Chapter 19

The Mirage of Pluralism

Jacques Maritaine to Eve Congar

It is under the banner of progress that so-called Catholic liberalism has arisen to the assault on the Church, just as I showed

you in our previous topic. There was nothing lacking to it except to put on the mantle of

philosophy in order to penetrate with all security the Church, which up to then had anathematized

it.

A few names, too, will illustrate this liberal penetration into the church up to the eve of Vatican II.

One is not mistaken in calling Jacques Maritaine the father of the religious liberty of Vatican

II.

For his part, Paul the 6th had nourished himself

with the political and social thesis of the liberal Maritaine since 1926, and he acknowledged him as his

teacher. St. Pius X, assuredly had been better inspired in choosing as a teacher Cardinal P,

from whom he borrowed the central passage of his inaugural encyclical,

A Supremi Apostolatus, and his motto, to restore all things in Christ.

Alas, Meritanz's motto, which would become that of Paul the Sixth, was rather to set up all

things in man.

In recognition of his old master, on December 8, 1965, the day of the closing of the council,

Paul the Sixth confided to him the text of one of the final messages of the Council to the world.

Now, here is what one of those texts declared, the message to the governors, read by Cardinal

Linehart. In your earthly and temporal city, he mysteriously builds his spiritual and eternal city, his church.

What does it ask of you, this church, after almost 2,000 years of vicissitudes of all sorts

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