Western European liberation theology : the first wave (1924-1959) / Gerd-Rainer Horn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Horn, Gerd-Rainer.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Catholic Church.

Liberation theology--Europe--History--20th century.

Liberation theology.

Catholic Church--Europe--History--20th century.

Christianity and politics--Catholic Church--History--20th century.

Christianity and politics.

Christianity and politics--Catholic Church.

History.

Europe.

Physical Description:

ix, 314 pages, 8 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Oxford ; New York : Oxford University Press, 2008.

Summary:

Western European Liberation Theology, 1924-1959 is the first comprehensive survey of the development of a distinct, progressive variant of Catholicism in twentieth-century Western Europe. This Left Catholicism served to lay the basis for the subsequent events and evolutions associated with Vatican II.

Initially emerging within the boundaries of Catholic Action, fuelled by the growing power and self-confidence of the Catholic laity, a series of challenges to received wisdom and an array of novel experiments were launched in various corners of Western Europe. The moment of liberation from Nazi occupation and world war in 1944/45 turned out to be the highpoint of these optimistic paradigm shifts.

Concentrating on interrelated developments in theology, Catholic politics and apostolic social action, Gerd-Rainer Horn integrates evidence from Italian, French, and Belgian national contexts. Drawing on his research in over twenty archives between Leuven and Rome, he highlights the role of organisations, social movements, and intellectual trends. The pivotal contributions of key individuals are assessed, from theologians such as Jacques Maritain and Emmanuel Mounier, to the millenarian activist priests, Don Zeno Saltini and Don Primo Mazzolari. In conclusion Horn suggests that first-wave Western European Left Catholicism served as an inspiration-if not constituting a prototype-for subsequent Latin American Liberation Theology.

Contents:

Catholic action : a twentieth-century social movement, 1920s

1930s

Theology and philosophy in the age of fascism, communism, and World War

The politics of left Catholicism in the 1940s

The Mouvement populaire des familles

A working-class apostolate beyond Catholic action : team building, base communities, and worker priests

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [303]-310) and index.

ISBN:

9780199204496

0199204497

OCLC:

229446146