Publishing and Social Catholicism
After witnessing the unrest caused by the Paris Commune, La Tour du Pin and Mun were determined to respond to the dilemma of the working class. The following year they organized a Catholic Workers' club, under the name L'Oeuvre des Cercles Catholiques d'Ouvriers (Society of Catholic Worker Circles), at the request of Maurice Maignen (founder of the Brothers of St. Vincent de Paul). The clubs spread quickly throughout France. These "circles" or clubs brought together the wealthy and the workers from a given locale for prayer, socializing, and hearing lectures by members of the aristocracy. The organization hoped to prevent members of the working class from embracing revolutionary socialism. The clubs were organized based on a national committee and local circles. At the height of the organization's influence in 1881, L'Oeuvre had 550 local circles and reached a maximum membership of 50,000.
The movement provided a theoretical framework for Catholic politics in France, and was influenced by thinkers such as Louis de Bonald, Thomas Aquinas, Frédéric Le Play, and Émile Keller. In 1876, the group founded its own journal, Association Catholique, where members of the organization could present and publisher their work.
From 1877 to 1881, La Tour du Pin served as military attaché to Austria-Hungary, where he was influenced by Austrian Social Catholicism. While in Frohsdorf, he met exiled Henri, Count of Chambord, the Legitimist pretender to the French throne. In 1881, he resigned from the army and retired to Arrancy, where he became mayor.
In 1883, Henri's death left the Legitimist line of succession distinctly confused. On one hand, Henri himself had accepted that the head of the Maison de France (as distinguished from the Maison de Bourbon) would be the head of the Orléans line, (the Count of Paris). This was accepted by many Legitimists, and was the default on legal grounds; the only surviving Bourbon line more senior was the Spanish branch, which had renounced its right to inherit the throne of France as a condition of the Treaty of Utrecht. However, many if not most of Henri's supporters, including his widow, chose to disregard his statements and this law, arguing that no one had the right to deny to the senior direct-male-line male Bourbon to be the head of the Maison de France and thus the legitimate King of France; the renunciation of the Spanish branch is under this interpretation illegitimate and therefore void. Thus these Legitimists settled on Juan, Count of Montizón, the Carlist pretender to the Spanish throne (the Salic law having been suspended in Spain, the actual king, Alfonso XII, was not the senior descendant in the male line), as their claimant to the French crown. La Tour du Pin, along with other supporters of the Count of Chambord, prevented, Philippe d'Orleans (Count of Paris), from claiming the French Crown.
