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Catholics for Marx |
By Fr.
Robert Sirico
FrontPageMagazine.com |
In the days when the
Superpowers were locked in a Cold War,
The Gospels were re-rendered not as
doctrine impacting on the human soul but rather as windows into the historical
dialectic of class struggle. These "liberation theologians" saw every
biblical criticism of the rich as a mandate to expropriate the expropriating
owners of capital, and every expression of compassion for the poor as a call
for an uprising by the proletarian class of peasants and workers.
This is hardly the first time that the
Gospels have been read in a way that seemed designed to support a peculiar and
wayward personal agenda. The history of heresy, usually Gnostic at its root
(for its perpetual claim to have discovered some hidden meaning accessible only
to the elect), is bound up with the history of megalomania and the search for
power over others.
What gave liberation theology its
currency was its appeal among elite theological students safely
cloistered far from the workers and peasants so much in need of
liberation. The sheer exotica of reading Christianity through Marxist eyes had
an appeal, as did the political luxury afforded by the strange new respect
secular intellectuals had for a version of Christianity that seemed to endorse
socialism.
For that matter, scholarship over the
last 20 years, when more mainstream academics have begun to think more
clearly about the subject of Marxism, has noted the strange respects in which
Marxism itself reads like a Christian heresy, in which a new age is to be
ushered in by a transformation of human nature in a grand historical dialectic.
In traditional Christianity, the ennobling of human nature takes place because
of Christ's Incarnation; in Marxism, the State takes His place. Marxism
offers a theory of sin (private property) and salvation (collective ownership),
a church that dispenses grace (the State, as administered by the vanguard of
the proletariat), and a litany of saints and sinners. (Of course, it was far
more violent than even the worst of the excesses of the Inquisition.)
So, in fact, it is not too much of a
stretch for Christian heresy to embrace Marxism as a creed, since, as G.K.
Chesterton said, heresy is often truth gone mad. Liberation theology is the admixutre of one small truth (God cares about the poor)
with so much error that it resulted in a madness that
saw Christians champion what amounted to terrorism against propertied elites.
Of course, it didn't work out the way the theologians imagined it would.
The breeding ground for libertarian
theology was, of course, Roman Catholicism, the world's largest branch of
Christianity and the religion of
There can be no doubt where authoritative
Catholic teaching has stood on this question. Pope Leo XIII (1878-1903), in the
first year of his papacy, devoted an encyclical against
socialism which cited his predecessors. These had in turn built their
position upon earlier Scholastics who stood in a line of orthodox
theologians dating back to the Church Fathers, in a
anti-socialist tradition that extends from the earliest centuries to the
current day.
There really can be no dispute on where
the Roman Catholic Church stands (nor, indeed, where the unified Church of the
first millenium stood): it rejects collective
ownership as a national policy, embraces private property and free initiative,
and affirms the business economy as both moral and practical. Pope John Paul II
has gone further than all his predecessors with an all-embracing critique of
socialism that rejects
its many offshoots, including the welfare state variety. The Pope led a
campaign against the theological deviation and boldly stood up to would-be
dictators in the region who used religion in their quest for personal power.
In the version of events you are likely
to hear in college, the
It is nonetheless true that true
Catholicism stood against liberation theology and the despotism it masked. What
has actually crushed liberation theology as a doctrine, however, has been the
market economics revolution that has swept through
It has been this experience that has persuaded
well-intended revolutionaries that a better means of helping the poor is
available: not through revolution but entrepreneurship. When standards of
living are rising even for the poorest of the poor, when the children of
peasants rise in social and economic stature in one generation, when whole
villages are transformed for the better by the arrival of a new factory, when
young women can afford to leave the workforce to get an education for the first
time, it becomes ever clearer what the real source of liberation is: not
collective ownership but economic freedom. Violence and collectivism
never gave the world any of these trends. Only market economics has—rooted in
private property and a system of free exchange.
Former revolutionaries are getting the
message. "Bogotá's Social Capitalism, Led by a Marxist of Old" ran a New
York Times headline (February 6, 2004) in a story about a former rebel
turned real estate developer. The story is indicative of a broader trend
throughout the region. The intellectual basis for understanding this is not
found in the Marxist tradition but rather in the classically liberal one that
has roots in the intellectual environment of late medieval Spain, took hold in
England in the 18th century, gave rise to the American Revolution, explained
the Industrial Revolution, and has an enormous presence today in explaining the
rise of global prosperity in a information age. Look at from this point of
view, socialism and all its offshoots appear to me little more than a
parenthesis in history.
