Liberalism and tradition : aspects of Catholic thought in nineteenth-century France / Bernard Reardon.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Introduction: the new century -- A prophet of the past: Joseph de Maistre -- Traditionalism and change -- Lamennais and liberal Catholicism: (I) a new apologetic -- Lemennais and liberal Catholicism: (II) Catholicism and democracy -- The fideism of Louis Bautain -- Voluntarism: Maine de Biran and others -- Ontologism -- Maret and Gratry -- An answer to positivism -- Maurice Blondel and the philosophy of action -- Alfred Loisy and the biblical question.

This book is a survey of French Catholic thought - theological, philosophical and political - during a period of marked spiritual and intellectual revival, delimited roughly by the Napoleonic Concordat with the Vatican in 1802 and the Separation Law of 1905. The thinkers and scholars studied include such diverse figures as Maistre, Lamennais, Lacordaire, Bautin, Gratry, Olle-Laprune, Maurice Blondel and Alfred Loisy. The authors studies these writers, and many others, in detail and analyses in characteristically lucid manner the distinctive contribution of each to French intellectual life in this 'second grand siècle'. Dr. Reardon examines too the major trends in French Catholic thought and concludes that in the nineteenth century there was a recurring tension between liberalism and tradition, between the poles of a secular and even agnostic humanism, and a rigid ultramontanism. The century saw a profound and many-sided reaction to traditional scholasticism, and Dr. Reardon explores this reaction in its various expressions, in theology and philosophy, in political and social thought. The approach is non-technical, and this book will be of considerable interest to a wide variety of readers, both general and specialist. It is the first book in English to cover the development of Catholic thought in France though the whole of the nineteenth century and it will be indispensable for all those who wish for a comprehensive and reliable background to one of the major currents of French intellectual thought in this century. -- from dust cover.