THE CHURCH AND THE COMMUNIST STATE: THE IMPOSSIBLE COEXISTENCE

By Prof. Plinio Correa de Oliveira

THE CENTRAL QUESTION POSED BY THIS ESSAY

As is well known, it is possible to have a Communist regime in which the Church is allowed to continue functioning, but with only a minimum amount of freedom. An example of such a situation is provided by Poland.

This raises a question. Is it legitimate for a Catholic in the West to view as a morally acceptable possibility the imposition of such a Communist regime in his own nation?

There is no way of avoiding this question. It is, on the one hand, certainly possible that for political reasons a Communist regime may grant this marginal freedom to the Church for a considerable period of time as in the case of Poland. It is also possible, on the other hand, that the nations of the West may be forced to choose in the not‑too‑distant future between the lesser of two evils: nuclear warfare and Communist domination.

If it is licit for the Church to accept a partial liberty under Communist domination, perhaps the lesser of the two evils may be to permit the victory of Marxism to avoid the hecatomb of atomic war. But if this coexistence represents a grave risk of complete or almost complete extirpation of the faith, the case is different. Then, to accept the struggle against Marxism would be the lesser evil, for the loss of the faith is a greater evil than the destruction of everything that an atomic war could touch.

How imminent, how palpable this question is! Consider the photograph on the front cover of this magazine. It shows a Communist demonstration in front of the Cathedral in Milan which occurred during the recent Italian elections.

This scene, situated in the nation which is the very seat of the Church, brings the Church and Communism into a tragic proximity. Who can fail to grasp the direction and import of such a scene?

Yet there is only one solution to the central question we have raised, and it is argued convincingly by Plinio Correa de Oliveira in his essay, "The Church and the Communist State, the Impossible Coexistence."

AUTHOR'S PREFACE

When this study was published for the first time in August of 1963, the propaganda and diplomacy of Communism were making ever‑increasing efforts to establish a regime of peaceful coexistence between the capitalist and communist worlds. At that time, a new set of relations between the East and the West was only beginning to emerge from the period of the Cold War.

The special targets of the "pacifistic" Soviet effort were the two great pillars of resistance to Communism: in the material sphere, the United States, and in the spiritual sphere, the Catholic Church.

The propaganda directed by Moscow against the United States employed useful innocents ‑ of an innocence at times contestable, but of an indisputable utility ‑ to spread an atmosphere of sentimental and pacifistic optimism, which surreptitiously led Americans to forget the experience of the past and to hope for a definitive reconciliation with the smiling Soviet leaders of the post‑Stalinist era.

This same atmosphere was spread in the bosom of the Church, carried out in the first place by groups of theologians and men of action, some of whom were ingenuous and others declaredly leftist. The illusion that a truly peaceful coexistence was possible between the Church and the Communist regimes continued to gain ground, in spite of the fact that the anti‑religious campaign proceeded with full rigor throughout the Communist world.

This study was written in order to create as many obstacles as possible in Catholic circles to this deceitful "pacifistic" maneuver of Moscow.

* * *

From that time until now, over the course of the years, editions of this work have been published one after another: nine in Portuguese, one in German, eleven in Spanish, three in French, one in Hungarian, four in English, two in Italian, and one in Polish, for a total of 144,000 copies, not counting its complete transcription in more than thirty newspapers and magazines in eleven different countries.

At the same time, events developed on the international scene. And as these events manifest themselves now, they impose the following conclusion: the “pacifistic” efforts of Moscow have accumulated, managing to work immense transformations and attaining to a large extent the goals at which they were aimed.

The "detente" promoted by Nixon and Kissinger between the West and the Communist nations continues obstinately. The Vatican is also "relaxing tensions" in a most impressive way in respect to its relations with the governments of Moscow and the various satellite nations. At the same time, ecumenism has provided the instrumentality for establishing increasingly frequent relations between the Catholic Church and the schismatic church. ("Orthodox") subordinated to Moscow.

As milestones of this diplomatic and religious rapprochement between the Church and the Communist world, it is not superfluous to call to mind some great events: the omission of any censure of Communism by the Second Vatican Council; the agreements of the Vatican with Yugoslavia, Hungary, Poland, Czechoslovakia, and East Germany; the Apostolic Letter Octogesima Adveniens; the difficulties between Cardinal Slipyi and the Catholics of the Ukrainian Rite and the Holy See; the dismissal of Cardinal Mindszenty from the archiepiscopal See of Esztergom; and the signing by the Vatican of the Helsinki accords.

