Obviously, the pope meant Communism, the Marxist form, but I felt the need to clarify to demonstrate that the word itself needn’t be so terror inducing. What to do then with the pope’s comments? Well, I would begin by turning once more to Dorothy Day:
We stand at the present time with the Communists, who are also opposing war […] The Sermon on the Mount is our Christian manifesto.
A Jewish convert said to me once, “The Communists hate God, and the Catholics love Him. But they are both facing Him, directing their attention to Him. They are not indifferent. Communists are not in so bad a case as those who are indifferent. It is the lukewarm that He will spew out of His mouth.”
We need to change the system. We need to overthrow, not the government, as the authorities are always accusing the Communists ‘of conspiring to teach [us] to do,’ but this rotten, decadent, putrid industrial capitalist system which breeds such suffering in the whited sepulcher of New York.
Here we must see that Communists and Catholics may share aims (such as opposing a war). Further, they may work together in the event that the cause in question is some lesser good (protesting a conflict, feeding the poor, etc.). Here we find the root of the pope’s point. When he says that “the communists [perhaps better “Communists”] think like Christians” he sounds just like Dorothy Day above. Now we must ask: with the horrible sufferings of so many under Marxist (recall that “Communism” has never been achieved) governments, how can these two say that “Communists are not in so bad a case as those who are indifferent?”
Again, Dorothy Day’s case is instructive. She was involved in socialist activity early in life before her conversion, and when she took to the streets to read the Psalms and labor among the poor, she found the socialists, the Communists there, not the “capitalists,” not the business executives. In the streets and slums, living with and caring for the forgotten, she found not the mainstream of American culture, but those whose political ideology put them outside of it. This may sound strange, but it really isn’t so. Marx was something of a notorious moralist (yes, believe it or not!). Whittaker Chambers, even after he defected from Communist espionage to American values, spoke highly of the Communist commitment to the poor and marginalized; in fact, it’s a large part of what drew him into the movement in the first place.
The situation is thus rather complicated. On the one hand, yes, it is entirely true that Marxist regimes have killed lots of people (often by unsavory means). On the other hand, it is true that, throughout the 20th century, Communists and other radicals were at the forefront of caring for the poor. The situation, of course, becomes more complicated when you realize (as Dorothy Day did) that our own system (capitalism) has killed many people of its own.
Now, I’m no Soviet apologist, and I doubt Pope Francis is either. I think he is simply a man who recognizes, like Dorothy Day, that often it was (and in some places remains) Communists and the like who are at the forefront of care for the poor. Moreover, I think he is a man, who, if occasionally naïve, recognizes that capitalism has not been a cake walk for many (something that, as a Latin American, he knows firsthand). Besides, it is true that, even as many (rightfully) criticize Marxist regimes, Marx’s starting point was a desire to improve the conditions of the poor and marginalized. That is something to be respected; it is a point of commonality between Christians and Communists (read: “Marxists”).
What we might wish to do, instead of seeking to point fingers and find reasons to disagree with the Holy Father (and there are reasons to criticize him), is to open our hearts to his words, to get out among the marginalized (something I fail at each and every day—heck, I’m writing this sitting on a bed in my apartment). We might learn to learn with Dorothy Day, to develop understanding even with ideological opponents. For, if we Catholics are lacking in love compared to Communists, is it they we ought to criticize first, or ourselves?
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