{"id":1652,"date":"2016-11-30T12:37:47","date_gmt":"2016-11-30T16:37:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/admin.patheos.com\/blogs\/oikonomia\/?p=1652"},"modified":"2016-11-30T12:38:58","modified_gmt":"2016-11-30T16:38:58","slug":"christianity-communism-mutually-exclusive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/oikonomia\/2016\/11\/christianity-communism-mutually-exclusive\/","title":{"rendered":"Are Christianity and Communism Mutually Exclusive?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

By\u00a0Sarah Stanley<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

Did Pope Francis just publicly endorse Communism? Recent comments have prompted many to suggest he has. During an interview with Eugenio Scalfari, they had the following exchange<\/a>:<\/p>\n

[Scalfari:] You told me some time ago that the precept, \u201cLove your neighbour as thyself\u201d had to change, given the dark times that we are going through, and become \u201cmore than thyself.\u201d So you yearn for a society where equality dominates. This, as you know, is the programme of Marxist socialism and then of communism. Are you therefore thinking of a Marxist type of society?<\/em><\/p>\n

[Francis:] \u201cIt it has been said many times and my response has always been that, if anything, it is the communists who think like Christians<\/strong>. Christ spoke of a society where the poor, the weak and the marginalized have the right to decide. Not demagogues, not Barabbas, but the people, the poor, whether they have faith in a transcendent God or not. It is they who must help to achieve equality and freedom\u201d (emphasis added)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Acton\u2019s director of research, Samuel Gregg, suggests that there\u2019s something else going on. In a recent article for The Stream, he begins<\/a>: \u201cMarxists, Marxist ideas and Marxist regimes have brought death and destruction to millions. Yet according to Pope Francis, \u201cif anything, the communists think like Christians.\u201d What\u2019s going on here?\u201d He goes on to note that though some have accused the Pope of \u201cMarxist sympathies,\u201d that is simply not true:<\/span><\/p>\n

For one thing, Francis has specified that Communism is a mistaken idea. Back in a 2013 interview with the Italian newspaper La Stampa<\/em>, the pope stated<\/a> that \u201cMarxist ideology is wrong.\u201d Likewise, the Argentine home-grown \u201ctheology of the people\u201d which has influenced<\/a> Francis\u2019s thought explicitly rejects Marxist philosophy and analysis. Nor has Francis hesitated to canonize Catholics martyred by Communist regimes. He\u2019s even conferred a cardinal\u2019s hat upon an Albanian priest, Father Ernest Troshani Simoni, who was twice sentenced to death by Enver Hoxha\u2019s dictatorship \u2014 one of the very worst Communist regimes. These aren\u2019t the words or actions of a Communist fellow-traveler or apologist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rather than offering a ringing endorsement for Communism and Marxism, Gregg offers this interpretation of the pope\u2019s remarks:<\/p>\n

One possible interpretation of the pope\u2019s words about Communism is that they reflect his belief that some people are drawn to Marxism because they regard Communism as being on the side of the world\u2019s underdogs. During a 2015 interview, the pope suggested<\/a> that Communists were, in a way, closet Christians. They had stolen, he said, \u201cthe flag of the poor\u201d from Christians.<\/p>\n

These themes resurfaced in a more recent interview<\/a> of Francis \u2014 this time conducted by the self-described atheist, the 92 year-old Italian journalist Eugenio Scalfari.<\/p>\n

Caution is advised when reading any of Scalfari\u2019s interviews. Scalfari\u2019s renditions of his conversations with prominent figures are based on memory rather than notes or recordings. That\u2019s bound to raise questions about the veracity of what\u2019s written (not to mention the prudence of talking to Scalfari, but that\u2019s a different matter). Scalfari\u2019s questions are also designed to encourage the pope to make controversial remarks. In most cases, Francis politely deflects them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Gregg points out that communism, by definition, is fundamentally incompatible with Christianity:<\/p>\n

In the first place, Marxism is rooted in atheism and philosophical materialism. Christianity is not. That\u2019s a rather fundamental and irreconcilable<\/em> difference. Second, virtually all Marxist thinkers and practitioners \u2014 Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Che Guevara, Pol Pot, etc. \u2014 hold that the ends justifies the means. Small \u201co\u201d orthodox Christianity, with its insistence upon moral absolutes which admit of no exception, specifically refutes that claim. Third, Marxism, Marxists and Marxist movements don\u2019t see the poor as Christianity does: i.e., as human beings who need to be loved and assisted.<\/p>\n

Instead Communism views the poor \u2014 like all human beings \u2014 as simply moving-parts of the dialectics of history. The economically less-well off, from a Marxist standpoint, have no intrinsic worth by virtue of their poverty or status as human beings. Such a materialist and instrumentalist perspective is light-years away from Christianity\u2019s view of those in poverty and human beings more generally.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The problem, according to Gregg, is that while Pope Francis is no Marxist, his imprecision with language lends itself to generating the type of confusion that\u2019s arisen from this interview. So too does the pope\u2019s tendency to conflate economic equality with poverty, which occurs in several places in the interview. But poverty and inequality are not, Gregg points out, the same thing. He concludes with this thought:<\/p>\n

One of Pope Francis\u2019s many paradoxes is that, while he consistently and rightly denounces any idolatry of wealth and the type of materialist mindset which reduces everything to economics, the pope often articulates curiously economistic explanations for the world\u2019s ills. Material poverty is something all Christians must be committed to working to reduce. Let\u2019s not pretend, however, that Christians and Marxists think the same way about poverty \u2014 or equality for that matter. The simple truth is that they don\u2019t.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Read\u00a0\u201cDoes Pope Francis really believe that \u2018Communists think like Christians\u2019?\u201d<\/a>\u00a0The Stream.<\/p>\n

Originally published at the Acton PowerBlog<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

Photo credit: Mark Surman<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

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By\u00a0Sarah Stanley Did Pope Francis just publicly endorse Communism? Recent comments have prompted many to suggest he has. 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