Distinct from the twofold "detente" (Moscow-Washington and Moscow‑Vatican) but like it is the ferment that is spreading within the more flexible political spheres of Western and Eastern Europe, in favor of "convergence." As everyone knows, this tendency, which is expressed on different levels and which bears various labels, is aimed at bringing about the adoption of the same socio‑economic regime in all nations. Such a regime would fall somewhere between one based on individual property and one imposing collective property. If such a tendency succeeds in prevailing, the non‑communist world will have taken an immense step toward the left. And the more "ductile" part of the Communist world will perhaps have taken a tiny step toward the regime of private property. Such a solution would permit one to perceive the advent of the day when the nations so "converged" would take another "convergent" step toward the part of the world which is irreducibly Communist. In this way, they would virtually arrive at Communism. The future will show that the various stages of "convergence" are nothing more than so many stages in the march toward the most extreme and radical pole of Communism.

All of this is so, be it understood, if Providence does not bring to a halt this immense process by which the world is being conquered by Communism, but we are certain that Providence will intervene.

When this panorama is considered as a whole, it gives us an overwhelming vision of the escalation of Communist power in the world. And it imposes on us a question: Are there still other aspects of this escalation to be considered?

It would be impossible not to mention three of them‑ a) there is a malaise between Western Europe and the United States that gravely threatens the Atlantic alliance; b) the economy of the West is apparently being eroded by an economic and financial crisis, which is confused in its causes and in its manifestations; c) finally, in another order of facts the military power of Russia is growing increasingly: while the international influence of the United States is withdrawing everywhere as it permits its military power to be overtaken or surpassed by the Russians.

If anyone had dared to forecast such calamities in the year that this study was first published, he would have found very few people who would have believed him. And the majority of the people today, face to face with these incontestable facts, do not recognize them as being surprising, much less calamitous.

That is perhaps the worst of the calamities ‑ the torpor of the good.

* * *

Under the circumstances, what is the good of this new edition of a work which calls us to struggle against an adversary whose final victory already appears, even before it is consummated, to be irreversible to so many pusillanimous spirits.

I advise certain kinds of people not to read this essay. It was not written for compliant mentalities who worship the "fait accompli," nor for slothful and fearful persons who view effort and risk as an evil which they are never disposed to face. Still less is it for the ambitious who try to guess the trend of events so that they may perceive before whom they must bow down in order to rise more rapidly in wealth and power.

The ones who will most especially waste their time reading this essay are the men without faith, who do not believe in God and who consider the course of history, in epochs of catastrophe and decadence, to be exclusively subject to blind social and economic forces, or to the personalities, both insipid and monstrous, who at those times appear on the crest of events.

The persons in these various categories are not prepared to give due weight to the fact that public opinion was mysteriously put to sleep, but by no means conquered, by Soviet propaganda. Today it continues to be just as absolutely true as it was in 1963 that Communism has never shown itself to be the majority position in free and honest national elections.1

Accordingly, the thirteen years that have elapsed since 1963 have seen a pertinacious and general rejection Communism in the West. Add to this the fact that inconformity with Communism, intact in the West, has done nothing but grow behind the Iron Curtain during these same thirteen years. The manifestations of this fact are so numerous and so notorious that I dispense myself from commenting on them.

In summation, then, Communism has power, gold, and propaganda at its service. And it has not ceased to grow among certain corrupt elites. But with the multitudes, the case is different, for, on the one hand, Communism does not win them over, and, on the other hand, it loses them. In the face of these facts, the power of Communism, which is as formidable as a giant, allows its feet of clay to show through as being quite bare.

Only men of faith, who do not permit themselves to be deceived by the whirlwind of publicity raised up around the supposed Communist omnipotence, see with full clarity that those feet are made of clay. They believe in God, confide in the Virgin, and are firmly disposed to enter into the struggle against the giant, having an unshakable certainty that the final victory belongs to them.

One may hope that such men, who know how to see that the feet of the colossus are of clay, will trample on those feet. This essay was written for such men. By proving the impossibility of coexistence between the Church and the Communist regimes, this work aims to help them to solidify themselves in a position of absolute rejection of the Communist onslaughts. And it constitutes a stimulus for them, in ever growing numbers, to attack this terribly great and ridiculously weak adversary. We repeat: Since they are fighting for the Cause of God, they will have the help of Heaven with them, and will be able, with the help of the Virgin, to renew the face of the Earth.

