“Like Yeast in Dough”: The Church–World Relationship in the Evolving Thought of Marie-Dominique Chenu

During his Parisian “exile” from 1942 to 1954, Marie-Dominique Chenu’s experiences with worker communities transformed his vision of the church–world relationship. This article highlights the overlooked social dimension of Chenu’s pre-conciliar thought, tracing his shift from a “New Christendom” ecclesiology towards a church in a state of mission and his growing call for ecclesial structural change in light of changing social structures. These life experiences would lead him to advocate for a church that reads and responds to the “signs of times.”

A Salvific Social Order

This chapter explores how social Christianity took hold in a progressive-era response to the perils of modern life. Catholic Action and Jacques Maritain’s new Christendom in Latin America proposed Christianizing society through institutional reform. By the mid-twentieth century, a languishing new Christendom and the weakening of Catholic cultural hegemony faced an inability to deal with the revolutionary currents running through the continent. Catholic and Protestant thinkers were again coping with explaining how faith-based values made any difference in the workings of society. Richard Shaull introduced the ideas of Dietrich Bonhoeffer to Latin American Protestants in responding to unrest, revolutionary movements, and the pressure for inclusion by marginalized groups. New post-war political theologies coming from Europe offered key ideas in dealing with a suffering world. Drawing on these earlier theologies, both Catholic and Protestant liberationists proposed the ultimate secularization of religion.

Modern Catholic Social Thought

Jacques Maritain and Marie-Dominique Chenu, O.P., were two Catholic thinkers who had a significant impact on Catholic social teaching. Jacques Maritain proposed the idea of a “New Christendom” in which the “temporal order” and the “spiritual order” were distinguished and the dignity and rights of each person respected. Maritain envisioned an economy in which workers cooperatively owned their own businesses and in which associations of workers collaborated to promote the common good. Marie-Dominique Chenu developed a “theology of work” exploring the human vocation to gain mastery over the earth. He believed modern society was witnessing the “socialization” of work, an increasing sense of collective effort and ownership over the production process. He believed socialization was a manifestation of the Incarnation, the presence of grace in history.

Jacques Maritain and the Jewish Question: Theology, Identity and Politics

This article calls for a reconsideration of Jacques Maritain’s philosophical and theological reflections on the ‘Jewish Question’, on anti-Semitism and, more broadly, on Jewish-Christian relations in modern history. The article follows two broad lines of enquiry. First, it sketches a general outline of Maritain’s arguments against Catholic-Christian anti-Semitism, and his proposals for workable solutions to what he identified as the ‘Jewish problem’ in European life. Second, the article considers the practical value of Maritain’s visions of a ‘new Christendom’, that is, of a new political regime based on Gospel-values and thus recognizing the complete civic equality, political and religious freedoms of European Jews. The article concludes that all of Maritain’s thought on the Jewish question must be read through the lens of his Christian eschatological view.

FRANCISCO XAVIER 500 ANOS DE DESAFIO COM O DIÁLOGO INTER-RELIGIOSO

O artigo aponta para a contradição da missão quinhentista entre a universalidade geográfica e a exclusividade salvífica. O ator social que se move nessa contradição, Francisco Xavier, cujo quinto centenário de nascimento recentemente celebramos, em 1927, junto com Teresinha de Jesus, foi declarado padroeiro das missões católicas. O despojamento de Francisco era radical e prudente. Nunca procurou “curtir” a sua obra, descansar sobre glórias alcançadas. Seu coração estava onde seus pés andavam e seus braços se multiplicavam. A constelação política da Ásia não permitiu a Francisco lançar as raízes de uma nova cristandade. Na Índia e no Japão, onde desenvolveu sua missão ad gentes, o catolicismo tem até hoje um papel, numericamente, marginal. A importância do seu labor missionário não está na quantidade dos batizados, mas na qualidade do seu testemunho. E este testemunho está ainda presente nos kirishitan (cristãos) que, para a surpresa dos missionários do século XIX, por mais de duzentos anos viveram a sua fé no Japão, no martírio e na clandestinidade.ABSTRACT: The article points out the contradiction of 1500s’ mission between the geographic universality and salvific exclusivism. The person who represents this contradiction, Francis Xavier, whom we recently celebrated the birth’s fifth century, Filipiin 1927, with Little Therese of Jesus, was declared the patron saint of Catholic missions. Saint Francis‘ unambitiousness was radical and prudent. He never tried to hold on his work, to rest upon the glories conquered. His heart was where his feet had walked and his arms multiplied. Asia’s political constellation did not allow Saint Francis to establish roots of a new Christendom. In India and Japan, where he developed his mission ad gentes, Catholicism has a numerically insignificant role until our days. The importance of his missionary work does not remain in the number of the baptized, but in the quality of his testimony. And this testimony is still present among kirishitan (Christians) who for more than two hundred years lived their faith in Japan under martyrdom and on clandestinity causing surprise to the nineteen century’s missionaries.