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• 1  Introduction
• 2  Alfred Loisy and the Great War
• 3  Laberthonnire in the Great War: A Modernist in the Trenches
• 4  Baron Friedrich von Hgel and the Great War
• 5  Joseph SauerA German Modernist in War Time
• 6  The Ways of Providence and the Sufferings of War: Canon Henri Delassuss Les Pourquoi de la Guerre Mondiale
• Bibliography
• Index