God's Mirror
Renewal and Engagement in French Catholic Intellectual Culture in the Mid–Twentieth Century
God's Mirror
Renewal and Engagement in French Catholic Intellectual Culture in the Mid–Twentieth Century
This item is available to order.
Please allow 2-3 weeks for delivery.
Hardback
£38.00
QTY
Publisher: Fordham University Press
ISBN: 9780823262373
Number of Pages: 360
Published: 01/12/2014
Width: 15.2 cm
Height: 22.9 cm
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.
Acknowledgements Contents Introduction Katherine Davies and Toby Garfitt 1. "Catholicisme ondoyant": Catholic Intellectual Engagement and the Crisis of Civilization in the 1930s Michael Kelly 2. Paul Valery and French Catholicism: Recognizing the Context of Renewal Paul Gifford 3. A Strange Christian: Simone Weil Florence De Lussy 4. Grenier and the Essai sur l'esprit d'orthodoxie Toby Garfitt 5. Charles Du Bos's Catholicism and his Politics of Sincerity in Interwar France Katherine Davies 6. From Mystique to Theologique: Messiaen's "ordre nouveau," 1935-1939 Stephen Schloesser 7. Rethinking the Modernity of Bernanos: a Girardian Perspective Brian Sudlow 8. "Into the Catacombs of the Past": Women and Wartime Trauma in the French Catholic Ressourcement Project (1939-1945) Brenna Moore 9. La Releve and its Afterlife: A Current of Catholic Renewal in Twentieth-Century Quebec Joseph Dunlop 10. Louis Massignon: A Catholic Encounter with Islam and the Middle East Anthony O'Mahony
"God's Mirror illuminates a critical moment in the encounter between Catholicism, modernity, intellectual integrity, artistic creativity, and political commitment. Specialists will appreciate the authors' many original insights into the struggles of path-breaking French Catholic intellectuals in the 1930s and '40s. All of us should welcome the renewed attention the book brings to these forerunners of Vatican II and the transformation of world Catholicism." -- -Peter Steinfels University Professor Emeritus at Fordham "God's Mirror is a substantial contribution to twentieth-century French intellectual history, and more broadly to the history of Catholicism. The editors build on previous scholarship on Catholic intellectual life and political activism by highlighting the work of journalists, scholars, and artists who participated in the Catholic renewal of the mid-twentieth century." -- -Thomas Kselman University of Notre Dame "The essays in this volume reflect a broad range of subject matters-literature, music, philosophy, theology, inter-religious dialogue, social and political events-that will expand the horizons of readers in presenting the rich texture of French Catholicism during the period surveyed. The themes of renewal and engagement, the recurrent ideas, and overlapping networks among the figures discussed in the essays give unity to the diversity, making this a work that is collaborative rather than simply collected. Familiar figures can be seen in new ways, unsuspected dimensions of movements are brought to light, and connections among disparate aspects of life are convincingly made. A book to stimulate thought and enhance appreciation of multiple dimensions of French Catholic intellectual culture." -- -Charles Talar University of St. Thomas in Houston
