Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic JACQUES MARITAIN AND THE FRENCH CATHOLIC INTELLECTUALS Bernard Doering Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic Intellectuals covers seventy years of Maritain’s life—from his con- version to Catholicism in 1905 to his death in 1973—and it follows the de- velopment of his ideas in response to the crucial social and political events of this century. In discussing his ten- uous affiliation with and later repudia- tion of the right-wing, monarchist Action Frangaise in the 1920s, sym- pathy and support for the victims of the Spanish Civil War, defense of the Jews against the anti-Semitic attacks in the 30s and 40s, and support of the Free French during the Second World War, it shows Maritain to be one for whom a commitment to Catholicism went hand in hand with a commitment to justice that led him to resist the absolutist, authoritarian tendencies of both the left and the right. Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic Intellectuals is more than the intellectual biography of one man, however; it presents a collective biog- raphy of an age. The Cercle d’Etudes Thomistes that met regularly at the Maritains’ home at Meudon brought together some of the leading Catholic intellectuals in France, including Mauriac, Cocteau, Merleau-Ponty, Massignon, Simon, and Mounier. This group of highly individualistic thinkers —and the other Catholic intellectuals connected with them—were faced with the double task of making sense of their place within Catholicism while at the same time determining their response as Catholics to the political currents engulfing Europe. Continued on back flap Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic Intellectuals BERNARD E. DOERING UNIVERSITY OF NOTRE DAME PRESS Notre Dame - London Copyright © 1983 by University of Notre Dame Press Notre Dame, Indiana 46556 Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Doering, Bernard E. Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic intel- lectuals. Includes index. 1. Maritain, Jacques, 1882- 1973. 2. Philosophers — France — Biography. 3. Catholics — France — History — 20th century. 4. France — Intellectual life —20th century. I. Title. B2430.M34D63 1983 194 82-40377 ISBN 0- 268-01202-4 Manufactured in the United States of America TO JANE Contents Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1. Action Frangaise: Maurras, Massis, Maritain 6 2. Action Frangaise: Bernanos, Massis, Maritain 37 3. The Decade of Manifestos 60 4. The Spanish Civil War 85 5. The Jewish Question 126 6. The Second World War and the Defense of Democracy 168 7. Ambassador to the Vatican and Professor at Princeton 206 8. Peasant of the Garonne and Little Brother of Jesus 217 Notes 243 Index of Names 265 Vll Acknowledgments No BOOK IS THE WORK of one individual. Like our lives, our books are influenced by so many persons that it is impossible for an author to recall all those who participated either directly or indi- rectly in the making of a book. It would be futile for me to try to express my gratitude to each one who, in the course of a conver- sation or a letter, by hints about avenues of research, by suggested corrections, or simply by gracious encouragement, has contributed to the writing of this book. However, I would like to express my appreciation to a number of people in a very particular way. First to Wallace Fow- lie, who suggested the topic of the book and has shown continued interest in my work. To the late Professor Joseph Evans, Director of the Maritain Center at the University of Notre Dame when I began working on this study, for generously making available whatever I needed from the Maritain Center for my research and for countless other acts of assistance. To the trustees of the Mari- tain Archives: the late Brother Heinz Schmitz, Professor Olivier Lacombe and Madame Antoinette Grunelius, for permitting me to consult certain documents prior to the date they were to be made public. I am particularly grateful to Madame Grunelius for the long hours she spent searching out the documents I needed, and above all for the long hours of conversation and her generous and cor- dial hospitality which made my stay at the Centre d'Etudes Jac- ques et Rai’ssa Maritain so fruitful and so pleasant. I am most grateful, too, to Brother Jean-Marie Allion, a Little Brother from Toulouse, who was working at the Maritain Archives in Kolbsheim during the summer of 1981 and who acted as my per- sonal “amanuensis," for giving so generously of his time reading letters to select those that would interest me, copying documents ix Jacques Maritain and the French Catholic Intellectuals X I needed and typing legible copies of letters written in almost in- decipherable script. I am also most grateful to Henry Bars for our long and help- ful conversations, and above all for his unselfishly putting at my total disposition unpublished manuscripts of his own on topics I was treating in my book. Finally, I express my appreciation to Anthony O. Simon for his countless acts of kindness and encour- agement, and in particular for having given me complete access to the correspondence between his father, Yves R. Simon, and Jacques Maritain, which, with Deba P. Patnaik, he is presently preparing for publication. All quotations from the Maritain/ Simon correspondence are from this collection. Copies of the Maritain/Simon letters can be found at the Maritain Center of the University of Notre Dame and at the Maritain Archives in Kolbsheim, France. Unless otherwise indicated, the English translations of all French texts are my own. Introduction striking phenomena of twentieth-century French ONE OF THE MOST letters is the Catholic Literary Revival, which was the more re- markable for the fact that it began from almost nothing. Consid- ering the situation in France in the early 1880s, one cannot avoid the impression that, in all its long history, the Church had scarcely ever found itself in such desperate straits. Positivism reigned supreme, often under the form of an ambitious and complacent scientism which saw no need for the supernatural and which therefore felt called to undermine the structure of traditional metaphysics and, consequently, of Catho- lic theology. The only metaphysicians who enjoyed any ac- ceptability were those who turned to a system of Kantian idealism which, to many minds, appeared sufficient to found a moral system without God and to make religion useless. For any- thing that resembled a religious climate, one had to turn to Renan, whose memories of seminary life and ecclesiastical vocabulary gave way with age to a skeptical laicism or to an aging Victor Hugo, who in countless alexandrins constructed a jumbled metaphysical system in which the name of God ap- peared, to be sure, but certainly not the traditional Christian God of the Bible and even less, of Calvary. In the literary world the spirit of positivism led, on one hand, in the tradition of Parnasse, to a kind of decorative paganism and voluptuous erudition which tended to describe with subtlety and perfection a beautiful object without ever look- ing for its soul. On the other hand, in the tradition of Medan, it led to an epic but vulgar naturalism. In the political order, the adamant antirepublicanism of Popes Pius IX and Pius X allied the Church with the antidemo- cratic forces of reaction. The papal condemnation of Lammenais, Lacordaire, Montalembert, Lord Acton and the Catholic liberal 1