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Jacques Maritain and the Spanish Civil War

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Bernard Doering
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Extract

The 1930's posed difficult moral problems for European Catholics. First came Mussolini's questionable adventure in belated colonialism in Ethiopia. Then the war in Spain suddenly, and with piercing sharpness, posed the moral problems of civil war. For the most influential Catholic thinker of his time, Jacques Maritain, the war in Spain was a challenging difficulty. Though Maritain openly refused his allegiance to Franco, and thereby became a scandal to Catholics horrified by the Spanish republic's attacks on the official Church, his reflections on Spain gave impetus to a current of thought in Catholic circles that culminated in the declaration of the Second Vatican Council on the relations between church and state. Hence, as so often happens, a time of confusion and fraternal strife was also a time of clarification, and a time of despair broadened into a time of hope.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , October 1982 , pp. 489 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1982

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References

1 Some of the prominent Catholic intellectuals in this group were Paul Claudel, Henri Bordeaux, Henri Massis, Gaeton Bernoville, Jean Guiraud, General de Castelnau, Robert Brasillach, Pierre Gaxotte, Jacques Bainville, Vice Admiral Joubert, Thierry Maulnier, J.-P. Maxence.

2 Ramon Sugranyes de Franch speaks of this leadership “so courageous and perhaps lonely, yet so perfectly coherent with the ensemble of his teaching” (“Jacques Maritain et la guerre civile d'Espagne,” Notes et Documents [October-December 1979]).

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33 25 July 1936.

34 Le Figaro, 20 June 1938.

35 Sept, 21 January 1927.

36 Le Figaro, 18 August 1936.

37 Iswolsky, Light before Dusk, p. 194.

38 Among those who signed were: François Mauriac, Charles Du Bos, Stanislas Fumet, Helen Iswolsky, Olivier Lacombe, Jacques Madaule, Gabriel Marcel, Jacques Maritain, Emmanuel Mounier, Boris de Scholezer, Pierre van der Meer de Walcheren, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Claude Bourdet, Paul Vignaux, Pierre-Henri Simon, Etienne Borne, Elie Beaussart, Luigi Sturzo.

39 La Croix, 8 May 1937; Sept, 14 May 1937; Esprit, 1 June 1937.

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52 Cf. the contributions of Bernanos to Sept which later made up the first part of Les grands cimetières, the “billets” of Mauriac to Sept and his articles in Le Figaro, the editorials of Sept (e.g., 8 January 1937), or the articles “la question d'espagne inconnue” by J. M. de Semprun Gurrea and “Double refus” by A. M. V. (Mendizabal) published in Esprit (1 November 1936).

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76 It may be apropos to recall here that Catholics were forbidden by the Vatican under penalty of being refused the sacraments to read or to contribute to Action Française.

77 T. Molnar, Bernanos, His Political Thought and Prophesy, p. 110.

78 Ibid., pp. 106 and 113.

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82 Dingle, “French Catholics and Politics,” p. 141.

83 Maritain, Carnet de notes, p. 232.

84 Ibid., p. 231.

85 December 31, 1937. Ramon Sugranyes de Franch makes the following remark about this article: “… these three questions are the core of a whole system of political morality and … the response that one gives to them, positive or negative, depends essentially on one's acceptance or rejection of the new ‘order’ that the Nazis, the Fascists and the Communists proposed at that time to an anaemic Europe” (Jacques Maritain et la guerre civile d'espagne,” p. 6).

86 Dingle, “French Catholic and Politics,” p. 140.

87 Mauriac, F., “Mis au point,” Figaro, 30 06 1938.Google Scholar