GeorgesHenri Lvesque

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Georges-Henri Lévesque

• A Builder of Institutions
• for Social Research

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Québécois Social Scientist

• Quebec 1903-2000
• Influenced by Fr. Rutten
• Founded School of Social Sciences at University
  of Laval
• 1983 Pearson Medal of Peace
• 1979 Comapanion of the Order of Canada
• 1985 Officer of the National Order of Quebec

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Thomistic Basis

• to act to inspire to act
• Course for 20 years on the morality technical
  methods of action
• To distinguish the place of social deeds in
  Christian thought
• Prima Secundae of Summa Theologiae his foundation

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School of Social Sciences

• Asked to found the School
• at University of Laval, Quebec
• it became a faculty in 1943
• Catholic voluntary organisations felt threatened
• too much like social work with U.S. stress on
  technique, Anglo-Protestant inspiration
• Lévesque responded
• kindness is the real act, the gesture that
  witnesses to true charity. It will be all the
  better if that act produces more that is good,
  but to achieve this, it must be well done.

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Belgian Experience

• With Georges Ceslaus Rutten OP
• invited him to Socal Weeks in Belgium 1930s
• focus on practical issues
• opened his eyes to the world of work in
  Depression
• Met Mgr Cardijn, founder of Young Christian
  Workers
• Inspiration to work in changing Canadian social
  context

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Goals for the School

• Lévesque synthesising his ideas when 1938 School
  of Social Sciences project came
• general cultural formation in humanities
• love of liberty, especially for Quebec
• Thomistic need to draw on real life experience
• relationship of rights duties
• we should all work as if our efforts could bring
  about paradise here on earth but without hoping
  for its completion here below, giving optimism
  the last word nonetheless.

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To act to inspire to act

• University connected to the local reality
• a Québécois-led faculty
• theoretical reflection on ethics, but to aid
  general population
• the university cannot reduce itself to
  maintaining the prerogatives of the elite, but
  must consider itself a democratic institution at
  the service of the people.

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Action

• External Service for Social Education
• Centre for Popular Culture
• evening classes
• Faculty pilgrimages to local church basements
• Making citizens aware of rights
• Co-operative Movement
• Belgian experience
• West Canadian Co-operative Commonwealth
  Federation
• Founding the National University of Rwanda,
  Kigali
• at request of the Master of the Order,
• fundraised helped set it up
• Aim to serve the Rwandan people

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Faith Works

• Fr Lévesque is not first of all a sociologist.
  He is a religious of the type a society can
  occasionally produce when it has defined the
  social function of a priest as broadly as
  possible he is a religious who accomplishes the
  work of a lay person
• (Leon Dion, a former student)

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