On January 10, 2024, Pope Francis received in a private audience 15 members of the DIALOP (Transversal Dialogue Project). The delegation included seven members of the Focolare Movement; a group of eight Marxists including Walter Baier, president of the Party of the European Left since December 2022; and Cornelia Hildebrandt of the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Baier and Hildebrandt have significant CVs as far-left leaders. Baier served as chairman of the Austrian Communist Party from 1994 to 2006, and between 2007 and 2022 he was the main coordinator of Transform Europe, a radical left collective. Cornelia Hildebrandt is a writer and thinker from the same political field who, through the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, tried to stimulate dialogue between Marxists and Christians. The Focolare movement itself is a lay Catholic movement founded in 1943 by Silvia Clara Lubich in Trento, Italy. Silvia Lubich was a great devotee of the Franciscan Saint Clare of Assisi. During the meeting, the Pope called for dialogue between Christians and Marxists in order to work for the “common good.”
This meeting had a negative impact on conservative and even moderate Catholic circles, reinforcing speculation about the pope’s “leftism”, leading to positions of resentment and frustration, and even less orthodox comments. Since it is a sensitive subject, like all those which border on competing loyalties, and which involve Heaven and Earth, it must be approached with caution, provided that this caution is not done at the detriment of clarity and truth.
First of all, it should be remembered that papal infallibility is only exercised for Catholics when the Holy Father speaks ex cathedra in matters of faith, morals and customs, because it is in these conditions that he benefits from the supernatural assistance of the Holy Spirit. Therefore, the subject of Pope Francis’ meeting with the laity of the Focolare and the Marxists of the European left neither obliges nor disobligates Catholics from the point of view of any hierarchical obedience.
But the important issue that can and should be discussed freely and honestly is the relationship between Christianity and Marxism. It is necessary to go beyond the surface – the rhetoric of goals – and penetrate deeper into the philosophy and nature of things. It should also not be forgotten that since Marxist regimes have been in place in parts of Europe and the world for several decades, it is possible to see how these regimes have treated and are treating Christians. Such things are sometimes forgotten in the enthusiasm that arises from the bringing together of opposites.
Alasdair Macintyre is a contemporary English thinker who, in assimilating Christianity and Marxism, had no doubt about the presence of multiple influences of the former in the latter. For Macintyre, the philosopher of Capital had carried out a sort of secularization of Christian values, mediated by the dialectic of Hegel and the materialism of Feuerbach.
If we look at the history of thought and the history of revolutions in the West, there is no doubt that Christian utopianism, memorably described in Utopia by Thomas More in the early 16th century, but present even earlier in the millenarian tradition – from The Apocalypse of Saint John to Campanella City of the Sun at Milton lost paradise– has its roots in myths of a lost golden age to be found at the end of time, and in many other aspects of the egalitarian future of utopian socialists. Norman Cohn developed this theme in an exemplary manner in The pursuit of the millennium.
Nor is it difficult to find parallels between the ideals of the Sermon on the Mount – with its exaltation of poverty and detachment from material goods – and the anti-capitalist radicalism found in revolutionary socialist rhetoric. Nor is it difficult to find ethical parallels, both in terms of ideals and declared enemies, between the theology of Christian millenarianism and Marxist political-ideological rhetoric.
But these are similarities that appear on the surface in a simplified existential perspective: common values to fight against inequalities, values of solidarity and community. Deep down, there are differences, and quite profound ones. Most essential is the fact that Marxism is a radical materialist scientism which denies any spirituality or transcendence: it affirms that material reality, as perceived by the senses, is the only real and true reality.
Marx (1818-1883) was a disciple of the radical materialist wing of the Enlightenment and of his contemporary and compatriot Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872), whose anti-religious principles served as the foundation for his anthropology, particularly his Christian worldview . religion. For Feuerbach, religion was nothing other than a product of imagination and feeling, a “limitless subjectivity”, contrary to reason and the nature of things. Thus, God would be nothing other than a product and a projection of the imagination of man who, alone in the world, would reproduce and invent a transcendent imagined and imaginary reality. Like all materialist philosophers, the epistemology of Feuerbach and Marx is based exclusively on sensory perception.
Feuerbach and Marx also insisted on the role of the Christian religion as a servant of established powers; this is how it would have been throughout the ages, whether supporting the Old regime as a reproduction of God’s will on earth, or by promising a future life to the poor and disinherited of this world – illusory and demobilizing compensation for the masses.
Marx’s philosophy is thus based on values and knowledge of the world and of man diametrically opposed to any transcendent religion. In fact, the Church immediately wanted to clarify this contradiction, emphasizing that the Marxist critique of industrial society and the Christian critique of the social injustices it engendered could lead to confusion. The doctrine of the social popes was no different from that of Leo XIII in Rerum Novarum and his successors until John Paul II, who Centesimus Annus took care to confirm and renew the teachings, warnings and condemnations of his predecessors. Having lived in communist Poland, Saint John Paul II knew what he was talking about.
This brings us to the second important aspect that Catholics and all Christians must keep in mind when dealing with Marxists and Communists. The fact is that regimes inspired by Marxism-Leninism, when in power, banned and persecuted religion and religious people. Everywhere since the Soviet revolution (Lenin explicitly ordered a commitment against “all forms of idealism and religion”), “militant atheism” has been taken up by communist regimes, since “atheism was the philosophy consistent with scientific truth.
Although, for tactical and pragmatic reasons, the ban on religion was not enshrined in Soviet constitutions, it was common practice. During the revolution, the 1920s and Stalinism, persecution was the rule and the Orthodox Church paid great tribute in martyrs to the faith in Christ. Also in Spain and Mexico, communists persecuted Catholics, closed churches and murdered bishops, priests and religious. Millions of Christians were killed by communists in the 20th century. In other words, whenever they held power, political or otherwise, Marxists persecuted Christians. They killed Christians in large numbers, from Spain to China, the USSR, Asia and Africa. Only, thanks to subtle propaganda, they managed to forget and reappear with the same ideas in a seemingly intact ideology.
Pope Francis can and must promote cooperation and collaboration of all people of good will, Christian and non-Christian, in the search for the “common good”. But it is important, with regard to Marxists and other radicals on the left (just as on the right, we must be wary of pagan and racist excesses), to know how to distinguish and prevent confusion and syncretism which could mislead Christians in good faith. . faith in ambiguous associations. In such associations, it will be difficult, if not impossible, to find common goals, let alone the “common good”.
