The Church and Communism
On the brink of the Second World War, March, 19, 1937, the Feast of St. Joseph, patron of the Church, Pope Pius XI published his judgment of Communism (closely following upon his condemnation of National Socialism) in the Encyclical Divini Redemptoris: “Communism is intrinsically wrong.”
His predecessor Pius IX, whom he cites, had already denounced Communism as “a doctrine most opposed to the very natural law. For if this doctrine were accepted, the complete destruction of everyone’s laws, government, property, and even of human society itself would follow” (Qui Pluribus, November 9, 1846, §16). At this stage of the Church’s analysis, the Communist doctrine of the ownership of property in common, to the detriment of private property, is condemned as contrary to the natural law.
Goods Held in Common a Perversion?
It should be remarked that private property is not absolutely required (simpliciter, the Scholastics say) by human nature, but only for a better condition of life (ad melius esse). Indeed, with private property everyone is better served and things better and more easily administered than with property held in common, because man takes a greater interest in his own good than in the common good. This is due to the limits of his nature when grace is not there to lift it above its natural capacity.
Nevertheless, since all Christians are not saints, private property is still required by the natural law even in a Christian society. It was by grace that the “saints” of Jerusalem in the first century, and nowadays persons in the religious state, succeed in renouncing the possession of private property. Communism, which seeks to impose this exceptional state upon everyone, is thus a kind of angelism, a naturalistic caricature of grace. This graceless angelism must bring about the ruin of a society, which is not and cannot be wholly “angelized,” even by grace, in a Christian polity.
The historical realizations of communal property in Christian civil society like the Jesuit “reductions” in Paraguay or the French missions in Texas were merely temporary, destined to initiate the indigenous peoples in the cultivation of land and related skills and arts in order to lead them progressively to the management of private property, which fosters initiative and organization in everyone. These very particular experiments, limited in time and space, were rather a “school of work and ownership” than a model of a stable, established society.
Earlier Condemnations of Communism
Pope Pius IX came back to this error several times, condemning it in his Encyclical Noscitis et Nobiscum of December 8, 1849; in his Allocution Singulari Quadam of December 9, 1854; and in his Encyclical Quanto Conficiamur Moerore of August 10, 1863, documents referenced in the Syllabus of Errors. The blessed Pontiff stigmatized it as “the criminal systems of the new socialism and communism” (1849), while not failing to reprove also “that thoroughly insatiable passion for power and possessions that overrides all the rules of justice and honesty and never ceases by every means possible to amass and greedily heap up wealth” (1863), by which is undoubtedly designated economic liberalism and its inhumane methods.
Pius XI also quotes the denunciations made by Leo XIII, Pius IX’s successor, of
that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread over all the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy, no longer seek the shelter of secret meetings, but, openly and boldly marching forth in the light of day, strive to bring to a head what they have long been planning–the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever....They leave nothing untouched or whole which by both human and divine laws has been wisely decreed for the health and beauty of life. (Quod Apostolici, December 18, 1878)
Then, in Rerum Novarum of May 15, 1891, Leo XIII renewed the condemnation of “socialists” who “are striving to do away with private property, and contend that individual possessions should become the common property of all, to be administered by the State or by municipal bodies.” Founding his reasoning upon “the principle of private ownership,” which is based upon human nature, the personal nature of work, and “the common opinion of mankind” as well as the rights of families, the Pontiff affirms “the inviolability of private property.”
This judgment, however, must be understood with the nuances adduced in the common opinion of Catholic theologians. They teach that the usage of property is private in the ordinary circumstances of life for the aforementioned reasons, but that the earth was given by the Creator absolutely for the good of all men, and thus private property cannot prevent that goal. On the contrary, it should favor it, which means that the private usage of goods must be directed towards the common good—a demanding and absolute truth indeed.
The Encyclical Divini Redemptoris
At that point, Communism was just a subversive theory. With the Russian Revolution of 1917, it became a practice, of which Pius XI was to denounce solemnly “the principles and tactics,” having previously condemned its doctrine in several texts: Miserentissimus Redemptor (May 8, 1928), Quadragesimo Anno (May 15, 1931), etc. The recent persecutions against the Church in Mexico and Spain impelled the Pope to analyze the methods of “the most persistent enemies of the Church, who from Moscow are directing the struggle against Christian civilization” (§5).
However (and which may surprise a reader discovering the Encyclical Divini Redemptoris today), Pius XI condemns Communism, not essentially because it is atheistic or destructive of private property, but, as Jean Madiran astutely observed (La vieillesse du monde [DMM, 1976]), because it is a practical application of dialectic materialism and a method for enslaving the masses through a reign of hatred and fear.
The classless society envisaged by the Communists, the Pope affirms, is but a counterfeit of the redemption of the lowly. “A pseudo-ideal of justice, of equality and fraternity in labor impregnates all its doctrine and activity with a deceptive mysticism” (§8).
