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From “Main Tendue” to Vatican II: The Catholic Engagement with Atheism 1936–1965

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Stephen Bullivant
Stephen Bullivant*
Affiliation:
Christ Church, Oxford
*
Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

Pius XII condemned atheism's “most ignoble corruptions” in his 1956 encyclical Haurietis Aquas, along with its “lethal tenets” in 1958's Meminisse Iuvat. Only six years later, however, in 1964, Vatican II's Lumen Gentium affirmed the possibility of salvation for “those who, without any fault of theirs, have not yet arrived at an explicit knowledge of God” (article 16). Furthermore, the following year's Gaudium et Spes 19–21, drafted by Paul VI's newly-founded Secretariat for Non-believers, offers, among much else, a sympathetic overview of contemporary atheisms, and invites their contemporary adherents to “a dialogue that is sincere and prudent”. These paragraphs, according to Ratzinger, “may be counted among the most important pronouncements of Vatican II”.

Evidently, comparing Pius XII's “lethal tenets” to Vatican II's salvific optimism, profound developments are manifest in the Catholic engagement with atheism. Primarily responsible for this are, I argue, two episodes in French Catholic history in the decades preceding Vatican II: a) the unprecedented dialogue of Catholic intellectuals with modern atheism, following the French Communist Party's main tendue (“outstretched hand”) during the period of the Popular Front (1934–38); and b) the ‘priest-worker’ experiment, initiated by Henri Godin and Yvan Daniel's 1943 publication of La France – Pays de Mission?

Keywords

Vatican IIAtheismWorker-priestCongarLubac
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 90 , Issue 1026 , March 2009 , pp. 178 - 187
Copyright
© The author 2009. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council/Blackwell Publishing Ltd. 2009

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References

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8 Ibid.

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11 In French, La Main tendue. Le Dialogue catholique-communistique est-il possible?

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14 Ibid., pp. 135–46.

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23 The English version of the article, published in the Cambridge student journal Integration, appeared in two parts.

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43 Alvares, Santiago, ‘Towards an Alliance of Communists and Catholics’, World Marxist Review, 8/6 (June 1965), pp. 27–3, at pp. 27–8Google Scholar.

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47 Secretariat for Non-believers, ‘Elenco degli Ecc. Vescovi Membri e dei Signori Consultori’, Bollettino di Informazione [del Segretariato per i Non Credenti], 1/3 (September 1966), pp. 68–73Google Scholar. Consultors were not formally appointed to the Secretariat until after the Council, beginning in January 1966. However, given that the Secretariat was clearly active during the Council, drafting parts of Schema XIII and releasing a series of informative reports for the Fathers, it is clear that its consultors were already at work – albeit not yet, in Vatican terms, “officially”.

48 This phrase is taken from the title of Roger Garaudy's book on “the challenge of Marxist-Christian cooperation”, for which Karl Rahner wrote an introduction – see Garaudy, Roger, From Anathema to Dialogue: The Challenge of Marxist-Christian Cooperation, tr. O'Neill, Luke and Quinn, Edward (London: Collins, 1967)Google Scholar. The philosopher Garaudy, at that time a member of the French Communist Party, was one of the leading lights of the post-conciliar dialogue between Christians and Marxists.