‑ Plinio Correa de Oliveira

* * *

Among those persons interested in the problem of the relation between the Church and the State, I believe there are those who will receive with understanding some reflections on a modern aspect of this problem, that is, the freedom of the Church in a Communist State.

Before taking up this matter, it seems necessary to define the natural limits of this essay. It is a study of the question of whether peaceful coexistence between the Church and the Communist regime is licit in states where this regime prevails.

This theme should not be confused with another ‑ that of peaceful coexistence on the international plane of different states living under different political, economic, or social regimes. Nor should it be confused with the problem of diplomatic relations between the Holy See and nations subject to the Communist yoke.

Since each of these two themes has unique characteristics and perspectives, to discuss either of them even briefly would involve making this study too lengthy. Therefore, we will not discuss them in this work, which is devoted exclusively to investigating whether, and under what conditions, the Church can maintain a truly free coexistence with a Communist regime.

After these observations, let us approach the question, starting with an analysis of the facts.

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1. The Facts

1. For a long time, the attitude of Communist governments, not only toward the Catholic Church but toward all other religions as well, has been painfully clear and consistent.

a) According to Marxist doctrine, every religion is a myth which has as a consequence the "alienation"*1 of man to an imaginary superior being, that is to say, God. The oppressing classes take advantage of this "alienation" to maintain their domination of the proletariat. Indeed, the hope of a future life, promised to uncomplaining laborers as a reward for their patience, works on them like an opiate so that they may not rebel against the hard living conditions imposed upon them by capitalistic society.

b) Thus, the religious myth is utterly false and harmful to man. Neither does God exist, nor is there any life hereafter. The sole reality is matter in a state of continuous evolution. This evolution has as its specific purpose the "disalienating" of man from any subjection to real or imaginary masters, and the free course of this evolution is the supreme good of humanity.

c) This evolution encounters a serious hindrance in every religious myth. As a result, the Communist State, which through the dictatorship of the proletariat should open the way toward the evolutionary "disalienation" of the masses, has the duty of exterminating radically all forms of religion, and to achieve this purpose, in the regions under its authority, it should:

‑ in the long or short run, according to the malleability of the population, close all churches, do away with all clergy, forbid all worship, profession of faith, and apostolate;

‑ for as long as it is not entirely able to achieve this result, to maintain with regard to all forms of worship which have not yet been suppressed, an attitude of odious tolerance, of multiform spying and of continuous restriction of their activities;

‑ to infiltrate Communists into subsisting ecclesiastical hierarchies, for the purpose of underhandedly transforming religion into a vehicle of Communism;

‑ to promote the "atheization" of the masses through all the means available to the State and the Communist Party.

From the time the Communist dictatorship took power in Russia until the time (roughly) that the country was invaded by Nazi armies, the conduct of the Soviet Government with regard to the diverse religions was governed by these principles. This was the first stage of the Soviet action.

Throughout the whole of this first stage, Communist propaganda boasted to the world that it intended to do away with all religions, and made it perfectly clear that, even when it tolerated some of them, this was done only to ensure their more efficient destruction thereafter.

2. In view of this Communist procedure, the line of conduct that Catholics should follow was likewise simple and clear‑cut.

Persecuted as a result of the deep‑seated and absolute incompatibility between its doctrine and the Communist ideology, the Church had no other resort than to react equally radically, using all licit means.

The "relations" between Communist Governments and the Church could consist only of an out and out, life and death struggle. Aware of this, Catholic opinion in every non‑Communist country rose as a great phalanx, ready to accept everything, even martyrdom, in order to avoid the implantation of Communism. And in those countries where Communism had been established, Catholics organized themselves with great strength of soul in order to live in a state of heroic undergroundness like the early Christians.

3. From a certain time on, the attitude of some Communist Governments with regard to religious matters seems to have taken on fresh nuances.

In fact, while the attitude of the Communist governments toward religion continues to be inexorably the same in some Communist‑dominated countries, such as, for instance, China, this attitude seems to be undergoing a gradual change in other Communist‑dominated countries, such as Yugoslavia, Poland, and more recently Russia.

Thus, in these latter Communist‑dominated countries (as announced by their respective propaganda agencies), a governmental attitude of intolerance, with respect to some religions, was replaced by a tolerance, which although initially malevolent, later became, if not benevolent at least indifferent. And the former regime of aggressive coexistence tends more and more to be replaced by one of peaceful coexistence.

