Frédéric Ozanam, inventor of the Church's social doctrine

Summary:

Frédéric Ozanam was a Catholic in the truest sense of the word: a man whose faith inspired nothing but love for others, whether in the name of God or mankind. As a child, already nourished by a deep faith passed on by his mother, he could have embraced a comfortable and socially enviable career. But he made different choices, with the help of Providence.

Ozanam was initially a Legitimist royalist. He then discovered the thinking of Fr. de Lamennais, the forerunner of liberal and social Catholicism, not in the economic sense but in the sense of a plea for religious freedom, in the wake of the irreversible French Revolution. In the early 1830s, after a year's internship with a Lyon solicitor, Frédéric Ozanam arrived in Paris. France was still reeling from the July 1830 revolution that had ousted King Charles X from his throne. The accession of Louis-Philippe marked the end of the alliance between the throne and the altar. Deeply affected by the revolt of the canuts in 1831, he published Réflexions sur le saint-simonisme, a pamphlet against Saint-Simonianism, the same year and contributed to L'Abeille française, a Lyonnais newspaper, where he was noticed by Chateaubriand and Lamartine in particular.

In the capital, he led a life withdrawn from the hustle and bustle of student life. He attended the law school near the Panthéon, but was more interested in literature. He enrolled at the Faculté des Lettres, earning a double degree in literature and law. Ozanam was both a fervent Catholic and a critical and assertive student. He never hesitated to intervene in class to denounce the ideas of professors who, more than indifference, conveyed a real hatred of Christianity. He also was a regular guest at Montalembert's salon, where he met Bailly, a young Christian philosopher who organized lectures on history and law, and who was to become his mentor.

However, while all this could have been confined to theories, one day he was challenged by a Saint-Simonian comrade who asked him "What is your church doing now? What is She doing for the poor of Paris? Show us your works and we will believe you!" Deeply moved, Ozanam gathered together a group of six companions and, under the guidance of the parish priest of Saint-Etienne-du-Mont, and with the help of Sister Rosalie Rendu, an energetic nun who knew every poor person in the Mouffetard district by name and nickname, and who would be seen on the barricades of 1848 tending to the wounded under fire, he set about visiting needy families, dispensing living vouchers, help, relief, and friendship. The charitable enterprise spread like wildfire, and the goodwill of these bourgeois students soon set France ablaze. The Saint-Vincent-de-Paul Conferences were born. They quickly found a valuable patron in Father Lacordaire, a brilliant orator and reintroducer of the Dominican order in France (as all religious orders had been suppressed during the French Revolution).

Ozanam took the great leap towards "Christian democracy", a term which he was among the first to use. He began the delicate juxtaposition of tradition and the new spirit of freedom, which was to be the great affair of the nineteenth century. But he wasn't a modernist in the sense of a lover of progress for its own sake. As was often the case among the men who reacted to the horror of liberalism in his century, Ozanam looked back to the Middle Ages throughout his life to contemplate the ideal earthly city - full of faults but on the way to greatness, justice and love.

Awarded a doctorate in law in 1836 and admitted to the Bar in 1837, he worked in the legal profession and returned to Paris where he devoted himself on the side to the fledgling Society of Saint-Vincent-de-Paul: by 1837, the Conferences had grown to 400 members in Paris and the provinces. The revolution of charity, in a country then almost entirely devoid of social services, was underway. Soon, disgusted with the atmosphere in Lyon, he took and passed the agrégation exam (Note: in France, the agrégation is the most competitive and prestigious examination for civil service in the French public education system) in comparative literature in Paris, where he became the first degree recipient. In 1844, he became chair of literature at the Sorbonne.

As a professor, he was one of France's greatest specialists in Dante and the Niebelungen. And just as his friend Lacordaire reestablished the Dominicans in France, so Ozanam became a champion of Saint Francis of Assisi, whom the century of Voltaire had erased from memory. On June 23, 1841, after considering his options and consulting priests about his vocation, he married Amélie Soulacroix, the daughter of the rector of the University of Lyon. The couple had only one daughter, Marie.

In 1846, Ozanam had barely reached the peak of his career when his failing health forced him to interrupt his lectures at the Sorbonne. He was sent on a research mission to Italy. During this trip, he had several audiences with the new Pope, Pius IX, whom he informed about the new Conferences of Charity.

He returned to teaching the following year, more than ever driven by his passion for the European Middle Ages. But while he was working on the civilization of the fifth century, on Dante and the Franciscans, in the stifling atmosphere of the July monarchy, the revolution of 1848 broke out. With his colleague Lacordaire, he spontaneously found himself on the side of the workers and the poor. It was there that Ozanam launched his famous phrase, "Let us pass to the barbarians", followed by "and let us follow Pius IX!" It was also then that Ozanam called on the Archbishop of Paris Mons. Affre for help, begging him to speak to the belligerents: mounted on a barricade, the holy prelate fell to a stray bullet. Ozanam, for his part, joined the National Guard and founded the newspaper L'Ère nouvelle, again with Lacordaire and Abbé Maret, in which he tried to give the decisive start to the birth of a social and political Catholicism, reconciling freedom and Christianity, promoting private property and work, and taking the side of the people, free from the old restorationist and aristocratic motives.

In particular, he published On Divorce and The Origins of Socialism, a series of articles that were reprinted in two short seminal works that have only become more relevant over time. He wrote: "In this sense, the Gospel is also a social doctrine." Who would believe that this sentence dates from 1848, and was penned during a revolution? Who would believe that these were the foundations of the Church's social doctrine, as Leo XIII would point out when he published Rerum novarum, the first encyclical on the subject, fifty years later ? Ozanam's inspired genius lay in the fact that he granted nothing to the pernicious mores of the time, retaining only the aspiration to fraternity and justice, while showing in a masterful apologetic how Christianity, from its beginnings, led to liberation. He warned against a bad socialism that is only concerned with materialistic ends; at the same time, he attacked a selfish and greedy capitalism that was ruining the whole of society by destroying the natural bonds of community.

In the heat of the moment, urged on by his friends, he ran for parliament, unsuccessfully. He was soon frightened by the bloody turn of events in June 1848. In 1852, somewhat withdrawn from the world, he fell ill again and had to stop teaching. He travelled to the south of France, Italy and Spain to try and regain his health, while continuing his scholarly research into medieval civilisation and literature. In Pisa, in 1853, he wrote a magnificent prayer, a veritable spiritual testament that reflected his last struggle. He was brought back to Marseille where he died on September 8, at only age 40. He had by then revolutionized Catholic social thought, the study of European literature and the charitable work of lay people. The model of a modest intellectual, hard worker and socially involved person, he was beatified on August 22, 1997, at the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris by Pope John Paul II, during World Youth Day.

Going further:

Frederic Ozanam and the Establishment of the Society of St. Vincent de Paul (Classic Reprint) by Edward Henty Palmer, Forgotten Books (August 20, 2012)

More information:

• Apostle in a Top Hat: the Life of Frédéric Ozanam by James Patrick Derum, Hassell Street Press (September 9, 2021)

• A Life in Letters - 1st Edition/1st Printing by Frederic Ozanam, Society of St. Vincent De Paul (January 1, 1986)

• Homily by Saint John Paul II on the life, work and legacy of Ozanam at the beatification of Frédéric Ozanam on August 22, 1997.