French social Catholicism—by which we mean the sum of all the efforts of Catholics in France to fight against the material and moral misery that the industrial revolution and economic liberalism inflicted upon the workers — has followed two general tendencies, one aristocratic and the other democratic.

The first, developed in the legitimist world of the Restoration, gave rise to a rightist Catholic social tradition which placed all its confidence in the authority of the upper classes and in the virtue of institutions. The second, which recruited its partisans from among the lower bourgeoisie and among the intellectuals, gave rise to a leftist tradition, that of Christian democracy, and placed its trust in popular liberty.