In other words, the Russian, Polish, and Yugoslav governments still maintain their complete adherence to Marxism‑Leninism, which continues to be the only doctrine taught and accepted officially by them. However, now they are ‑ to a greater or lesser degree according to the country ‑ permitting a greater freedom of worship, and allowing a treatment devoid of violence and, in certain respects, an almost correct attitude toward the religion or religions which have considerable importance in their respective countries.

In Russia, as is well known, the religion having the greatest number of adherents is the Greek schismatic church currently known as the Orthodox Church. In Poland, the dominant religion is Catholicism, with a majority of the Catholics following the Latin Rite, while in Yugoslavia, both churches are important.

As a result of this, there begins to appear for the Catholic Church in certain countries behind the Iron Curtain a "tenuous" freedom which consists in the possibility ‑ sometimes greater and sometimes lesser ‑ of distributing the Sacraments and of preaching the Gospel to people who until now had been entirely deprived of religious assistance. We say "tenuous," for in spite of everything, the Church continues to be attacked quite openly by official ideological propaganda and to be permanently spied upon by the police, so that She can do nothing or almost nothing more than carry out the functions of worship and some catechesis. In Poland, besides this, the Church is grudgingly allowed to maintain courses for the formation of priests and to engage in a few social works.

2. A Complex Problem

The behavior of the Communist authorities in the aforementioned countries having been modified to a certain extent, the Church in these countries now finds two paths open:

a) to abandon the underground and catacomb-like existence it has led up till now behind the Iron Curtain, and to come out to live in the open, coexisting with the Communist regime in accordance with a tacit "modus vivendi";

b) or to reject any "modus vivendi," whatever, continuing to lead an underground existence.

The choice between these two paths is a very complex tactical problem which is posed at this moment for the consciences of a great number of Catholics.

We say "for the consciences" because the decision at this crossroad depends on the solution one gives to the following moral problem: Is it licit for Catholics to accept a "modus vivendi" with a Communist regime? It is this problem which as we said, the present article intends to take up.

3. The Importance of This Problem in the Present Concrete Situation

Before weighing all the arguments pro and con, let us say something about the concrete importance of this problem.

The importance of this problem for the nations under Communist regimes is obvious.

It seems necessary for us to say something about its importance for the Western countries, particularly with regard to Communist plans for penetrating these countries with ideological imperialism ‑ plans which aim at an ultimate worldwide victory of the Communists.

The fear that, in the case of such a Communist victory, the Church will become subject everywhere to the horrors it suffered in Mexico, Spain, Russia, Hungary, and China, constitutes the principal reason for the decision of 500 million Catholics scattered the world over ‑ bishops, priests, monks, nuns, and laymen ‑ to resist Communism to the death. Moreover, this same consideration, applied to the other religions, is the principal reason for the anti‑Communist stand taken by the hundreds of millions of persons professing these creeds.

In the order of psychological factors, this heroic decision represents the greatest obstacle ‑ or perhaps even the only significant one ‑ against the establishment and permanent endurance of Communism throughout the world.

How, then, we may ask has this heroic decision been affected by the aforementioned change in attitude of some Communist governments toward the various religions? The fact is that, regardless of the tactical reasons that may have determined this change in attitude, the religious tolerance which some Communist governments practice at present, and which their propaganda proclaims with great exaggeration to the whole world, provides them already with an immense profit which may be stated as follows: In view of the alternatives which this change in attitude opens up, opinions in religious circles are divided over which policy to adopt, thereby resulting in a breaking down of the ramparts of solid and intransigent opposition to Communism previously maintained unanimously by those who believe in God and worship Him.

In fact Catholics and those belonging to other confessions are having trouble fixing an attitude toward Communism in the face of the new religious policy of certain Communist governments, a condition which is giving rise to perplexities, divisions, and even polemics. Many Catholics ‑ according to their degree of fervor, optimism, or suspicion ‑continue to believe that the only sensible and consistent attitude is one of absolute opposition toward Communism, but others believe that accepting immediately without further resistance a situation such as the one prevailing in Poland would be better than fighting to the end against Communist penetration only to fall into a much more oppressive situation such as the one prevailing in Hungary.

