Caritas in Veritate

Paper for Maritain Association Conference

April, 2023, University of Dallas
Thomas Mammoser, Draft 720

Renewing the Soul of America

Remembering our Past, Forging our Future

It was the evening of January 4, 1939. President Franklin Roosevelt delivered a

landmark State of the Union speech that night to an anxious nation, struggling out
of the Great Depression, facing a horrific global war, and deeply fearful of its
future.
The outbreak of World War II in Europe, threatening to envelop the world in
flames, was just months away. Two years later Fascism, Nazism, and Communism
presented the greatest threat to democratic ideals in history.
In his remarks that night, Roosevelt was trying to steady a very troubled ship, and
foresaw a deeper, more perilous road ahead for America, warningthan fighting and
war. He saw the insidious and already pervasive threats from godless ideologies -–
from without and yes, from within--sweeping the globe. He especially warned that
“storms from abroad directly challenge three institutions indispensable to
Americans, now as always.”
The first imperative institution he mentioned –of great import to this paper,
‘Renewing America’ ---wasn’t oriented to democracy or to international good will.
It wasn’t oriented to ideology of any kind. It was directed to faith, to religion, to
belief in a transcendent, provident God..
With deep conviction, the President reminded his fellow Americans that belief in
God, –a founding pillar of American democracy--must not asbe a forgotten,
progressivist accident of history. Rather, as our forefathers believed and taught, it

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must be “the source of the other two.” As he put it, “democracy and international
good faith find their soundest foundation in religion and furnish religion with its
best guarantee.” (Roosevelt, State of the Union, 1939)
In that memorable speech, Roosevelt also recalled for Americans’ hazy memory
another founding principle. Namely the indispensable and indeed providential link
between democracy and religion.

And he was reminding them-- contra powerful humanist ideologies from ‘within’--
of the preeminence of religion in that relationship. He was recalling that religion—
specifically Christianity-- was the cornerstone of their remarkable, truly humanist
representative government.

From his eminent place in the free world, Roosevelt was calling Americans to
rediscover their graced history and heritage. He was reminding them of a decisive
reason for their existence, namely that they were so blessed to be ‘one nation,
under God.’

There’s the old adage: people more often need to be reminded, than informed!

This was one of those moments, and with extraordinary historical precedent.
Recall Abraham Lincoln, in his famous, 1861 Inaugural, reminding a nation facing
a dreadful civil war-- that “intelligence, patriotism, Christianity and a firm reliance
on Him who has never forsaken this favored land, are still competent to adjust, in
the best way, to our present difficulty”.” (Lincoln (First Inaugural)

Or recall George Washington, telling his founding compatriots that “while we are
zealously performing the duties of good citizens and soldiers, we certainly ought
not to be inattentive to the higher duties of religion. To the distinguished character
of Patriot, it should be our highest glory to add the more distinguished character of
Christian.” George Washington. (I visited Mount Vernon a while ago, noticed a
beautiful painting of the BVM in the dining room!!)

Or our second President and signer of the Declaration of Independence, John

Adams, saying that “our constitution was made only for a moral and religious
people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.” (Adams, to
Officers of 3rd Division of Militia of Massachusetts, October 11, 1798)

Powerful reminders, Indeed! How quickly we forget!!

