Coleman, Weber and Maritain Changing the World

7/28/2019 Coleman, Weber and Maritain Changing the World

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John A. Coleman draws together the Sociology of Religion of Max Weber with

the concept of a concrete historical ideal articulated by French philosopher Jacques

Maritain to develop a theoretical framework for understanding how a church can

mobilize its members for a world transformative mission. Drawing upon Max Webers

analysis of the necessary conditions for a Church with a worldly vocation (Gerth and

Mills, p.325), Coleman identifies three essential elements for the mobilization of a

religious movement that is capable of producing sustained social and cultural change.

First, there must be an underlying and irresolvable tension between a compelling

vision for an ideal social order based on mutuality, community and justice, and the need

to accommodate such as vision to the mundane world as it exists. Such a religious

movement must not take flight from the world, nor can it fully accommodate itself with

the world, it must be in the world but stand in prophetic opposition to it as it points to a

potential higher order of society (in traditional Christian thinking this is represented as

the kingdom of God).

Second, a church with a worldly vocation must effectively mobilize its

constituency into a high level of commitment to view the world and their work as an

arena of highest priority forreligious action. It is not sufficient for the religious hierarchy

to make moral pronouncements regarding the social order. The laity must be solidly

convinced to act decisively and consistently to promote religious values within the

secular spheres of society. The religious hierarchy must elicit this commitment from the

laity and empower them to carry out their worldly vocation without overriding or

limiting their autonomy. This leads to the third and final condition which is for the

effective and sustained mobilization of lay energies around practical action to influence


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the social order by infusing religious values into the "secular realm in the attempt to

move the existing social order towards the concrete historical ideal. (Coleman, p.39).

Jacques Maritain, (1882 1973) was a French philosopher who was raised as a

Protestant and converted to Catholicism in 1906. In his seminal work, Integral

Humanism, he proposed the concept of a concrete historical ideal as a realistic

alternative to the idea of utopia.1 A concrete historical ideal is a specific possibility in any

given historical epoch, with corresponding and historically determined limits and

potentialities. Coleman holds forth Alexis de Tocquevilles study of democracy in France

and America in the nineteenth century as an example of the delineation of a concrete

historical ideal (Coleman, p.39).

According to Maritain, Utopia is something that is constructed ens rationis (a

"being of reason"), ahistorically and conforming to an absolute social and political ideal.

As an alternative, Maritain proposes a concrete historical ideal which is not an ens

rationis, but which represents an ideal essence which is historically achievable, but with

obvious limitations and imperfections. Maritain intends that the concrete historical ideal

be an essence capable of existing in a given historical climate with a relative level of

social and political perfection that may serve as a frame-work and a rough draft which

may later be determinative of a future reality.2 This would create a possibility for a

Christian philosophy of culture to prepare future temporal realizations by exempting it

from the need to pass through a Utopian phase. (Maritain:128).

Coleman takes Maritains concept of the concrete historical ideal, and places it in

conjunction with Webers idea of a church with a worldly vocation in order to determine

1 Maritain, Jacques.Integral Humanism; Temporal and Spiritual Problems of a New Christendom.Translated by Joseph W. Evans. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.

2 Maritai.Integral Humanism , p.128.


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This is what Catholic Action attempted to do beginning in Europe in the 1930s

and culminating in Brazil, Cuba and other nations of Latin America in the late 1950s.

Catholic Action probably reached its greatest social influence in its specialized form in

France in the pre-war period of the mid 1930s, where its various youth and worker forms

competing successfully with communist and socialist youth organizations. Catholic

Action, specifically the student/university branch (Jeunness etudiant Catholique JEC)

also achieved a maximum social influence in French Canada in the 1950s, perhaps with

the unintended consequence of hastening the secularization of Quebec culture.4

In Latin America, Catholic Action reached its zenith of social influence in the

1950s in a number of Spanish speaking countries and Brazil. In this dissertation, Catholic

Action university movements in Brazil and Cuba have been examined and compared. A

comparative study of Brazil and Cuba offers fertile ground for scholarly inquiry because

of their rich similarities (the historical influence of Iberian Catholicism, colonialism, the

long enduring institutions of slavery, the existence of extreme poverty and pressing social

crises in the 1950s) and their contrasts (Spanish versus Portuguese, Island versus

continent, and most importantly for our purposes, general Catholic Action versus

specialized Catholic Action).

Both Cuba and Brazil experienced lively Catholic Action movements beginning in

the 1930s and accelerating in growth and social influence in the postwar 1950s. Both

Catholic student movements were patronized and promoted by their respective clerical

hierarchies. Both student movements were composed by highly committed youth and lay

people -- often called militants attempting to infuse Catholic social values (Webers

ethic of brotherly love) into their respective secular arenas, particularly at the university

4 The book by Gerard and the other books on JEC in Quebec.


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level. Both Catholic Action student movements pursued the vision of a concrete historical

ideal in the form of a more just and communitarian society based on Catholic concepts of

brotherly love and social justice. Both student movements existed in a time of excessive

social upheaval in their respective countries, culminating in one case in a social

revolution, and in the other, a conservative military revolution that turned into a

repressive, 24-year military dictatorship. In both student movements there was a great

deal of youthful idealism and there were casualties and martyrs on the behalf of their

desired concrete historical ideal of an ethic of brotherly love.

Coleman points out that in the quest to transform the world, any genuine organ of

the church will find itself also being transformed. The transformational work goes both

ways, in a manner reminiscent of Fernando Ortiz idea of transculturaltion. In order to

carry religious values into the secular and academic realms, Brazilian and Cubans were

required to engage those realms on their own terms and to come to some commitments in

political and social arenas. Some university Marxists came to faith through the inspiring

influence of young Catholic activists, but many Catholic students also became Marxists

along the way.

The Catholic student movements in Brazil and Cuba exercised significant social

influence in their respective countries, but both ultimately failed in their transformative

mission. In Cuba, the student movement became swept up in the whirlwind of the

Revolution was ultimately fragmented and polarized by Castros alignment with the

Soviet Union. A few Catholic students and priests supported Castro while the majority

moved into opposition and were for the most part exiled from Cuba.

In Brazil, the Catholic student leaders moved into national prominence and


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captured the ear of the Brazilian President Joo Goulart for a time. Nevertheless, the

Catholic student movement became naively over politicized and lost the dialectical

tension that Weber believed was essential to exercise a world-transformative mission. As

the JUC strategically aligned itself with several Marxist student groups, it became less

religious and more political. When the Brazilian military overthrew the regime of

President Goulart, they also moved against the Catholic student organizations. This

initiated a period of intense repression against the Catholic students. Although the

Bishops eventually defended their left-leaning priests and Catholic students, within two

years of the Miliary Coup, the Brazilian bishops decided to effectively bring to an end the

Catholic Brazilian University (JUC) organization as an semi-autonomous movement.

Coleman, Weber and Maritain Changing the World

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