Besides this it appears to these latter that acceptation by the people still free of a Communist or quasi‑Communist regime, could prevent the cosmic tragedy of an atomic war. There is only one reason which would lead them to accept resignedly the risk of such a hecatomb: the duty to fight to prevent a worldwide persecution of unprecedented proportions aimed at the radical extermination of the Church. But they see a possibility that this danger may not materialize, since in certain Communist countries the Church is allowed to survive, even though reduced to a minimum of liberty; therefore, their determination to face the danger of an atomic war becomes very much weakened. And the idea of establishing everywhere on an almost worldwide scale a "modus vivendi" between the Church and Communism ‑ along the same lines as the one in Poland ‑ gains ground among these Catholics, even though accepted as an evil, but nevertheless a lesser evil.

Between these two points of view, an immense majority has begun to form, a majority which is disoriented and indecisive and, for this same reason, psychologically less prepared for the struggle than it was until recently.

If this phenomenon of a weakening in the anti-Communist attitude can be found in persons utterly opposed to Marxism, how natural it is for it to be more intense among the so‑called leftist Catholics, who are becoming more and more numerous and who, without professing materialism and atheism, are in sympathy with the economic and social aspects of Communism!

In synthesis, then, in all or in nearly all of the countries not yet subject to the Communist yoke, millions of Catholics who only yesterday would have gladly died in regular armies or guerrilla units to prevent the establishment of Communism in their native countries or to overthrow any such regime that managed to gain power, today no longer have the same disposition. Moreover, in the event of a crisis of panic, such as the situation arising in the face of an imminent nuclear war, this phenomenon may be intensified further, probably leading entire nations to catastrophic capitulations to the Communist powers.

All of this reminds us that the relative religious tolerance of some Communist governments has placed the consciences of millions and millions of men in our day at a crossroad, and brings into relief the importance of studying as soon as possible the various aspects of the moral questions inherent to that crossroad.

It is perfectly reasonable to state that a considerable part of the world's future depends upon the solution of this problem.

4. There Is No Way to Avoid This Problem

The usefulness of such an investigation may perhaps appear questionable to some hasty spirits, who will try to avoid this complex problem by means of preliminary allegations which seem to us altogether questionable.

To illustrate this point, we present some of these allegations now, followed, in each case, by the answers that can be made to them:

a) It is evident that relative religious tolerance is merely a Communist maneuver and, therefore, the prospect Of a "modus vivendi" between the Church and a Communist regime cannot be taken seriously. In response to this we may answer that nothing prevents us from supposing that manifestations in many different forms of certain internal tensions may make it necessary for some Communist governments to adopt a more relaxed attitude in religious matters. This relaxation may perhaps have a certain durability and consistency, thereby opening up new prospects for the Church.

b) Any agreement with people who, like the Communists, deny God and morality, offers no guarantee of being fulfilled. Thus, even though one admits the Communists to be really disposed today to tolerate religion up to a certain point, one still knows that tomorrow, if it suits them, they will unleash against it the most brutal and complete persecution. We recognize this to be so in principle. We also recognize, however, that the Communist State may not take such an action for a time because of political reasons. The religious tolerance of the Communist State is certainly not based on respect for promises, but on the essentially political interest of preventing or reducing internal difficulties. Since this is so, an attitude of relative religious tolerance can endure as long as those difficulties continue. Moreover, it is conceivable that it could eventually last for no short time. Therefore the Communist authority might possibly fulfill for a long time the conditions of an accord proposed to some religion by it, doing this not for considerations of honor but out of political interest.