The theory of “dialectical and historical materialism” articulated by Karl Marx and completed by Lenin, is directed towards accelerating the conflicts that conduct society to an earthly paradise by means of human action. “Hence they endeavor to sharpen the antagonisms which arise between the various classes of society” (§9). This is what is supremely contrary to charity, which unites the classes.
Finally, Communism “strips man of his liberty, robs human personality of all its dignity, and removes all the moral restraints that check the eruptions of blind impulse” (§10). The woman is thrust into the workplace and the care of children devolves upon civil society (§11). To the economic failures the Pope describes is joined a cruel and absolute power, reigning by means of terror, which reduces countless individuals to slavery ( §23). Thirty-five years before Solzhenitsyn, the Pope denounced the regime of espionage and the Gulag, the reign of fear.
Systematic Lying
Before pronouncing his condemnation, the Pope denounces the deceitful but all too effective methods of Communist propaganda: “trickery of various forms, hiding its real designs behind ideas that in themselves are good and attractive,” like “peace,” even as “they have recourse to unlimited armaments”; or “they invite Catholics to collaborate with them in the realm of so-called humanitarianism and charity”; or with periodic mitigations of anti-religious legislation (§57).
Now Pius XI can pronounce his grave and concise judgment:
See to it, Venerable Brethren, that the Faithful do not allow themselves to be deceived! Communism is intrinsically wrong, and no one who would save Christian civilization may collaborate with it in any undertaking whatsoever (§58).
The Remedies Proposed by the Church
As the guardian of the natural law by reason of its spiritual ends, the Church should not only condemn Communism’s perverse practices, but also propose remedies. All the Popes we have cited did so. Following are the remedies set forth by Pius XI; for him it is a matter of putting into practice the doctrine of the Church in the face of Communist ideology (§39).
The poor and rich alike must practice detachment from material goods, but the rich will also practice the works of charity and “social justice” (§51), which include the establishment of public or private insurance of all kinds, and the employers’ fixing just wages by “organizing institutions the object of which is to prevent competition incompatible with fair treatment for workers” (§53). This can only be achieved, given the disappearance of traditional guilds, by “a body of professional and inter-professional organizations, built on solidly Christian foundations, working together to effect, under forms adapted to different places and circumstances, what has been called the Corporation” (§54). This will be achieved with interprofessional labor agreements and without Communism.
The final remedy proposed by Pius XI was to expose the deceptions of Communism (§57). In this the Pope was not to be obeyed; rather, the clergy in the period after the war spoke only of collaboration with the Communists! The Church became infected with the idea of baptizing Communism, which led straight to the scandalous refusal to condemn Communism during the Second Vatican Council. The reader may profitably consult the chapters “The Battle of Mortain” and “In the Turmoil of the Council” in our biography of Marcel Lefebvre (2002; English version: Angelus Press, 2004).
Conciliar Rome’s Complicity with Moscow
Concerning Conciliar Rome’s complicity with Moscow, Archbishop Lefebvre used to say: “The Council, which had given itself the responsibility of discerning the “signs of the times,” was condemned by Moscow to keeping silence on the most obvious and the most monstrous of the Signs of this time!” (They Have Uncrowned Him, p.215). But John XXIII in his Encyclical Pacem in Terris of April 11, 1963, had already absolved Communism of every accusation by asserting:
Besides, who can deny the possible existence of good and commendable elements in these undertakings, elements which do indeed conform to the dictates of right reason, and are an expression of man’s lawful aspirations? (§159)
In light of this one readily understands that the attempt by Bishop Geraldo de Proença Sigaud and Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre to have the Council condemn Communism was doomed to failure. The petition signed by 332 of the Council Fathers (ultimately by 454) which the two bishops submitted to the secretariat of Vatican II on November 9, 1964, was conveniently “forgotten in a drawer” (Archbishop Lefebvre, Against the Heresies, p.329).
The Vatican’s Dubious Policy of Ostpolitik
The scandalous silence of the Council led the Holy See to conduct its dubious Ostpolitik during the Seventies, a politics of compromise with the Communist governments of Eastern Europe by the appointment of bishops who were collaborators with the Communists and former “Peace priests.” We touch on this briefly in the above-mentioned biography, pages 503-505.
Cardinal Casaroli, the mainspring of Ostpolitik, explained his method:
Even if the other party is less sincere, for tackling the problem without any complex, an attentive study of the situation is required, as well as a complete honesty, bolstered against the risk of naiveté. Great patience is especially required, and raised voices or threats are out of place. [We base our position] on the fundamental rights of man without refusing to consider the whole in which the religious problem is situated in order to achieve practical, and even provisional, solutions when it is not possible for the time being to go any further. (Conference at Vienne, France, Fideliter, No. 67, November 1978, p.52)
An assessment of Ostpolitik needs to be made. The fall of the Iron Curtain in 1989 challenges our presuppositions: was it the fruit of Ostpolitik? Did it result in freedom for the Church everywhere? We leave to others the task of justifying a response, which, in our opinion, must be rather in the negative.
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