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Now, 150 years later, to flagging memoriesr, our longest serving President felt
compelled to once again remind Americans of their marvelous history. A history
that transcended ideologies, but was now forgetting its basic principles. Perhaps
especially how to integrate man’s greatest gifts and needs: namely freedom and
religion
It wasn’t just an American issue. A truly humane world order He said, Roosevelt
said, meant that religion— taught for millennia by Judaism and Christianity and
now being cast aside by false ideologies -- must be restored to first place.
“Religion, by teaching man his relationship to God, gives the individual a sense of
his own dignity and teaches him to respect himself by respecting his neighbors.”
(It is from that dignity and respect-- personal and theocentric in nature--that all
else follows.)
“In a modern civilization,” Roosevelt continued, “all three – religion, democracy
and international good faith—complement and support each other. Where religion
has been attacked, the attack has come from sources opposed to democracy…An
ordering of society which relegates religion, democracy and good faith among
nations to the background can find no place within it for the ideals of the Prince of
Peace.”
It bears saying: this was no fleeting, ‘one off’ sentiment by the President—a
sincere Christian. Three years later, in a letter to Catholic bishops, Roosevelt
referred again to the ‘Prince of Peace’, saying “we (the United Nations) should
see…the establishment of an international order in which the spirit of Christ shall
rule the hearts of men and of nations.” (Catholic News, Jan. 17, 1942).
Several months later, Vice President Henry Wallace put it this way: “The idea of
freedom is derived from the Bible with its extraordinary emphasis on the dignity of
the individual. Democracy is the only true political expression of Christianity.”
(“The Price of Free World Victory,” Speech by Wallace delivered on May 8, 1942
before the Free World Association.)
(In historical hindsight, it’s encouraging to note that when authentic personal
freedoms were in the gravest danger, in this part of the 20th century, our country’s
political leaders showed little hesitancy –contra popular prevailing ideologies;
the Humanist Manifesto, et al--in acknowledging the preeminence of religion over
ideology.) I’ll get into the Manifesto of 1933 shortly!
To provide the President’s remarks some historical context, we need to ask: what
were those ‘opposing forces to democracy’…the ideologies from within that

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Roosevelt called out in his 1939 speech? Who were their leading representatives,
and what did they believe? What can we learn from our unique past, and from its
leaders, to keep our own ship moving forward!

Walter Lippmann
Much can be learned from a mid-20th century public force, Walter Lippmann.
Lippmann was a highly prominent columnist, cultural intellectual and secular
ideologist whose public career spanned some sixty years. A winner of several
Pulitzer Prizes, a man of extraordinary influence on American culture for decades,
he’s rightly been called ‘the most famous journalist of the 20th century and “the
father of modern journalism.”

If anyone had the public ear and can help us better understand that era, it was
Walter Lippmann. And in January, 1939, he was as concerned as his fellow
countrymen about the future of America.

It bears saying: Lippmann was neither a ‘religionist,’ nor a great fan of FDR. But
this powerful exhortation by the President of the United States to return religion to
the public square made a deep impression on him. He likely found it surprising
and politically incorrect’, but he also found it remarkable and in fact necessary,
calling it “a landmark in the history of Western thought.”

Three days after the State of the Union, for example, in the very prominent New
York Herald Tribune, (January 7, 1939), he said Roosevelt’s message “registers a
change of ideas which is absolutely fundamental, a change not only in Mr.
Roosevelt’s own mind, but, and this is much more significant, in the minds of the
great masses of men here and abroad, of whom he is, by virtue of his office, the
most representative spokesman.”

Roosevelt’s speech, he said, contained “the outline of that reconstruction of their

moral philosophies which the democracies must undertake if they are to survive.”.
“The message, “he said, marks the reconciliation which is now in progress, after
more than a century of destructive conflict, between patriotic freedom, democracy
and religion.”

“That the President, who is the most influential democratic leader in the world,
should recognize religion as the source of democracy and of international good
faith is not a mere matter of words, it is a fundamental re-orientation in the liberal
democratic outlook upon life. “

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He concludes that Roosevelt’s message is “a philosophy which formulates in
outline the positive answer of the West to the forces which threaten to destroy the
Western world. …it contains the outline of that reconstruction in their moral
philosophy which the democracies must undertake if they are to survive”

