¹ Miano has adopted a distinction from the Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique between “negative indifference”, which refuses to decide the question of God, and “positive indifference”, which decides that religions are all equal. Miano, Vincenzo, ‘L'Indifferenza religiosa: Studio teologico’, in Segretariato per i non credenti, ed., L'Indifferenza religiosa (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1978), p. 10Google Scholar, including note 7.

² Cf. Lubac Henri de, S.J., Mémoire sur l'occasion de mes écrits (Namur: Culture et Vérité, 1989), p. 363Google Scholar. He says that his role in the Council was not considerable and that he had “pas de role important dans la rédaction même des texts (sauf pour certains détails).” This declaration likely reflects modesty more than historical fact. Ratzinger remembers matters otherwise: Ratzinger, Joseph, ‘The Dignity of the Human Person’, in Vorgrimler, Herbert, ed., Commentary on the Documents of Vatican II (New York and London: Herder and Herder and Burns & Oates Limited, 1969), p. 145Google Scholar.

³ Henri de Lubac, S.J., Le Mystère du Surnaturel (Paris: Aubier, 1965), p. 222Google Scholar. The denotation of theology as an exile is taken by de Lubac from M.‐D. Chenu, Introduction à l'étude de saint Thomas d'Aquin, p. 6. On the overly facile separation of grace from nature cf. de Lubac, Le Mystère du Surnaturel, p. 210. Cf. also p. 233: In maintaining both that God is necessary and intrinsic to human persons and that he gives himself freely, de Lubac says, “A‐t‐on le droit de lâcher l'une, fût‐ce dans l'intention de mieux tenir l'autre?” In Henri de Lubac, S.J., Athéisme et sens de l'homme: Une double requête de Gaudium et spes (Paris: Les Éditions du Cerf, 1968), p. 98Google Scholar de Lubac quotes Norbert Luyten's appraisal: “N'avons‐nous pas encore compris combien nous avons dû payer cher l'erreur de maintenir le surnaturel bien à l'abri du naturel? L'intention fut sans doute excellente: sauvegarder la pureté du surnaturel. Mais le résultat n'en a pas moins été catastrophique: nous nous étions isolés, retirés du monde dans des ghettos où nous nous étions enfermés nous‐mêmes.” Norbert Luyten, ‘L'Église et la culture’, Civitas August (1967), p. 917. In Athéisme et sens de l'homme de Lubac is rather taciturn about his own role in unseating the Cajetanian understanding of nature and grace.

⁴ The word is Gilson's. De Lubac, Mémoire, p. 126.

⁵ For a different judgment on Cajetan's interpretation of Thomas on this point see Juan Alfaro, S.J., ‘Lo natural y lo sobrenatural segun el Card. De Vio, Cayetano: Contenido, Fuentes, Originalidad’ (Rome: Pontificia Università Gregoriana, 1950), p. 69. Referring to de Lubac he says: “… Cayetano es en este problema un verdadero continaudor del pensamiento del Doctor Angélico y de los teólogos tomistas de los siglos XIV y XV. La teoría de la posibilidad del estado de naturaleza pura no es un concepto extraño al tomismo e introducido en él por Cayetano, como se ha afirmado recientemente.”

⁶ “La solution est simple, en effet. Mais elle fait bon marché, dans l'esprit du chrétien, de l'unité qui doit, englobant les distinctions et même les oppositions intimes, marquer de son sceau toute pensée comme toute existence digne de ce nom. Elle est facile. Mais, en excluant l'Évangile de la vie, elle favorise tous les abandons. Elle est déjà un abandon. Dans l'absolu de son séparatisme, elle force le chrétien à une véritable schizophrénie, dont il ne se guérira que par un reniement.” Lubac De, Le Mystère du Surnaturel, 103. See also Henri de Lubac, S.J., ‘Apologétique et théologie’, Nouvelle Revue Théologique 57, no. 5 (1930)Google Scholar. Already in 1930 de Lubac indicates that the consequences of a stark separation of grace from nature on the part of theology are significant for Christian apologetics. This makes Christian truth seem, for the most part, to be arbitrary and disconnected from man's nature. “Pas plus qu'il n'avait à s'enquérir d'abord de ce que l'homme, peut‐être, attendait, il n'a ensuite à se préoccuper de ce que Dieu a dit.” p. 364. This presupposition seriously compromises apologetics. Apologetics must set up a contrary global outlook to those that oppose the Faith. It is not that people really leave the Faith because of questions about particular points of Catholic dogma (though sometimes objections to these can be the outward effects of a more profound divergence) but because they have a different general outlook on life. “Il importe donc extrêmement, nous installant à l'intérieur de la théologie, d'y travailler à nous faire, selon les principes de la foi, une conception du monde plus haute, plus riche, plus cohérente, de tirer de ces principes une doctrine de vie plus totale et plus féconde, que toutes celles qu'on pourrait nous opposer …” p. 370. This outlook, in the form of a clear and coherent supernatural doctrine, will answer the aspirations of man's nature. Apologetics cannot afford to fall back on a defensive and superficial tack.

