Jean Ousset
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Jean Ousset (born 28 July 1914 in Porto, died 20 April 1994) was a French ideologist of National Catholicism. He was an activist of the Action française monarchist movement in the 1930s, and personal secretary of its leader, Charles Maurras. Under the Vichy regime during World War II, Ousset became the chief of the research bureau of Jeune légion, a structure dependent of the Légion française des combattants, the veterans' association created in 1940 and headed by Xavier Vallat.
Following the Liberation, Jean Ousset became one of the leader of Cité catholique, a Catholic fundamentalist group close to the OAS terrorist group. The Cité catholique also included Marcel Lefebvre, who would latter initiate a schism in the Roman Catholic Church. As the Cagoule had done before the war, the Cité catholique had as aim to infiltrate the Republic's elites in order to form a National Catholic state, on the model of Francoist Spain [1].
Close to Lefebvristes, Jean Ousset published in 1949 Pour qu'Il règne, a title which was chosen by the Belgian section of the Society of St. Pius X as title of its newspaper. The preface of the book was signed by Marcel Lefebvre.
Ousset also wrote Le Marxisme-Léninisme in which he developed the new concept of "subversion" and argued that Marxists could only be combatted by "a profound faith, an unlimited obedience to the Holy Father, and a thorough knowledge of the Church's doctrines." [2]. Its Spanish translation was prefaced by Antonio Caggiano, the archbishop of Buenos Aires and military chaplain, who would theorize counter-revolutionary warfare in Argentina (theories which were implemented by the military during the so-called "Dirty War").
[edit] Works
- Histoire et génie de la France (1943)
- Fondement d’une doctrine (1944)
- Pour qu'Il règne (1949)
[edit] References
- ^ Sophie Coignard and Marie-Thérèse Guichard, Les Bonnes fréquentations : Histoire secrète des réseaux d’influence (Editions Grasset, 1997)
- ^ Quoted by Horacio Verbitsky in The Silence, extract transl. in English made available by Open Democracy: Breaking the silence: the Catholic Church in Argentina and the "dirty war", July 28, 2005
