Correspondence
Correspondence The quality of mercy Lexington, Ky. To the Editors: Amen to Garvey on the "Temptation to Be Right" [February 22]. This is a fascinating phenomenon to a psychologist who works...
...as having powerful and profound implications for systemic changes in the U.S...
...economy, notably in the direction of a guarantee of full employment...
...At the same time a sad condition was created for the Palestinian people who were in large part excluded from their homeland...
...The other point I would like to raise stems from Fisher's statement that the ' 'religious and communal rights of Jews, Christians, and Muslims" in Jerusalem are already' 'acknowledged and affirmed by the wise administration of Mayor Teddy Kollek...
...Our system of "shoulds" naturally applies to everyone else too...
...I suggest that Mr...
...Just the same, Doering does make two important points...
...When the master is naked, it is unkind to expose him...
...Still, one can dream of a society in which there is neither money nor tokens, only eye-to-eye and heart-to-heart request and response, and in which the ultimate social principle is "Ask and you shall receive...
...If it is true that Kollek's efforts are laudable, it does not mean however that the Holy See accepts that one party (in this case the Israeli government) determines how the rights of Christians and Muslims living in Jerusalem should be determined...
...Then he recounts his surprise at the "decisive fact" of an immense "social transformation" which, while still in its beginnings had "already" occurred...
...I'm already overexposed in your letter columns...
...But once again, he lifts a quotation out of context: "but from the point of view of social life, it is surely much worse, because of the state totalitarianism it implies and the losses of freedom it results in for the human person . . . Communism and Capitalism, neither is good, and to resign oneself to the lesser of two evils is unworthy of the human spirit...
...Most of that testimony appeared in the December, 1984 issue of the New Oxford Review, if anyone is interested...
...Reflections on America is a seminal, deliberately stimulating book, inviting American theologians and philosophers to fashion a moral theory of political economy worthy of our people—a "light," Maritain says, "in the darkness...
...or by implying that his last years were spent in senility and dotage...
...What is curious about this psychologically is that the more deeply we doubt our personal worth, the more intensely we are likely to hold righteous views toward others...
...Novak's interpretation of the quotations lifted out of Reflections on America were correct (a condition contrary to fact, as far as I am concerned), he would still have to account for a radical change in Maritain that cannot be explained away by claiming that Maritain's "aims in his later years were predominantly spiritual" (when were they not so...
...When we apply this awareness to the structures of religion, some challenging questions can be asked: How much is the present structure of the Roman Catholic church an expression of a compulsive need to be right...
...I wrote it, not to expose my "naked" master, but to expose those who pick and choose among his works to find in one or two of his books selected and truncated quotations which they then lift out of context and misuse to give pseudo-respectability to ideologies Maritain held in abhorrence...
...Pesch and Nell-Breuning might have convinced Maritain easily on this point, had not the latter's aims in his later years been predominantly spiritual...
...Neither France nor China believes that today, nor can anyone who witnesses the chronic food shortage and untold hours standing in line in formerly prosperous agricultural lands such as Poland and Ukrainia...
...Even if Mr...
...Our beliefs provide us with a platform on which to "stand...
...But then this is precisely the kind of selective self-serving use of quotations for which I reproach Mr...
...JOHN C. CORT 19 April 1985: 255...
...To portray Jacques Maritain as "naively Utopian," offering "nothing more than the pipe dreams of an old man," making a "tenuous, or even frivolous" distinction between tokens and money, and recounting that he held a "Marxist" proposition that human labor is the sole source of value, the very proposition that Pius XI and von Nell-Breuning (in his commentary) decisively rejected—this is to seek in Maritain a univocity that is not present in his work...
...The difference between our own righteousness and the worst fanaticism for God's sake is a matter only of degree, personality style, and insecurity...
...I won't say more...
...The proof is the ongoing refusal by Rome to establish official diplomatic relations with the Jewish state...
...This is a fascinating phenomenon to a psychologist who works constantly with couples and individuals convinced that their world view is the only right one...
...Traditionally, the Holy See does not initiate diplomatic ties with any country...
...In fact, for the first time a sovereign pontiff had publicly linked Israeli responsibility, in part, to the plight of the Palestinians...
...PASCHAL BAUTE Measure for measure Los Angeles, Calif...
...I was not and do not...
...This proposition, in its entirety., I certainly do defend, as do many others...
...Novak himself follow Maritain's important principle dis-tinguer pour unir, which he claims to admire, and make the necessary and evident distinctions between what I have said, what Maritain has said, and what others may say...
...Novak should be embarrassed either, even by his "Marxist" proposition that human labor is the sole source of value...
...Indifferent to the philosophy of economics as his work shows him to have been, Maritain continued until his death to believe in the labor theory of value and in the principle of the infecundity of money...
...To the Editors: I am writing in reply to Eugene Fisher's article "The Pope and Israel" [January 11...
...I venture (and pray) that the forthcoming synod will be the turning point at which the church applies to itself the proclaimed social principle of subsidiarity...
...If I am this way . . . (which is the right way) why shouldn't others behave the same...
...I am currently working on a book entitled: The Papacy and the Middle East: The Role of the Holy See in the Arab-Israeli Conflict, to be published by the University of Notre Dame Press...
...I hope Mr...
...It is ineffably sad to see Maritain writing in 1973: "From the point of view of the economic system, the Communist solution seems better than the capitalist solution...
...Fisher should have underlined the other link in Pope John Paul H's Otranto speech (October 3,1980...
...To the Editors: I had not intended to comment on Michael Novak's remark [February 8] that the opening pages of the Lay Commission's Letter on the U.S...
...Novak asks in disbelief if I defend Maritain's proposition that "from the point of view of the economic system, the Communist solution seems better Commonweal: 254 than the Capitalist solution.'' I knew this line would give Mr...
