In her introduction to this volume, the editor Aude Attuel-Hallade asks whether ‘Liberal Catholicism’ or ‘Catholic Liberalism’ are a ‘non-sense.’ Readers of this journal, presumably familiar with the powerful legacy in the English-speaking world of unimpeachably Liberal nineteenth-century Catholics like Lord Acton—or the more ambivalent ecclesio-political titans like Daniel O’Connell or John Henry Newman—would not expect the question to be put quite so starkly. Nevertheless, there is no doubt that many in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries (even still today?), both inside and outside the Church, would agree with the editors of the French Revue du Monde Catholique, who wrote in February 1902 that the Revolution of 1789 inaugurated ‘a new era, opposed to the Christian order’, and that this new era was marked by ‘liberalism’, defined as the ‘exclusion of the Church and Christ’ (quoted on p. 1).
In response to this seeming exclusion, a number of official organs of the Church—including, most importantly, emphatically, and uncompromisingly, the Roman magisterium—articulated a theological narrative of history and, implicitly, a different social and political path forward. This well-known nineteenth-century vision for Catholicism has been labelled many ways: counter-revolutionary, conservative, ultramontane, intransigeant, and/or reactionary. It entailed a fourfold rejection; of (1) the Protestant Reformation, (2) the Enlightenment, (3) the Revolution of 1789, and (4) the modern liberal state (see pp. 1–3). The contours of this anti-liberal vision, increasingly hegemonic during the lengthy and tumultuous pontificate of Pius IX (1846–1878), are well-known, and profoundly shaped Catholicism. It is certainly true, as the evidence marshalled in this volume shows, that many Catholics—from the pews and factories to manors and parliament houses to episcopal palaces—shared this conservative vision, especially in France, Spain, and Italy (but also in Germany, the UK, and elsewhere).
Nevertheless, as Attuel-Hallade traces in her introduction, some Catholic intellectuals struck a very different tune. They might even reflect on the alleged Ur-sin of 1789 and take a conciliatory path, refusing to ‘systematically condemn’ the Revolution, preferring to either insist on salutary distinctions or even try to assimilate liberalism into a ‘philosophy of history’, as did, for example, Lord Acton (p. 3; and see Attuel-Hallade’s third chapter). Or, they might claim the liberal project, at least in certain key ways, actually taps into and resonates with the ‘essence of Christianity’ (p. 3). These tendencies, in Attuel-Hallade’s words, mark the emergence of a ‘liberal Catholicism (primacy of the liberal matrix) or a Catholic liberalism (primacy of the Catholic matrix)’ (p. 4).
Nine essays follow, exploring different facets of positive Catholic engagement with liberalism and Catholic promotion of liberal ecclesial, political, and intellectual projects. The majority of the essays volume are by French authors (6), joined by a Spaniard and three scholars based in England. It would have been tempting to centre the volume on France and Francophone texts and figures, for a number of reasons (but, if anything, as the preoccupation of four of nine chapters, it is British thinkers that are over-represented). According to Attuel-Hallade, the birth of Catholic liberalism in France was in 1828, in the work of the editors of L’Avenir: Lammenais, Lacordaire, and Montalembert (see p. 4; incidentally, I wonder if the birth of Catholic liberalism in France might be earlier, with the Abbé Grégoire, notwithstanding the decisive importance of the original L’Avenir group). Be that as it may, the volume avoids the well-trodden and sometimes Whiggish or teleological path of approaching Liberal Catholicism as a promise that was de-railed by Gregory XVI’s condemnation of Lammenais and L’Avenir, then buried by the infallible Pius IX and his Syllabus, only to be posthumously (partially?) vindicated in the twentieth century, especially at Vatican II.
