On August 22, 2024, Richard Francis Crane, a professor of history at Benedictine College in Atchinson, Kansas, published an article that reviewed the important contribution made by the Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain in the fight against Christian antisemitism. Crane introduced the subject as follows:
“Last year marked 50 years since the death of the French Catholic philosopher Jacques Maritain and almost 60 years since the promulgation of ‘Nostra Aetate,’ the Catholic Church’s declaration at the Second Vatican Council on its relationship with non-Christian religions. As we are witnessing an explosion of antisemitism in our time, I want to tell the intertwined stories of Maritain and this shortest of Vatican II’s documents, now in its sixth decade as a milestone in Catholic-Jewish relations. In so doing, I hope to underscore the need for Christians, now more than ever, to repudiate and combat antisemitism.”
In a previous post, I discussed the history of Christian antisemitism. Also, in the context of the war between Israel and Hamas, I mentioned the Catholic declaration called Nostra Aetate, published in 1965 as part of the work done by Vatican II. In Nostra Aetate, the Catholic Church presents its new, more tolerant attitude towards other worldviews, and Islam and Judaism in particular. On Judaism, the document states the following:
“Furthermore, in her rejection of every persecution against any man, the Church, mindful of the patrimony she shares with the Jews and moved not by political reasons but by the Gospel’s spiritual love, decries hatred, persecutions, displays of anti-Semitism, directed against Jews at any time and by anyone.”
My interest in the stories of the people who contributed to this reversal in the attitude of the Catholic Church is therefore not surprising. Crane notes that the French Catholic bishops issued, in 1997, a Declaration of Repentance in which they expressed regret that the Church did not listen to its best voices in the debates that preceded World War II and the Holocaust:
“In the context of the debate which we know took place, why did the Church not listen to its best voices? On several occasions before the war, through articles and public lectures, Jacques Maritain endeavored to open Christians to another perspective on the Jewish people. He also forcefully warned about the perversity of the antisemitism which was developing.”
Instead, French bishops supported the Vichy regime which Maritain had opposed because it collaborated with the Nazis.
Crane explains that Maritain was not always on the Jewish side of the debate, even though he married a Jewish woman. He converted to Catholicism in the first decade of the 20th century. At the time, he was already a philosophy professor but, like many French Catholics in the 1920’s, he was part of an ultranationalist, authoritarian and xenophobic movement whose goal was to “return the country to unity, tradition and order,” and he blamed the Jews for many of the world problems of the day (Does that sound familiar?):
“It is necessary to add that an essentially messianic people such as the Jews, from the instant when they reject the true Messiah, inevitably will play a subversive role in the world… Jews, Jewish intrigues, and the Jewish spirit can be found at the origin of most revolutionary movements in the modern era.”
His change of mind occurred when, in the late 1920’s, Pope Pius XI condemned the above ultra-right movement and asked him to write a defense of the position of the Church on the matter. At that point, as explained by Crane, “Maritain obeyed the pontiff, burning his bridges with the extreme right and rethinking his political theology.”
By the second half of the 1930’s, Maritain was a leading Catholic intellectual and an “anti-fascist proponent of pluralism and human rights” who also understood that it is “logically and morally impossible for a Christian to embrace antisemitism.” In 1938, he delivered a radio talk in which he strongly denounced antisemitism and the false accusations commonly made against the Jewish people. He denounced attempts to shift the blame onto Jews for the economic and social problems of the time:
“We do not underestimate the gravity of the great economic difficulties of our epoch and of the general economic crisis of civilization. We say that it is not by hounding the Jews but by transforming the economic and social structures, which are the real cause of those difficulties and of that crisis, that we can effectively remedy them. Anti-Semitism diverts men from the real tasks confronting them. It diverts them from the true causes of their woes-which lie simultaneously in our egoistic and hypocritical hearts and in the social structures causally interrelated to our moral wretchedness; anti-Semitism diverts men from the true causes of their sufferings to throw them against an innocent multitude, like a worthless crew which, instead of combating the tempest, would throw overboard some of their companions, until finally, they all are at tempting to choke each other and set fire to the vessel on which humanity, lost in dreams, has taken passage.”
Speaking more directly to Christians, he emphasized their common roots with Judaism and rejected excuses made to justify their failure to stand in solidarity with the Jews:
“If we now turn more particularly toward the Christians, who are themselves grafted onto the olive tree of Israel, they must look on the men involved in the Jewish tragedy with a brotherly eye and, as the apostle Paul teaches them, not without trembling for them selves. It is certainly possible for Christians to be anti-Semites since one observes the phenomenon frequently enough. But it is possible for them only when they obey the spirit of the world rather than the spirit of Christianity. He is our fellow creature, this wounded Jew lying half-dead on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho.
Strangely enough, certain Christians are heard to say, ‘Has the world been moved by the massacre of so many Christians in Russia, in Spain, and Mexico? We will be stirred by the Jewish persecutions when the world will be stirred by the sufferings of our own.’ When I hear this manner of reasoning, I wonder how it is that from one day to the next, and without even telling me anything about it, my religion has been changed. Does the Gospel teach that if a brother has sinned against me, by omission or otherwise, it is justifiable to sin against him in the same fashion? Jesus said: ‘These things you ought to have done, and not to leave those undone.’ Now it is said: ‘Because these things have been left undone, you ought not to do those.’ Because here certain people have been lacking in justice and in love, others must be similarly deficient.”
