Monseigneur Saliège: Archevêque de Toulouse, 1929-1956 by Jean-Louis Clément (review)

280 BOOK REVIEWS a minor shortcoming: one can easily imagine that much of the potential audience for this book might have appreciated brief summaries in Polish. That quibble aside, the plain fact remains that this admirable compilation takes its place as an indispensable resource for students of the life and work of Pius XI as well as the single most valuable publication on the Ratti nunciature in Poland. No scholar in either field can afford to overlook it. Neal Pease University ofWisconsin-Milwaukee Monseigneur Saliège:Archevêque de Toulouse, 1929-1956. ByJean-Louis Clément . [Bibliothèque Beauchesne: Religions - Société - Politique, Volume 23.] (Paris: Beauchesne. 1994. Pp. 415. FF 210 paperback.) This work is much more than a biographical study of Cardinal Saliège. It is, in fact, a comprehensive analysis of the intellectual, spiritual, and political context in which the justly renowned Archbishop ofToulouse lived and labored, especially in the dark years preceding and during World War II. Jean-Louis Clément, its author, utilizes the comprehensive methodology characteristic of the best contemporary French scholarship in the field of church history. The influence ofhis mentor,Jean-Marie Mayeur, is pervasively evident in this study, which he directed in its initial form as a doctoral dissertation at the Sorbonne. However, in its revised form, this work is gracefully written and cogently argued, with none of the shortcomings often associated with reworked dissertations. The single most impressive aspect of this book is the quality of the research conducted by the author. National, ministerial, and departmental archives as well as pertinent church sources of every type have been carefully combed and complemented by a sweeping study of published sources and a whole array of personal interviews. The resulting work, which effectively draws on the findings of French religious sociologists and intellectual historians, emphasizes mainly the crucial decade 1936-1946. It is during this period—from the Popular Front through the Fall of France,Vichy, the Resistance, and the Liberation— that Archbishop Saliège emerged as arguably the most outspoken French bishop and certainly the most vocal champion oftheJewish victims ofNazi and Vichy persecution. What Clément compellingly demonstrates is the continuity of conviction on which Archbishop Saliège based his often politically controversial, but always soundly orthodox teaching. Whether it concerned the excesses of liberal capitalism , the dangers of Communism, or the injustice of anti-Semitism, his teaching —usually expressed in pastoral letters—was solidly derived from his thoroughly Incarnational orientation in theology and spirituality. In this regard, the profound influence ofTeilhard de Chardin, SJ., on Archbishop Saliège is particularly well examined by the author. BOOK REVIEWS 281 In sum, this book is written for specialists in the study of twentieth-century France by a young scholar of truly outstanding professional ability. It supersedes the earlier biography of Cardinal Saliège by Jean Guitton and sets a lofty standard for future biographers of church leaders. Francis J. Murphy Boston College ClemensAugust Graf von Galen: Neue Forschungen zum Leben und Wirken des Bischofs von Münster. Edited by Joachim Kuropka. (Münster: Regensburg . 1992. Pp. 439. DM 48.) Clemens August Grafvon Galen, Bishop of Münster (and, after the war, Cardinal ), earned the reputation of being a résister to National Socialism. At home and abroad, von Galen was depicted as a representative ofthe "other" Germany; the Germany which refused to be co-ordinated to Nazism's ideology. He received worldwide fame in August, 1941, when he delivered a series of sermons in which he took aim at Nazi policies, especially that ofthe euthanasia program. Von Galen, the strong Catholic prelate, opposed Nazism's attempts to interfere with the practice of Catholicism in Germany.Von Galen, the ultra-nationalist, at the same time praised the German invasion of the Soviet Union. This works suggests the complexities of a conservative German Catholic nationalist who chose his positions concerning National Socialism selectively. Several German monographs studying the bishop already exist. The present volume is a valuable collection of recent studies, edited by Joachim Kuropka. Brought up in an aristocratic and strict household, the young "Clau's" intellectual and spiritual development is explored in the first three essays. Barbara Imbusch cites von Galen...