Jean Ousset

Jean Ousset (born on July 28th 1914 in Oporto, Portugal, dead on April 20th 1994), French catholic essay writer. He wrote under several pseudonyms such Jean Marial , André Roche , Louis Morteau , Jean-Marie Vaissière , Jacques Régnier and Jacques Haissy . Near to the royalist mediums, he was an ideologist of the “National-Catholicism French”.

Years 1930-1940: French action

In the years 1930, Jean Ousset militates in the mobility of the French Action, the royalist movement founded by Charles Maurras. During the Second world war, he becomes the chief of the research department of the Jeune legion, a structure related to the French Légion of the combatants, one of the arms armed with the mode of Vichy of the Marshal Philippe Pétain. One of the colleagues of the time was François Mitterrand.

During the ocupation Nazi of France, publishes two political works: History and genius of France (1943) and Base of doctrines (1944).

A. Biographie of Jean Ousset

1) Youth

Jean Ousset was born in 1914, on July 28th, to Oporto (Portugal), it passes his youth in the south of France, in a small village of Bas-Quercy, in Montalzat. They are his/her grandparents who will deal with the education of this only sons, his/her parents (Eugene and Camille Ousset) being obliged to go to work in Paris. The grandfather as his son is convinced catholics and monarchists, member of the French Action. Jean will pass all his elementary schools in the commune and very early watch an private interest for the literature. He has a great thirst for knowledge but works only according to its centers of interests. Is 14 years old, with the death of his/her grandmother, her entourage the met in pension at Mrs. Règnier who deals with children with fragile health. Consent of Jean Ousset it is it which will give him “the orientation of all its life”: it will give him the love of the Beautiful which will be the base of its combat for a Christian city.

To 16 years and half it enters in pension at the Dominican ones which hold the college of Saint-Elme. It is on this occasion that it will make knowledge with Jean Masson, future founder with him of the catholic City. This passage of its life will give him like it says it in its memories: “(…), an irreducible love of my fatherland, France (…) and in large respect in front of the importance of the religious fact. ” Ousset has an anticonformist temperament and is rebellious with any authority, which brings it has to be often given to the order. It is student studious, cultivated, but which misses its vat. “He works more than the others but in directions which have nothing to do with what he is essential to learn when one makes a point of passing by the doors whose only official diplomas open the keys. ” His/her father who worries for his future finds him a work in the craft industry (manufacture of hats). Work which it will give up very quickly to devote itself to its passion: Article It will leave for Bordeaux to follow courses of painting and sculpture. Will follow one crisis period and of distress with a future more than dubious.

It will achieve many readings and to the wire of those the flame will reappear. The work of Ernest Psichari “the voyage of the Centurion” will give a new dash to its being, “like servant of enracinées truths, morally. Spiritually. Charnellement; and historically sanctioned”. To carry out this objective it will advance its military service, and will spend three years within the 9th battalion of Alpine hunters. The stays which it will accomplish in high mountain will enable him to find serenity. At the end of its time of service, although having the possibility of continuing within big silence, it turns over in his grandfather who lives, following the loss of his wife, at Septs-Bottoms.

In 1934, it is 20 years old after these three years of separation it will join again with his friends: Jean Masson, Pierre Sournac, Jean Ratchet and the brothers Mallet… Does everything part of a league that is: patriotic Youths, the French Action, Crosses of Fire… These young people sociologiquement, ideologically and religieusement disparate are crystallized around events which have occurred at that time:

it phenomenon of the “helping hand” by the Communists with the catholics, whom they regard as against nature.

it war of Spain which divide them. Ousset and Masson run up with virulence on the subject. Ousset taking the support of the Nationalists and Masson for the Reds.

