The Parish & The Working Class
- Product Code: tpwc
- Publication date: January 24, 2025
- Pages: 442
- Size: 6 x 9
$24.95
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Three books in one volume Missionary parish Paperback & Hardback Arouca Press 2025✠ OVERVIEW ✠
The Parish & The Working Class gathers three important works by Abbé Georges Michonneau, the French parish priest of Sacré Cœur de Colombes: Revolution in a City Parish, The Missionary Spirit in Parish Life, and Catholic Action and the Parish. Together they form a searching examination of the modern parish, the working-class apostolate, the priestly vocation, Catholic Action, liturgy, preaching, money, clerical habits, and the urgent need to bring Christ to those who live within the parish but outside the life of the Church.
Michonneau writes not as a theorist safely removed from parish life, but as a priest who lived among workers, faced the dechristianization of the modern city, and asked what the parish must become if it is to be more than a religious service-station for the already devout. The result is a book that challenges priests, seminarians, parish leaders, and serious lay Catholics to ask whether their parish is merely preserving a small inner circle—or becoming a true missionary community.
The volume is especially relevant today because it reveals that many pastoral crises often treated as purely “post-conciliar” were already visible before the Council: nominal Catholicism, a weakening sense of mission, a gulf between the Church and ordinary workers, the danger of clerical routine, and the temptation to substitute management for priestly zeal.
The challenge at the heart of the book
Christ did not entrust the parish to priests so that they might become clerks, organizers, fundraisers, or custodians of routine. He entrusted souls to them—and those souls include the many who never cross the threshold of the church.
For priests
A summons to priestly presence, interior life, zeal, teamwork, preaching, and real pastoral fatherhood.
For parishes
A demanding vision of the parish as a living cell of evangelization, not merely a stable routine.
For the laity
A call to become apostles in ordinary life, not a clericalized class turned inward toward ecclesiastical power.
For today
A pre-conciliar witness that helps Catholics think beyond slogans about the crisis of the Church.
❦ FROM THE BOOK ❦“Christ was here; Saint Paul was here.
Forethoughts
“A parish in a mission country must be a missionary-parish.
The Parish and the Missions
“The world will not be changed by the clergy. The world will only be changed — let us say it: converted — by a laity witnessing to the gospel in the ordinariness of their daily living.
Foreword
“They do not expect us to be artists or scholars or administrators or businessmen or specialists. In the final analysis, they ask nothing from us that is foreign to our mission.
The Missionary Problem Is Primarily a Priestly Problem
✦ INSIDE THE VOLUME ✦Book I
Revolution in a City Parish
A concrete account of Sacré Cœur de Colombes and the attempt to make an urban parish a missionary community.Book II
The Missionary Spirit in Parish Life
A direct address to priests on the interior and apostolic spirit without which methods become sterile.Book III
Catholic Action and the Parish
A study of parish, vocation, priestly availability, apostolic fraternity, and the Sons of Charity.Key themes
Missionary parish life, living liturgy, direct apostolate, working-class evangelization, priestly zeal, teamwork, Catholic Action, preaching, money, culture, and the formation of modern apostles.
A necessary provocation
The book asks hard questions: Are our parishes inward-looking? Do our activities form apostles? Are our priests sufficiently priestly? Is the parish reaching the souls outside its own comfortable circle?
✠ ABOUT THE AUTHOR ✠Georges Michonneau (1899–1983) was ordained a priest in France and later joined the Fils de la Charité, a religious congregation founded for the evangelization of the urban working class. He served in working-class suburbs of Paris, including Petits Colombes and Colombes, where his pastoral experience gave rise to Revolution in a City Parish, one of the seminal texts of the French parish missionary movement.
His work is marked by practical realism, apostolic urgency, and a deep conviction that parish life must be ordered to the salvation of souls—especially those who have drifted farthest from the visible life of the Church.
✦ PRODUCT DETAILS ✦Author
Abbé Georges Michonneau
Foreword
Hugh Somerville Knapman, OSB
ISBN
978-1-998492-22-0 (pbk)
978-1-998492-23-7 (hc)Publisher
Arouca Press
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✠ ENDORSEMENTS ✠
Evangelization
A witness to missionary parish life before the Council.
Pastoral realism
A practical guide to parish life, organization, outreach, and zeal.
Historical insight
A window into the pastoral setting from which later changes emerged.
Parish renewal
A resource for priests and laymen wary of shallow revitalization programs.
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