of saints and French poets 
Me llaman la atención los Santos franceses del siglo XIX. Pero mucho. A los ojos de la historia, el siglo de las luces parece desplazar a una Francia de tradición católica católica. Cómo pudo ser posible que en el mismo país de la Revolución, del terror y del positivismo de Comte, de las ambiciones expansionistas de Napoleón, se gave these characters humamente little, but large in spirit. It is the century of a poor rural priest named Ars John Vianney who risked being expelled from the seminary for not being able to learn Latin, or that nun in Lisieux who fell asleep during prayer and answered to the name of Teresa , or the tiny Bernadette who lived in a mill in Lourdes and to which the Virgin appeared. Or that teacher at the Sorbonne in Ozanam name which generated an intense apostolate with the poor of Paris. Or Catherine Laboure in 1830 that religious talk to the Virgin Mary and spread devotion to the Miraculous Medal. Many Saints, Many thanks, much mercy in spite of the revolt, political discord, of so much political ambition and intellectual arrogance.
Yes, look for signs of contradiction, but also the way in which God shows to men. When we closed on the possibility of hope throughout history, young men and insignificant in the eyes of the world, show the true face of love. As the Easter proclamation: Where sin abounds, grace sobreabuda.
And despite groups and reactionary and counterrevolutionary characters who wanted to identify Catholicism with a particular regime, there are a number of authors, poets, philosophers and writers who have made from his work, a world view of man, his condition, society, God and the Church, which in turn is hard to modernity, but are in the right way to search for man can encounter the mystery and its destination. I mean
poets, thinkers and writers generally converts like Charles Peguy, Georges Bernanos and Paul Claudel. These three writers have the common denominator that they do not understand a Catholic from a conservative, or say now, right. Delving on each of them would like to highlight a deep and serious commitment by the reality, of man and understanding that Christianity can not be reduced a way of understanding society, culture or politics, but it is a passion for the man and his destiny. The characters that fuel his stories are simple people, mostly campirano who seek not pontificating or moralizing, but consider his life in relation to the pursuit of happiness that holds his heart. Joan of Arc of Péguy, Violaine de Paul Claudel or country priest Bernanos.
France is a nation that, from the baptism of Clovis has been given the title of "eldest daughter of the Church", but, on the other hand, and following the French Revolution, it has significance as a country particularly belligerent against the Catholic Church. It is this contrast between the France of Voltaire, Diderot, Laplace, of free thought and scientific rationalism. The France of the secular governments of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, governments that break any concordat, closing monasteries and convents, expulsion of members of religious orders and congregations, especially those dedicated to education, confiscation property, secularization of cemeteries, schools and colleges, armed forces, hospitals, suppression of religious signs in shops and public buildings. Land seems to be "liberated from the dogmas of faith" and proud of its science, its philosophy, its literature and its politics.
Quizás por causa de este radicalismo laicista surgió como contrapartida una generación de intelectuales y literatos de signo católico como Bernanos, Bloy, Claudel, Marcel, Maritain, Mauriac, Peguy y Ricoeur. La conversión al catolicismo de estos hombres de letras aportó a las letras católicas una gran dignidad literaria y, simultáneamente, un planteamiento problemático del hecho y de la vivencia religiosa. De ello se siguió:
1º que la literatura católica dejó de ser una literatura «piadosa», «devota», para hacerse conflictiva y provocar una conmoción en todo el aparato de la fe;
2º que, como alguien ha dicho, los intelectuales Catholics no longer feel an inferiority complex and put their thoughts into contact and the level of contemporary secular thought. (If you jo i et fos fuster diguessis Maria text published in the newspaper Ultima Hora in Barcelona by Bonet (April 13 and May 4, 1973).
parallel, but was born shortly after a "new theology" whose authors prepared the "ecclesial awareness" and repristinación of Catholicism have been the engine and the goal of Vatican II. Many of them, then advanced (Chenu, De Lubac, Rahner, and Daniélou before his election to the cardinal, among others). (If you jo i et fos fuster diguessis Maria, text published in the Barcelona newspaper Ultima Hora, Bonet (April 13 and May 4, 1973).