It is the Choulot Abbot who will deal with the doctrinal formation of the group and will allow the discussions to take a less anarchistic direction. It is the charisma, the ardor of the young abbot who will direct the combat of part of the pioneers of the catholic City. In spite of rather clear divergences at the beginning, Ousset will manage to gather the men around a pool, by disregarding dissension on the accessory. These young people worry about the influences growing of revolutionary philosophies which want to make clean slate of the Christian influence. During his studies, Jean Ousset working with the factory to secure an income, will discover the methods of operation of the Communist party, his “dialectical” and his influence on the workmen. He will worry some and want to react. Frequentation of a medium strongly touched by the Marxist revolutionary theses, then the discussions which it will have with its communist fellow-prisoner, at the time of his imprisonment in Germany during the war, will have a great importance on its future engagements. The theories developed by the Communists deeply will consolidate Ousset in its faith and the mission of which it feels invested.

The catch will be carried out in Bordeaux in April 1939 (Jean Ousset is 25 years old), where he carries out a certificate of competence in right. Always in the search of an odd job to pay its studies it will find a place of personal secretary for the drafting of speech. At the time of a cycle of conferences it is pointed out for the quality of its talk per Charles Maurras who places it at the one of the French Action of the following day. The founder of the right-wing policy main movement in France before the First World War a few years later at the time of one of his last public appearances will designate the Jean Ousset like one of surest continuators of his intellectual and moral work, the other being Jean Arfel (Jean Madiran). During a maintenance that Jean Ousset will have with Maurras, this one will say to him: “However, if you seek doctrines, be certain that there are true doctrines only catholic. If thus you are catholic, do not be it with half! ” This assertion puts an end to the hesitations of the small group which always meets in Montalzat. They are given to claim catholic doctrines openly. August 15th, 1939, in front of the Blessed Virgin, they form the wish to devote their life “to be used France and the Church by a work of doctrinal training and education to the action of political and social frameworks effective”.

Post-war period: Catholic city

It is on July 29th, 1946, with the Basilica of the Sacred Heart of Montmartre that three men (Denis Demarque, Jean Masson and Jean Ousset) will devote their project to Christ King. The same day, new work was put under the protection of the “Queen of the World”, in the vault of the miraculous Medal, street of the Vat. The Catholic City had been born under its first name from “Center from critical studies and synthesis”. The will of the founders is to create an organization of laic acting under their civic responsibility with the advent for a Christian social order. This laic work must profess and diffuse through its members, the social doctrines of the Catholic church rather than personal doctrines. It is thanks to the right which admits the Roman hierarchy with any catholic to take particular political positions that the Catholic City will exert this freedom in order to spread its method and its action. Jean Ousset and Jean Masson know different political bases besides, the first has a rather traditional formation and maurassienne, the second comes from the Christian Democrat. By its activity within the world work does not claim to represent the Church, but to be made of it the echo “… in the plan of these social, civic affairs or policies that the naturalism and revolutionary laicism do not cease penetrating”.

From 1946 to 1963 the catholic City in spite of difficult beginnings goes to develop constantly. Then victim of its success and ceaseless attacks, the founders will make the decision to cease the activity of the organization and to found the “international Office of civic works of formations and doctrinal action according to the natural and Christian right”. This name wants to be voluntarily unpronouncable, even by the play of initial, to prevent that its members do not hide behind a label. After two years of startup, the center will constitute the doctrinal unit, the synchronization and training service around whose a multitude of associations will revolve. Another reason of this passage of the catholic City to the Office is the will to have a device more adapted to international expansion than she knows. The goal did not vary, nevertheless Jean Ousset realized that one could not be simply satisfied to clarify the intelligence by the doctrines of the Church, but that it was necessary to spread it by teaching it. The review also will adapt, Verbe will be replaced by Permanences whose contents are less dogmatic and deal more regularly with the topicality.

