JACQUES MARlTAIN
205
The practical resourcefulness of Catholicism is exhibited, to
mention one of many things, in the skillful use it can make of
everyone. It has a place and function for all who accept the Cath–
olic dispensation-for every type of mind and personality, for
every interest and talent. Soldier or social worker, scholar or man
of action, poet or astronomer, converted Jew or converted Protes–
tant-the virtues of each individual's excellence can be made to
serve the purposes of the Church. Its base of common dogmas is
sufficiently broad to permit of a wide and
controlled
variation. It
has countenanced a modernist and fundamentalist wing in politics,
a realistic and nominalist tendency in philosophy, a rationalist
and mystic
~mphasis
in theology. In the past it has found use for
a St. Francis Assisi and a Torquemada just as today it can find
uses for a Maritain and a Coughlin.
The
New Christendom
M. Jacques Maritain has been aptly described* as the general
commanding "the ordered offensive of Thomism" in the Western
world. His appeal is therefore not demagogic but intellectual; hii
audience not the masses which follow slogans more easily than fine
distinctions but the intellectuals who lead them. More particu–
larly, his writings are addressed to those intellectuals who, dis–
satisfied with the cheap dogmas of current political ideologies, are
seeking a way of life which can integrate the values of personal
experience into a significant pattern and at the same time provide
a dynamic perspective for social action-and this without intel–
lectual stultification. Normally, Catholicism would be the last
faith to which intellectuals of social conscience, historic knowledge
and some intellectual training would look for such a new basis.
But M. Maritain's books while breathing a simple piety and con–
vincing personal integrity display such formal sophistication that,
despite the
nihil obstats
of the
censor librorum,
they can circulate
to the unconverted as illustrations of how one can be Catholic even
though intelligent, yes, even though radical and intelligent. Such
distinguished preaching to the unregenerated is not without its
profound influence upon the faithful themselves, especially those
errant sons of the Church who have grown critical of its institu-
·By
Mr. Montgomery Belgion
