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Twenty-five years ago, one of the 20th century’s greatest Catholic theologians passed away in the Avenue de Breteuil in Paris in the care of the Little Sisters of the Poor.
Born in 1896 as the Dreyfus Affair was tearing France apart, and dying while the Soviet Union imploded in 1991, Cardinal Henri de Lubac, SJ, participated in some of the most momentous events that shaped the Catholic Church between the pontificates of Leo XIII and Saint John Paul II.
Though well-known for his work in opening up the Church’s rich intellectual patrimony and his influence upon key documents of Vatican II, de Lubac was far from being a reclusive scholar.
Coming from a fervently Catholic French aristocratic family, de Lubac could not help but be conscious of the deep fractures between the Church and the forces unleashed by the French Revolution.
Nor was he afraid to immerse himself in many of the epoch-making conflicts of his time. Indeed, de Lubac definitely had a mind for politics—but not of the type you might expect.
When much of the Church hierarchy, clergy, and laity rallied to the Vichy regime following France’s humiliating defeat in 1940, de Lubac quickly became active in the French Resistance.
A consistent anti-Nazi before and during World War II, de Lubac was outspoken in his opposition to anti-Semitism at a time when anti-Jewish sentiments were widespread among many Catholics.
Likewise, de Lubac was critical of some French Catholics’ infatuation with Marxism after World War II. Unlike some of his contemporaries, Communism was never something about which de Lubac entertained any illusions.
Beyond the specifics of particular movements, de Lubac was puzzled by the fact that secular ideologies—ranging from Marxism to socialism, fascism, nationalism, and particular expressions of liberalism—continued to exercise such a grip on the Western imagination.
Why, de Lubac asked, did so many people in the West continue cleaving to ideas that had led to the destruction and death unleashed throughout the 20th century in the name of the proletariat, der Volk, or “progress”?
And how, he wondered, could people of considerable intelligence actually believe that they were promoting man’s well-being by supporting such ideologies? Continue reading
Sources
- The Catholic World Report, from an article by Dr. Samuel Gregg, Research Director at the Acton Institute.
- Image: Jesuits in Britain
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