A first section examines ‘Theology, truth, and the philosophy of history’. Bernard Bourdin begins our journey with an exploration of the ‘interpretative circles’ governing narratives of ‘Political Modernity-Christianity’ in the work of several philosophers and historians. Liberal Catholicism can be situated as one attempt to give Christianity ‘a future’, but this future was possible only ‘on the condition of becoming modern’ (p. 22). In the second chapter, Frédéric Libaud considers whether John Henry Newman, who railed against ‘liberalism in religion’ was in fact an ‘anti-liberal’ (in the sense of ‘Liberal Catholicism’: not really). Attuel-Hallade, in a lengthy third chapter, examines three great English thinkers: Macaulay, Acton, and Burke. The peculiarities of the British context—born of many factors, the compromising nature of the Established Church looming especially large —make for a fascinating case study. Burke, for example, a philo-Catholic in his own context, would have been suspected of deism in France merely for recognizing truth in every religion and advocating for toleration (p. 65, n11). Acton’s view of history ‘as the true demonstration of religion’ shows both the appeal and the limits of his liberalism, when faced with the kind of Catholicism typified by Cardinal Manning and the drivers of Vatican I’s definition of papal infallibility in 1870 (pp. 63–64).
A second section begins with a very stimulating essay by Colm O’Siochru on ‘Liberties before liberalism: Ultramontane political thought in England, c. 1835–50’. O’Siochru rightly takes aim at the well-entrenched tendency to simplify or even polemically caricature ‘ultramontanism’. To return to Bourdin’s observation that Christianity had to become modern to survive, O’Siochru demonstrates that it was not just liberals or anti-ultramontanes who saw the reality of the situation. Ultramontane thought was in fact ‘varied and dynamic’ (p. 84), and the tendency to glorify the medieval (in theory) should not be confused with an unwillingness or inability to innovate and adapt (p. 83). Bernard Callebat’s chapter six, on Spanish Catholic liberalism, is likewise excellent. Callebat shows that Catholic liberals—not secular or anti-Catholic forces—built modern Spain. The Cortes of Cádiz (1812), influenced by regalist, Catholic Enlightenment, and late Jansenist sources and ideals, led to the abolition of the Inquisition the next year, after 325 years of continuous operation (p. 102). Chapter six keeps us in Spain. Francisco Javier Ramon Solans’s ‘Between Sinai and Calvary’ examines the debate over freedom of worship in 1869. This pivotal episode led to a great victory for liberalism—‘the principle of Spanish Catholic citizenship that had prevailed in previous constitutional texts was broken; that is, one could be Spanish without being Catholic’—however non-normative this was (p. 121). But it also helped lay the groundwork for ultramontane forms of Catholic action that depended on the mass mobilization of the laity.
A final section rounds out the volume with more considerations of the relationship between church and state in the mid-to-late nineteenth century. Daniele Giuseppe Palmer explores the French anti-sacrilege law of 1825, and the liberal Catholic Pierre Paul Royer-Collard’s criticisms of this legislation. Royer-Collard was influenced by the Jansenist jurist Gabriel-Nicolas Maultrot (1714–1803), though the precise nature of Royer-Collard’s Jansenism remained unclear to this reviewer (see, for example, pp. 136–7). Nevertheless, Palmer’s chapter helps paint the complexity of nineteenth-century Liberal Catholicism and their opponents, for example by pointing out that Bonald believed that humanity could theoretically achieve a kind of perfection, while Royer-Collard denied this (p. 136). Arthur Hérisson contributes an excellent overview of the thought of the great Montalembert concerning the relationship between church and state (and the slogan ‘a free church in a free state’). Finally, Maud Besnard considers Newman’s ‘idea’ of education in the Victorian context. A stimulating conclusion by Peter Schröder includes helpful summary points as well as a useful and timely discussion of the criticisms of secularization theory.
A great strength of the volume is that it takes seriously the porousness of the subject(s) under consideration and consequently embraces an exploratory approach. There are some small mistakes and stylistic oddities, presumably the result of translations that needed smoothing out, or were probably the result of infelicitous auto-corrects that were not spotted (humorously in the case of p. 176: ‘the Holy Sea’). But none of these issues detract from the rigor of the arguments advanced by each scholar. This is a useful collection. In places, these essays are very stimulating. While they hang together at times rather loosely, they achieve the task Attuel-Hallade lays out in the introduction and Schröder ties up in the conclusion. That is, they serve as a valuable set-piece for scholars examining the rewarding and, at least from certain angles, under-researched phenomenon of Liberal Catholicism. While probably not ideal for an undergraduate or non-specialist audience, graduate students and academics in a number of fields will find the rich research in these essays of great value.
