LABERTHONNIÈRE, LUCIEN. - Oratorian, writer on the philosophy of religion, b. at Chazalet (Indre) on 5 Oct. 1860, d. in Paris on 6 Oct. 1932. Having entered the Oratory in 1886, he was professor of philosophy at Juilly (1887-96), director of the École Massillon (1897-1900), superior at Juilly (1900-1903), director of the Annales de philosophie chrétienne (1905-13). When this periodical was condemned by the Holy Office (decree of 5 May 1913), and his submission did not appear acceptable to the religious authority, he withdrew into private life, and shortly afterwards he was also forbidden to publish further writings. He continued to give example of a dignified priestly life and of a profoundly supernatural piety; but, even while instilling in others submission to the directives of the Church, he prepared, in that period of forced silence, other works, unfortunately always in tune with the same errors already condemned. Before dying he asked for and received the Sacraments with profound piety.
Gifted with speculative penetration, with polemical vigour, with a limpid and agile style and an aristocratic tone, he wished to cooperate in the design of M. Blondel, who proclaimed the necessity of a new apologetics that would bind together in a higher synthesis the demands of the contemporary mentality and the Christian idea.
The new system adopted by him and called "moral dogmatism" was to break the union of Christianity with Thomist Aristotelianism, to free "Christian realism" from the old and oppressive incrustations of "Greek idealism", to abolish a purely abstract faith, a tangle of formulas imposed on the spirit from "outside", such as that taught and practised until then by the faithful, replacing it with a faith coming from "within ourselves", according to which the spirit proclaims its autonomy and "gives itself the truth that it admits". An immanentist theory, which declares the impotence of speculative reason with the acceptance of the Kantian critique, considered as a conquest of the modern spirit; overcoming it, however, inasmuch as it intends to rest on the demands of practical life and on our best aspirations in order to deduce from them the fundamental truths of philosophy and the confirmation of the very truths of Christianity.
The system was expounded and vigorously defended by L. in a substantial series of articles that appeared in the Annales de philosophie chrétienne and in separate works: a) Essai de philosophie religieuse (Paris 1903; Italian trans., Palermo 1907; placed on the Index, decree of 5 Apr. 1906), in which, while declaring that he does not wish to maintain that human nature postulates the supernatural, he nevertheless confuses the limits, clearly established between the two orders of nature and supernature by the doctrine of the Church, thinking that one must be able to discover in man the exigency of Grace, which leads him as far as faith, provided he corresponds faithfully to its appeals, that is, to his intimate aspirations. Faith, moreover, is not imposed, nor is it undergone, because this would be to violate the intelligence; but every certainty of a religious order is acquired only by "making the truth live within oneself". b) Le réalisme chrétien et l'idéalisme grec (Paris 1904; Italian trans., Florence 1922; placed on the Index, decree of 5 Apr. 1906) seeks to demonstrate that Christian doctrine is not, like Greek philosophy, a system of concepts ("to think is everything"), but a living interpretation of history, which is reality in continuous becoming, immeasurable richness, complexity, in which, and especially in the life of Jesus, "we must find the active presence of God in humanity". c) The same ideas are reaffirmed in Le témoignage des martyrs (Paris 1912; placed on the Index, decree of 16 June 1913) and in Sur le chemin du catholicisme (ibid. 1913; placed on the Index, decree of 16 June 1913); but with more vehemence and bitterness in the posthumous works: Etudes sur Descartes (2 vols., ibid. 1935; placed on the Index, decree of 2 Dec. 1936) and Etudes de philosophie chrétienne et premiers écrits philosophiques (ibid. 1937; placed on the Index, decree of 26 March 1941), where to the usual immanentist doctrines and to the consequences of autonomy of the spirit that derive from them are joined the most virulent and audacious invectives against the magisterium of the Church, against the theologians, who by their extrinsicist teaching on Grace and on Revelation lower us from the state of persons to the state of things; and especially against the first person responsible for these ruins, St. Thomas Aquinas, oppressor of souls, the man "who is not even a heretic, because he has remained completely outside Christianity".
L. also wrote: Positivisme et catholicisme, à propos de l'Action française (ibid. 1911), where he notes with force and acute foresight, even before the condemnations, the agnostic and anti-Christian character of the movement.
Also in the pedagogical field L. wished to apply his conceptions in order to show their value and fruitfulness, and composed a brief treatise: Théorie de l'éducation, rapport de l'autorité et de la liberté (in Essai, cit., pp. 233-89; in the Italian trans., pp. 227-89; new Italian trans. of the treatise alone, Florence 1921); where he clearly inculcates the mission and the duty of the Christian educator, which must not consist in imposing on the pupil, by more or less coercive methods, the habit of acting passively; but in serving, helping the personality of the child to raise itself above its instincts and to dominate its inner anarchy. Apart from the immanentist explanations concerning the religious truths that are to be taught, the treatise is dense with useful considerations and advice.
In conclusion: one must not deny to L. the very notable merit of having placed himself in the field of historical and concrete reality, in the field of lived life, with the aim of ever more intimately permeating it with Jesus Christ: this also explains the good and the consolation derived by many from reading his books; but one must also say that the attempt at an apologetics of Christianity no longer in function of the metaphysics and theology employed by the Church, but in function of immanentist and therefore subjective and relative exigencies, has completely failed.