CNN Exposes Socialist Catholic Archbishops

CNN’s recent story about Catholic Archbishops is purportedly about their lavish homes, but in reality the story is about the sometimes lavish homes they live in, not the ones that they own. This distinction is a fine one, but it demonstrates what most Catholic clergy share in common: by and large they do not live in privately owned property. In many cases they take vows that absolutely disallow the ownership of private property.

This exposes a pre-Marxist socialist principle, recalled this past Sunday in the multiplication of the loaves, called sharing. Catholic clergy and religious take sharing to the extreme of rejecting the binary between a religious private sphere and a secular public sector.

This only adds to the evidence that property need not be private to remain personal and that the personal is most like the human person when it is shared in public.

On this reading, CNN is in fact sharing a truth more scandalous than a swanky crib: they are exposing the radically communitarian and communal way of life those who lead the Roman Catholic follow, warts and all.