These were dramatic, even ironic words—and a significant intellectual conversion

by Walter Lippmann. Here he was, a great progressive, supporting a return to our
historical, religious roots, no less! Early on, Lippmann was something of an
idealist; his book Public Opinion, in 1921, begins with the cave allegory of Plato’s
Republic, and he remained an idealist all his life. He was to become something of
a poster boy for contemporary, progressive, anti-theistic ‘liberalism.’
10 years earlier, in A Preface to Morals, for example, Lippmann was arguing that
traditional religious faith has lost its power to function as a source of moral
authority in modern society; it was now passe!
Lippmann, along with many progressivist, skeptical friends, believed governments
had become increasingly democratized. People had grown up and ‘found their
voice,’—or had simply lost interest in religion. History moves on and tradition in
general wasn’t suited to the dictates of modernity. Ancient religious doctrine is
indeed ancient, and no longer relevant to the conditions of modern life. Americans
had not so much left the faith, they had forgotten it and moved on!
They had progressed!
In fairness Lippman was well aware of religion and wasn’t afraid to discuss it in
Preface to Morals. He does so, not without theological missteps, relative to
Christianity and especially Catholicism, which he refers to as “high religion” and
which “evolved” the modern doctrine of infallibility!!!!
He must have forgotten the great St. Augustine, writing back n the 400s: “Rome
has spoken, the case is closed.”!
And it was now Lippmann’s moral philosophy, he seemed to realize, that needed
reconstruction. Needless to say, Lippmann’s progressivist position had plenty of
support…as we’ll see in reviewing the Humanist Manifesto and the thought of
John Dewey. And indeed Lippmann’s secular moral philosophy --with great
cultural impact-- retained support for many years --- and in fact still has many
adherents!

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I’d point to rulings of our Supreme Court, for example, which have seriously
misinterpreted the notion of the ‘separation’ of church and state and seriously
distorted the intent of our founders vis a vis religion.
These ruling have in fact effect encouraged, not the ‘practice of religion,’-- which
our founders, and our Presidents saw as vital to the political philosophy of
America-- but freedom from religion, now so tolerated and so abetting of a
fractured, confused, culture… In so doing, they have also gravely confused a
vulnerable, modern public mind.
I’m thinking here especially of Supreme Court Justice Hugo Black, writing in
Everson vs. Board of Education in 1947. We have Justice Black to thank for that
historic misuse of Jefferson’s ‘wall of separation metaphor. (Jefferson had used the
phrase privately in 1802 in a letter to Danbury Baptists over their concern about
imposition of a ‘state’ church).
Black raised Jefferson’s ‘private comment’ --it’s not in the Constitution nor any of
the extensive deliberations leading up to it-- to the level of a Supreme Court
decision. And with his provocative misinterpretation of ‘separation,’ -- about
which the First Amendment says nothing-- we are left with massive
misunderstanding as to the fundamental role of religion in a democracy.
Fortunately, we have Jacques Maritain to thank for the wonderful clarification on
this point, namely that we need to ‘distinguish’ state from religion, in order to
properly unite them—not separate them.
Another Supreme Court example: There’s the infamous ‘fortune cookie’ statement
–that’s Justice Scalia’s term, not mine!—of Justice Anthony Kennedy in Casey vs.
Planned Parenthood, 1992, which upheld Roe v. Wade and abortion rights. It is a
brief, seminal statement of modern relativism, and bears quoting. Kennedy wrote:
"At the heart of liberty…”is the right to define one's own concept of existence, of
meaning, of the universe, and of the mystery of human life." Sounds like Cogito,
ergo Sum to me. Little wonder Kennedy is sometimes referred to as ‘the decider.’
As expected, Justice Scalia’s reaction was sharp. “The Supreme Court of the
United States has descended from the disciplined legal reasoning of John Marshall
and Joseph Story to the mystical aphorisms of …the fortune cookie.”
Self-defining reminds me of the guy swimming… for the girl’s team at U.Penn!!

