Title Catholic and French forever : religious and national identity in modern France / Joseph F. Byrnes

Published University Park, PA : Pennsylvania State University Press, ©2005

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Description 1 online resource (xxiii, 278 pages) : illustrations Contents Cover -- Copyright -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- Part 1: Divorce -- 1 Between Church and Nation: Posing, Abdicating, and Retracting Priests -- 2 National Ideals and Their Failure: Festival Celebration Under the Directory -- 3 Religious and Secular Extremes at the Beginning of the Nineteenth Century: Chateaubriand and Destutt de Tracy -- Part 2: Defense -- 4 Piety Against Politics: Pilgrimage to Chartres During the Nineteenth Century -- 5 Local Languages for the Defense of Religion: Alsace and the Roussillon -- Part 3: Détente 6 The Limits of Personal Reconciliation: Priests and Instituteurs in World War I -- 7 Reconciliation of Cultures in the Third Republic: The Work of Émile Mâle -- Epilogue: Between the Wars, Vichy, and the New Republics -- Appendix: The "Nation" Conundrum -- Notes -- Further Reading -- Index -- Back Cover Summary It is often said that there are two Frances--Catholic and secular. This notion dates back to the 1790s, when the revolutionary government sought to divorce Catholic Christianity from national life. While Napoleon formally reconciled his regime to France's millions of Catholics, church-state relations have remained a source of conflict and debate throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In Catholic and French Forever Joseph Byrnes recounts the fights and reconciliations between French citizens who found Catholicism integral to their traditional French identity and those who found the continued presence of Catholicism an obstacle to both happiness and progress. He does so through stories of priests, legislators, intellectuals, and pilgrims whose experiences manifest the problem of being both Catholic and French in modern France. Byrnes finds that loyalties to the French nation and Catholicism became so incompatible in the revolutionary era that Catholic believers responded defensively across the nineteenth century, politicizing both religious pilgrimage and the languages of religious instruction. He shows that a détente emerged in the first decades of the twentieth century with the respect given to priests in arms during World War I and to the work of religious art historian Émile Mâle. This détente has lasted, precariously and with interruption, up to the present day Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-256) and index Notes English Print version record Subject Catholic Church -- France -- History -- 19th century Catholic Church -- France -- History -- 20th century Catholic Church -- History -- 19th century. Catholic Church -- History -- 20th century. SUBJECT Catholic Church fast Subject Church and state -- France -- History -- 19th century Church and state -- Catholic Church -- History -- 19th century Church and state -- France -- History -- 20th century Church and state -- Catholic Church -- History -- 20th century POLITICAL SCIENCE -- Political Process -- Political Advocacy. RELIGION / Christianity / Catholic Church and state Church and state -- Catholic Church Nationale identiteit. Rooms-katholicisme. Kerk en staat. SUBJECT France -- Church history -- 19th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051181 France -- Church history -- 20th century. http://id.loc.gov/authorities/subjects/sh85051182 Subject France Genre/Form Church history History Form Electronic book LC no. 2005011290 ISBN 0271022698 9780271022697

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