c) This study will be of no use to the peoples behind the iron Curtain, since it will not be able to circulate freely among them. in addition, it is of no interest to the peoples on this side of the Iron Curtain. For them the problem of the legitimacy of a possible coexistence of the Church with the Communist regime is not posed, since that regime does not exist in the non‑Communist Occidental nations. The problem which interests the Occidental peoples is not how one can coexist with such a regime, but what can be done to prevent its being implanted. Consequently, this study does not interest anyone, It is not true that this study cannot come to the knowledge of the peoples on the other side of the Iron Curtain. The fact is, it has. The weekly Kierunki of Warsaw, edited by the association "Pax," an influential "Catholic" Polish movement of the extreme left, published, March 1, 1964, on its first page and with great emphasis, an "Open Letter to Dr. Plinio Correa de Oliveira," which was an extensive and indignant protest against this essay by Mr. Zbigniew Czajkowski, an outstanding member of the "Pax" movement. Moreover, we have reason to see an answer to the present study in an article published in the weekly Wiez by authors Mr. Tadeuz Mazowiecky, senior editor of that review and representative in the Polish Diet of the Catholic group Znak, and Mr. A. Wielowieyski, his collaborator. ("Otwarcie na Wschod," Wiez, Nos. 11‑12, Nov.‑Dec. 1963). If it was necessary to refute our article, it is because it has in some way penetratedthe Iron Curtain and has had reprecussions in areas under Communist domination. Now, to answer the assertion above about the interest this essay has for Occidental peoples, we say that really, it is better to prevent an evil than to remedy it. Furthermore, it may well happen that an Occidental nation, or several Occidental nations at the same time, could be forced to choose between two evils, that is, the acceptation of a Communist regime or modern warfare with all of its horrors, internal and external, conventional and thermo‑nuclear. In such an event, it would be necessary to choose the lesser evil. And the problem will inevitably arise; if the Church can accept coexistence with a Communist government and regime, perhaps the lesser evil consists in avoiding the hecatomb of war, admitting the victory of Marxism as a "fait accompli." Only if coexistence is considered to be impossible and the implantation of Communism to represent a grave risk of complete or almost complete extirpation of the faith in a certain people, only then would the acceptance of the struggle be the lesser evil. For the loss of the faith is a greater evil than the destruction of everything that an atomic war can touch.

As is evident, all of these preliminary allegations tending to avoid the study of the question under consideration are inconsistent. The problem of the legitimacy of coexistence between the Communist regime and the Church must be considered head‑on and can be resolved satisfactorily for all Catholics only by analyzing it in all of the profundity of its doctrinal aspects.

5. Facing the Problem

At first glance, and considered in itself, the problem of coexistence between the Church and a "tolerant" Communist regime might be stated as follows:

If, in a given country living under a Communist government and regime, the holders of power, far from forbidding worship and preaching, permitted one and the other, could the Church accept this liberty of action in order to distribute the sacraments and the bread of the word of God unfettered?

When the question is presented purely and simply in these terms, the answer is necessarily affirmative: The Church could, and even would be obliged to accept that freedom. In this sense She could, and would be obliged to coexist with Communism. For, under no pretext whatsoever may She refuse to carry out her mission.

We must note, however, that this formulation of the problem is oversimplified. it makes one suppose

implicitly that the Communist government would not impose the least restriction on the liberty of the Church in carrying out her doctrinal mission. But there is no reason to believe that such a government would give the Church full freedom to teach her doctrine, since this would imply allowing her to preach all the doctrines of the Popes concerning morals, the law, and particularly concerning the family and private property, which in turn would result in making every Catholic a born enemy of the regime, so that to the degree the Church extended her action She would be killing the regime. This means that the regime would be practicing suicide to the extent that it tolerated the freedom of the Church. And this would be so, above all, in countries where the influence of the Church over the population is very great.

Thus, we cannot be satisfied with the resolution of the problem as it is presented in the general formulation above. We must see what solution should be given to this problem in the case of a Communist government which required that Catholic preaching and teaching, in order to be tolerated, conform to the following conditions:

1^st ‑ that they convey the Church's doctrine in an affirmative manner, but without making to the faithful any refutations of materialism and other errors inherent to Marxist philosophy;

2^nd ‑ that they remain silent as to the Church's thought concerning private property and the family;

3^rd ‑or that, without criticizing directly the social and economic system of Marxism, they at least state that the legal existence of the family and private property is an ideal desirable in theory but unattainable in practice as a result of communist domination, and for this reason they recommend in the present situation that the faithful give up any attempt to abolish the Communist regime and to reestablish legally private property and the family in accordance with the principles of the Natural Law.

Could such conditions be accepted, in all conscience, tacitly or expressly, as a price for a minimum of legal freedom for the Church under a Cominunist regime? In other words, could the Church renounce her liberty in some of these points in order to preserve it in others for the spiritual benefit of the faithful? This is the heart of the problem.

6. The Solution

1. With regard to the first condition, it appears to us that the answer must be negative, in view of the persuasive force which metaphysics and morals have when they are concretized in a regime, a culture, and an environment.

