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The following is adapted from “Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P. (1895-1990)” by Fergus Kerr, in Ressourcement : a Movement for Renewal in Twentieth-Century Catholic Theology, ed. G.Flynn, P. Murray (Oxford, 2013)
Marie-Dominique CHENU, (1895-1990), was a French Dominican theologian and medievalist. Born in Soisy-sur-Seine, France, Jan. 7, 1895, he entered the Belgian Dominican community of Le Saul Choir in 1913. After studies at the Angelicum in Rome During World War I, he was assigned in 1920 to teach theology at Le Saul Choir, where he undertook the project of reading St. Thomas Aquinas in his historical context, contrasting with what he regarded as the non-historical exposition of Thomism employed by his teacher in Rome, R. Garrigou-Lagrange. His 1928 and later essays were published in 1964 as La Parole de Dieu I—La foi dans l’intelligence.
As Regent of Studies at Le Saul Choir he published in 1937 Une école de théologie: Le Saul choir, a short work justifying his historical approach in which he criticized “Baroque Scholasticism.” He was delated to Rome for “Modernism,” and the text was placed on the Index of Forbidden Books in 1942. His three principal books, Introduction à l’étude de saint Thomas d’Aquin, La théologie comme science au XIIIe siècle (Paris 1957) and La théologie au XIIe siècle were published between 1950 and 1957. He was advisor to the worker-priest movement in France, disapproved by Pope Pius XII in his 1950 Apostolic Exhortation, Menti Nostrae. The same pope's 1950 Encyclical Humani Generis warned against “historicism” and condemned those who questioned the centrality of Thomism in Catholic philosophy and theology. In 1953 Chenu was relieved of his teaching responsibilities and subsequently turned his talents chiefly to preaching.
See Claude Geffré et al., L’hommage différé au Père Chenu (Paris: Cerf, 1990); Jacques Duquesne (ed.), Jacques Duquesne interroge le Père Chenu: ‘un théologien en liberté’ (Paris: Centurion, 1975).
a. duval, “Bibliographie du P. Marie-Dominique Chenu (1921–1965),” Mélanges offerts à M.-D. Chenu (Paris 1967). o. de la brosse, Le père Chenu: La liberté dans la foi (Paris 1969).
This Webpage was created for a workshop held at Saint Andrew's Abbey, Valyermo, California in 1990
