God's Mirror : Renewal and Engagement in French Catholic Intellectual Culture in the Mid–Twentieth Century

Presents perspectives on intellectual, cultural and political questions faced by French and French-Canadian intellectuals who engaged with Catholicism in the period 1930-50, in the diverse but related fields of philosophy, theology, politics, literature and music. Names include Jacques and Raïssa Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Paul Valéry, Simone Weil, and many others. Gathering in one place a cohesive selection of articles that deepen our sense of the vitality and controversy within the Catholic renewal of the mid-twentieth century, God’s Mirror offers historical analysis of French Catholic intellectuals. This volume highlights the work of writers, thinkers and creative artists who have not always drawn the attention given to such luminaries as Maritain, Mounier, and Marcel. Organized around the typologies of renewal and engagement, editors Katherine Davies and Toby Garfitt provide a revisionist and interdisciplinary reading of the narrative of twentieth-century French Catholicism. Renewal and engagement are both manifestations of how the Catholic intellectual reflects and takes position on the relationship between the Church, personal faith and the world, and on the increasingly problematic relationship between intellectuals and the Magisterium. A majority of the writings are based on extensive research into published texts, with some occasional archival references, and they give critical insights into the tensions that characterized the theological and political concerns of their subjects. 'God's Mirror' explores how French Catholic intellectual culture in the mid 20th century was caught up in the process of transition from a closed, defensive and conceptual theological structure of the late-nineteenth century to an open, 'authentic' and 'experientially' committed faith. The volume offers different stories of renewal and engagement in Catholicism, which address the nature of this transition and the tensions therein. What unites these stories is their illumination of a Catholicism that is increasingly concerned with the human being and the concrete, lived reality of faith