From his understanding of Scripture, Maritain believed the Jews, as God’s chosen people, were part of a divine covenant that cannot be revoked, and they continue to have an important role to play in the redemptive history of humankind. According to Michael Novak, Maritain believed that the return of the Jews to the Promised Land in 1948 and the occurrence of Vatican II shortly after (1962-1965), together, were a sign of a reorientation of history. Novak explains that Maritain often spoke of the mystery of Israel, which he explains as follows:
“Maritain held that Jews are ‘not only a people, but a people endowed with a mystery which pertain[s] to the very order of the redemption of mankind.’ The Jews form, ‘analogically, a kind of Mystical Body.’ In his view, after its lapse in not recognizing Jesus as the Messiah, Judaism no longer had an ecclesial mission as the church of all humankind. But ‘its mission continues . . . because it cannot help being the chosen people, for the gifts of God are without repentance, and the Jews are still beloved because of their fathers.’ To the Catholic Church has been assigned the task of the ‘supernatural and supra-temporal saving of the world.’ To Israel, on the other hand, is assigned, ‘in the order of temporal history and its own finalities, the work of the earthly leavening of the world.’ He continues: ‘Israel is here . . . to irritate the world, to prod it, to move it. It teaches the world to be dissatisfied and restless so long as it has not God, so long as it has not justice on earth. Its indestructible hope stimulates the live forces of history.’ The continued vitality of Judaism is necessary to the vitality of the world.”
Novak also explains how Maritain described the particularly sinful nature of antisemitism and the repulsive attempt to justify it on the basis that Jews are Christ-killers:
“In public and visible ways, Jews were subjected to second-class status and limited in what they could do. They were often humiliated. Far worse still, a lethal and deadly anti-Semitism was allowed to fester and at times to break forth in displays of passionate and horrible violence. From all this history, which Maritain portrayed in vivid detail, despite his restraint and softened manner of exposition, how does one find evidence of the hand of the true Messiah? The terrible betrayals by which Christianity is unfaithful to itself are doubly sinful, both in themselves and because of the darkness of mind and antipathy to which they give rise regarding the true calling of Christianity.
In this regard, Maritain used a particularly compelling example. Those who accuse the Jews of being ‘Christ-killers,’ he said, seem to be desirous above all of hiding from themselves the fact that it was their own sins that killed Christ: that Christ died particularly for their sins, and thus in a highly personal way became their Redeemer. In trying falsely to divert attention to the Jews, they undercut their own redemption. In their attempt to hide from their own sinfulness, they double their guilt. Thus, it is quite wrong to say that anti-Semitism is a natural fruit of Christianity. On the contrary, in all its forms and in each of its devious paths, anti-Semitism is a radical denial of Christianity. Its real motive is a kind of, in Maritain’s word, ‘christophobia.’ Anti-Semitism is a refusal to face one’s own sins and to accept one’s own redemption. It is also a radical affront both to the God of Christianity and to the God of Judaism—Who is one and the same God.”
But Novak also explains that Maritain was aware of the possibility that Jews might, in some ways, see his attempts to defend them as offensive. Indeed, Maritain admitted that he spoke of those matters from a Christian perspective. To put it simply, Christians believe that Jesus is the biblical Messiah and Jews don’t. When Christians affirm their belief on that matter, Jews understand their affirmation as a denial of the Jewish faith. They call it triumphalism. It is the idea that Christianity supersedes Judaism and makes it irrelevant. Many Christians today are very sensitive to that issue and are almost apologetic when they deal with it. In my view, that is because Western Christianity must live with the guilt associated with its history, a history that constantly violated the teaching of Jesus. In my view, Jews and Christians must live with both the common features that bind them and the very real differences in theology that separate them. Indeed, a Jew who declares that Jesus is not the Messiah is also denying the validity of the Christian faith. Christian condemnation of antisemitism should not be an admission that Judaism is just as correct as the Gospel of Christ, but a natural application of the Gospel of Christ which is about loving all humanity, including enemies. Maritain, in addition, emphasizes the common roots between the two religions, implying that there is no reason why Jews should have been considered enemies in the first place.
After World War II, according to Crane, Maritain served as French ambassador to the Holy See and lobbied Pope Pius XII for “a definitive condemnation of antisemitism on behalf of the church,” as he feared that antisemitism would not end with the fall of Nazism. But Pius XII apparently felt that the matter had already been dealt with. It is his successor, Pope John XXIII, who called Vatican II and revisited the issue of relations between Catholics and Jews. John XXIII died in 1963, before the council ended, and was succeeded by Pope Paul VI who considered Maritain his teacher. Nostra Aetate was the result of Vatican II.
It goes without saying that the presumed affinity between Christians and Jews should not prevent Christians from denouncing atrocities perpetrated by the Israeli administration against Palestinians in today’s war in Gaza. While Hamas must be condemned for its actions on October 7, 2023, it is clear that the Netanyahu government is not interested in peace and has no regard for Palestinian lives.
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