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Humanism
I believe its important to reference Lippmann here because he and his colleagues
were major protagonists of America’s mid-century cultural condition They were,
and with great influence, moral positivists—indeed relativists-- in the middle of the
American experience of the 20th century.! They believed –indeed ‘baptized’—the
term humanism—‘a fair term’ to be sure, but in their eyes quite anti -theistic and
anthropocentric. While ignoring the divine, humanism for them had a ‘religious’
quality, and was ‘the philosophy’ best suited to replace the role of religion in
modern life.
“To replace the conception of man as the subject of a heavenly king” … Lippmann
wrote, “humanism takes as its dominant pattern the progress of the individual from
helpless infancy to self-governing maturity.” Unfortunately he took Roosevelt’s
concept of devout, pious, moral religion, and simplified it into passe medieval
dogmas, with the intent to move on to a new, pragmatic, democratic
philosophy….”

Enter the first Humanist Manifesto, of 1933, and John Dewey and friends!
The list of signatories to the famous Humanist Manifesto was illustrative of its
ideosophy, to borrow a wonderful Maritain term! It included John Dewey, the
leading philosopher of education at the time, Alan F. Guttmacher of the American
Eugenics Society, Andrei Sakharov, renowned feminist Betty Friedan, Isaac
Asimov, John Ciardi, and B.F. Skinner, the preeminent American behaviorist
philosopher of the first half of the century and a President of Planned
Parenthood!)

John Dewey
A brief look at the views of the leading American philosopher/ideosopher of the
day, John Dewey-- for some an “intellectual giant;”-- seem in order. His ideology
is deeply ingrained in the Manifesto, and in the American public school system. Its
impossible to understand the tensions and challenges of contemporary culture, and
especially its profound secularizing effects on public education over the past 60
years, without engaging his thought. . (Ideosophers, per Maritain, are ‘lovers of
ideas,’ not necessarily, or even likely, lovers of wisdom)

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With little question, John Dewey was the most influential of all modern American
educationalists. His tendencies toward socialization and secularism are apparent in
all of his works and left notable marks on American culture. Christopher Dawson
reminds us, referring to Dewey, “in his views our purpose for education is not the
communication of knowledge but the sharing of social experience, so that the child
shall become integrated into the democratic community.”
Community first, then child. Dare we say, shades of Rousseau?...Little wonder
Dawson blames Dewey for the establishment of the mass mind, or as he puts it,
‘the pooled intelligence of the democratic mind.’”
Dewey, an agnostic, believed morals are essentially social and pragmatic, and that
any attempt to subordinate education to transcendent values or dogmas would be
deleterious to American education, and ought to be resisted. (Christopher Dawson,
The Crisis of Western Civilization, Washington, “D.C., 1961, pp 62-63,)
This, in the terminology of Maritain, is an exaggerated form of soul-less
individualism –‘we are all just one of many’—versus the true personalism that
recognizes the uniqueness, spirituality and transcendence of each and every soul.
Given the prominence of this belief, and given Dewey’s prolific writing and public
stature, and influence on public education, it’s not surprising that relativism and
subjectivism have become such ‘defining ideas’ of modern culture.
Dewey’s secular views of how religion and democracy relate are likely emblematic
of the views of an American majority at his time, and likely our own. They help us
better understand the prevalent culture of the times, and those deceptive
ideological forces from within that Roosevelt was warning of. And they definitely
show how far we have wandered from our authentic evangelical and indeed,
philosophical roots.
Needless to say, Dewey’s views were quite opposite those that our President was
sharing with the American public in 1939. Dewey was also no fan of FDR, saying
it would be ‘suicidal’ for progressives to back Roosevelt in the 1932 election. A
year later, in 1933, he and 34 of his intellectual cohorts , with blessings from
Lippmann, signed the infamous Humanist Manifesto. In so doing they prominently
and totally disavowed the need for religion in American life, which, according to
their wisdom had become passe and obsolete.
By the time of Roosevelt’s speech in 1939, Dewey was writing Freedom and
Culture, which presents itself as a significant rewrite of our foundational

