JACQUES MAR/TAIN
223
ciples. How is it understandable tllat a just war on one side of the
Rhine, should be considered an unjust war on the other side of
the Rhine by Catholics who enjoy the same grace of papal benedic·
tion and the same light of revealed principles as their fellow·
Catholic, M. Maritain? Is justice, then, as Pascal suggests, bounded
by
a river? Would it be understandable if M. Maritain, as a Cath·
olic, supported an unjust war? Why is it more understandable
that the Catholic Bishops of Germany should support an unjust
war? And why is it "naive" to be scandalized by the division
among Catholics? Because to be scandalized implies that one has
taken the principles of integral humanism seriously? Or because
it implies that one is not acquainted with the long record of such
division? Or because it implies that it lacks intelligence to expect
Catholic principles to be administered in any other way except
realistically, i.e., with an eye to organizational fortunes rather
than
to justice or sanctity?
M. Maritain himself has exposed the hollowness of his integ.
ral humanism. A French patriot need not be driven to such des·
perate expedients to justify his action. Whether we accepted his
reasons or not, we could understand them. For they would not
involve transcendental mythology.
Science, Atheism and Mythology
One of the central terms in M. Maritain's critique of modern
culture is "atheism." Almost all of our current evils and errors are
reduced to expressions or consequences of atheism. It is the root
of
Marxian fallacy in theory and Marxian inadequacy in practice.
IDsofaras M. Maritain finds occasion to criticize totalitarian re–
simes, he traces their excesses not to false principles of economics
or politics but to their "atheism." This atheism, he reminds us, is
Ihe logical outcome of bourgeois free thought. In many places M.
Maritain seems to suggest that the Deists, many Protestant sects,
all
humanists except integral humanists, are atheists, too. Even the
"bourgeois liberal," as a type, no matter how great a play he
makes of morality and a spiritual point of view, "is a deist and an
atheist; it is he who has taught their atheism to his pupils and
~irs,
the communists."
(True Humanism,
p. 72)
How such broad divergences as democratic socialism, capi·
