Communism/Socialism No Friend of Family or Religion

08-25-2024Weekly ReflectionFr. Leonard F. Villa

“Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist” Communism is intrinsically wrong. Pope Pius XI

A pundit, Joseph Sobran, once remarked: Liberalism is really piecemeal socialism, and socialism always attacks three basic social institutions: religion, the family, and private property: religion, because it offers a rival authority to the state; the family, because it means a rival loyalty to the state; and property, because it means material independence of the state. (Note: Liberalism is a word that has had many meanings in history. What passes for liberalism today in the political realm is what Sobran describes as piecemeal socialism. In the past liberalism was also used to describe unrestricted or lassez-faire-capitalism where profit was the highest priority. Unrestricted capitalism was also rejected by the Church’s social teaching.)

Other problems with socialism are its materialism, its attacks on private property, confiscatory taxation, and an all-powerful centralized bureaucratic State. This opposes a cardinal principle of Catholic social teaching: subsidiarity. Catholic social teaching emphasizes the importance of what are sometimes called “meditating institutions” that stand between the individual and the state. These institutions—families, churches, small businesses, trade unions, voluntary associations—can be threatened by both the state and the market. The Catechism defines subsidiarity as the principle that "a community of a higher order should not interfere in the internal life of a community of a lower order, depriving the latter of its functions, but rather should support it in case of need and help to coordinate its activity with the activities of the rest of society, always with a view to the common good.” (CCC 1883) The definition is actually a good one. It is succinct and complete as much as one sentence definitions can be, but let us take a closer look.

All of the church’s social doctrine flows from the recognition that every human person has a life and dignity that society must respect, protect and foster. Being social creatures, it starts with the family. From the family outward, we develop groups, associations, relationships and institutions that make it possible to achieve social growth and to function as a civil society. Eventually, larger or “higher” orders develop, usually in the form of governmental jurisdictions, but sometimes powerful businesses and economic structures can develop. The principle of subsidiarity tells us that these higher orders should not interfere with what the “lower” order can achieve. Depriving these more local orders of their ability to function and make decisions can be a grave injustice.

With regard to the family: Since at least the early 1800s, when the effort began in earnest, …radicals have sought to undermine the natural-traditional-Biblical family—the Western Judaeo-Christian model anchored in a man and woman as parents of a household. The steady assault on this timeless model has been a long march that culminated in the chaos of the sexual revolution of the 1960s and in the antics of the nature-redefiners of today’s secular left, which employs bullying, state coercion and demonization to forcibly redefine everything from marriage and parenting to biological sex (or as they now call it “gender”), and whether a child in the womb is even considered a life. Marx and Engels in The Communist Manifesto wrote of the “abolition of the family,” which even in 1848, they could flaunt as an “infamous proposal of the communists.” What, precisely, they meant by that is a complicated subject. But complexities aside, there is no question that efforts to redefine the family structure have been long at work, from Marx and Engels to sordid figures such as Vladimir Lenin, Leon Trotsky, Alexandra Kollontai, Margaret Sanger, Margaret Mead, Wilhelm Reich, Herbert Marcuse, Betty Friedan, Kate Millet, and assorted ‘60s New Left radicals from Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn to Mark Rudd and Tom Hayden. They included groups ranging from the Bolsheviks to the Frankfurt School of cultural Marxists to the Planned Parenthood eugenics “progressives” to the Weather Underground and many more. Paul Kengor https://www.faithandfreedom.com/socialism-attacks-the-family-just-as-its-inventors-intended/

According to Catholic teaching the nuclear family, father, mother, and children is the building block of the Church and society. The Compendium of Catholic Social teaching has the following:

209. The importance and centrality of the family with regard to the person and society is repeatedly underlined by Sacred Scripture. “It is not good that the man should be alone” (Gen 2:18). From the texts that narrate the creation of man (cf. Gen 1:26-28, 2:7-24) there emerges how — in God's plan — the couple constitutes “the first form of communion between persons”. Eve is created like Adam as the one who, in her otherness, completes him (cf. Gen 2:18) in order to form with him “one flesh” (Gen 2:24; cf. Mt 19:5-6). At the same time, both are involved in the work of procreation, which makes them co-workers with the Creator: “Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth” (Gen 1:28). The family is presented, in the Creator's plan, as “the primary place of ‘humanization' for the person and society” and the “cradle of life and love”.