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principles. In the book, for example, he asserts that the norms, principles and
values by which our lives and institutions should be governed, come neither from
nature or from God!
In fact Dewey boldly asserts that solving the world’s great problems now had
more to do with abandoning God than of embracing him. His writings make it
clear he believed science has largely discredited Biblical Christianity. “Geological
discoveries,” for example, “have displaced Creation myths which once bulked
large.”2 Biology, says Dewey, has “revolutionized conceptions of soul and mind
which once occupied a central place in religious beliefs and ideas, and biology has
made a “profound impression” on the ideas of sin, redemption, and immortality.
John Dewey can fairly be called a modern figure of the late Enlightenment. He
shared its hopes for the universal progress of a prosperity driven by the expansion
of science and technology. He believed reason to be the primary source of
authority and legitimacy. And he readily accepted the marginalization of religion,
and specifically Christianity.
For Dewey, studies such as anthropology, history, and literary criticism not only
didn’t reinforce Christianity, they furnished a “radically different version of the
historic events and personages upon which Christian religions have built.” 4 As for
psychology, it was already opening up “natural explanations of phenomena so
extraordinary that once their supernatural origin was, so to say, the natural
explanation.”5??

So much for Harvard’s original motto

adopted in 1692

:
:
Veritas Christo et Ecclesiae (Truth for Christ and the Church)
Original Seal of Harvard University, adopted in 1692
:

Indeed, not all of the insidious ideologies were abroad…some were quite close to
home, indeed, even at Columbia University!

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Dewey’s influential pragmatism/progressivism had long dispensed with
foundational views such as those presented by Roosevelt, not to say those of
Washington, Adams, de Tocqueville, Lincoln, and a host of Founding Fathers! )
One can’t help be reminded of Kim R. Holmes, in The Closing of the Liberal
Mind, (Heritage Foundation, 2016, p8.), noting that the dominant ideology of
progressive liberal circles today isn’t liberalism, it’s illiberalism. It isn’t toleration,
it is intoleration. And it certainly isn’t ‘caritas in veritate’, but its opposite.)

Jacques Maritain
Meanwhile, what was our Thomist friend Jacques Maritain up to? A month after
Roosevelt’s famous speech, on the brink of the war in Europe, Maritain delivered a
compelling lecture in Paris which sheds light and perspective on those dramatic
times (Feb. 8, 1939) It was aptly entitled The Twilight of Civilization.
The deeply concerned Maritain wrote: “for the moment, civilization is plunged not
only in twilight, but in a devasting hurricane. All the dangers that I pictured four
years ago,” he said, “have suddenly taken on a single monstrous form, the form of
war led by the Nazi Revolution, by means of which the pagan Empire is now
crushing Europe.” (Twilight, p Ix ).
The immediate threat, he pointed out, was totalitarianism: Fascist, Communist,
National-Socialist…atheism, under any guise, a false God invoked against the God
of spirit, of intelligence, and of love. The threat was a disastrous, global false
humanism that would require an heroic renewal and rectification, which he
identifies as a genuine, theocentric, Christocentric humanism. Source…
Twilight??)
Maritain would of course return to this theme many times. Namely the disastrous
failure of an individualistic, a-religious, anthropocentric humanism that was
startling even the American President and its leading journalist, and reminding a
periled world of the need for a vigorous, heroic return to a personalist,
theocentric, ‘integral’ humanism, a “humanism of the Incarnation.
“Concerning the social significance of such a humanism,” he wrote, “in my
opinion it must assume the task of a profound transformation of the temporal
order,” leading to a ‘personalist’ civilization and economy, through which would

