LABERTHONNIÈRE, LUCIEN. - Oratorian, writer on the philosophy of religion, b. at Chazellet (Indre) on 5 Oct. 1860, d. in Paris on 6 Oct. 1932. He entered the Oratory in 1886 and was professor of philosophy at Juilly (1887-96), director of the Massillon School (1897-1900), superior at Juilly (1900-1903), and director of the *Annales de philosophie chrétienne* (1905-13). The journal was suppressed by the Holy Office (decree of 5 May 1913), and as his submission to ecclesiastical authority did not appear acceptable, he withdrew into private life and soon after was forbidden to publish further writings. He continued to exemplify a dignified priestly life and a profoundly supernatural piety; yet, while urging others to submit to the directives of the Church, he prepared during this period of enforced silence further works, unfortunately still marked by the same errors already condemned.
Before his death he asked for and received the sacraments with deep piety.
Endowed with speculative penetration, polemical vigour, a limpid and agile style, and an aristocratic tone, he sought to cooperate in the design of M. Blondel, who proclaimed the need for a new apologetic that would unite in a higher synthesis the demands of contemporary mentality with the Christian idea.
The new system which he adopted and called “moral dogmatism” was intended to break the union of Christianity with Aristotelian Thomism, to free “Christian realism” from the old and oppressive encrustations of “Greek idealism,” to abolish a purely abstract faith—a tangle of formulas imposed on the spirit from without, such as had been taught and practised by the faithful up to that time—and to substitute for it a faith arising “from within us,” according to which the spirit proclaims its autonomy and “gives to itself the truth it admits.” An immanentist theory, it declares the importance of speculative reason with the acceptance of Kantian criticism, regarded as a conquest of the modern spirit; yet it intends to surpass it by appealing to the demands of practical life and to our highest aspirations in order to deduce the fundamental truths of philosophy and the confirmation of the truths of Christianity.
The system was expounded and vigorously defended by L. in a copious series of articles 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 did not wish to maintain that human nature postulates the supernatural, he yet confuses the limits, clearly established by the Church’s doctrine, between the two orders of nature and of the supernatural, thinking that one should be able to discover in man the exigency of grace, which leads him to faith provided he faithfully corresponds to its promptings, i.e., to his inmost aspirations. Moreover, faith is not imposed nor is it undergone, for that 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) aims to show that Christian doctrine is not, like Greek philosophy, a system of concepts (“to think is everything”), but a living interpretation of history, which is a reality in continual becoming, an immense wealth of 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 greater vehemence and acerbity in the posthumous works: *Etudes sur Descartes* (2 vols., ibid. 1935; placed on the Index, decree of 2 Dec. 1936) and *Etudes de philosophie cartésienne et premiers écrits philosophiques* (ibid. 1937; placed on the Index, decree of 26 Mar. 1941), where to the usual immanentist doctrines and the consequences of the autonomy of the spirit which follow from them are joined the most virulent and daring invectives against the magisterium of the Church, against theologians who, with their extrinsicist teaching on grace and revelation, reduce us from the status of persons to that of things; and especially against the chief culprit of this ruin, 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, d'épropos de l'Action française* (ibid. 1911), in which he forcefully and presciently noted, even before the condemnations, the agnostic and anti-Christian character of the movement.
In the pedagogical field too L. sought to apply his conceptions 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); here he clearly inculcates the mission and duty of the Christian educator, which must not consist in imposing on the pupil, by more or less coercive methods, the habit of passive action, but in serving and aiding the child’s personality to rise above its instincts and to master its inner anarchy. Apart from the immanentist explanations regarding the religious truths to be taught, the treatise is rich in useful considerations and advice.
In conclusion: one must not deny L. the very considerable merit of having placed himself in the field of historical and concrete reality, in the field of lived life, with a view to 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 apologetic of Christianity no longer functioning in relation to the metaphysics and theology employed by the Church, but in relation to immanentist and hence subjective and relative exigencies, has completely failed.