Libertà religiosa e ‘fine della cristianità’. Una genealogia parigina del Concilio Vaticano II (1927-1965).

The diagnosis concerning the end of a “régime de Chrétienté” seems today to enjoy broad consensus within the Magisterium, from the French episcopate to the highest levels of the universal Church. The present contribution traces, through a number of key expressions, the historical and theological genealogy of this consensus. Starting from the Cardinal Suhard’s pastoral letter Essor ou déclin de l’Église (1947), the article reaches back to the Parisian intellectual milieu of the 1920s and 1930s — from Nikolaj Alexandrovič Berdjaev to Jacques Maritain, from Emmanuel Mounier to Étienne Gilson — in which the critical distinction between Christianity and Christendom was elaborated, before tracing its trajectory through to Marie-Dominique Chenu’s formula on the “end of the Constantinian era” (1961) and the conciliar declaration Dignitatis humanae (1965).