The doctrinal mission of the Church consists not only in teaching the truth but also in condemning error. No teaching of the truth is sufficient unless it includes the enunciation and refutation of the objections which may be brought against that truth. As Pius XII said, "The Church, ever overflowing with charity and kindness toward those who go astray,but faithful to the word of her Divine Founder, who said: 'He that is not with me is against me' (Matt. 12:30) could not fail in her duty of denouncing error and unmasking the sowers of lies. . ." (Christmat

Radio Message of 1947, "Discorsi e Radiomessagi,” Vol. IX, p.393). Pius XI expressed the same thought

as follows: "The first gift of love of the priest to his milieu, and which is incumbent upon him in the most evident manner, is the gift of serving truth, the whole truth, and to unmask and refute error underall the forms, masks, and disguises in which it is presented." (Encyclical "Mit Brennender Sorge" of March 14, 1937. AAS, Vol. XXIX, p. 1 , 63). The false maxim that teaching the truth does not require attacking or refuting error is of the essence of religious liberalism. There is no adequate Christian formation without apologetics. It is particularly important to note this, since the majority of men tend to accept as normal the political and social regime under which they are born and live and since the regime as a consequence of this fact exerts a profound influence upon the development of their souls.

In order to measure the power of this formative action in its full extension, let us examine it in its “reason for being" and in its manner of action.

Every political, economic, and social regime is based in the final analysis upon a metaphysics and a morality. The institutions, laws, culture, and customs of which a particular regime is formed, as well as those which are correlated with it, reflect in practice the principles of this metaphysics and this morality.

A regime by the very fact of its existence, by the natural prestige of the constituted authorities, as well as by the enormous force of environment and habit, leads the population to accept as good, normal and even indisputable, the existing culture and temporal order, which are consequences of the dominant metaphysical and moral principles. And, by accepting all of this, the spirit of the people ends up by going farther, letting itself be permeated, as by osmosis, by those same principles, habitually perceived in a vague, subconscious, but very vivid way by the majority of the people.

Accordingly, it is easy to see that the temporal order exerts a profound formative or destructive influence over the souls of peoples and individuals.

There are epochs in which the temporal order is based upon contradictory principles coexisting because of one kind of skepticism or another; however, whatever the kind of skepticism may be, it almost always has shades of pragmatism. This pragmatic skepticism generally passes on to the mentality of the multitudes.

In other epochs, the metaphysical and moral principles that serve as the soul of the temporal order are coherent and monolithic ‑ in truth and goodness as in the Europe of the XIII Century, or in error and evil as in the Russia or the China of our day.

These principles can profoundly mark the peoples who live in a temporal society inspired by them.

To live in an order of things coherent in error and evil is already of itself a tremendous invitation to apostasy.

The Communist State, sectarian and committed to an official philosophy, carries out the doctrinal impregnation of the masses with intransigence, amplitude, and method. And this is complemented by an untiring and explicit indoctrination repeated at every opportunity.

The whole course of history provides no example of pressure more complete in its doctrinal content, more subtle and multiform in its methods, more brutal in its moments of violent action than that exercised by the Communist regimes over the peoples who are under their yoke.

In a Communist State, the regime is so totally anti‑Christian that there is no way to avoid its influence except by instructing the faithful about the evils that it contains.

In the face of such an adversary, even more than in the face of any other, the Church cannot, then, accept a freedom which implies the sincere and effective renunciation of the frank and efficient exercise of her apologetic function.

2. As for the second condition, that the Church remain silent as to its thought concerning private property and the family, it also appears to us to be unacceptable, in view not only of the total incompatibility between Communism and Catholic doctrine but also ‑ and especially ‑ of the right of property in its relation to the love of God, the virtue of justice, and the sanctification of souls.

This second condition is rejected first of all on the basis of a reason of a general kind. The Communist doctrine, atheistic, materialistic, relativistic, and evolutionist, collides in the most radical way with the Catholic concept of a personal God, who promulgated for mankind a Law which contains all the principles of morality fixed, immutable, and in agreement with the natural order. Communist "culture," considered in all its aspects and in each one of them, leads to the denial of morality and of law. The collision of Communism with the Church does not occur then merely in the matter of the family and property. And so it is that the Church would have to be silent about all morality and about all notion of law.

Therefore, we do not see what tactical result would be achieved by such an "ideological armistice" between Catholics and Communists, that is, one circumscribed to these two points, if the ideological struggle continued in respect to all the other points.

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Let us consider, however, for the sake of argument the hypothesis of the Church remaining silent in regard only to the family and private property.

It is so absurd to admit that the Church accept restrictions in her preaching in matters concerning the family that we shall not even detain ourselves in an analysis of this hypothesis.

But let us imagine that a Communist State were to give the Church complete liberty to preach about the family but not about private property. In such a case, what should our response be?

