Alphonse-Joseph-Auguste Gratry (18051872) was born in Lille, northern France, of irreligious parents and lived during a time of endless revolution. As a young man, he underwent a powerful conversion in which he experienced a mystical vision of a world based on truth and justice. This determined the course of his future life. A classically educated scholar, he studied engineering at the outstanding Ėcole Polytechnique, completed a doctorate on the scientific method in Strasbourg (1840), was ordained a priest, and later obtained a doctorate in letters and a licentiate in theology. Moved by the events of 1848, he published his first book in the form of a social catechism on the necessity for a systematic response to the needs of society. In a parallel initiative to that of Blessed John Henry Cardinal Newman in England, he relaunched the Congregation of the Oratory in Paris (1852) with Pierre Pėtėtot to raise intellectual standards among the clergy after the Revolution. A charismatic individual, well known as a distinguished logician, theologian, social thinker, and outstanding educator, preacher, and spiritual director, his major philosophical works appeared in the 1850s. The French Academy recognized his genius with election to the chair held by Voltaire a century earlier. Gratry fell into disfavor for his adhesion to the International Peace League on the eve of Frances war with Germany, and for his stand in regard to papal infallibility before Vatican I (a position largely vindicated in Vatican II), but he accepted the much narrower declaration once it was made. His most famous work, Les Sources, widely published until World War II, offers a plan of studies and a plan of life which reflect Gratrys philosophy of the person. The Christian Democratic Parties, the French lay movement Le Sillon, the Young Christian Workers (YCW), and the writings of Peter Maurin, mentor to todays Catholic Worker movement, witness to his foundational and comprehensive influe
...
Read Full Text