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pass a temporal refraction of the evangelical truths.” “This task is intimately linked
up with a profound renewal of religious conscience.” (ibid, p. 31)
Specifically, Maritain wanted to clarify the seemingly benign term ‘humanism’ lest
one be to tempted to embrace lovely theories or ideosophies of it that are gravely
mistaken, and were proving to be unlivable. He addressed the great defect of
classical humanism since the Renaissance, namely the error of affirming human
nature as “closed in upon itself or absolutely self-sufficient (Twilight, p. 4)
Thus, he says, “we witness the gradual formation of the man of the bourgeois
pharisaism in which the nineteenth century long believed, and where “the progress
of man’s enlightenment was to produce a full happiness of leisure and rest, an
earthly beatitude.: (ibid, p. 6) .
Instead, as Maritain wrote, “After having put aside God in order to become self-
sufficient, man loses his soul; he seeks himself in vain, turning the universe upside
down…He find only masks, and, behind those masks, death.” (ibid, p. 6). Quite an
indictment of Illiberalism!!
(This he called ‘anthropocentric humanism,’ a humanism of pure reason, isolated
from the Gospel and from supra-rational truths, and indeed now a substitute for the
Gospel, resulting, in the concrete realm of human life, that “reason has become
divorced from the supra-rational.” (ibid, p. 5).
Sounds a lot like the humanism of the Humanist Manifesto of 1933, of which he
was well aware!
Maritain continues in Twilight: (p. 31) “Christian morality, no longer vitalizing the
social life of nations, has become …a universe of words and formulas (dare we
say, ideologies!), not intrinsically, nor in the Church, but rather in the world, in the
general behavior of culture.
“And there, in this practical behavior of civilization, such a universe of words and
formulas has found itself effectively vassalized by temporal activities which are
really quite detached from Christ. This kind of disorder cannot be cured except by
the renewal of the most profound energies of the religious conscience up into
temporal existence.” (ibid, p. 32) (emphasis added.)
Several years later, as America entered the war, Maritain wrote a remarkable piece
for the publishing magnate Henry Luce’s Fortune magazine, entitled “Christian
Humanism.” Kind of ironic….a French Thomist philosopher convert writing in a
preeminent, American capitalistic magazine, no less.

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I’d like to share a few ideas from this notable piece, which among other things
shows Luce’s serious commitment to Christianity and to the importance of public
opinion, and its enormous role in restoring authentic values to the public square!
Subtitled “Life with Meaning and Direction,” it appears in a Fortune issue
overwhelmingly devoted to the massive, world-wide war effort.. (One article, for
example, writes glowingly of the superb training Canadian fighter \pilots were
now receiving!)
Maritain, shown in a large picture in his office, begins with an historical reflection
on the prevailing, disastrous, man-centered humanism we’ve been discussing,
noting that it has its roots in philosophers such as Descartes and Rousseau, and
which precipitated the writing of Twilight of Civilization in 1939 and before that,
The Three Reformers)
This bogus humanism sees man as the ‘man of true nature, trusting in peace and
fraternity, perfecting himself, guiding himself, saving himself, without Christ. This
‘modern man’ was to be set free, … by the essential goodness of human nature,
buttressed by means of Education without restraint”, and without God. (Sounds
like Humanist Manifesto, again, and John Dewey, to me.)
Maritain continues: “and all of which leads to “The City of man of coming
centuries…will be “in that form of state in which everybody obeying all, will
nevertheless obey only himself.” Sounds like Justice Kennedy!
We can clearly see where this is going: another of the incisive critiques of
individualism, relativism and anthropocentric humanism that Maritain was to
return to with great vigor and clarity over the years.

Henry Luce:
It’s worth a brief reflection on the publisher of Fortune, where Maritain’s
remarkable article appears. This powerful critique of anti-theistic humanism, was
appearing in likely the most capitalistic magazine in the world, owned by one of its
strongest protagonists and wealthiest men, Henry Luce. Luce, the son of a
Protestant missionary to China, was already famous for founding the hugely
successful Time and Life magazines, and later married prominent Catholic Clare
Booth Luce, former Ambassador to Italy.
What Luce, the consummate businessman, and Maritain, the deeply religious
Thomist shared, wasn’t necessarily love for philosophy, I suspect, but love for
Christianity, and for America. Maritain had for many years been interested in the

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public domain, and dearly loved America; and no one occupied a more prominent
position in that domain than Henry Luce. Luce has been called “the most
influential private citizen of the America of his day.”
I believed they also had a profound respect for public opinion, correctly formed,
according to the truth, caritas in veritate, which makes them both such notable
figures of their times.
We need more of such figures, in academia, in business, and in journalism,
methinks!!