...They are the very first steps in a process which will require at least a century for its full development...
...I fail to see why I or Mr...
...I stand by what I have written, I stand by Maritain, and I stand by those words of Aristotle that Maritain loved so much: Amicus Plato, magis arnica veritas...
...BERNARD DOERING Too much ado Nahant, Mass...
...I, for one, have never argued that Maritain's thinking on economics was complete or even profound...
...One must then begin to imagine the atrocious abuses that "all those weaknesses and miseries" would certainly give rise to, and to contemplate ' 'those vices and that festering of moral evil" in those eyes and hearts...
...Ambassador to the Holy See, William Wilson, wrote:' 'There is no evidence whatsoever in the public domain at this moment which would indicate that the Vatican has reached such a decision nor that it is in the process of coming to such a decision...
...How he can deduce from these words that the "radical revolution" Maritain called for has "already" occurred is beyond me...
...Novak states, portray Maritain as "naively Utopian" nor his distinction between tokens and money as "tenuous, nor even frivolous...
...I am no more a trained economist than is Mr...
...In a letter to this writer, the U.S...
...To the Editors: Bernard Doering, through an excess of love, is most unkind to Jacques Maritain ["Misappropriating Maritain," February 22...
...In his great humility Maritain never took himself too seriously, and it was not I, but he himself who said that his last reflections on capitalism may well appear ' 'at first glance, to be nothing more than the pipe dreams of an old fool" (my emphasis...
...Just that I believe the bishops are much closer to drawing the correct inferences from Matthew 25 than the Lay Commission...
...Novak in his book The Spirit of Democratic Capitalism...
...The whole quote reads as follows: The Jewish people, after tragic experience linked to the extermination of so many sons and daughters, gave life to the State of Israel...
...When dreaming of a more perfect world, I would myself go further: ' 'A Society Without Tokens...
...Many to the far left and to the far right take nourishment from him, perhaps most of all those who try to respect analogy and the principle so important to Maritain: distinguerpour unir...
...GEORGE EMILE IRANI Love's labor's lost Washington, D.C...
...Such work, which he could have done so nobly, he, alas, left to the rest of us, including, I hope, Professor Doering, whose love for Maritain is obvious...
...However, I am glad that the commission has begun to think about it...
...Novak a case of the tic...
...MICHAEL NOVAK The author replies To the Editors: I am happy to learn that Michael Novak recognizes my love and admiration for Jacques Maritain, for it was precisely this love and admiration that led me to write the article ' 'Misappropriating Maritain...
...I did not, as Mr...
...What I did say was that Maritain and his distinction appear so to some, and they did appear so to some economists to whom I showed the text...
...Maritain is so much to be loved and honored, not because his views were logically and universally consistent throughout his life, but because he was a brave thinker, always experimenting and probing, fecund with analogies and creative intuitions...
...Mari-tain imagines human beings "who retain all those weaknesses and miseries, often so atrocious, and those vices and that festering of moral evil" to which human nature is permanently exposed, even under the conditions of his "radical revolution...
...Regarding capitalism, he began very negatively, testified to a "social transformation" he had come to discern in fact, not yet expressed in any theory he had encountered, and requested two things: both a clear account of what had already been permanently altered and a statement of the ideals and the spirit which would call forth yet further progress...
...I do not claim him as a patron saint of democratic capitalism...
...Where is the' 'forgotten sacrament" of Christian authority, Jesus' washing feet, seen in leadership style today...
...This is one of the fundamental reasons why the Holy See calls for an internationally guaranteed, special status for Jerusalem...
...I was invited to testify before the commission and could see no valid reason for refusing...
...A great deal of historical evidence tells against these beliefs of his, as well as massive volumes of philosophical and economic argument—not to mention Pius XI...
...Novak, but I can read English, as I presume he can...
...A simple illustration: if all value comes from labor, and if capital (in the form of money) is infecund, why is there unemployment...
...When Maritain first came to America he shared the prejudices against capitalism so common to European intellectuals, as he freely admitted in Reflections on America...
...But I was, and am, much moved by Maritain's plea that we Americans give up our ' 'too great modesty'' and fashion an intellectual theory that would articulate the (Continued on page 253) Commonweal: 226 (Continued from page 226) unique combination of politics, economics, and culture that has been fashioned here, under the impulse of the Gospels...
...Does Professor Doering actually defend this proposition of Mari tain's...
...A recent article in the New York Times (October 22, 1984) claimed that a group of Eastern European prelates ' 'urged the pope to recognize Israel...
...Unfortunately, as I feared, that statement has created the impression that I was a member of the commission and share its conclusions...
...Economy "spring from a suggestion of John Cort...
...The other issue relates to the de facto and de jure relations between the Holy See and Israel which are not as "clear" as Fisher wants us to believe...
...The first comment is that for the sake of objectivity, Dr...
...In Reflections on America he has read Maritain's words: "This new social and economic regime is still in a state of becoming...
...In Christianity and Democracy, Man and the State, and other books, he was quite original in his reflections on democracy...
...As for "A Society Without Money," Maritain was insufficiently Utopian...
...My "suggestion" seems to have been an emphasis on the 25th chapter of Matthew, verses 31-46 ("Feed the hungry, clothe the naked, etc...
...Novak will have the honesty to read, without his ideological blinders, the entire text of "A Society Without Money" which will appear in the April issue of the Review of Social Economy...
...Maritain was not embarrassed about what he wrote...
...Those business executives could really do something to make Matthew 25 come alive...
...Given electronic ac19 April 1985: 253 counting, it may well be that money and tokens can be rendered obsolete...
Vol. 112 • April 1985 • No. 8
