Loisy, Alfred Firmin

(1857–1940)

   Theologian.

   Loisy was born in Ambrières, France, and was educated at the Institut Catholique in Paris. He was ordained to the priesthood in 1879 and, after serving in a parish, he returned to Paris where he worked on the critical study of Scripture. In 1893, he was dismissed from the Institut because he had ceased to believe in the inerrancy of the Bible. He became chaplain to the Dominican nuns of Neuilly and subsequently taught at the Ecole Pratique des Hautes Etudes. His best-known book, L’Evangile et l’Eglise, was published in 1902. This was intended as a response to harnack’s Wesen des Christentums and it argued that Christianity was not based on the actual teachings of Jesus, but on the faith of the Catholic Church as developed by the Holy Spirit. It was condemned by the Archbishop of Paris and Pope Pius X put it (and Loisy’s later books) on the Index of Prohibited Books. In 1906 Loisy resigned his priestly functions and in 1908 he was excommunicated. He is remembered as the founder of Catholic Modernism in France and was in close touch with Baron von hügel. His later years were spent in teaching the history of religions at the Collège de France.

   A.R.Vidler, A Variety of Catholic Modernists (1970);

   G. Daly, Transcendence and Immanence (1980);

   M.R. O’Connell, Critics on Trial (1994).