Maritain and Martin Luther King, Jr

I’ll conclude my remarks with a brief reflection on another notable figure of our
times, Martin Luther King, Jr.—whom I must confess I never hear referenced at all
in this BLM chatter!
I want to share a few thoughts from Dr. King Jr. regarding education; they are in
such healthy contrast to those of John Dewey, and I believe point the clear path to
‘renewing America.”
Its fair to say, King was on to the “Dewey:” game quite early on. Writing in the
Morehouse College campus newspaper in 1947—at the ripe old age of 18!!, King
argued that education has both a utilitarian and a moral function.
He writes: “The function of education …is to teach one to think intensively and to
think critically. But education which stops with efficiency may prove the greatest
menace to society. The most dangerous criminal may be the man gifted with
reason, but with no morals. “
King continues: “We must remember that intelligence is not enough. Intelligence
plus character—that is the goal of true education. The complete education gives
one not only power of concentration, but worthy objectives upon which to
concentrate. The broad education will, therefore, transmit to one not only the
accumulated knowledge of the race, but also the accumulated experience of social
living.”
“If we are not careful, our colleges will produce a group of close-minded,
unscientific, illogical propagandists, consumed with immoral acts. Be careful,
“brethren.” Be careful, teachers!”
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It turns out that King was familiar with the writings of two great Christian teachers,
Jacques Maritain and Thomas Aquinas, and in fact did a paper on Maritain while at
Crozer Theological Seminary in February, 1951, about the time Maritain wrote
Philosophy of Nature, 1951 and Range of Reason, 1952 ______. Congratulations
to Crozer!!!
The paper was done for a Christian Social Philosophy course , for which King
received an A. In it King identified Maritain as “one of the foremost Catholic
philosophers” of the day.
He writes: “From his chair in the Institut Catholique in Paris, Maritain views the
whole modern age with a critical eye, diagnoses its diseases, and prescribes
“Integral Thomism” as the infallible attitude for all its ills. He diagnoses the ills of
modern culture in intellectual terms”. ‘The disease of modernity began, according
to Maritain, when modern philosophy abandoned its dependence on theology.’
“This separation,” he goes on, “could not be checked short of the very verge of
destruction.” Maritain, he says, sees the great symptoms of this dissociation in:
(1) Agnosticism or the complete separation of the knowing mind from the
object of knowledge,
(2) Naturalism, or the complete separation of the world from its Divine
Source, and
(3) Individualism, or the complete separation of the rebellious human will
from any object of trust or obedience.”
King says that democracy, while not perfect, is the most ideal political system
created by the mind of man. It’s virtue, he says, lies in the fact that it grew out of
Christian inspiration. He quotes Maritain’s Christianity and Democracy “The
democratic impulse burst forth in history as a temporal manifestation of the
inspiration of the Gospel.”
King concludes: ‘Democracy has it vices, found in the fact that it has failed to
remain true to its principles, “and that the survival of the democracies will rest on
the condition that the Christian inspiration and the democratic inspiration
recognize each other and become reconciled.”

