The joy of Jesus can be personal. It can belong to a single man and he is saved. He is at peace, he is joyful now and for always, but he is alone. The isolation of this joy does not trouble him; on the contrary: he is the chosen one. In his blessedness he passes through the battlefields with a rose in his hand. . . .
My joy will not be lasting unless it is the joy of all. I will not pass through the battlefields with a rose in my hand.1
What Christian has not encountered such an accusation? How many souls have not encountered upon their course this stone of stumbling? . . .
"How," they ask in particular, "can a religion which apparently is uninterested in our terrestrial future and in human fellowship offer an ideal which can still attract the men of to-day?" . . .
"[The Christian] withdraws from the converse of men, exclusively preoccupied with his own salvation, which is a matter between God and himself" [as opposed to] "the modern man who . . . cannot detach himself from other men: fully conscious of the solidarity which unites him with his fellows, which makes him in a sense dependent on them, he knows that he cannot work out his salvation by himself".2
. . .
In answer to all this we may quote this simple assertion of a believer and a theologian: "Fundamentally the Gospel is obsessed with the idea of the unity of human society."3 This shows the full extent of the misunderstanding. We are accused of being individualists even in spite of ourselves, by the logic of our faith, whereas in reality Catholicism is essentially social. It is social in the deepest sense of the word: not merely in its applications in the field of natural institutions but first and foremost in itself, in the heart of its mystery, in the essence of its dogma. It is social in a sense which should have made the expression "social Catholicism" pleonastic.
Nevertheless, if such a misunderstanding has arisen and en-trenched itself, if such an accusation is current, is it not our own fault? We can leave on one side what is only too obviously groundless in certain objections, those which are bound up with a purely extrinsic and secular conception of Catholicism or of salvation or based on a complete misunderstanding of Christian detachment. Nor need we insist on the failings, serious though they often are, which may have given rise to these misunderstandings: the selfish piety, the narrow religious outlook, the neglect of ordinary duties in the multiplication of "devotions", the swamping of the spiritual life by the detestable "I", the failure to realize that prayer is essentially the prayer of all for all. These are all deviations to which all believers, being human, are exposed, and which it is easy to criticize. But are they in fact sufficiently recognized as such? Does not neglect of dogma increase the extent of moral failure? And if so many observers, who are not all lacking in acumen or in religious spirit, are so grievously mistaken about the essence of Catholicism, is it not an indication that Catholics should make an effort to understand it better themselves?
1 Jean Giono, Les vraies richesses, 1936, pp. v and viii.
2 Les affirmations de la conscience moderne, 3rd edn., 1906, pp. 108-9 ; and p. 56: "Our morality is less and less Christian just because it is more and more social". p. 108 : "the Christian, like the Stoic, is sufficient unto himself".3 E. Masure, conference in Semaine sociale de Nice, 1934, p. 229.
Henri de Lubac, Catholicism: A Study of Dogma in Relation to the Corporate Destiny of Mankind (1947; tr. 1958), viii-x