Jacques Maritain and the Jews ed. by Robert Royal (review)

672BOOK REVIEWS Telling the missionary history is perhaps the most difficult part of this subject , because the intervening years have made us aware of the cultural imperialism that often accompanied evangelization. We believe that we have a more nuanced approach to inculturation of the Gospel than did previous ages. Sensitivity , however, has often been paid for with a loss of zeal. The Spanish missionaries to the Americas in the first centuries displayed a heroism and energy—alongside their blind spots—rare in missionary activity today. David. J. Weber and Iris H. W. Engstrand in separate essays provide particularly well balanced accounts of mission activities in North America, noting the successes, failures, flaws, and genuine virtues of the remarkably small numbers of Franciscans largely responsible for that work. This volume closes with some wishful thinking on the part ofRobert McAfee Brown that the example ofthe Encounter may provide us with some new principles of evangelization for the future. Better as a cautionary tale for historians are the historiographical essays by Bishop Pierre DuMaine and Frederick P. Bowser, and brief representative views from 1892 and 1992, that point to the need for humility and patient effort in the unending approximation to historical truth. Robert Royal Ethics and Public Policy Center Washington, D.C. Jacques Maritain and theJews. Edited by Robert Royal. (American Maritain Association . Distributed by University of Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, Indiana . 1994. Pp. vüi, 286. $15.95 paperback.) This book brings together papers read at the 1991 meeting of the American Maritain Association at Georgetown University, edited and masterfully introduced by Robert Royal. It is an extraordinary collection of papers. The reputation ofJacques Maritain is emerging from any slight dimming of it that occurred after his death in 1973. There are two international societies devoted to his thought; there are national associations in Canada and the United States, in Latin America and in Europe. A magnificent fifteen-volume edition of the writings of Jacques and Raissa Maritain has just been completed and a twenty-volume English edition of his work has begun to appear from the Jacques Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame. It seems safe to say that Maritain will exercise even more influence in the future than he has in the past. That he is not the object of a cult of personality with fans gushing uncritically over his work is manifest in this volume. One of the admitted glories of Maritain was his serious and thoughtful consideration of the "mystery of Israel." Contributors to this volume show us that Maritain, from the time he was French BOOK REVIEWS673 Ambassador to the Holy See immediately after World War II, urged the Church to condemn anti-Semitism. The Second Vatican Council's eventual condemnation of anti-Semitism vindicated this effort. Maritain advisedly spoke of the "mystery" ofIsrael—he was not, ofcourse, referring to the state of Israel. Like everyone else who has given the matter any prolonged and serious thought, he finds the history of the Jewish people ultimately unintelligible on any natural grounds. FatherJames SchallV'The Mystery of the Mystery ofIsrael" is the best short account of this work of Maritain's I have seen. But it must be complemented by William Bush's essay on Bloy and Maritain. The fact that Bush sees Maritain as a Modernist makes clear that even radical criticisms of Maritain are put forward in this volume, although they are not universally accepted. Royal has grouped the essays into three parts. In the first part, Bernard Doering , Raymond Dennehy, Schall, Rabbi Leon Klenicki,John Hellman,Vittorio Possenti , and Michael Novak discuss the thought of Maritain. It is, of course, impossible to review such a collection,but each ofthese essays deserves a close analysis. Their merits are many, their interpretations are often at odds but—and this remark covers essays in the other parts as well—the quality of scholarship and liveliness of thought is unusually high. Part Two contains essays dealing with friends of Maritain, and here, along with Bush, are to be found Ralph Nelson ,Judith Suther, Astrid O'Brien, Robert Royal, Desmond Fitzgerald, and Peter Redpath. Part Three contains three memoirs, one by Donald Gallagher, and others...