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In 1938-1939, the centenary of the death of Johann Adam Möhler provoked a return to the theological school of Tübingen in France led by the Dominican Yves Congar, professor at the Saulchoir, and by the Jesuit Pierre Chaillet, professor at Fourvière. There they find a recourse against intransigent ecclesiology, support for nascent ecumenism and a bulwark against the totalitarian threat. To the contrary, Roman theologians saw in Möhler’s work a prefiguration of the modernism condemned in 1907. His book Unity in the Church was therefore briefly withdrawn from commerce in 1939 by the Holy Office, before inspiring post-war the ecclesiology of Fr. Congar. The episode is significant of the theological debates between modernism and Vatican II.