Jacques Maritain: An Intellectual Profile

VIII. Maritain on the Church of Christ

    MARITAIN ON THE CHURCH OF CHRIST Maritain’s last complete book, De l’Église du Christ, was published in English translation in the year of his death.1 It was ignored by the secular media and given scant notice in the Catholic press. It followed by seven years the publication of Paysan de la Garonne (),2 which had earned Maritain the enmity of the Catholic left for its critique of some of the theology developing in the wake of Vatican II. John Courtney Murray in We Hold These Truths () noted happily that the Church in North America was not divided between left and right as it was with destructive consequences in Europe. By the close of Vatican II, the European virus had spread to North America. Maritain, who had been the darling of the liberal Catholic intelligentsia because of his social philosophy , was suddenly ostracized, his later works ignored. For Maritain a liberal social policy did not presuppose a liberal Catholic theology , certainly not one at war with the intellectual heritage of the Church.  . Jacques Maritain, De l’Église du Christ: la personne de l’Église et son personnel, trans. Joseph W. Evans On the Church of Christ: The Person of the Church and Her Personnel (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, ). . Jacques Maritain, Le Paysan de la Garonne, trans. M. Cuddihy and E. Hughes, The Peasant of the Garonne (New York: Holt, Rinehart, and Winston, ). In none of his critical studies does Maritain present himself as a theologian. He is a Catholic layman, a philosopher of rank, noticing the ambiguities, inconsistencies and repudiations of key elements of the Catholic faith by prominent and regrettably influential theologians, who still called themselves somewhat dubiously “Catholic.” No stranger to debate, Maritain challenged deviant positions with his customary acuity but without much success. No surprise there: the left characteristically avoids debate, preferring to ignore or ridicule its critics, which it easily does with the aid of a willing secular media. In the case of Maritain, he was simply ignored although one can find snide comments in the writings of a number of Catholic authors. Maritain’s ill treatment aside, his work proved to be prescient in a number of ways. Two recent Vatican documents, Fides et Ratio and Dominus Iesus, carry elements of the debate, emphasizing the importance of philosophy to theology and the tendency of the ecumenical dialogue to blur irreconcilable differences in the interest of accommodation. In De l’Église du Christ Maritain speaks of the“profoundly troubled historical moment” at which he was writing. He calls himself “an old Christian philosopher who has thought about the mystery of the Church for sixty years.”3 He is appalled by the appreciable number of pseudo-theologians who employ themselves to destroy the treasure of truth which is the Church’s responsibility to transmit . His work, he says, should not be read as a work of apologetics. It presupposes the Catholic faith and is addressed primarily to those who share that faith. Speaking of ecumenism, he decries the search for a spurious universalism, the first condition of which seems to be indifference with respect to truth. It is foolish, he holds, to attempt to unite all Christians in spite of their dissidences and all men in spite of the              . Maritain, De l’Église, v. diversity of their beliefs. The great utopian ideal—unity of all Christians—can only be achieved with a complete disregard for the truth. One hears of “ecumenical dialogue” but not “ecumenical friendship.” Is it not friendship, he asks, which is first required; well-established habits of friendship, created by fraternal banquets , eating, drinking and smoking together, conversing at random and joking? Such is far more useful than “the meetings of commissions with their definite programs, their reports, and their speeches.”4 “The meal taken in common is a natural rite of human friendship.” Four decades subsequent to the close of the Second Vatican Council it is apparent that something unintended occurred. The Church entered the Council in a self-confident, if not triumphant, mood. At the opening of the twenty-first century, the Church remains shaken by the sparseness of vocations to the priesthood and to the religious life and, except for some encouraging pockets in Europe and North America, by the fall in Mass attendance, and neglect of the sacrament of penance. It is commonly acknowledged that the Church has...