Yves Congar - Journal of a Theologian 1946-1956

The original edition in French with the title Journal dun thologien 19461956 Les ditions du Cerf, Paris, 2005.

English text copyright 2015 ATF Theology

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ATF Press acknowledges the financial support given by the Australian and New Zealand Congregations of Dominican Sisters towards the translation and production costs associated with this volume.

PRINT ISBN: 9781925232240
eISBN: 9781925232257

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ABBREVIATIONS

The journal composed by the Dominican theologian Yves Congar during the Ecumenical Council Vatican II has been published in French and in an English translation. Those personal impressions of a significant world-event attracted considerable interest. This second journal presents an earlier record, one of the years from 1946 to 1956. That was a time of great vitality for the French churchbut they were also years of hostility and persecution for those creating that vitality.

This second journal has been edited by tienne Fouilloux, distinguished historian of French religious movements during the twentieth century. He offers a general introduction. The journal entries are grouped in eight sections: an article composed of reflections by Congar on his life and not in the form of a diary; a first journey to Rome in May 1946 to discuss the new directions being taken in the French church; incidents from 1946 to 1950 where church authorities forbid ecumenical activity and frustrate Congars publications; the campaign against the book, True and False Reform; the climax of 1954 when French Dominican provincials, directors of studies, and teachers are removed from their positions; the atmosphere in Rome furthering Catholic fundamentalists and censorship; and finally Congars forced isolation in Cambridge, England from 1955 to 1956. The reader is aided by Fouillouxs introduction of a page or two before each of these sections where he offers a context for the journal entries.

Born in 1904, Yves Congar grew up in the Ardennes, although his family came originally from Celtic Brittany. The first years of his life were touched by the misery of World War I being fought on battlegrounds not far away. Turning from aspirations to be a doctor, he decided to study for the diocesan priesthood but then, drawn to the monastic life during a retreat with the Benedictines in 1919, after some study in Paris and obligatory military service he entered the Dominicans in 1925. The atmosphere of Congars years of study include the intersection of the old and the new, the tensions between neo-medieval forms of Catholicism and the new French philosophies of life and history, and an openness to movements in society like ecumenism with Protestants and modern social theories.

Congar was particularly inspired by his teacher and friend, the influential historian of the theology of Thomas Aquinas, Marie- Dominique Chenu who lived from 1895 to 1990. He had drawn the Dominican studium of Le Saulchoir to a focus on the historical context of each theologian. After ordination the young Dominican wanted to work for Christian unity. He used journeys to Germany for visiting the places associated with Luther: the Wartburg, Erfurt, and Wittenberg. In Dsseldorf, a few weeks after ordination, 17 September 1930, he composed a prayer: God, why does your church always condemn? True, she must guard the deposit of faith, but is there no other means but condemnation...? If your church were only more encouraging, more comprehensive... The church must make itself intelligible to every human ear... The times pressthere is so much work to be done ... [toward] the union of the churches.the first theology of ecumenism from a Roman Catholic.

World War II with imprisonment by the Nazi army interrupted his life. After 1945 the French church entered into a period of new life, ranging from the study of biblical and patristic sources to beginning new forms of parish life. Anyone who did not live during the years of French Catholicism after the war missed one of the finest movements in the life of the church. Through a slow emergence from misery, one tried in the great freedom of a fidelity as profound as life, to join in a Gospel way the world, a world of which the church could become an integral part for the first time in centuries. Congars approach to theology, church life, and ecumenism was historical. Early in his ministry he expressed a desire to renew the church; liberation would come not so much from the history of the church as from research into the concrete social forms of the church fashioned differently by cultural ages. The churchs beginnings and its chosen healthy modes of existence were past resources and traditions inspiring contemporary movements. The ecclesiology of the bishop in the local church drew from patristic theology and medieval canon law; a theology of tradition looked at early Greek theologians and at modern German ones; ecumenism began with a study of the Reformation. He was particularly attentive to German literature which was not widely accessible.

Teaching at Le Saulchoir from 1946 to 1954, he wrote on ecumenism, the laity, Orthodox ecclesiology, and the theology of the biblical and preached word. He worked with the relatively few men and women in France who were involved in a renewal of the liturgy, religious education, and preparation for reception of the sacraments. He published in 1950 a study of reform in the church through the centuries,