⁷ De Lubac, Athéisme, p. 99. Cf. de Lubac, Mémoire, p. 33, where de Lubac notes the centrality of the separation of grace from nature to unbelief and calls the relationship between the two the “nud du problème de l'humanisme chrétien”.

⁸ De Lubac, Athéisme, p. 99.

⁹ De Lubac, Athéisme, p. 103 et passim.

¹⁰ De Lubac, Athéisme, p. 110.

¹¹ Monchanin, Jules, ‘Le temps selon l'hindouisme et le christianisme’, Dieu vivant 14 (1949), p. 118Google Scholar, as quoted in de Lubac, Athéisme, p. 112.

¹² De Lubac's concern here with atheists applies to indifferentists, mutatis mutandis, without conflating these designations.

¹³ See Pannenberg, Wolfhart, Christianity in a Secularized World, Bowden, John, trans. (New York: Crossroad, 1989)Google Scholar, esp. pp. 27, 32–33; here Pannenberg draws attention to the risk of Christianity's becoming one more thing on the shelves of consumer society and no longer as universally binding. See also Gianfranco Morra, ‘Indifferenza e ateismo’, in Segretariato per i non credenti, ed., L'Indifferenza religiosa (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1978), pp. 152, 161Google Scholar. It will have been noticed that Pannenberg's book is cited here in its English translation and an explanation is due: English citations are used throughout for whatever works these exist, with the exceptions of magisterial and classical texts and those of this essay's principal subject, de Lubac. The aim is to improve readability without sacrificing clarity.

¹⁴ On Nominalism and Protestant extrinsicism, see René Virgoulay, ‘La création humaine des valeurs’, Revue des sciences religieuses (1967), p. 220. Virgoulay also makes the point on p. 197 that voluntarist freedom applied to God is a notion of freedom easily appropriated by man, as in Sartre.

¹⁵ See Gaudium et spes, cc. 19, 21.

¹⁶ Defois, Gérard, ‘Quand la foi chrétienne laisse indifférent … Que faire?’, in Secrétariat pour les non‐croyants, ed., L'indifférence religieuse (Paris: Beauchesne Editeur, 1983), p. 245Google Scholar. See also p. 228: “Leur foi leur devient indifférente parce qu'elle ne leur paraît pas apporter quelque chose de neuf, de différentà côté des théories politiques, culturelles ou économiques qui légitiment une transformation de l'humanité.” See Wolfhart Pannenberg, ‘How to Think About Secularism’, First Things June/July, no. 64 (1996), p. 31. “The Absolutely worst way to respond to the challenge of secularism is to adapt to the secular standards in language, thought, and way of life. If members of a secularist society turn to religion at all, they do so because they are looking for something other than what that culture already provides … Religion that is ‘more of the same’ is not likely to be very interesting”.

¹⁷ 1 Pet 3:15.

¹⁸ I intentionally leave to the side here any discussion of these themes in themselves, including whether and to what degree such revisions have been justified.

¹⁹ See, for example, Joseph de Finance, S.J., ‘L'athéisme, problème majeur de l'évangélisation dans le monde d'aujourd'hui’, in Mariasusai Dhavamony, S.J., ed., Évangélisation, (Rome: Università Gregoriana Editrice, 1975), p. 362Google Scholar.

²⁰ Augustine saw that the pressing presence of falsehood often outweighs dimly perceived truth: “cur non beati sunt? quia fortius occupantur in aliis, quae potius eos faciunt miseros quam illud beatos, quod tenuiter meminerunt.” Confessions, 10, 23, 33.

