between independent institutions and free individuals. This approach, how-
ever, was out of the intellectual reach of the neo-scholastic scholars.JACQUES MARITAIN’S INTEGRAL HUMANISMThe twentieth century brought the change that Leo XIII had initiated. Two
main factors encouraged a mutual process of rapprochement leading up to the
Second Vatican Council. First, there was the terrible experience of totalitar-
ianism and the atrocities committed in two world wars that made the popes
aware of the merits of‘true democracy’.^14 Second, the Catholic Church had a
positive experience with modernity in the United States. The Catholic Church
grew quickly in the liberal system of religious freedom and separation of
church and state, as enshrined in the American Constitution and its amend-
ments, and there was a Catholic presence in the democratic political parties in
the USA. In the European countries the liberal democracies mostly dropped
their anti-Christian ideology, and the church gave up its defensive attitude.
Jacques Maritain played an important role in this process, and even today
his teachings exercise an enormous influence on Catholic social teaching. His
work is central for a Catholic notion of Christian humanism. In his‘Integral
Humanism’,^15 Maritain asks whether humanism can be Christian, or, rather,
as he formulates it: is a heroic humanism possible? Humanism, theoretically
speaking, is what renders man truly human, manifesting his original greatness
by having him participate in all that can enrich him in nature and history. In
reality, however,‘humanist’periods seem to be opposed to heroic times. They
deny superhuman ideals and instead choose the human average: what humans
usually do, full of benevolence and humanity. The Christian ideal, in contrast,
consists of heroism or sanctity. Therefore, Christianity and humanism seem to
be incompatible with each other. Maritain correctly points to transcendence as
the solution: we are not fully human if we do not transcend ourselves with the
aspiration to heroism.^16 The new Christian humanism, according to Maritain,
will be a new form of secular sanctity in the world.^17
(^14) See Pius XII, Christmas Message, 24 December 1944, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-xii/
it/speeches/1944/documents/hf_p-xii_spe_19441224_natale.html.
(^15) Jacques Maritain,Integral Humanism, Freedom in the Modern World, and A Letter on
Independence, ed. Otto Bird (1936; repr. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press,
1996), 141ff.
(^16) Maritain,Integral Humanism, 153–6.
(^17) Maritain,Integral Humanism, 229–31. Timothy Fuller and John P. Hittinger (eds) offer a
good and succinct summary of Maritain’sinfluential book inReassessing the Liberal State:
Reading Maritain’s Man and the State(Washington, D.C.: American Maritain Association,
2001), 5–8.
A Catholic Concept of Christian Humanism 203