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

Commonweal, May 18, 2001 by Bernard Doering

Back in 1935, Maritain had written to Journet: "But there is...the question of scandals that must be brought to light. Are we guilty of abandoning the sheep if we refrain from mouthing the same prejudices and the same ready-made erroneous opinions they have become accustomed to? Or rather isn't it just not howling with the wolves? In other words, to what degree is it required of apostles of the truth to go easy on error concerning questions that are infra-dogmatic? Didn't Saint Thomas scandalize the ancient scholastics with his doctrine on the unicity of substantial form? Was he supposed to remain silent on this question in order not to put at risk his grand theological synthesis?" (II, 549).

Both Journet and Maritain came to realize that the friendship of Garrigou-Lagrange was not as true and as deep as they believed. In 1942, Journet wrote to Maritain: "I have heard nothing from P. Garrigou-Lagrange, we no longer write to one another. But I believe he continues to defend us in his own fashion which is not always the best" (II, 785). Today Garrigou-Lagrange's secret collusion with and even encouragement of Maritain's enemies in Argentina is no secret.

If Maritain publicly questioned the church's position on human sexuality, there was grave danger that the great work of his life, the complete renewal of Christian philosophy, for which he needed the church's approval, would be compromised. He could not risk the chance that Integral Humanism would be placed on the Index, or even being refused a nihil obstat. He gave priority to going public on the great problems of political philosophy and social justice.

Journet was caught in the same dilemma. He was in trouble with his bishop, Monseigneur Besson, because of his position on the Spanish Civil War. He wrote to Maritain: "The only chance I have to do intellectual work is to remain in the seminary. If I go back to Geneva, it will be to parish work, which I love also, but any serious and extended study would be impossible...I don't want to do anything that might endanger my position here--it is already endangered as you know by a kind of wish I suspect on the part of monsignor to send me back to Geneva, either because he needs a priest there who etc., or because with my modern tastes he must think I am an enfant terrible in this holy house of the seminary...So I'm ready to "run risks." But [as was quoted above] 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, like Maritain, had to choose his priorities in order not to compromise his profound and sustained writings on the theology of the church. For each of them going public on birth control was not worth compromising the work of a lifetime.

While he was ambassador of France to the Vatican after World War II, Maritain wrote to Journet that "during the Occupation intelligent people were scandalized because they heard too many Thomists chanting the litanies of Marechal Petain and heard a great theologian whom we know [Garrigou-Lagrange] actually declare in Rome that any priest who gave absolution to a supporter of de Gaulle was living in a permanent state of mortal sin" (III, 812).