Marie-Dominique Chenu

Contents

Marie-Dominique Chenu was a French Dominican priest, historian of medieval theology, social theologian, and conciliar expert who emphasized the historical conditions in which theology works.[1]

Marie-Dominique Chenu OP (French pronunciation: [maʁi dɔminik ʃəny]; 7 January 1895 – 11 February 1990[3]) was a Catholic theologian and one of the founders of the reformist journal Concilium. He was a member of the Dominican Order.

Life

Chenu entered the Dominicans and taught at Le Saulchoir, where his historical method and program for theology drew Roman suspicion; A School of Theology was placed on the Index in 1942, and he was removed from teaching. He later worked with worker-priest and social movements and served as an expert at Vatican II.

Thought

Chenu argued that theology is faith seeking intelligence within history. Doctrinal truth is not reduced to social conditions, but the questions, vocabulary, institutions, and imaginative forms through which theologians work must be understood in their actual cultural setting.

His medieval studies recovered the twelfth century and Thomas Aquinas as living moments rather than inventories of timeless formulas. He treated human labor, social transformation, art, and the signs of the times as possible theological loci, always requiring discernment by revelation and the Church.

Major works

A School of Theology states the methodological program; Theology in the Twelfth Century is the historical monument; studies of Aquinas, labor, mission, and Vatican II join archives to contemporary engagement. Some programmatic formulations remained contested.

Catholic reception

Chenu's earlier censure is a real part of his history and was not itself a declaration of heresy. His later conciliar service and papal citation show substantial rehabilitation, but they do not make every political alignment or methodological claim normative Catholic theology.[2]

Early life

Chenu was born on 7 January 1895 at Soisy-sur-Seine, Essonne,[4] and grew up with the name "Marcel-Léon". His parents were bakers near Corbeil.

Chenu entered the French province of the Dominican Order in 1913, taking the name "Marie-Dominique" and studying at Le Saulchoir, then located in Belgium.[5] With the outbreak of the First World War and the suspension of teaching at Le Saulchoir, Chenu travelled to Rome in 1914 to study at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, the future Angelicum. While at the Angelicum, Chenu was ordained in 1919 and completed his doctorate in theology in 1920 under the direction of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange with a dissertation entitled "De contemplatione", which studied the meaning of contemplation in Thomas Aquinas.[6]

Career

In 1920, Chenu was appointed Professor of the History of Dogma at Le Saulchoir (and in late 1921 turned down a request from his doctoral supervisor, Garrigou-Lagrange, to return to the Angelicum as a lecturer).[7] He began to develop his theological perspective, replacing the non-historical approach to Thomism that he had learned from Garrigou-Lagrange at the Angelicum with an historicist reading of Aquinas. At Le Saulchoir he was the teacher of the Dominicans Yves Congar and Edward Schillebeeckx.

In 1930, Chenu founded the Institut d'Etudes Médiévales de Montréal.[3]

Chenu served as rector of Le Saulchoir from 1932 to 1942,[8] and was therefore very involved in the move of Le Saulchoir from Belgium to Étoilles, near Paris, in 1937.

In 1937, Chenu privately published a book entitled Une école de théologie: Le Saulchoir.[9] In February 1938 he was called to Rome to defend the book and made to sign a list of 10 propositions.[10][11] Then, in February 1942,[10] Une école de théologie was placed on the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books because of its ideas about the role of historical studies in theology.[9] He was removed as rector of Le Saulchoir[9] and never taught there again. Friends helped him to get a position at the École des Hautes Études in Paris. He subsequently taught at the Sorbonne and the Institut catholique de Paris.

In the late 1940s and early 1950s he became involved, as a friar-preacher, in the nascent worker-priest movement, and its attempts to evangelize the anti-clerical industrial suburbs of Paris. Eventually, in 1953, Chenu was among the French Dominicans disciplined by the Master of their Order, Suárez, supposedly to save them from worse treatment by the Vatican.[12] He was expelled from Paris and moved to Rouen, only being allowed to return to the Dominican convent of Saint-Jacques in Paris in June 1962.[13]

According to Christoph F. Potworowski, for Chenu the incarnation is the means by which God acts within and on behalf of creation.[14] Chenu was a theological advisor at the Second Vatican Council (1962–65) where he was influential in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes).[9]

Influence

Chenu was a forerunner of the ressourcement in theology that preceded the reforms of Vatican II. Chenu played a large role in the reappropriation of historic theological sources that led to the nouvelle théologie. In particular he promoted the return to Thomas Aquinas as a source, but rejected 19th-century "modern scholastic" theology.[15]

Although his book Une école de la théologie: Le Saulchoir was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum in 1942[9] by Pope Pius XII and the Holy Office, he was later rehabilitated and his theology embraced by the fathers of the Second Vatican Council.

Chenu can be credited with being the grandfather of the liberation theology movement, since Gustavo Gutiérrez of Peru, who wrote the first book on liberation theology, studied with Chenu at the Institut Catholique de Paris, and cites him numerous times in his ground breaking book. Gutiérrez moved to France and became a member of the same Dominican community that Chenu belonged to.[16]

References

  1. 1.Marie-Dominique Chenu — Biographical overview, chronology, works, and bibliography
  2. 2.John Paul II, Letter to Artists — Papal use of Chenu's account of artistic works as genuine loci for theological reflection
  3. 3.[3.2]"André Narritsens". L'Humanité (in French). 4 June 1996. Retrieved 14 May 2019.
  4. 4.Kerr 2003.
  5. 5.Kerr, Fergus (2002). "Marie-Dominique Chenu". In Marthaler, Berard L. (ed.). New Catholic Encyclopedia. Vol. 3 (Second ed.). Detroit: Gale. p. 466.
  6. 6.Boersma 2009; McInerny 2006.
  7. 7.Gray 2012, p. 208; Mettepenningen 2010, p. 48.
  8. 8.Principe 1996, p. 303.
  9. 9.[9.2][9.3][9.4][9.5]Principe 1996, p. 304.
  10. 10.[10.2]Kerr, Fergus (2023). "Chenu's Little Book". From Aberdeen to Oxford: Collective Essays. ATF Press. p. 12. ISBN 9781923006348.
  11. 11.Kerr 2007, p. 19.
  12. 12.Kerr 2007, p. 20.
  13. 13.Mettepenningen 2010, p. 50.
  14. 14.Potworowski 2001.
  15. 15.Gray 2012, p. 208.
  16. 16.Gutiérrez 1988.