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The Catholic Career of Alfred Loisy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 November 2011

Richard Wilson Boynton
Richard Wilson Boynton
Affiliation:
First Unitarian Church, Buffalo, N.Y.
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Extract

It takes perhaps some boldness of assertion to maintain that the life-story of an author relatively unknown—at least to the English-reading world — deserves to rank with those acknowledged masterpieces of religious autobiography, the Apologia pro Vita Sua of John Henry Newman, and the Souvenirs d'Enfance et de Jeunesse of Ernest Renan. Renan and Newman were born leaders of men, each drawing after himself a train of zealous disciples, and followed by an admiring public. Both were consummate artists in words, knowing full well how to make the most of the dramatic and human element that chance or their own choice had woven into their careers. Each produced a long row of eloquent volumes, and their writings not only enjoyed the widest vogue in their own day but are among the works of the nineteenth century whose significance is still far from being exhausted. Each was a convert — the one into Roman Catholicism, the other out of it — and so their self-revelations appeal to the psychological interest of such a process, when the subject of it is a man of genius, and no less to the historical interest attaching to any conspicuous individual whose career has become interwoven with the Church of Rome. The Choses Passées of Professor Alfred Loisy assuredly did not originate in any conscious imitation of these two famous writers, although both were conspicuous among his formative influences. But his book belongs in the same class with theirs, and in its distinction of style, its dramatic and human appeal, and its psychological and historical interest, as I shall try in this article to show, falls no whit behind. It is my confident belief, at least, that Choses Passées bids fair to become in its turn a classic to be placed beside the Apologia and the Souvenirs on the shelf of the student of religion, as a document of outstanding significance for the intellectual and religious evolution of the last quarter-century.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 11 , Issue 1 , January 1918 , pp. 36 - 73
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1918

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References

1 Choses Passées, Paris, Émile Nourry, 1913.

2 “… Pendant mes études de critique biblique, en 1881–1893, … mon auteur de prédilection fut Renan, que je ne prenais d'ailleurs pour un oracle; mais c'est surtout avec lui et contre lui que je pensais; de 1894 à 1900, c'est avec Newman, passablement élargi, que je pense contre les théologiens protestants.” Revue d'Histoire et de Littérature religieuses, Nov.—Dec. 1913, p. 570.

3 Choses Passées, p. 137. Suppleness of character, he tells us, never was the dominant trait of his ancestors. Ibid. p. 2.

4 Souvenirs, IV, ii (D. C. Heath edition, p. 161).

5 Choses Passées, p. 29. That some improvement has been made in teaching the Thomist system, may be seen by consulting A Manual of Modern Scholastic Philosophy, by Cardinal Mercier and Professors of the Higher Institute of Philosophy, Louvain; Eng. tr., 2 vols., London, Kegan Paul; St. Louis, B. Herder, 1916.

6 Choses Passées, p. 27.

7 On Duchesne, cf. A. Houtin, Histoire du moderaisme catholique, pp. 2 f.

8 Choses Passées, p. 66.

9 Ibid. p. 58.

10 Choses Passées, p. 34.

11 Ibid. p. 68.

12 Ibid. p. 71.

13 Choses Passées, pp. 72 f.

14 Ibid. p. 75.

15 Choses Passées, pp. 109, 127.

16 Rudolf Eucken, Die Philosophie des Thomas von Aquino und die Kultur der Neuzeit, passim.

17 Choses Passées, p. 77.

18 “Ā vingt ans, je m'étais donné sans réserve à l'Église, et si sincèrement donnè que, même après avoir constaté que plus d'une erreur s'était glissé dans le contrat, je n'ai pas cru devoir reprendre ma parole avant qu'on me la rendit.” Loisy, Ā Propos d'Histoire des Religions, 1911, p. 148.

19 Houtin, op. cit. p. 3. Cf. also a keenly critical comment on Loisy's position at this transition stage, in M. Alfred Loisy's Type of Catholicism, by Gardner, Professor Percy, Hibbert Journal, Oct. 1904, Vol. III, No. 1, p. 126.Google Scholar

20 Choses Passées, p. 90. Cf. below, pp. 60 ff.

21 Ibid. p. 106.

22 Joseph Schnitzer, Der katholische Modernismus, pp. 22 ff.

23 Choses Passées, p. 107.

24 Choses Passées, p. 110. Cf. Houtin, La Question Biblique chez les Catholiques de France au XIXe Siècle, and La Question Biblique au XX Siècle.

25 On Cardinal Meignan, cf. Georges Weill, Histoire du Catholicisme libéral en France, 1828–1908, pp. 211 f., 243 ff.

26 Choses Passées, pp. 114 ff.

27 Loisy, Quelques Lettres, p. 221.

28 If less than full justice is here done, following Loisy's own narration, to the excellent M. d'Hulst, reference may be made to his official biography, Vie de Mgr. d'Hulst, 2 vols., Paris, 1914, by Mgr. Alfred Baudrillart, Rector of the Catholic Institute in Paris, the recipient of the letter cited above, p. 51.

29 Choses Passées, p. 365. Cf. below, p. 62.

30 Choses Passées, p. 170.

31 Paul Sabatier, Modernism, Introd. p. 7.

32 La Religion d'Israel, 2d edition, 1903. Eng. tr. by Galton, Arthur, The Religion of Israel, Fisher Unwin, London, 1910.Google Scholar

33 Les Mythes Babyloniens et les premiers chapitres de la Genèse, 1901.

34 L'Évangile et l'Église, 4th edition, pp. xxvi, xxix. The English translation, by Christopher Home, The Gospel and the Church, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1904, is marred by the translator's eccentricity in referring to Professor Harnack throughout as “Herr” Harnack.

35 A Catholic professor, quoted by Weill, op. cit. p. 257. Schnitzer, op. cit., also gives much evidence, especially as regards German Catholicism.

36 Choses Passées, p. 153. Houtin is doubtless right in saying that the Encyclical was directed mainly against Loisy's position. Histoire du modernisme catholique p. 13.

37 Choses Passées, p. 390; the italics are mine.

38 Choses Passées, p. 227.

39 Ibid. p. 243.

40 Ibid. p. 249.

41 Choses Passées, p. 251. The difference in tone between this and the letter of ten years before, already quoted, is noteworthy.

42 Ibid. p. 254.

43 Choses Passées, p. 230.

44 Ibid. p. 258.

45 Autour, p. xxxvi.

46 Choses Passées, p. 209 f.

47 Ibid. p. 263. His approximation here to Auguste Sabatier is to be noted in view of his frank opposition to him as a historian of early Christianity, referred to above.

48 Ibid. p. 269. How long he could have been satisfied with so patent a compromise cannot be told. As an expedient, it appears to work well in the Anglican and some other churches; but the condition there is one of unstable equilibrium. Cf. Harnack's penetrating remarks in What is Christianity? Eng. tr., by T. B. Saunders, Williams and Norgate, 1901, p. 175.

49 Choses Passées, p. 277.

50 Ibid. p. 284.

51 Choses Passées, p. 307.

52 Ibid. p. 290.

53 Ibid. p. 292.

54 Choses Passées, p. 299.

55 The story is elaborately told, including the astonishing episode of the Dreyfus Affair, by A. Debidour, L'Église Catholique et l'État en France, 1870–1906, tome II; an able work, of strong anti-clerical bias.

56 Choses Passées, p. 364.

57 Ibid. Avant-propos.