Albert Houtin

Albert Houtin (4 October 1867 – 28 July 1926) was a French Catholic theologian and historian with a focus on the history of doctrine and on modernism in French religion.{{cite book|last1=Walsh|first1=Michael|title=Dictionary of Christian Biography|date=2001|publisher=Continuum|location=London|isbn=0826452639|page=[https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofchri0000unse/page/623 623]|url=https://archive.org/details/dictionaryofchri0000unse/page/623}} Born in La Flèche, he grew up to become a priest and was ordained in 1891. Following the turn of the century, he became disenchanted with religion and came to regard all religious belief systems as fraudulent. In 1907, he had attended the Fourth International Congress of Religious Liberals in Boston, which had been organised by Unitarians.{{cite journal|last1=Talar|first1=C. J. T.|title=A Modernist among Liberals: Albert Houtin at the Fourth International Congress of Religious Liberals|journal=U. S. Catholic Historian|date=2002|volume=20|issue=3|pages=23–31|jstor=25154816}}

He died in Paris in 1926, leaving incomplete Courte Histoire du célibat ecclésiastique (Short History of Ecclesiastical Celibacy) in which he argues that the practice of celibacy among priests has been difficult to maintain throughout previous centuries.{{cite journal|title=Review of Courte Histoire du célibat ecclésiastique by Albert Houtin|journal=Books Abroad|date=1930|volume=4|issue=1|page=23|doi=10.2307/40046473|jstor=40046473}}