Two French priests were great during the Twentieth Centuryury's two world wars.

Friday, 12/1/17

In class yesterday I mentioned two French priests , who as scholars had a great influence on the Catholic Church in the last century; and one of the students asked who they were, so let me tell you.

During World War One, Henri de Lubac fought in the trenches, saving Paris from the Kaiser's troops; but in the last year of that war he received a bullet to his skull, bringing on many periods of misery in later life.

Yves Congar's town was captured by the Kaiser's troops. who slaughtered his father. Yves joined in his town's Protestant boys in resisting the Germans' and i t gave him a life-long  respect for all baptized Christians . After that war , Henri de Lubac became a Jesuit, while Yves Congar became a Dominican priest.

In World War II Father Yves Congar spent five years in a  Nazi prison camp, while Lubac dodged the Gestapo as he published an underground newspaper, saving Jews from being deported


In 1950, Rome, finding  their views too fresh, banned each of them from teaching; but in 1958 Pope John XXIII named them special consultants to Vatican II; then the Church named both of them cardinals for their great contributions to Vatican II.   

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