5) The international Office of civic works of formations and doctrinal action according to the natural and Christian right

The Office will know a great radiation both in France and with the international level. The first congress takes place in 1964 in Switzerland in the canton of Were worth, in Sion. Then of 1965 to 1977 they will be held in Lausanne. Two thousand five hundred to four thousand people, all nationalities confused (it up to 17 will have represented there in only one and even time, 26 if one enters all those which took part in the one of the congresses of Lausanne), find oneself three days lasting with the Beaulieu palate: occasion for organizers of works very varied, sometimes opposed, to harmonize and concert their actions (all the movements, associations, newspapers catholic and rather traditional are represented by a stand). This annual international gathering, one can hear there, in plenary session, the elite of catholic intelligentsia (especially French-speaking): Marcel Of Corte, Jean Madiran, Marcel Clement, Louis Salleron, Gustave Thibon, etc the journalist of the World itself, come in observer, notes on April 13rd, 1977: “Three days during, the Beaulieu palate of Lausanne undoubtedly contained documentation the most important counter-revolutionary of Europe. ”

Movements will shake the Office during years 70/80. The divisions caused by the Concile Vatican II within the Church will have repercussions at the militants of the civic combat. A certain number of sympathizers requires of Ousset to discuss the liturgical quarrels. He will always oppose noncategorical: “I refuse to engage me in the combat which developed in the Church, the Office believes neither possible nor desirable (by its same statute and its structures) to engage as regards liturgy, from interpretation, catechesis, etc” Thus little by little will deviate from the Office a good number of men and associations representative of the catholic and national current, to start with Jean Madiran.

Jean Ousset little by little will leave the “command of the ship” since 1973. He makes a bitter report: subversion, says it, changed form. It takes more and more the aspect of a cultural war in which all the means of modelling the sensitivities are mobilized to change the nature even of the man and, consequently, that of the company. What is to be fought is not thus more about the truth or of the error, it is a corrupting climate. “Refusing to be easily deceived successes of Lausanne, I have to cross, I acknowledge it, one of the most painful periods of my life (…). Not seeing there rather clearly, the idea me had just gone in the most various mediums, to study how to begin there to reach those of our French brothers that it had been impossible to us to approach up to that point. Too much affection retained me, I acknowledge it. But, finally, I left”.

But the Office precisely, after fifteen years of a work which made it possible to create in multiple fields of the pockets of resistance to the which gallops Revolution is badly in point: the divergences, sometimes irreducible, between the members of the executive team on the means to adopt to advance as well as possible the cause of the Christ-King, in France of the years septantes, deeply shook it. And even if the machine, although a little blown, still turns, Jean Ousset, perpetual dissatisfied, estimates that it is preferable to carry a final crushing argument to him. The cultural activity, to which it holds so much, and whose founded good is disputed by much, allures a whole part of the young generation. Thus in 1981, a team of young disciples, grouped around J. Trémolet de Villers and of Jean-Marie Schmitz, collects the whole of the experiments of Jean Ousset and under its aegis, ICTUS founds (cultural and technical Institute of social utility). ICTUS attempts to renew the “course” of political training and social, develops some historical dimension, and finally, cultural dimension by a practical approach adds to it which is a “civic education, social, national and religious by the Beautiful”.

Jean Ousset took part until the end of his forces in the development of this action so that the team continues work in a strict fidelity with the initial intention. It is during a visit in Louvre, that it organized for some organizers, that it is victim of an brain attack. He dies on April 20th, 1994.

B. the intellectual or man of concrete with the service of the Beautiful, the Love and the Church

Jean Ousset bases his action in favor of the Church and the social reign of Christ on ground by his love of the Beautiful. Its heart of artist comes in support to the message exempted by the Office. Since the abstract truths reject, it is necessary to touch the hearts, to raise the feelings, to make admire and know splendors of Christian civilization. The Beauty has a character of universality, thus any thing is fully beautiful only if it forms part completely of the divine order, only prospect in which it takes direction and plenitude. For him the Beauty is joy of the spirit, and it goes without saying it initially does not owe asresser with the directions. A passion art is condemned to be only one individual, enigmatic art and by-there same élitiste. The role of art is not it to support a greater communion. “Is communicable in “ego” only what belongs to the universal man”. For him it is essential to return to the criterion of the Beautiful in the field of the judgment, and in particular within the modern school which tends to classify it with the ray of the old-fashioned things. “I pass for doctrinary. Whereas at the bottom of me I regard the doctrines only as one skeleton. Image of death, as long as one does not coat it with the hot and flexible muscular masses which, only, can animate it (…). The object of my desire: contemplation in love with the beauty, the harmony of the beings and the things! Because the “demons” of my youth never released me, in spite of the muzzle which I tried to impose to them. Far from being itself concealed, they are always there. Always with the load. ”

