THE VATICAN EMBRACES COMMUNISM

This article was posted by Richard Owen of the The Times, October 22, 2009.

Vatican thumbs up for Karl Marx after Galileo, Darwin and Oscar Wilde

Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, has joined Galileo, Charles Darwin and Oscar Wilde on a growing list of historical figures to have undergone an unlikely reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church.

L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, said yesterday that Marx’s early critiques of capitalism had highlighted the “social alienation” felt by the “large part of humanity” that remained excluded, even now, from economic and political decision-making.

Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, wrote in an article that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment. He also said that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.

“We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system,” Professor Sans wrote. “If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”

With reassessments such as these it may be wondered which formerly unacceptable figure could be next. Last year the Vatican erected a statue of Galileo as a way of saying sorry for trying the astronomer in 1633 for his observation that the Earth moved around the Sun; in February a leading official declared Darwin’s theory of evolution compatible with the Christian faith, and in July L’Osservatore praised Oscar Wilde, the gay playwright, as “a man who behind a mask of amorality asked himself what was just and what was mistaken”.

Professor Sans argues that Marx’s intellectual legacy was marred by the misappropriation of his work by the communist regimes of the 20th century. “It is no exaggeration to say that nothing has damaged the interests of Marx the philosopher more than Marxism,” he said.

This overturns a century of Catholic hostility to his creed. Two years ago Benedict XVI singled out Marxism as one of the great scourges of the modern age. “The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful destruction of the human spirit,” he told an audience in Brazil.

Then again the Pope has been busy reappraising modern capitalism. Benedict’s latest encyclical, Charity in Truth, offers a direct response to the recession, arguing that global capitalism has lost its way and that Church teachings can help to restore economic health by focusing on justice for the weak and closer regulation of the market.

His predecessor, John Paul II — who hated communism and as pontiff helped to bring it down in his native Poland — was keenly aware of the failings of the West and the effects of unbridled capitalism on post-communist societies.

Professor Sans’s view of Marx was not without criticism. He argued that Marx’s “materialist” view of history had wrongly reduced man to no more than a product of his material, economic and physical circumstances. He also said that after the fall of communism in 1989, few believed any more that private property was in itself wrong or unjust, and “given the experience of the past half century” no one believed that collectivisation of property was the answer.

Marx, who predicted that capitalism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions and be replaced by communism after a transitional period, was born in 1818 in Trier in Germany to Jewish parents. Although it was a majority Catholic town, his father, Heinrich, converted to Lutheran Protestantism to escape anti-Semitism.

Marx was baptised as a Christianbut he remained an atheist all his life. He once observed that “religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.”

Marx was expelled from several European countries for his radical espousal of a working-class revolution. He moved to London in May 1849 and lived there until his death in 1883.

Professor Sans’s article was first published in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit paper, which is vetted in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State. The decision to republish it in the Vatican newspaper gives it added papal endorsement.

View source article here.

Comments

[catholicresistence]

RCC has NEVER embraced communism, not even post V2 leaders,let alone those solid pre-V2 peopes.Read Rerum Novarum and Quad.ANno, pluse other encyclicals out there the specifically condemn communism and socialism.....Capitalism is "2 peas in a pod", with Govt and buisness merged, Big Govt, Big Buiz or both......check out distributist sites for further and really, Chris,are you even trying to do any research or just spewing out tired, worn out and long ago debunked drivel?? Come up, please,with something new and provable....and something properly contexted.......

[Denise Porter]

In response to 'Catholic Resistance' --- there are none so blind as those who will not see. This is the first step away from God.

The Catholic system has always played both sides of every situation & usurped the position of God so that men worshipping the system instead of the God Who has revealed Himself in Scripture, and in the Person of Jesus Christ ----will willingly sacrifice themselves, serving as pawns & dupes in Rome's schemes.

The similar pattern in the Communist system is too much like Rome's not to be connected at some level.

I must add that the doubly perverse blindness of those who DO see yet still try to keep the hood over the heads of others is doubly damning, as well. It is another step away ----and down. Making pragmatic deals with evil will backfire in the end, my friend. Reconsider while it is yet called To day. Gird the loins of your mind & quit yourself like a man: seek and face the Truth that is ---not what you wish it were, or vainly believe you can manipulate it into being in the grand gnostic & Romanist tradition. Our God is highest, holy and only ---He changeth not---neither does His Way. He does not 'evolve' or 'progress' ---there is no shifting or shadow of turning in Him. He does not repent. The glory is God's---not Rome's or Man's. Our glory is Jesus & the plain simplicity of the Gospel.

The 'light' of Lucifer is false ---and so are his 'promises' ------he NEVER keeps his bargains in the manner that his dupes suppose: see Genesis 3, the epistles to the Corinthians, Colossians, Galatians, Hebrews, II Timothy 3 & 4, II Thessalonians 2, Ephesians 6:10-20, Jude, II Peter, Revelation.

To the Word and to the Testimony, if they speak not according to this Word, it is because there is no light in them. Isaiah 8

Jesus said that those who received Him, the Truth, the living Word as revealed in the written word of God ---& kept it, persevering in the faith to the end -----would be free indeed, receiving the gift of reconciliation & eternal life. This is the faith once for all delivered to the saints ---and the once offered sacrifice that was sufficient to accomplish salvation that brings peace with God. There is no such promise to the 'religious' who trust in works & systems & traditions & techniques ---the arm of man ---rather than in God's strong arm of salvation. See the book of John ---and Romans, the epistle to the Ephesians, etc.

Ye must be born again ---not of blood, nor of the will of man or the flesh ---but of God. John 1 & 3