ACTION FRANÇAISE. - A political-social movement, which arose in France in 1899, on the initiative of Henry Vaugeois. Charles Maurras became its principal theorist, following in the footsteps of the master of French positivism, Auguste Comte. The movement had many adherents, including among Catholics. Having survived various and complex vicissitudes, with Léon Daudet and Charles Maurras at its head, it won no little resonance in French political-social doctrine and action and also abroad. The instruments of its expansion were the works of Maurras and Daudet and the Revue d'A.F., which later became the daily L'A.F. (1908).
The political program of the movement, which in time rose to become a true party, was and remained purely French: the monarchical restoration in France. The struggle, however, to carry out this program came to assume more universal characteristics: the exaltation of an "integral nationalism" and the overthrow of contemporary political and social life, by every means and in defiance of any limitation, to the point of adopting boldly revolutionary attitudes. Alongside the innovative political movement and the party stood the philosophical-social system inspiring principles and doctrines far more daring and dangerous. The theorists of the movement, with Maurras at their head, educated in a Christian manner but later become an unbeliever, and Daudet, a believer but a highly unscrupulous novelist, willingly drew inspiration from "positivist" theories. No wonder, then, if in the background of the doctrines of the A. F. we find a decidedly atheistic and anti-Christian agnosticism, an openly pagan naturalism, and therefore an unmistakable amoralism, of the individual as of society, with the consequent removal of the individual and of society from the influence of the law of God and of the Church. The proclaimed subordination of morality and of law to national interest is explained precisely against the background of such doctrines.
It was evident that militating in the movement under the influence of such doctrines constituted a grave danger for the faith. But many French Catholics failed to take heed of this, not excluding high personalities of the clergy, enticed by the merits that the A. F. might have indirectly acquired in the struggle against the persecutors of the Church, and dazzled by the protests of absolute respect for religion and for the beliefs of individual adherents that flourished from the pens of the "masters." Hence the grave misunderstanding and the no less grave illusion that went about secretly producing effects in the souls of the many Catholics who, perhaps in the majority, had tagged along with the movement or even with the party. But the gravest danger and the most deplorable illusion hung over the young, and not only French youth.
A danger, a misunderstanding, an illusion that did not take long to give fuel to controversies between the opposing tendencies of those who denounced them and those who disavowed them or exaggerated them, falling back on the opposite and equally false democratic or demagogic ideas; cf. P. Descoq, A travers l'oeuvre de M. Ch. Maurras, in Etudes, 120 (1909, III), pp. 153-86, 330-46, 593-641 and 121 (1909, IV), pp. 602-28, 773-86, articles later reprinted, with revisions and additions, under the same title, Paris 1913; P. Exupère de Prats-De-Molle, A propos de la politique religieuse de Ch. Maurras, in Etudes Franciscaines, 29 (1913, I), p. 520 ff.; F. Chalanave, L'A. F. Ses Principes, ses Directions et son Institut, Etude documentaire, Paris n.d.; and still other publications of the kind that appeared in journals or in pamphlets up to 1927, thus inserting themselves into the well-known analogous controversy of the Sillon, which closed with the condemnation of Pope Pius X.
Symptomatic is the episode reported by F. X. Maquart, L'A. F. devant le Souverain Pontife, in Pourquoi Rome a parlé, IV, Paris 1927, p. 257: «Les cahiers de l'Association de le Jeunesse Catholique belge ayant organisé, en 1925, un referendum sur le sujet suivant: Parmi les écrivains des dernières vingt-cinq années, quels sont ceux que vous considérez comme vos maîtres, le plus grand nombre de suffrages était allé à Charles Maurras, tandis que le Cardinal Mercier n'avait obtenu que le dernier rang avec six voix seulement».
For these reasons the authorities of the Church, avoiding with every care, as always, any interference in the merely political program of the A. F., disapproved of and condemned its errors from the moral and religious point of view. The condemnation had been decreed and was ready as early as 1914; but its publication had been deferred
«to a more propitious time». This chronological reminder has its importance, because it dismantles the equivocal thesis of the A. F., which tended to set Pius XI in opposition to his predecessor Pius X.
