FELIX, CÉLESTIN-JOSEPH. - Jesuit, preacher, born at Neuville-sur-l'Escaut (diocese of Cambrai) on 28 June 1810, died at Lille on 6 July 1891. After four years of teaching at Bruggelette, he moved to Paris in 1851 as a preacher and in 1853 was called by Archbishop A. Sibour to succeed Fathers E. D. Lacordaire and S. de Ravignan in the pulpit of Notre-Dame. He remained there until 1870, earning a reputation as one of the most brilliant orators, and concluding his long series of conferences with a bold and courageous sermon, for those times, on papal infallibility. From 1867 to 1883 he was superior at Nancy; from 1883 to 1885 at Lille, where he remained until his death, occasionally preaching in the principal cathedrals of France and Belgium.
His name is especially associated with the conferences at Notre-Dame. After preaching for three years on various topics (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, social—is treated with breadth of vision combined with great doctrinal precision. Each year, moreover, he summarized the practical conclusions drawn from his conferences in the discourses of the Lenten retreat (7 vols., 1867-71). The conferences and retreats had numerous editions and translations, and even today retain their profound efficacy unaltered.
His eloquence is distinguished by clarity, vigorous logic, vibrant enthusiasm that moves and stirs the heart, doctrinal certainty, and the art of skillful and subtle dialectic.