Noonan

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Peggy Noonan, the well known Wall Street Journal columnist, provides a moving
footnote to King’s thoughts in a recent (May 28, 2022) editorial on the horrific
Uvalde shootings in Texas.
She writes: “I keep seeing the pictures…the women sitting on the curb near the
school and sobbing, a minister in a gray suit hunched down with them,
ministering.
“And the local Catholic church the night of the shooting—people came that night,
especially women, because they know they are loved, regarded, part of something,
not alone.
“I don’t mean here “the consolations of faith.” I mean the truth is its own support.
Consolation is not why you believe but is a fact of belief and helps all who have it
live in the world and withstand it.
“I am so glad for the people of Uvalde this weekend for only one thing, that so
many have that.”
Let us conclude with some incisive thoughts of Meuser Maritain on the power of
faith. They are properly relevant to our theme, Restoring the Soul of America.
“Faith creates unity among men,” he writes in The Range of Reason, but he warns
that this unity is in itself a divine, not a human reality, a unity as transcendental as
faith.” (p. 211)
He continues: “It is clear that this additional unity produced by faith, this spread-
out unity, depends on how deeply the Gospel has penetrated in us….
“When we meditate upon the theological truths, it is we who do the meditating
upon theological truths, but when we meditate upon the Gospels, it is the Gospels
which are speaking to us; we need only give heed.
“And no doubt, when we are thus walking with Matthew, Mark, Luke and John,
the One Whom the Gospel tells of draws near us, to make our minds a little more
alert. …Abide with us, Oh Lord, for the evening comes.
“It seems to me if a new Christendom is to come into being, it will an age when
men will need and meditate upon the Gospel more than ever before.. “ Jacques
Maritain,p. 211, pp 214-217 “The Range of Reason, Charles Scribner’s Sons, New
York, 1958.
As for America, a country he deeply loved, he wrote “What the world expects
from America, is that it keep alive, in human history, a fraternal recognition of the
dignity of man, --in other words, the terrestrial hope of men in the Gospel”
(Reflection on America, XX).
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 For Maritain, and hopefully for all of us, the true end of all human activity, and of
building an authentic civilization, is reflected in St. Paul’s abiding counsels to the
Galatians, and to us: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience,
kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control; against these there is no
law.” (Galatians 5, 22-23.

*******

Let’s pray for more faith in-- and forfor-- America!!!

Thomas Mammoser

Possible addendum
Text of FDR Radio Address - Prayer on D-Day, June 6,
1944:
"My fellow Americans: Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I
knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our allies were crossing
the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus
far.

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And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our Nation, this day have set upon a mighty
endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization,
and to set free a suffering humanity.

Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts,
steadfastness in their faith.

They will need Thy blessings. Their road will be long and hard. For the enemy is
strong. He may hurl back our forces. Success may not come with rushing speed,
but we shall return again and again; and we know that by Thy grace, and by the
righteousness of our cause, our sons will triumph.

They will be sore tried, by night and by day, without rest-until the victory is won.
The darkness will be rent by noise and flame. Men's souls will be shaken with the
violences of war.

For these men are lately drawn from the ways of peace. They fight not for the lust
of conquest. They fight to end conquest. They fight to liberate. They fight to let
justice arise, and tolerance and good will among all Thy people. They yearn but for
the end of battle, for their return to the haven of home.

Some will never return. Embrace these, Father, and receive them, Thy heroic
servants, into Thy kingdom.

And for us at home -- fathers, mothers, children, wives, sisters, and brothers of
brave men overseas -- whose thoughts and prayers are ever with them--help us,

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Almighty God, to rededicate ourselves in renewed faith in Thee in this hour of
great sacrifice.

Many people have urged that I call the Nation into a single day of special prayer.
But because the road is long and the desire is great, I ask that our people devote
themselves in a continuance of prayer. As we rise to each new day, and again when
each day is spent, let words of prayer be on our lips, invoking Thy help to our
efforts.

Give us strength, too -- strength in our daily tasks, to redouble the contributions we
make in the physical and the material support of our armed forces.

And let our hearts be stout, to wait out the long travail, to bear sorrows that may
come, to impart our courage unto our sons wheresoever they may be.

And, O Lord, give us Faith. Give us Faith in Thee; Faith in our sons; Faith in each
other; Faith in our united crusade. Let not the keenness of our spirit ever be dulled.
Let not the impacts of temporary events, of temporal matters of but fleeting
moment let not these deter us in our unconquerable purpose.

With Thy blessing, we shall prevail over the unholy forces of our enemy. Help us
to conquer the apostles of greed and racial arrogancies. Lead us to the saving of
our country, and with our sister Nations into a world unity that will spell a sure
peace a peace invulnerable to the schemings of unworthy men. And a peace that
will let all of men live in freedom, reaping the just rewards of their honest toil.

Thy will be done, Almighty God.

Amen."

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