Jacques Maritain

On the practical atheism of many Christians:

They keep in their minds the settings of religion for the sake of appearances or outward show, but they deny the Gospel and despise the poor, pass through the tragedy of their time only with resentment against anything that endangers their interests and fear for their own prestige and possessions, contemplate without flinching every kind of injustice if it does not threaten their own way of life. Only concerned with power and success, they are either anxious to have means of external coercion enforce what they term the "moral order" or else they turn with the wind and are ready to comply with any requirement of so-called historical necessity. They await the deceivers. They are famished for deception because first they themselves are trying to deceive God.

The Range of Reason, 1952

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