²¹ The phrase belongs to Mezzadri, Luigi, ‘L'Indifferenza religiosa nei suoi fattori storici’, in Segretariato per i non credenti, ed., L'Indifferenza religiosa (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1978), p. 116Google Scholar.

²² Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World, esp. p. 58 argues that the Christian confessional divide is an ongoing scandal. See also Pannenberg, Wolfhart, ‘Die Zukünftige Rolle Von “Glauben Und Kirchenverfassung” in Welt’, Einer Säkularisierten, Una Sancta 44, no. 4 (1989), pp. 334–336Google Scholar. This theme is also treated as part of a general discussion of Christianity and modern culture in Pannenberg, Wolfhart, ‘Christianity and the West: Ambiguous Past, Uncertain Future’, First Things December, no. 48 (1994)Google Scholar.

²³ Evelyn Waugh's summary of modern man in the person of the protagonist of his Brideshead Revisited is to the point: “The view implicit in my education was that the basic narrative of Christianity had long been exposed as a myth, and that opinion was now divided as to whether its ethical teaching was of present value, a division in which the main weight went against it; religion was a hobby which some people professed and others did not; at the best it was slightly ornamental, at the worst it was the province of ‘complexes’ and ‘inhibitions’ … and of the intolerance, hypocrisy, and sheer stupidity attributed to it for centuries. No one had ever suggested to me that these quaint observances expressed a coherent philosophic system and intransigeant historical claims; nor, had they done so, would I have been much interested.” Waugh, Evelyn, Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder (Boston: Little, Brown and Company, 1945), pp. 85–86Google Scholar.

²⁴ Pascal, Blaise, Pensées sur la Religion et sur quelques autres sujets (Club des Libraires de France, 1961), p. 114Google Scholar.

²⁵ See Filippo Liverziani, Facoltà di Filosofia Pontificia Università Salesiana, ed., ‘Ateismo e risveglio religioso’, in Religione, ateismo e filosofia: Scritti in onore del Prof. Vincenzo Miano nel suo 70° compleanno (Rome: Libreria Ataneo Salesiano, 1980), p. 95Google Scholar: “Sembra che nella testa dell'uomo non ci possa albergare che un'idea per volta! Nel concentrarsi su certi obiettivi e su certi problemi … l'uomo moderno ha perduto di vista i problemi dello scopo e del significato della vita nel suo insieme.” De Rosa describes how consumerism has placed an accent on the value of Homo faber, to the detriment of religious values, Rosa, Giuseppe De, ‘Indifferenza religiosa e secolarizzazione’, in Segretariato per i non credenti, ed., L'Indifferenza religiosa (Rome: Città Nuova Editrice, 1978), p. 142Google Scholar.

²⁶ De Finance, ‘L'athéisme, problème majeur’, p. 370: “On peut dire que pour l'homme contemporain la transcendance ≪verticale≫, propre au divin, tend àêtre remplacée par une transcendance ≪horizontale≫, soit en ≪longueur≫, selon la ligne du temps (vers des ≪lendemains qui chantent≫, comme dans le marxisme), soit en ≪largeur≫, vers des domaines nouveaux, déconcertants, bouleversants, de l'univers, qui ≪élargissent≫ en effet immensément notre vision des choses mais — pour le pensée métaphysique et religieuse — restent sur le plan de la facticité, de la contingence — sur le plan ≪créaturel≫.”

²⁷ De Rosa, ‘Secolarizzazione’, p. 145: “L'ulteriore scomparsa della religiosità tradizionale non porterà alla scomparsa della religione, ma alla sua ≪degradazione≫ e ≪mondanizzazione≫: da una parte, questa porterà alla nascita delle ≪religioni secolari≫ con la sacralizzazione di realtà≪secolari≫, come la politica, la scienza, la razza, la nazione, la libertà, il sesso, il progresso, il benessere, la produttività, la socialità; dall'altra, porterà a cercare la risposta ai problemi ≪ultimi≫ nella magia, nello spiritismo, nell'astrologia, nella divinazione. La degradazione del sacro porterà inoltre a dare carattere sacrale ad oggetti, come la macchina, il vestito, la casa, ed a riti, come i ceremoniali sportivi, politici, consumistici: i luoghi in cui questi riti ≪sacri≫ si compiranno saranno lo stadio, il parlamento, l'aula congressuale d'un partito, la piazza in cui si tiene un comizio, la boutique in cui si fa lo shopping. La religione, in tal modo, non scomparirà, ma cambierà radicalmente nelle forme e nei contenuti, mondanizzandosi totalmente.”