Jacques Trémolet de Villers (the successor and friend of Jean Ousset) describes it in the foreword of the work of Raphaëlle de Neuville like initially an artist, a draftsman, a painter. The reports which it made did not come from a theoretical deduction from doctrinary, but from the observation of reality. He had, on the things and people, a terribly acute glance and which was seldom mistaken. He was like one says, lucid, which, sometimes made it pass for a skeptic or desperate. He detested the illusion. What he had seen before the last war and of which last time did not correct the data, it was extreme division, the absence of the least preoccupation with a complementarity between the forces of those which should have been plain for the safety of the company. He often repeated this sentence of Jacques Bainville, who seemed to him to summarize the situation of France, since the advent of the revolutionary phenomenon: “People of left between-commit suicide, certainly, but it is for the conquest of the capacity, while people of right-hand side are sent mud to the face, for nothing.”

One finds his thought on the Love and the relation of the man and the woman in one of his works entitled: “Love or sexualism? ”. The couple for him must be with the image of the union of Christ and the Church, which shows well the top of degree at which the Christian marriage has to be.

“The man and the woman have each one a role which is clean for him, and if it is not question of superiority of one or the other, it is quite as illusory to claim with the equality. Each being must be held with its place”.

“All that tends to reduce the human love to the only impulses of the instinct, with the only continuation of a strictly animal pleasure, is unworthy of the man. And consequently, dead loss and scandalous; the plenitude of the human love not being able to be a simple coupling of animals, but union filled with wonder at two “people”, highly recognized for such. Made love of attraction, fusion and carnal intoxication, certainly, but which can and must be desired, maintained, renewed, by what is quite higher than the simple animal instinct. As much to say a true human love.

“Love whose specific character cannot not be in an authentic union of the hearts, spirits and hearts…; in a sufficient harmony of the sensitivities, the kindness of the characters, a relative correspondence of the tastes”

For him morals is only one “code for better liking” and it has direction only because it makes it possible the human love to reach its plenitude and the harmony of a really divine order. It protests in addition against the charges of prudishness whose catholic morals makes the expenses. Raphaëlle de Neuville in its book points out that the Catholic church forever regarded the sexual intercourse as illegitimate. In fact the Lutheranism (Calvinism) and jansénisme are guilty to have created an excessively rigorous frame of mind on the matter. One should not separate what God linked: the carnal rejoicings belong to the cycle of the human love such as God wanted it. To claim that the sex act is ordered only with procreation and that the research of the pleasure is far behind this noble intention, it is to be unaware of all the harmonious plenitude of the union in love.

The Church is the guarantor of the doctrines and the Gospel: it is given the responsability to fix the direction of them and to explain the thought of it, “otherwise there would be as much Gospel than of different passion”. Jean Ousset will more precisely define his relation with the mother the Church in a text: “Disorder in the Church or mystery of the Cross”. Through dialog that it has with an officer (who is actually itself), it expresses its sadness vis-a-vis deep divisions which tear the French episcopate and clergy with regard to the teaching of the Holy See. That has it particularly disturbed because he suffered much for the Church and by the Church. He will recognize that the support of many prelates consolidated it in his task for the largest good of the catholic City. Rome followed the doctrinal developments of work through the prefect of Holy Office, the Ottaviani Cardinal, charged at the Holy Father with all the doctrinal questions. At the time of the Congresses, the Pie XII Pope intervened in person on several occasions by personal messages addressed to Jean Ousset.

Publications

Jean Ousset, With discovered beautiful , Paris, Montalza Editor, 1971,251p.

Internal bond

Catholic church during the Second world war

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