Catholiques et Communistes: La crise du progressisme chrétien, 1950–1955 (review)

Catholiques et Communistes: La crise du progressisme chrétien, 1950-1955. By Yvon Tranvouez. [L'histoire à vif.] (Paris: Editions du Cerf. 2000. Pp. 363. FFr 165 paperback.)

Nine of the twelve chapters of this superbly researched work first appeared as separate articles in varied, specialized publications. For this study, Tranvouez has revised, expanded and supplemented these articles and produced a well integrated, highly nuanced monograph.

The central focus of this book is the semi-monthly review, La Quinzaine. Tranvouez painstakingly examines every aspect of La Quinzaine from its initial appearance in November, 1950, to its condemnation by the Holy Office in February, 1955, and its final issue one month later. The special significance of La Quinzaine lies not in its limited readership, which Tranvouez carefully reconstructs from subscription data, but rather in its role as the voice of the Christian progressive movement in France.

The Christian progressives occupied a unique position on the French Catholic spectrum, to the left of Témoignage Chrétien. The distinguishing feature of La Quinzaine was its double commitment to the Church and to the worker movement. In the polarized world of the Cold War and in the turbulent upheaval of French Catholicism in the early 1950's, Tranvouez convincingly demonstrates the incompatibility of a simultaneous loyalty to the teaching of the Church, on the one hand, and to the Communist-dominated worker movement, on the other. As a result, the eventual condemnation of La Quinzaine could be seen as the final chapter in the fascinating, frustrating, and fractious conflict between Paris and Rome, most dramatically symbolized by the censure of the priest-worker "experiment" in 1954.

The book is written for specialists in twentieth-century French Catholicism. Tranvouez uses an amazing array of primary sources, especially the archives of La Quinzaine. He places the review in the longer tradition of French Catholic thought by showing its links to both Temps Présent and Lamennais. Through this carefully crafted study of one current of French Catholic thought, a fuller, richer picture emerges of the convulsive condition of the French Church in the decade following World War II.

 

Francis J. Murphy
Boston College

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