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Why the French Christian Democrats Were Condemned

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Oscar L. Arnal
Oscar L. Arnal
Affiliation:
Professor of church history in Waterloo Lutheran Seminary, Wilfrid Laurier University, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
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Extract

The enthusiastic reception with which the Catholic hierarchy greeted the burgeoning Christian Democratic movements immediately after World War II could leave the impression of a solidarity born of a long and stable relationship. In fact, such was not the case. Christian Democracy had failed for a century in its attempts to reconcile Catholicism with the democratic values emanating from the French Revolution. Antirepublican forces within the church had been too strong and the hierarchy too unsympathetic to permit such a reconciliation. In addition, the democratic forces outside the church had come to incorporate anticlericalism as part of their creed. Both camps seemed to share at least one view in common: one could not be both a Christian and a democrat. Only small groups of Christian republicans sought to challenge this assumption by word and deed.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 49 , Issue 2 , June 1980 , pp. 188 - 202
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1980

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References

The author wishes to thank the Ford Foundation for the grant that supported the research for this article.

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