Taming the Action - II The Decree

[Taming the Action - I]

85 years ago, in December 1926, following his first explicit words of reprobation for  the Maurrasian movement, L'Action Française, Pope Pius XI, by way of a decree of the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office, officially condemned that work and their periodical. The action of Pope Saint Pius X, which had been in a kind of suspended state since 1914, in view of various considerations, finally reached its logical conclusion.

Decree of the Holy Office

condemning certain works of Charles Maurras
and the periodical L'Action française

January 29, 1914, and December 29, 1926.

Since many have asked that a diligent inquiry be taken on the thinking and intention of this Apostolic See, and especially those of Pius X, of blessed memory, regarding the works and writings of Charles Maurras and of the periodical named L'Action française, H.H. Pope Pius XI ordered me, the undersigned, assessor to the Holy Office, to research with care the acts and files of the Sacred Congregation of the Index - which, as all know, was joined and incorporated to the Holy Office - and to present him a report.

Taming the Action - I

Exactly 85 years ago, in September 1926, Pope Pius XI began to make public his careful move to extricate the Church in France from the complex matter of the Action française (the "French Action"), the all-encompassing movement guided by Charles Maurras - the final stages in a matter that had been simmering in the Sacred Halls for nearly two decades. In a response to a letter written by the Archbishop of Bordeaux, Cardinal Andrieu, to the youth of his diocese, in which several aspects of the movement were condemned, the Pope made clear that he was on the Cardinal's side against the totalizing view of a political movement - and much more was to come from Rome in the following months, as we will see in the next posts of this series.

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LETTER

To the most eminent Cardinal Andrieu, Archbishop of Bordeaux, whose letter is approved and praised.

Dear Son, greetings and apostolic blessing.

We have gladly read the response of Your Eminence to the group of young Catholics who questioned you on the matter of the "Action française". We have found in it a new and high testimony of the pastoral care and fatherly vigilance of Your Eminence for the good of souls and, particularly, of youth, threatened ceaselessly in our days. Your Eminence indicates, in fact, a danger that is as grave in this case as it touches, more or less directly, and without it appearing so, upon the Catholic faith and morals;