Posted on 05/24/2013 8:07:53 AM PDT by Alex Murphy
Christians talk about Christ but today they mean Marx.
As I told my DRE recently, "Don't tell me all these Bishops who can understand the 'nuance' of how natural family planning is NOT birth control, can't understand market economics."
He just shook his head and agreed with me....
WE cannot forget that that David Ricardo and Karl Marx looked upon men and women as purely economic beings. Neither is compatible with Christian thought. The only advantage of economic liberalism over Marxism is that it does not idolize the state. It does leave room for intermediate social institutions. However, it leads to cartels that join with the state to reduce the power of such institutions.
The Catholic Church has always spoken out against socialism; Popes of the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries wrote encyclicals against it. The concepts of private property and rights to keeping one’s wages were central themes. While it is easy for haters to single out the relationships the Church had with some right-wing governments in early twentieth century Europe, that opposition to socialist (and by extension, Bolshevism) was key.
The Christian people of Europe knew what they were facing in the 1930s; Stalin had demonstrated it for them in the Ukraine (and Spain). Many decided that they would at least have freedom to worship and private property rights with fascism; the United States fought on the side that would deprive them of those rights. For eastern Europe, those rights would not return for nearly 50 years.
However, my concern isn't really with the RCC, per se. I am not Catholic, for one thing. For another, my own Church, or rather denomination, the Southern Baptists, have been making noises that I do not like lately.
The institutions may waver or stray, nut God's Word is constant.
In the case of the Catholic Church, Americans (of all faiths) have to separate what the Vatican’s positions are from those taken by the American Catholic Church; the latter often pushes/magnifies those stances which it thinks will be palatable to the larger public, while ignoring/dulling those messages that would make it clear that Catholics can never truly assimilate in an American culture determine to eliminate rules, norms, or morality.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.