Roman Catholics: Teacher of the Pope

Traditionally, papal encyclicals cite only writings from the past: scripture, previous encyclicals, the declarations of church scholars and saints. One of the novelties of Pope Paul's recent Populorum Progressio is that it is studded with references to contemporary works and living thinkers. To students of Paul, it came as no surprise that his ardent defense of a "true humanism" cited as a source the writings of French Philosopher Jacques Maritain. "I am a disciple of Maritain," the Pope once said. "I call him my teacher."

A Protestant-born convert, Maritain, now 84, has earned a firm niche in history as a principal architect of Neo-Scholastic philosophy, and as one of the century's foremost intellectual defenders of the relevance of St. Thomas Aquinas' thought. Pope Paul, as it happens, was one of the first officials of the Roman Curia to recognize Maritain's greatness. In 1928, when the Pope was Giovanni Montini, a minutante (document writer) in the Vatican's Secretariat of State, he translated Maritain's Three Reformers—a study of Luther, Descartes and Rousseau—into Italian.

During Italy's Fascist regime, Msgr. Montini was the unofficial leader of a liberal Catholic faction that used Maritain's concepts, newly codified in his 1936 work True Humanism, to carry on an intellectual movement against totalitarianism. After World War II, when Maritain served as French Ambassador to the Holy See and Montini was one of the top officials of the Vatican Secretariat of State, the two saw each other on an average of once a week, frequently dined together. And at the close of the Second Vatican Council, the new Pope honored Maritain by addressing a message to intellectuals and scientists through him, and publicly embracing the philosopher in St. Peter's Square.

Echoes from the Garonne. Since the death of his wife Raïssa 61 years ago, Maritain has lived in obscure austerity on the outskirts of Toulouse with a branch of the Little Brothers of Jesus, a Catholic order dedicated to work among the poor. Frail and ailing, he clearly wants to retire from active life; this has proved difficult, thanks largely to the uproar caused by his 50th book, The Peasant of the Garonne (the river that flows through Toulouse). Published in France last November, Maritain's reflections on the place of the church in the modern world has sold more than 70,000 copies, set off a bitter debate among French Catholic intellectuals.

Throughout most of his life, Maritain has been a symbol of what has come to be called Christian humanism—the concept that the church, while not sacrificing its theological precepts, should actively support political democracy and social reform. He was one of the first 20th century thinkers to call for Christian involvement in secular concerns.