JACQUES MARITAIN
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God, might be applied by other religions against Catholics, to
further the Kingdom of the Devil. M. Maritain cannot in
principle
condemn the aspiration of the Catholic Church to monopoly of
temporal power without falling into heresy; he cannot condone
all its practices without lapsing into spiritual sadism which would
be
very shocking to bourgeois liberals whom he accuses of lacking
"both erotic feeling and ontological sensibility."
It
is to escape
from this and similar difficulties that he introduces his double mys·
tery about time.
To what pitiable straits M. Maritain is reduced as a Church
apologist is indicated by the following. Attempting to explain away
the assumption of vast temporal power by the Church during the
middle ages, the counter.reformation, and the
ancien regime,
he
writes: "The Church, as such, was not involved in these excesses
hut they were produced within the Church." (p. 99)
If
this is not
another divine mystery, how can an organization not be involved
in
that which is produced within it? Perhaps the excesses were the
work of outsiders-pagans dressed in the vestments of clerics?
Such things have been often alleged. For example, the Nazi
excesses of 1933 were all explained as the work of Communists in
the uniform of Storm Troopers. .But if these excesses were the
work of outsiders, surely M. Maritain might tell us when the
Church as such disavowed these excesses. Unfortunately, he does
not. Even on the assumption the M. Maritain's distinction between
what is "involved in" and what is "produced within" makes sense,
were he discussing the good works of the Church during this
period, instead of its
auto.de·fe's,
he would not be likely to say:
"The Church, as such, was not involved in these beneficent meas·
ures but they were produced within the Church." Yet there is as
much warrant for one piece of verballegerdermain as for the other.
It
is not a question of whether the distinction between the temporal
activity of the Church·as·such and the temporal activity of the
Church·not-as-such is tenable or untenable, since it involves the
mysteries of sacred theology. The empirical question is: To what
forms of behavior, intellectual and practical, is the use of such
words an index?
Although M. Maritain allows a formal autonomy to questions
of empirical fact, he shows absolutely no respect for empirical
facts where they conflict with his ideological mission. In justify-
