Social Catholic sources of family reform in France: Contributions to the National debate, 1920-1947. (Volumes I and II)

This study examines the development of family reform thought among Social Catholics in France from 1920 to 1947. During this period, interaction with a republican state belatedly moving toward national social security resulted in the refinement of a confessional vision, and allowed Social Catholics to develop an influential voice in national debates over social policy.; The contribution of medical men to Social Catholic reform thought was paramount. Blending confessional and professional concerns, Social Catholic medical men fashioned a medecine de famille--less a field of practice than a brief for a certain philosophy and organization of social protection. Family medicine drew upon quasi-scientific thought to reaffirm marriage and the patriarchal family, and to resuscitate the image of the family doctor. It justified the preservation of traditional medical practice, then, and advocated a familial basis for social protection.; By the late 1930s, the tension between Social Catholic and republican opinion on the appropriate shape of social protection was clear. Social Catholics transformed the Third Republic's desire to rationalize social services into a threat to the health and welfare of the personne humaine. The debate over "social medicine" marks the emergence of a coherent Catholic critique of the interventionist state, articulated with specific reference to existing programs of social protection.; This critique made possible the existence of significant Catholic support for three visions of national renewal between 1940 and 1947: those of Vichy, of the Resistance, and ultimately of the MRP in Liberation France. The reality of Vichy's corporatism, revealed by the Ordre des Medecins and the Charte du Travail, highlighted, by contrast, the degree of compatibility between Social Catholic objectives and institutions of social protection that had arisen under the Third Republic. Thus, the experience of interwar Social Catholicism, as well as the Resistance, informed the MRP's distinctive approach to national reconstruction after 1945.; In tracing Catholic family reform thought from 1920 to 1947, this study highlights the continuity of Catholic social thought across regimes, and addresses the larger issue of Catholic participation in national life: not only did Catholic reform thought help to shape the French "welfare state," it also provided a means by which French Catholics rallied to republicanism.