Abstract

In this engaging APSA address, Jacques Maritain outlines the essential relationship between Christianity and democracy. In Maritain's view, it is the Gospel or the Christian leaven which has awakened the secular, temporal consciousness to supreme moral principles and the real content of democracy understood as the earthly pursuit of Gospel truths conceming the transcendent origins and destiny of man and society. Christianity teaches the inalienable dignity of every human being fashioned in the image of God, the inviolability of conscience, the unity of the human race, the natural equality of all men, children of the same God and redeemed by the same Christ, the dignity of labor and the dignity of the poor, the primacy of inner values and good will over external values, universal brotherhood, love, and justbe. Maritain distinguishes between the procedural aspects and the substantive content of democracy, but anchors the Gospel vision in the free exercise of rational and moral faculties as key to democratic self-government. He cautions that without a superior moral law by virtue of which men are bound in conscience toward what is just and good, the rule of the majority runs the risk of being raised to the supreme rule of good and evil, and democracy is liable to tum to totalitahanism, that is, to self-destruction. Maritain concludes that what has been gained for the secular consciousness, if it does not veer to barbarism, is the sense of freedom consonant with the vocation of our nature.