Marie-Dominique Chenu | |
|---|---|
| Born | Marcel-Léon Chenu (1895-01-07)7 January 1895 Soisy-sur-Seine, France |
| Died | 11 February 1990(1990-02-11) (aged 95) Paris, France |
| Ecclesiastical career | |
| Religion | Christianity (Roman Catholic) |
| Church | Latin Church |
| Ordained | 1919 |
| Academic background | |
| Alma mater | Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas |
| Thesis | De contemplatione (1920) |
| Doctoral advisor | Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange |
| Academic work | |
| Discipline | Theology |
Marie-Dominique ChenuOP (French pronunciation:[maʁidɔminikʃəny]; 7 January 1895,Soisy-sur-Seine,Essonne – 11 February 1990,Paris[1]) was aCatholictheologian and one of the founders of the reformist journalConcilium.
Chenu was born on 7 January 1895 atSoisy-sur-Seine,Essonne,[2] and grew up under the name Marcel-Léon. His parents were bakers nearCorbeil.
Chenu entered the French Province of theDominican Order in 1913, taking the name Marie-Dominique and studying atLe Saulchoir, then located inBelgium.[3] With the outbreak of theFirst World War and the suspension of teaching at Le Saulchoir, Chenu travelled toRome in 1914 to study at the Pontificium Collegium Internationale Angelicum, the futureAngelicum. While at the Angelicum, Chenu was ordained in 1919 and completed his doctorate in theology in 1920 under the direction ofReginald Garrigou-Lagrange with a dissertation entitledDe contemplatione, which studied the meaning of contemplation inThomas Aquinas.[4]
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's to return to the Angelicum as a lecturer).[5] He began to develop his theological perspective replacing the non-historical approach toThomism that he had learned from Garrigou-Lagrange at theAngelicum with an historicist reading of Aquinas. AtLe Saulchoir he was the teacher of DominicansYves Congar andEdward Schillebeeckx.
In 1930 Chenu founded theInstitut d'Etudes Médiévales de Montréal.[1]
Chenu served as rector of Le Saulchoir from 1932 to 1942,[6] and was therefore very involved in the move of Le Saulchoir from Belgium to Étoilles, near Paris, in 1937.
In 1937 Chenu privately issued a book entitledUne école de théologie: Le Saulchoir.[7] In February 1938 he was called to Rome to defend the book, and was made to sign a list of ten propositions.[8][9] Then, in February 1942,[8]Une école de théologie was placed on the Vatican'sIndex of Forbidden Books because of its ideas about the role of historical studies in theology.[7] He was removed as rector of Le Saulchoir.[7] He would never again teach there. Friends got him a post at the École des Hautes Études in Paris, and 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 nascentworker-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.[10] 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.[11]
According to Christoph F. Potworowski, for Chenu the incarnation is the means by which God acts within and on behalf of creation.[12] Chenu was a theological advisor at theSecond Vatican Council (1962–65) where he was influential in the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World (Gaudium et spes).[7]
Chenu was a forerunner of theressourcement in theology that preceded the reforms of Vatican II. Chenu played a large role in the reappropriation of historic theological sources that led to thenouvelle théologie. In particular he promoted the return toThomas Aquinas as a source, but rejected 19th-century "modern scholastic" theology.[13]
Although his bookUne école de la théologie: Le Saulchoir was put on theIndex librorum prohibitorum in 1942[7] byPope Pius XII and theHoly Office, he was later rehabilitated and his theology embraced by the fathers of theSecond Vatican Council.
Chenu can be credited with being the grandfather of theliberation theology movement, sinceGustavo Gutiérrez ofPeru, who wrote the first book on liberation theology, studied with Chenu at theInstitut Catholique de Paris, and cites him numerous times in his ground breaking book. Gutiérrez moved toFrance and became a member of the same Dominican community that Chenu belonged to.[14]
The following titles are a selection of the works published by Chenu.[a]
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