Laïcat catholique et société française: Les Comités catholiques (1870–1905), and: La Résignation dans la culture catholique en France (1870–1945) (review)

These two books on French Catholic history, taken together, offer similarities and contrasts that justify a common review. They both are histories of the apostolate, and their narratives begin in 1870. The Moulinet Laïcat catholique et société française: Les Comités catholiques ends in 1905, year of the Law of Separation of Church and State, and the Galinier-Pallerola Résignation dans la culture catholique en France ends in 1945 with the end of the Nazi occupation and World War II—moments proper to their topics. Moulinet embraces all those lay Catholic groups that set themselves to charitable works in submission to the church hierarchy. A Comité is such a general term that numerous local Catholic groups all over France within the time frame are subject matter for the study. The author records the structures and purposes of all these organizations, highlighting leading Catholic lay leaders along the way. The central figure, the parliamentarian Charles Chesnelong, believed that he was continuing the earlier work of Charles de Montalembert to federate the charitable and educational groups of earlier generations. The work offers a privileged entry into the relationship between Church and state across the contentious nineteenth century, because these groups were the extension of the Church in the public domain. Moulinet concludes, “With obvious limits and semi-successes and semi-failures, these charitable activities prepared engaged Catholics for reintegration into the bosom of the French nation” (p. 510). What he presents in arriving at this conclusion is a monument of erudition.

Whereas Moulinet fully covered his topic, even providing hundreds of pages of primary-source documentation on a CD-ROM, Galinier-Pallerola had to pick and choose across the vast field of witnesses to resignation in the face of personal frustration or defeat. And so Galinier-Pallerola gives us Lenten Letters of the bishops, examples from novels written for young people, papal teachings, manuals of theology, and catechisms. In Moulinet, total coverage left little room for interpretation across the data, making the overarching interpretation (cited above) all the more important. In Galinier-Pallerola, interpretation across the data was the ultimate organizer. The Moulinet volume had served as the author’s habilitation, the ultimate stage in the professional certification of the scholar pedagogue; the Galinier-Pallerola volume had served as the author’s dissertation, the basic qualification for the scholar pedagogue.

Laïcat catholique et société française: Les Comités catholiques presents in good order virtually all of the relevant Comités. Readers would do well to have their own (re)search agendas as they make their way through the repertoire of these groups, organized for the promotion of spirituality; the support of Catholic teaching; the care of youth; the provisions of simple hospitality; and the support of workers, families, and specific professions. The vignettes of leading and original personalities take on their own life. In addition to Chesnelong, we have Émile Keller, Anatole de Caulaincourt, Charles Thellier de Poncheville, and Charles de Nicolay—five key figures who were part of the conflict and competition between institutional Catholicism and the secularized French government. Their evolution began with their presumed duty to win out—to dominate—until it reached the ultimate goal of the Comités—charity. Moulinet, a priest of the diocese of Moulins who is professor at the Université catholique de Lyon, is an ideal interpreter of this phenomenon, pointing out the ecclesiastical, political, and social success achieved, as well as the concominant human failings involved.

Comités existed earlier in Belgium, Germany, Switzerland...