JACQUES MARITAIN
215
That M. Maritain should hurl this reproach at the Stalinists
is puzzling because were it true-and it is-it would seem as if he
were accusing them of recapitulating the history of the Church
itself. But it is at this point that M. Maritain rears himself to his
full height as a Catholic apologist. In order to evade responsibility
for the acts of the Church, he invokes a distinction between
"authentic Christianity"
(the Church)
and the historic career of
the Church. From the standpoint of "authentic Christianity"
(Catholicism) there are many things which historic Catholicism
has done from which we might well shrink in horror. But nothing
it has done can affect the essence of
the Church,
its sacred and holy
validity which it has received from the source of all validity. None
of the deplorable acts and programs to which the historic Church
has committed itself can be deduced from the principles of the
authentic Church. But if it is impossible to deduce from authentic
and revealed Christianity the particular programs which M. Mari–
tain condemns, it is just as impossible to deduce their contraries
of which he approves.
If
authentic Christianity comprises a set
of general, eternal and immutable truths beyond history and time,
they cannot serve as a guide to
specific
problems of history and
time. M. Maritain's dilemma therefore is either to admit that no
positive political program, (which must of course consist of more
than vague and unqualified injunctions to love one's neighbor), is
deducible from Authentic Christianity, or
that the political pro–
grams of Catholicism, including his own proposals, are to be ex–
plained by the concrete interests of the Church as an-historic Oi'gan–
ization in time.
He cannot do the first without cutting himself off
from a principled basis on which to criticize political formations
in
time; he cannot do the second without running the risk of being
compelled to condemn Church and Pope and of suffering eternal
damnation.
M. Maritain attempts to slip between the horns of this
dilemma with another distinction.
The Church
itself must not be
identified with the Kingdom of God; it is only the chrysalis of the
Kingdom of God which can never be achieved in time.
"It
is in
time but not of time." Insofar as it is " in time" it must strive to
realize the Kingdom of God although it can never completely suc–
ceed; insofar as it is "not of time" it is the Kingdom of God al–
ready realized. But this distinction, which is based on -a religious
