FELIX, CÉLESTIN-JOSEPH. – Jesuit, lecturer, born at Neuville-sur l'Escaut (diocese of Cambrai) on 28 June 1810, died at Lilia on 6 July 1891. After four years of teaching at Brugelette, he went as a preacher to Paris (1851), and in 1853 was called by Archbishop A. Sibour to succeed Frs. E. D. Lacordaire and S. de Ravignan in the pulpit of Notre-Dame. He remained there until 1870, acquiring a reputation as one of the most brilliant orators, and concluding there the long series of his conferences with a bold and courageous sermon, considering the circumstances, on the infallibility of the pope. From 1867 to 1883 he was superior at Nancy; from 1883 to 1885 at Lilia, where he remained until his death, occasionally going to preach in the principal cathedrals of France and Belgium.
His name is linked above all with the conferences at Notre-Dame. After preaching for three years on various subjects (Grandes erreurs du siècle [1853]; Le christianisme est charité [1854]; Le sacrifice [1855]), in 1856 he began the series Le progrès par le christianisme (15 vols., Paris 1856–70), in which true and genuine progress in all its forms—individual, familial, artistic, moral, and social—is treated with breadth of outlook combined with great doctrinal precision. Each year, moreover, he summarized the practical conclusions arising from his conferences in the discourses of the Easter retreat (7 vols., there 1867–71). The conferences and retreats went through numerous editions and translations, and even today retain their profound effectiveness undiminished.
His eloquence is distinguished by clarity, vigorous logic, vibrant enthusiasm, which moves and touches, certainty of doctrine, and the art of a skillful and subtle dialectic.