Marie-Dominique Chenu OP (French pronunciation: [maʁi dɔminik ʃəny]; 7 January 1895, Soisy-sur-Seine, Essonne – 11 February 1990, Paris[1]) was a Catholic theologian and one of the founders of the reformist journal Concilium.
While at the Angelicum, Chenu was ordained in 1919 and completed his doctorate in theology in 1920 under the direction of Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange with a dissertation entitled De contemplatione, which studied the meaning of contemplation in Thomas Aquinas.
[4] In 1920 Chenu was appointed Professor of the History of Dogma at Le Saulchoir (and in late 1921 turned down a request from his doctoral supervisor Garrigou-Lagrange's to return to the Angelicum as a lecturer).
[5] He began to develop his theological perspective replacing the non-historical approach to Thomism that he had learned from Garrigou-Lagrange at the Angelicum with an historicist reading of Aquinas.
[8][9] Then, in February 1942,[8] Une école de théologie was placed on the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books because of its ideas about the role of historical studies in theology.
[13] Although his book Une école de la théologie: Le Saulchoir was put on the Index librorum prohibitorum in 1942[7] by Pope Pius XII and the Holy Office, he was later rehabilitated and his theology embraced by the fathers of the Second Vatican Council.