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S i d e b a r
COMMON SENSE AND APOLOGETICS
By Fr. Rawley Myers
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This Rock
Volume 4, Number 8
 September 1993 
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JACQUES MARITAIN was one of the greatest thinkers
in this century. A French philosopher and convert to the Church, he
taught in Europe and at Columbia and Princeton universities. The documents
of Vatican II, Maritain wrote, made the human person, his dignity,
and his rights their central theme, and all who care for man and the
future of civilization cheered. But then many writers gave their peculiar
interpretation to all this, and, after getting the car out of the
ditch on one side, they pushed so hard it went into the ditch on the
other side of the road.
Mortimer Adler, another Thomistic philosopher, but
not a Catholic, writes that the thinking of Aristotle is the "common
sense philosophy." Ordinary people follow Aristotle, whether
they know it or not, because their minds are "unspoiled by the
sophistication and specialization of academic thought." Adler
suggests some people have been educated out of their common sense.
Others, living in artificial urban communities, think in an artificial
manner. Still others are sophists or utilitarians. All around us we
have proof that how we think is how we act.
To think correctly there is no better guide than Aristotle.
Plato raised all the questions, Adler states, and Aristotle answered
them. Plato taught Aristotle how to think so well that Aristotle thought
more clearly than his teacher.
Maritain would have agreed with Adler. There must be
more common sense in the Church--that was his position. He argued
that "The Church cannot kneel to the world; it cannot adapt itself
to the world." He noted with alarm that current writers often
fail to distinguish, which is a difficult and fatiguing task. It seems
to be too painful for many of them, but without distinctions nothing
is clear.
He said that man, thwarted by the wounds of sin, is
far from the spiritual self-sufficiency some authors would like us
to believe he has. Since many people think little and in a confused
manner (a bad combination), they accept much nonsense; there is talk
of the blossoming of wonderful human nature while the newspapers are
full of crime.
Maritain wrote, "Some speak as if justice and
peace on earth were the only work of the Church. This temporal vocation
is vital, but earthly social activity is not the only reality. Saving
souls is even more important. And our temporal duties are only effective
if the life of grace and prayer make natural energies more pure and
upright." In other words, there is more than this earth. This
is just common sense.
In general the crowd is not following the Christians,
but the Christians are following the crowd. Even the Christian prophets
of the avant-garde, who think their whole duty is to this world, cannot
understand Christ-like people, because they do not think with Christ.
The world has become absorbed in itself--what Maritain
called "the insane mistake." A world that is self-centered
thinks it hasn't the slightest need to be saved from above. A person,
we are told, must fulfill himself here; he must be exalted on earth.
This is the attitude of modern society. Such an illusory attitude
has no place for God and obviously sees no reason to be interested
in the words of the apologist.
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