It would be really, really nice if conservative Catholics read the words of this Pope as carefully and thoughtfully as they studied the comments of the previous one. He was frequently misquoted and misrepresented, too, but back then they made a point of looking past the headlines to what he was really saying. Ah, those halcyon days of old. Pope Francis isnt saying Communism is the essence of Christianity, or that Communists please Jesus. Look at the full quote: The flag of the poor is Christianity. Communists have *stolen* that flag. He goes on to point out that Communists will say that helping the poor is Communistic, but theyre twenty centuries too late. Christianity isnt Communism; instead, Communists are trying to act like Christians. This is the nature of his joke--and notice that he is said to have laughed as he said this, in case it wasnt obvious that he was being tongue-in-cheek--that we can tell Communists that theyre actually Christians. Nietzsche said the same thing when he accused secular utilitarians like the blockhead (his word) John Stuart Mill of being an inconsistent Christian for trying to retain a Christian morality. Jacques Maritain (citing Toynbee) specifically called Marxism a Christian heresy for doing much the same thing: Removing the metaphysics of Christianity while trying to retain its social justice vision. It is a bastard child of Christianity, and thus Marxists, too, are inconsistent Christians, in that sense. Pope Benedict XVI spoke much the same way in Spe Salvi when he talked about Marxism as being a continuation of the heresy of immanetizing the eschaton. No one was horrified then, and, to be fair, this may have been because Benedict was much more deliberate and scholarly in his language. Nevertheless, it is really ill-befitting of Catholics to take such an uncharitable reading of Francis--unworthy of them both as sheep being disrespectful to their shepherd, and unworthy of them as worshipers of the Logos. One of the most important messages for the Western world is that its major ideologies are Christian heresies. Chesterton was pointing this out at the beginning of this century, and it still holds today. Pope Francis is simply continuing that witness, and, in the process, reclaiming for the Church what is rightfully ours: The flag of the poor (a metaphor, by the way, that really deserves some reflection).
Posted on: Mon, 30 Jun 2014 03:09:42 +0000
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