214. The priority of the family over society and over the State must be affirmed. The family in fact, at least in its procreative function, is the condition itself for their existence. With regard to other functions that benefit each of its members, it proceeds in importance and value the functions that society and the State are called to perform. The family possesses inviolable rights and finds its legitimization in human nature and not in being recognized by the State. The family, then, does not exist for society or the State, but society and the State exist for the family. (emphasis added) Every social model that intends to serve the good of man must not overlook the centrality and social responsibility of the family. In their relationship to the family, society and the State are seriously obligated to observe the principle of subsidiarity. In virtue of this principle, public authorities may not take away from the family tasks which it can accomplish well by itself or in free association with other families; on the other hand, these same authorities have the duty to sustain the family, ensuring that it has all the assistance that it needs to fulfill properly its responsibilities.

215. The family has its foundation in the free choice of the spouses to unite themselves in marriage, in respect for the meaning and values of this institution that does not depend on man but on God himself: “For the good of the spouses and their offspring as well as of society, this sacred bond no longer depends on human decision alone. For God himself is the author of marriage and has endowed it with various benefits and purposes”. Therefore, the institution of marriage — “intimate partnership of life and love ... established by the Creator and endowed by him with its own proper laws” — is not the result of human conventions or of legislative prescriptions but acquires its stability from divine disposition. It is an institution born, even in the eyes of society, “from the human act by which the partners mutually surrender themselves to each other”, and is founded on the very nature of that conjugal love which, as a total and exclusive gift of person to person, entails a definitive commitment expressed by mutual, irrevocable and public consent. This commitment means that the relationships among family members are marked also by a sense of justice and, therefore, by respect for mutual rights and duties.

216. No power can abolish the natural right to marriage or modify its traits and purpose. Marriage in fact is endowed with its own proper, innate and permanent characteristics. Notwithstanding the numerous changes that have taken place in the course of the centuries in the various cultures and in different social structures and spiritual attitudes, in every culture there exists a certain sense of the dignity of the marriage union, although this is not evident everywhere with the same clarity. This dignity must be respected in its specific characteristics and must be safeguarded against any attempt to undermine it. Society cannot freely legislate with regard to the marriage bond by which the two spouses promise each other fidelity, assistance and acceptance of children, but it is authorized to regulate its civil effects. 218. In its “objective” truth, marriage is ordered to the procreation and education of children. The marriage union, in fact, gives fullness of life to that sincere gift of self, the fruit of which is children, who in turn are a gift for the parents, for the whole family and all of society. Nonetheless, marriage was not instituted for the sole reason of procreation]. Its indissoluble character and its value of communion remain even when children, although greatly desired, do not arrive to complete conjugal life. In this case, the spouses “can give expression to their generosity by adopting abandoned children or performing demanding services for others”. (emphasis added)

50. The Church places herself concretely at the service of the Kingdom of God above all by announcing and communicating the Gospel of salvation and by establishing new Christian communities. Moreover, she “serves the Kingdom by spreading throughout the world the ‘Gospel values' which are an expression of the Kingdom and which help people to accept God's plan. It is true that the inchoate reality of the Kingdom can also be found beyond the confines of the Church among peoples everywhere, to the extent that they live ‘Gospel values' and are open to the working of the Spirit who breathes when and where he wills (cf. Jn 3:8). But it must immediately be added that this temporal dimension of the Kingdom remains incomplete unless it is related to the Kingdom of Christ present in the Church and straining towards eschatological fullness”. It follows from this, in particular, that the Church is not to be confused with the political community and is not bound to any political system. In fact, the political community and the Church are autonomous and independent of each other in their own fields, and both are, even if under different titles, “devoted to the service of the personal and social vocation of the same human beings”. Indeed, it can be affirmed that the distinction between religion and politics and the principle of religious freedom constitute a specific achievement of Christianity and one of its fundamental historical and cultural contributions.