Roman Catholics: Teacher of the Pope

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In The Peasant, which he calls "my last book," Maritain unleashes a fervent denunciation of innovation-minded Catholic clergy who have been responsible for current departures from tradition, among them the vernacular liturgy and preoccupation with sexual issues. Maritain views such changes as symptoms of a larger worldly trend that threatens the entire basis of Christian faith. Citing the late Jesuit liberal thinker Pierre Teilhard de Chardin as a bad example, Maritain warns that the church is heading for "a complete temporalization of Christianity."

Disciple's Warning. Some critics accuse Maritain of betraying his own principles. But friends insist that he has always combined an enthusiastic liberalism in political and social thought with an orthodox regard for purity of doctrine. Much the same blend of belief is shared by Maritain's best-known disciple. Fortnight ago, Pope Paul delivered a harsh new excoriation of overzealous attempts to alter Catholic dogma in the wake of Vatican II. To a meeting of Italian bishops, the Pope warned: "Something very strange and painful is happening. Admitted are the most radi cal attacks on sacred truths of our doctrine. Put in question is every dogma which does not please. The cult of one's own personality and of one's own freedom of conscience is clothed in the most hasty and slavish vulgarism. The church is not obeyed, but ready trust is accorded the thought of others and the irreverent and utopistic audacities of the current culture."