It was on February 27, 1854, surrounded by Freemasons, that Félicité de Lamennais, gazing at the bust of Marianne — symbol of the French Republic, which had replaced the statue of the Blessed Virgin Mary in his bedroom — died without receiving absolution from the Church. He would be buried by Father Lachaise, in a common grave, in accordance with his last wishes to be buried with the poor. When the gravedigger suggested that it would be fitting to place a cross on the grave of this “former” priest, Lamennais’ closest companions rejected this last Christian gesture. Clearly they knew that Félicité would not approve. ¹ The apostate priest Lamannais had spent much of his life trying to transform the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church according to the revolutionary Masonic ideas of the French Revolution. At the end of his career as chief “religious” proponent of the Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity of the Revolution, Lamennais would conceive of and preach the fusion of “all religions united in a single universal movement in order to contribute its spiritual aid and all its divine force to the world revolution. Such a religion would be the strongest solvent of every established order and every historical community that is of necessity imperfect and vulnerable. Therefore, the Gospel will be the best cement for a new humanity, one that is free, equal, and fraternal, built on justice, peace, and liberty.” ²

The walking contradiction, the ‘Liberal Catholic,’ emerges

Even though it was the teachings of Lamannais that were the object of condemnation in Pope Gregory XVI’s encyclical Mirari Vos, the Catholic intellectual elite, especially in France, were split on the resolve of some to transform the Catholic Church by sifting its teaching and practices to eliminate anything that was unconformable to the revolutionary ideas of 1789. Count Montalembert and Felix-Antoine-Philibert Dupanloup, Bishop of Orleans were the leaders of the group spoken of as “Liberal Catholics,” those hoping to achieve reconciliation between the Church and the post-Revolutionary world; their journalistic organ was Le Correspondant. On the other side were Louis Veuillot, editor of L’Univers, Bishop Pie of Poitiers, and Msgr. Freppel, Bishop of Angers, the “Ultramontanes,” who rejected any kind of marriage between Church and the Modern Liberal System.

Originally published in Integrity Magazine. Read original article

Original Tags: Church History, Catholic Social Teaching, Bishop Dupanloup, Integralism, Liberal Catholicism, Liberalism, Louis Veuillot, Traditional Catholicism