Teacher of the Pope

Traditionally, papal encyclicals cite only writings from the past: scripture, previous encyclicals, the declarations of church scholars and saints. One of the novelties of Pope Paul's recent Populorum Progressio is that it is studded with references to contemporary works and living thinkers. To students of Paul, it came as no surprise that his ardent defense of a "true humanism" cited as a source the writings of French Philosopher Jacques Maritain. "I am a disciple of Maritain," the Pope once said. "I call him my teacher."

A Protestant-born convert, Maritain, now 84, has earned a firm niche in history as a principal architect of Neo-Scholastic philosophy, and as one of the century's foremost intellectual defenders of the relevance of St. Thomas Aquinas' thought. Pope Paul, as it happens, was one of the first officials of the Roman Curia to recognize Maritain's greatness. In 1928, when the Pope was Giovanni Montini, a minutante (document writer) in the Vatican's Secretariat of State, he translated Maritain's Three Reformers--a study of Luther, Descartes and Rousseau--into Italian.

During Italy's Fascist regime, Msgr. Montini was the unofficial leader of a liberal Catholic faction that used Maritain's concepts, newly codified in his 1936 work True Humanism, to carry on an intellectual movement against totalitarianism. After World War II, when Maritain served as French Ambassador to the Holy See and Montini was one of the top officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State, the two saw each other on an average of once a week, frequently dined together. And at the close of the Second Vatican Council, the new Pope honored Maritain by addressing a message to intellectuals and scientists through him, and publicly embracing the philosopher in St. Peter's Square.

Echoes from the Garonne. Since the death of his wife Raissa 61 years ago, Maritain has lived in obscure austerity on the outskirts of Toulouse with a branch of the Little Brothers of Jesus, a Catholic order dedicated to work among the poor. Frail and ailing, he clearly wants to retire from active life; this has proved difficult, thanks largely to the uproar caused by his 50th book, The Peasant of the Garonne (the river that flows through Toulouse). Published in France last November, Maritain's reflections on the place of the church in the modern world has sold more than 70,000 copies, set off a bitter debate among French Catholic intellectuals.

Throughout most of his life, Maritain has been a symbol of what has come to be called Christian humanism--the concept that the church, while not sacrificing its theological precepts, should actively support political democracy and social reform. He was one of the first 20th century thinkers to call for Christian involvement in secular concerns.

In The Peasant, which he calls "my last book," Maritain unleashes a fervent denunciation of innovation-minded Catholic clergy who have been responsible for current departures from tradition, among them the vernacular liturgy and preoccupation with sexual issues. Maritain views such changes as symptoms of a larger worldly trend that threatens the entire basis of Christian faith. Citing the late Jesuit liberal thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as a bad example, Maritain warns that the church is heading for "a complete temporalization of Christianity."

Disciple's Warning. Some critics accuse Maritain of betraying his own principles. But friends insist that he has always combined an enthusiastic liberalism in political and social thought with an orthodox regard for purity of doctrine. Much the same blend of belief is shared by Maritain's best-known disciple. Fortnight ago, Pope Paul delivered a harsh new excoriation of overzealous attempts to alter Catholic dogma in the wake of Vatican II. To a meeting of Italian bishops, the Pope warned: "Something very strange and painful is happening. Admitted are the most radi cal attacks on sacred truths of our doctrine. Put in question is every dogma which does not please. The cult of one's own personality and of one's own freedom of conscience is clothed in the most hasty and slavish vulgarism. The church is not obeyed, but ready trust is accorded the thought of others and the irreverent and utopistic audacities of the current culture."

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