SILENT DISSENTER : Jacques Maritain on contraception - twentieth-century French Catholic theologian

Commonweal, May 18, 2001 by Bernard Doering

Jacques Maritain, French philosopher and intellectual, played a crucial role in the revival of Thomistic philosophy early in the twentieth century, as well as in reconciling the Catholic church and democratic institutions. Today conservatives commonly regard Maritain as a model of a docile Catholic intellectual. But his fifty-year correspondence with Abbe Charles Journet--Swiss theologian, consultant at Vatican II, and eventually, cardinal of the church--tells a more interesting and complex story.

Maritain first met Journet with the founding of the Cercles Thomistes in 1922; they corresponded from that time until Maritain's death in 1973 (Journet died in 1979). From their first meeting, the two became close friends and Maritain chose the younger man as his "confidant-theologien," which he remained over the half century of their friendship. Almost eighteen hundred of their letters survive and are being published (Journet/Maritain Correspondence, Paris: Editions Saint-Paul); the first three of a projected six volumes are in print. Volumes II and III contain a surprising number of references to questions of human sexuality, particularly those concerning birth control. Even someone with an extensive familiarity with Maritain's writings would never suspect that he was preoccupied with such questions, but in a letter dated December 6, 1934, Maritain wrote to Journet: "I'm afraid I've been boring you with my questions on the theology of marriage. Please excuse me." (Journet/Maritain Correspondence, Vol II, letter no. 498--future references will be indicated by volume number and the number of the letter). I suspect that Maritain's questions resulted from the promulgation four years earlier of Pius XI's encyclical Casti connubii (1930).

Six months before its promulgation, Journet, who as a young priest had been appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Fribourg, wrote to Maritain that he feared being sent back to parish work if he were too outspoken on certain questions. "I don't want to put myself at risk on any question at all. There are certain problems where I think that boldness would actually amount to imprudence (for example, the very strict positions of the church on continence in marriage)" (II, 322). Journet had good reason to be careful.

In 1935, the Dominican Benoit Lavaud, professor of moral theology at the University of Fribourg and a close friend of the two men, published a book on marriage: Le monde moderne et le mariage chretien. Lavaud apparently put himself at considerable risk, for he began immediately to encounter difficulties with the ecclesiastical authorities. That same year he was ordered by his superior general to limit his activities exclusively to preparing and

teaching his classes. Journet wrote to Maritain: "So he can no longer do any writing. In this regard, good Father Lavaud is undergoing considerable trials. He has been very popular in Fribourg, was very much in demand as a preacher, and was held in great esteem by the bishop. But certain fathers among the Dominicans concluded that he must not be preparing his courses, and have denounced him to Rome. He explained himself, but the father general told him that, to avoid any possible occasion for complaint, he should refuse any invitation to participate in the ministry. He told me that he has the impression that his difficulties are dormant for the moment, but they will all start up again" (II, 503).

And they did. Near the end of that year, Maritain was also in hot water with ecclesiastical authorities because of his connection with the periodical Sept, his contributions to the leftist periodical Vendredi, his position on the Spanish Civil War, and the calumnies spread by Action Francaise in Rome. Journet, himself in trouble with his bishop over the Spanish situation, wrote to Maritain: "Neither I, nor Father Lavaud...is surprised at this inhuman way of acting" (II, 541).

In 1941, Lavaud was deprived of his chair at Fribourg and sent off to the Dominican House at Toulouse because of what he wrote concerning the "ends" of marriage. Journet wrote to Maritain:

"Poor Father Lavaud is in deep and agonizing trouble with Rome because he is considered too much in favor of the theory which insists that conjugal communion is one of the ends of marriage" (III, 785). Of course, in Gaudium et spes (47, 52), Vatican II proclaims this same thesis, along with others defended by Lavaud in the thirties and forties (II, 490, footnote 1).

In 1948, from Princeton, Maritain sent a letter to Journet, accompanied by a note titled "Apropos of Birth Control" which is important and surprising enough to be quoted in its entirety. He wrote: "In order that intercourse between spouses may not be hindered from attaining its natural finalities and in order that it be morally correct: It is not necessary that the intention of procreating children be present. (The woman may have undergone an operation that made her sterile, or she might be beyond childbearing age.) Moreover, the intention not to procreate may be present, as in the case of the Ogino method [the rhythm method], which the church has not condemned. So it is not the intention of the agent, the intention not to procreate, which makes the practice of birth control sinful. Then what does make it sinful? Certainly not an intention (finis operantis) extrinsic to the act of intercourse itself, but rather an alteration introduced into the very exercise of that act, which turns it away from its finality in its very excellence. (For example: the case of Onan.)