Moreover, the documents issued on the matter by the French episcopate, as well as by Pope Pius XI and by the various dicasteries of the Roman Curia, beginning in 1926, are well known (cf. the AAS and the principal Catholic journals from 1926 to 1929). Also interesting are the marginal documents reported by F. X. Maquart (loc. cit.), because they demonstrate with how much longanimity, ponderateness and paternal solicitude the Pope acted in a question so complex and thorny. Meanwhile Pius XI had personally to re-examine the whole question, having been unable to procure the position, lost during the removal of the archives of the Index. But his conclusions were entirely in conformity with those of 1914. Here is how he expressed himself in a letter to Card. Andrieu, Archbishop of Bordeaux, on 5 January 1927 (La documentation catholique, 17 [1927], col. 139 ff.).
«Il est de toute évidence que Nous aurions employé de tout autres procédés si les documents que Nous publions avaient été à Notre connaissance; mais ce n'est qu'après le jour du Consistoire que Nous les avons eus en Nos mains. Sans doute, il Nous était très pénible de voir opposer (comme on l'a si souvent fait plus ou moins ouvertement) le nom et le prétendue conduite de Notre vénéré Prédécesseur à Notre nom et à Notre conduite vis-à-vis de l'A. F.; Nous avions le profond sentiment, dites le presentiment, pour ne pas dire autre chose, qu'une telle opposition ne répondait pas au vrai... mais les documents positifs Nous manquait, ils Nous ont manqué jusqu'à la toute dernière heure... ils attestent le persévérant jugement de l'Eglise, sur cette grave question. Nous espérons que, révélée à l'heure qu'il est, une telle continuité de jugement suprême de cette Eglise que l'Esprit-Saint appelle calumne et firmamentum variata, suffirait à elle seule à éclairer les esprits, à dissiper les doutes, à tranquilliser les âmes, à ramener partout et en tous la paix».
By contrast, the attitude of open insubordination assumed by the exponents of the movement clashed painfully, for they did not scruple to publish a purported yellow book, in response to the Vatican (cf. Les pièces d'un procès. L'A. F. et le Vatican, with a preface by Charles Maurras and Léon Daudet, Paris 1927; as well as the exhaustive commentary made on it by La Civiltà Cattolica, (1927, III, p. 329 ff.). The A. F. responded with the proud «non possumus» and launched into a campaign of poisonous anti-clericalism. There followed then more formal and more grave condemnations both on the part of the S. Congregation of the Holy Office, concerning the doctrinal system not only of the movement but also of the newspaper itself and of the leagues, and on the part of the S. Penitentiary, concerning the interdict and the refusal of absolution to the rebels. It is interesting to note that the heads themselves of the royal house of France were in turn constrained to disavow the A. F. Later there was a praiseworthy repentance. As early as 1938, the exponents of the movement had turned to Pope Pius XI to obtain the withdrawal of the condemnation. The supplication was repeated, with loyal retraction and guarantees for the future, in 1939, to Pope Pius XII, who received it and granted it (cf. the AAS and the principal Catholic journals of the year 1939).
The letter of June 19, 1939 from the A. F. to Pope Pius XII said, among other things: « Nous exprimons la plus sincère tristesse de ce qui a été de notre part irrespectueux, injurieux, et même injuste envers la Personne du Pape, envers le S. Siège et la Hiérarchie Ecclesiastique... Tous ceux d'entre nous, qui sont catholiques, rejettent complètement tout principe et toute théorie contraire aux enseignements de l'Eglise Catholique...».
It must be borne in mind, however, that Pius XII's measure of clemency regarding the A. F., after repeated acts of repentance, concerns only the newspaper of the same name, evidently leaving in force the condemnation of the works of Maurras and Daudet listed in the Index.
Bibliography15 works
Agatangelo da Langasco