But while liberation theology may be dead
in a formal and political sense, it is part of a species of leftist religious
economics that is still alive and well, particularly in
There are many differences this time.
Redistribution, not revolution, is the watchword this time. Resentment is
directed against globalization, not the commercial classes as such. The
theological dressing behind the new Latin leftism
is more populist and nationalist than communist. This
rhetoric focuses on popular control of industry and welfare measures
rather than wholesale looting. And, most importantly, because the new political
trends do not play into an overarching global-political drama, hardly anyone is
paying much attention.
In some sense, however, this increases
the danger of these trends, if not for global political reasons but for the
plight of all people in
A soft version of liberation theology
also thrives among the Religious Left in the
A great danger of all religious ideas is
their tendency to be employed for political purposes, a tendency which always
introduces an element of distortion. If this is true for Catholic doctrine
generally—and the sometimes-sordid history of the temporal power of the Church
certainly demonstrates that it is—it is all the more true of the church's social
teaching. Because it is necessarily addressed to issues of civic obligation and
its relationship to personal ethics, social teaching is especially vulnerable
to political manipulation, even if the magisterial texts that concern this
topic emphasize again and again that Church is not attempting to push a
particular political agenda, valid for all times and places.
As every pope since Leo XIII has
emphasized, the purpose of social teaching is to state general doctrinal
principles, while only sketching in the most skeletal way their
practical application by government, which is necessarily contingent on
circumstances of time and place. Socialism, however, can never be an answer to
human ills. Leo XIII said it "would rob the lawful possessor, distort the
functions of the State, and create utter confusion in the community," and
he was precisely correct. Pope Pius XI (1922-39) was even clearer. He wrote,
"No one can be at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true
Socialist."
The Religious Left needs to come to terms with certain economic truths. First,
the market economy serves the poor better than forty years of welfare state
failures. Among the vulnerable in any society are the poor, whether in our own
families and communities or in society at large. The best solution to poverty
is a growing economy. It provides jobs, better pay, better working conditions,
more opportunities and a chance for everyone to achieve. A growing economy
requires that the market economy be allowed to function.
Second, the interventionist state
has fallen far short of expectations. In thinking about ways to help the poor,
we must consider the costs and benefits of various strategies. If we turn to
the government as a response of first resort, particular dangers arise.
Government policies create impersonal bureaucracies before which the poor
must grovel. The situation is demeaning.
In the developing world, politics, and
not foreign trade commerce, is a main source of oppression of the poor.
Political systems that do not recognize property rights,
do not permit trade, do not permit entrepreneurship, inflate the currency and
otherwise burden the people with excessive regulation and taxation keep people
in a state of dependency, while empowering an economic elite that is closely
connected to the ruling regime.
Third, the market economy is a
generous institution and permits philanthropy better than any other system.
Historically, the most charitable societies in the world have been the
wealthiest, and the wealthiest societies have also been the most free. When
people have more disposable income, they can invest more to charitable causes.
Only a free economy can generate this kind of wealth, and it requires humane
virtues, not selfishness, to give of oneself regardless of economic conditions.
Prosperity permits people to spend more time in leisure rather than work, which
allows them to spend more time volunteering for community activities and
service to the poor. Only a free economy allows for growing levels of voluntary
leisure time to make this possible. It is these facts that have led free
societies to be the most attentive to the needs of the most vulnerable.
Four, the preferential option for the
poor does not exclude the need to minister to the rich. In the course of a
historic visit to
With this insight, we are recalling a
tradition of thought that long predates the rise of ideologically driven class
envy. An
Introduction to the Devout Life by St. Francis de Sales (1577-1622)
counsels wise investment and service to others. To live a spiritually fulfilled
life requires the exercise of more, not less, care to "make your property
profitable and fruitful." God gives possessions "to cultivate and he
wants us to make them fruitful and profitable. Hence we perform an acceptable
service by taking good care of them. It must be a greater and finer care than
that which world's men have for their property."
But doesn't wealth corrupt? "You can
possess riches without being poisoned by them if you merely keep them in your
home and purse, and not in your heart. To be rich in effect and poor in
affection is a great happiness." The great Saint Francis concludes,
"Let us exercise this gracious gift of preserving and even of increasing
our temporal goods whenever just occasions present themselves."
Perhaps Mother Teresa said it best,
"We have no right to judge the rich…We do not believe in class conflict
but class encounter: where the rich save the poor and the poor save the
rich."
For this society to exist, the Church -- and
all moral individuals -- should condemn those who, in the name of God, would
foment class warfare.
Fr.
Robert A. Sirico is a Catholic priest and president
of the Acton Institute for the Study of Religion
and Liberty in