Marx gets Vatican thumbs up

http://beta.thehindu.com/news/international/article37253.ece ^

[kronos77]

Amid the worst recession in generations, Karl Marx, who famously described religion as “the opium of the people”, got a thumbs up from the Vatican overturning a century of Catholic hostility to his creed.

Marx, who predicted that capitalism would be destroyed by its internal contradictions, 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, The Times newspaper said on Thursday.

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

Amid signs of recovery in global financial markets, Christian leaders have flayed the capitalist system for displaying a lack of moral values, arguing that ethical debates needs to be given greater prominence.

Georg Sans, a German-born professor of the history of contemporary philosophy at the pontifical Gregorian University, argues that Marx’s work remained especially relevant today as mankind was seeking “a new harmony” between its needs and the natural environment.

The report quoted Prof. Sans as saying that Marx’s theories may help to explain the enduring issue of income inequality within capitalist societies.

[Crolis]

Thanks for the title to that encyclical. I’ll be reading it later.

[Running On Empty]

Thank you for your post.

The Latin title for that encyclical is Divini Redemptoris, as poster Campion was good enough to point out.

Atheistic communism still is, of course, the same subject matter of the encyclical.