Christian Faith and Modern Democracy: God and Politics in the Fallen World, by Robert P. Kraynak, Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. 334 pp. FIFTY YEARS AGO, Jacques Maritain, Yves Simon, and John Courtney Murray had reputations as being non-traditional, even somewhat progressive, Catholic thinkers. Remarkably, today the three men are widely viewed as conservatives. That this transformation of perspective goes largely unnoticed makes it all the more remarkable. At the midpoint of the twentieth century, each man was engaged in a project to establish the basic compatibility of Christianity and liberal democracy. Faced with the brutal, dehumanizing experience of communist and fascist totalitarianism, these three thinkers defended the virtue of the only political regime that seemed legitimate in the modern world.