²⁸ De Lubac argues this point forcefully; see, for example, his treatment of Auguste Comte in The Drama of Atheist Humanism.

²⁹ Henri de Lubac, S.J., Sur les Chemins de Dieu (Paris: Aubier, 1956), p. 207Google Scholar.

³⁰ Von Balthasar's admonition bears repeating: “God remains the centre and man is related to something outside himself, to the absolute. Man only ‘has’ this love in so far is it ‘possesses’ him, that is to say he does not have it as a possession over which he has control, or which he can point to as one of his powers.” Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Love Alone: The Way of Revelation (London: Sheed & Ward, 1968), p. 108CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

³¹ Pannenberg draws attention to the contemporary crisis in meaning in reference to V. Frankl and P. Berger in the second chapter of Pannenberg, Christianity in a Secularized World. On the consumerist approach to religion and the related absence of an perception of meaning see Pannenberg, Wolfhart, ‘The Absence of God in Theological Perspective’, in Christian Spirituality (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1983), pp. 89–90Google Scholar. Cf. Pannenberg's discussion of meaning for persons as enabled by reference to God in Pannenberg, Wolfhart, ‘Sinnerfahrung, Religion und Gottesfrage’, Theologie und Philosophie 59, no. 2 (1984)Google Scholar. In commenting on Gaudium et spes' treatment of atheism, Ratzinger expresses in harsh understatement a negative judgment on “l'homme absurde” of modernity. “[T]he joyful meaninglessness which Camus ascribed to his Sisyphus” he writes, “is not convincing”. Ratzinger, ‘Dignity of the Human Person’, p. 156.

³² “Ce n'est … pas l'amusement seul qu'il recherche; un amusement languissant et sans passion l'ennuiera; il faut qu'il s'y échauffe, et qu'il se pipe lui‐même, en s'imaginant qu'il serait heureux de gagner ce qu'il ne voudrait pas qu'on lui donnât à condition de ne point jouer, afin qu'il se forme un sujet de passion et qu'il excite sur cela son désir, sa colère, sa crainte pour cet objet qu'il s'est formé, comme les enfants qui s'effraient du visage qu'ils ont barbouillé.” Pascal, Pensées, p. 112.

³³ Martin Buber teaches the valuable lesson that God will not be found at the other end of a managing, controlling relationship, i.e., as an It. See Buber, Martin, Eclipse of God: Studies in the Relation Between Religion and Philosophy, Friedman, Norbert Guterman Maurice, Kamenka, Eugene and Lask, I. M., trans. (New York and Evanston: Harper & Row Publishers, 1957)Google Scholar.

³⁴ Augustine points out this misjudgment in general: “ … fuderam in harenam animam meam, diligendo moriturum ac si non moriturum …” Confessions, 4, 8, 13.

³⁵ Gaudium et spes, c. 19, “Atheismus enim, integre consideratus, non est quid originarium …” Miano makes this point well with reference to Gaudium et spes cc. 19, 21 and 42; see Miano, ‘L'Indifferenza religiosa’, pp. 21–22.

³⁶ Gaudium et spes, c. 21: “Nemo enim quibusdam momentis, praecipue in maioribus vitae eventibus, praefatam interrogationem omnino effugere valet.”

³⁷ Gaudium et spes, c. 19. This is far from a categorical rejection of technology and the relative ease of modern civilization; indeed, the social‐encyclical tradition—paralleled here, curiously, by Abraham Maslow's theory of self‐actualization—suggests that lower needs' being provided for by modern technology is an occasion, rather than an impediment, for seeking God.

³⁸ Although Vatican II's message concerning the immanence of Christ to man is easier to conceive in terms of a single (supernatural) end, this point may be taken to stand generally even if Vatican II does not specifically endorse de Lubac's conception of nature and grace.

³⁹ Thomas Aquinas, Summa Contra Gentiles, 4, 54, 3.