The end of the Age of Enlightenment is witnessing a revival of Catholicism. Political issues such as the "Dreyfus affair" with so-called "Catholic without faith", which later led to rightist political movements such as the members of the Action francaise, "which ended up being condemned by the Pope and Hitler supporters. Catholics living on the edge of a counter political affiliation, with the risk of emptying the contents would be as a Christian culture, political regime (l'ancien regime, who spoke the revolutionaries) or a rigid moral.
The "Catholic novel" is a French product at the time, but has among its most conspicuous English growers Graham Greene: Mauriac, Bernanos, Julien Green (French-speaking American). Maxence van der Meersch (markedly inferior, etc.). (If you jo i et fos fuster diguessis Maria text published in the newspaper Ultima Hora de Barcelona, \u200b\u200bBonet (April 13 and May 4, 1973).
As a common denominator of the novels of these French authors could cite not denote a contempt of Catholicism towards modernity. Péguy, for example, his literary impulse stems from a fierce critique of bourgeois morality and bourgeois standards in all domains of life and all social classes. Péguy their struggle was against the bourgeois mentality of the modern world mentality that he himself would say he was immersed the Socialist Party. Strongly asserts that "all evil comes from the bourgeoisie." Bernanos himself makes a strong indictment of fascism in his book the major cemeteries in the moonlight. "
But these complaints were not the spin easy to say that the rich are bad, or making a simplistic view of reality through the social conditions of his time, his opinion went further, is an anthropological view. What is interesting about the characters in his works, is showing a limited and wounded humanity, denouncing the inhumanity that the proposals had social, cultural or psychological era, which presented man as a "monster transformer into super man" (Essays in understanding 1930-1954 /: written not collected and unpublished Hannah Arendt / Hannah Arendt; translation of Augustine Serrano de Haro). "They realized that a pursuit of happiness really meant to banish all the tears, would end soon to banish all the laughs."
This is the background, to show men in their fragility, their limited status and alert to the danger posed Illustrated fantasy man with a magic wand and have the mastery of self and reality.
face of all this was going on inside the church, there was a literary trend, given the social and political situations of the moment, adopted leftist political positions, from Peguy to the 'affaire Dreyfus', come to anti-Nazi resistance, through the wars of Spain, Indochina and Algeria.
The "Catholic novel" was (I quote the note of Bonet Catalan newspaper) "not the novel 'moral', 'uplifting', 'copy', but a crude sample of evil, doubt, sin, in a world in which the presence of God is contradictory and confusing. Novel "not to be put into all hands" according to the traditional moralistic, but strictly Catholic conception of man's relationship with God, and much more valid than the pious pictures of former Catholic literature (ie, valid simply ). "
The novels of these authors present the priests in his capacity as mediator and dispenser of grace, but under human dejection and existential shock, a crisis of vocation and clashes with church structures.
these novels is a clash in time despite a relatively short distance they were written. The "secularization" of life and culture (even taking that word in the sense that the Catholic Church uses) seems to have raised the levels of creation literature independently. The "horizontality" of religious feeling seems to exclude the penetration of an interior problem and problematized: the "commitment" (when taken as such) serves the collective liberation of man and his temporal achievement. The "ecumenism" favors the common recognition of the existence of a personal God, but the expression of man's inner struggle with it. Is the difference between a novel "confessional" and these "Catholic novel."
Today, in this era of postmodernism, France live on fears of immigration and Islam, is the youthful anomie, the slum and conflicting schools. Of the controversy over the hijab. And also, the return to a growing interest in religious themes. In René Girard, Derrida, in Debray. The kind of religion, history of religions school again, after long decades of exile. The current president, Sarkozy said in several interviews with newspapers that France was carrying a Christian heritage of centuries and that she was part essence of French culture. A journalist of the newspaper Le Figaro said, "Look at you, behind the secular moral and republican France two thousand years of Christianity." And later in a statement to this newspaper said that "religion is an expression of freedom, one thing that must be protected by the state." Besides talking with a reporter from La Croix few days before the election they expressed their conviction that "the Catholic religion is one of the foundations of French identity."
