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Thoughts on An Encyclical
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 25 October 2024
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“Pope Denounces Communism.” But we must read his words carefully, and see just what it is he denounces and why he denounces it, however painful and humbling may be the process. And then we must ask ourselves Whether the monster against which he so insistently warns us is not London or Birmingham, or even Nazi Berlin or Fascist Milan, as well as Moscow or Barcelona, U.S.A. as well as U.S.S.R., whether the thing called Atheistic Communism is not to be found among avowed Catholics as well as professed Communists. We must ask ourselves not only whether our industrial-capitalist world is not guilty of having brought about the thing which the Pope calls Atheistic Communism, but further whether it is not guilty precisely of the very evils of Atheistic Communism itself in so far as these fall under the anathemas of the Church as they are expressed in the text of the Encyclical Divini Redemptoris.
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- Copyright © 1937 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 cf. Etienne Gilson in Blackfriars, June 1936: “The ‘world’ is not nature; it is nature seeking to be independent of God, to become some thing autonomous, self-contained and self-sufficient”.
2 “Hence the critique of those whose minds are fixed in academic ways of thought nearly always misses the point. We are not dealing with a system of thinking which claims its confirmation in the identities of being, but with one which claims its confirmation in action and practice. Moreover it does not confirm itself by referring back to traditional waya of action or established practice; it claims its verification in the unity of thought with revolutionary practice”.—Bernard Kelly, Blackfriars, January 1937.
3 Blackfriars, March 1935.
4 The Crimean War: The Decay of Religious Authority (Articles in the New York Tribune, reproduced in the Gollancz Handbook of Marxism. PP. 172–179.)
5 V. I. Lenin, The Teachings of Karl Marx (Handbook of Marxism, P. 546).
6 See especially the chapter on The Force Theory in Engel's Anti-Dühring.
7 Christians and the Class-Struggle, by Bernard Kelly, Blackfriars, Jan. 1937. Berdyaev's Christianity and Class War (Sheed & Ward, 1933) should also be read.
8 Blackfriars, May 1937.
9 Marx, Karl, Die Deutsche Ideologie, Vol. II. Google Scholar
10 J. Middleton Murry, The New Man in Marxism (Chapman and Hall, 1935). We are well aware that Mr. Murry is no “orthodox” interpreter of Marxism, but his exposition of Marx in this particular seems to us penetrating and unexceptionable.
11 By industrialism is here to be understood the historical and existing reality; we are not here concerned with the possibilities of utilizing machinery and scientific technique in ideal forms of society conformably with the preponderating exigencies of Christian humanism.
12 cf. Quadragesirno Anno:“The immense number of prortylesa wage-earners on the one hand, and the abundant riches of the fortunate few on the other, is an unanswerable argument that the earthly goods so abundantly produced in this age of industrialism are far from rightly distributed and equitably shared among the various classes of men”.
13 Divini Redemptoris.
14 e.g., in such a masterly work as Eigentumsrecht nach dem hl. Thomas von Aquin by Dr. Alexander Horváth, O.P. (Graz, 1929.)
15 This is a delicate way of calling it theft—though not, of course, deliberate theft.
16 Statement from the Secretariate-General of the Sodalities of Our Lady in Rome, reproduced in The Catholic Herald, 14–5–37.