The Man Who Saved The Catholic Church

Tomorrow, July 11, is the feast of St. Benedict and the anniversary of the refounding of St. Peter’s Abbey of Solesmes, France in 1833 by Ven. Dom Prosper Guéranger and five other priests. Apart from the Benedictines, you may wonder why this event has significance. Solesmes became a great center of renewal for the entire Church and its refounding brought forward a larger than life figure, who would oversee this renewal. Guéranger (1805-1875), originally a diocesan priest, literally saw a local, beloved church in crumbles, a medieval abbey, whose remnants were meant for demolition, and felt a call to restore not only that building, but also to begin a new way of life as a monastic. His response, reminiscent of St. Francis, entailed not only a restoration of one particular building, but a propping up of the Church itself.

The crumbles that Guéranger noted were of the Abbey of Solesmes, noted for its medieval statuary. This was only one small piece of the general destruction of the Church wrought by the French Revolution and Napoleon. The Corsican tyrant had seen to the nearly complete extermination of monasticism from Europe, deeming contemplatives useless to society. As Guéranger was ordained a priest in the early nineteenth  century, the Benedictines were on the verge of extinction in France. He would oversee a return of monasticism not only to France, but also to Europe more generally.

It is frankly hard to underestimate the influence of Guéranger on the Church as a whole in the nineteenth century and beyond. Besides resurrecting the Benedictines, he battled the remnants of Gallicanism and Jansenism, initiated the liturgical movement, paved the way for the declaration of the Immaculate Conception and Papal Infallibility, and instructed generations of Catholics through his monumental, The Liturgical Year.

Ven. Guéranger’s influence on the Church of his day is truly staggering: restoring religious life, reforming the liturgy of France, restoring Gregorian chant, collecting the work of the Fathers, and making a serious contribution to the development of doctrine of two separate dogmas! The life of Dom Prosper Guéranger is truly one of rebuilding the Church from the ruins of the French Revolution and the lingering corruption of the Gallicanism which preceded it. Guéranger is therefore a model for all of us to renew our own spiritual life, to reinvigorate our liturgical prayer, and to deepen our study and fidelity to the Church’s doctrinal teaching. In age of great disintegration, Guéranger can be a model of rebuilding for all of the faithful!

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2014/ven-prosper-gueranger-refounding-solesmes