At first glance, one would say that the mission of the Church consists essentially in promoting the knowledge and love of God, rather than in advocating or maintaining a political, social, or economic regime. And that souls can know and love God without being instructed about the principle of private property.

It would seem then that the Church should be able to agree as a lesser evil to a compromise in which She would keep silent about the right of property in order to receive in exchange the freedom to instruct and sanctify souls, speaking to them of God and the eternal destiny of man, and administering to them the sacraments.

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This way of looking at the teaching and sanctifying mission of the Church collides with a preliminary objection. If any given earthly government demanded, as a condition for the Church's liberty, that She renounce the preaching of any one of the precepts of the Law, She could not accept this liberty, which would only be a sham.

We affirm that this liberty would be a sham because the teaching mission of the Church has as its objective the teaching of a doctrine which is an indivisible whole. Either She is free to fulfill the mandate of Our Lord Jesus Christ, teaching that whole, or She must consider herself oppressed and persecuted. If her complete liberty is not recognized, She must ‑ due to her militant nature ‑ fight against the oppressor. The Church cannot accept a partial silencing of her teaching function nor a partial oppression in order to obtain a partial liberty. It would be a complete betrayal of her mission.

***

Besides this preliminary objection, based on the teaching mission of the Church, it is necessary to raise another one, concerning her function as the educator of the human will for the attainment of sanctity.

This objection is based on the fact that a clear knowledge of the principle of private property and respect for this principle in practice are absolutely necessary for a truly Christian formation of souls:

a) FROM THE P01NT OF VIEW OF THE LOVE OF GOD: The knowledge and love of the Law are inseparable from the knowledge and love of God. For the Law is in a certain way the mirror of the Divine Sanctity. And this, which one can say of each of its precepts, is principally true when it is considered as a whole. To renounce the teaching of the two precepts of the Decalogue which form the foundation of private property would be the same as to present a disfigured image of this whole and, therefore, of God Himself. Now, where souls have a disfigured idea of God, they are formed according to an erroneous model, which is incompatible with true sanctification.

b) FROM THE POINT OF VIEW OF THE CARDINAL VIRTUE OF JUSTICE: The cardinal virtues are, as the name says, the hinges upon which all sanctity is supported. For a soul to sanctify itself, it must know them rightly, love them sincerely, and practice them genuinely.

It happens that the whole notion of justice is founded upon the principle that every man, his neighbor individually considered, and human society are the holders respectively of rights, to which there correspond naturally obligations. In other words, the notions of "mine" and "thine" are to be found in the very foundation of the concept ofjustice.

Now it is precisely the notion of "mine" and “thine” which in economic matters leads directly and ineluctably to the principle of private property.

Hence it is that, without the right knowledge of the legitimacy and of the extension of private property, and moreover of its limitation, there is no right knowledge of the cardinal virtue of justice. And without that knowledge, a true love and a true practice of justice are impossible; in short, sanctification is impossible.

c) FROM A MORE GENERAL P01NT OF VIEW ‑ THAT OF THE FULL DEVELOPMENT OF THE FACULTIES OF THE SOUL, AND OF ITS SANCTIFICATION: The explanation of this argument presupposes as given that the right formation of the intelligence and the will is, under various aspects, favorable to sanctification and, under other aspects, even identified with it. And it presupposes that, on the contrary, everything prejudicial to the right formation of the intellect and will is, under various aspects, incompatible with sanctification.

We are going to show that a society in which private property does not exist is gravely opposed to the right development of the faculties of the soul, especially of the will. And for this reason it is in itself incompatible with the sanctification of men.

In passing, we shall also refer, for analogous reasons, to other consequences of the community of goods, those that are prejudicial to the culture of the people and its development. We shall do this because the true development of culture is not only a factor favorable to the sanctification of the people but also a fruit of that sanctification. Accordingly, a proper cultural life is intimately connected with our theme.

Let us approach the question by making clear an essential point frequently forgotten by those who treat the institution of private property, that is, it is necessary to the equilibrium and to the sanctification of men.

To justify this thesis, we should recall first that the pontifical documents, when they treat of capital, labor, and the social problem, leave not the least doubt about the fact that private property is not only legitimate but also indispensable to the individual as well as to the common good ‑ indispensable for both the material interests of man and for that of his soul.

It is indeed certain that these same papal documents have vehemently risen up against the numerous excesses and abuses that beginning, in the main, in the nineteenth century, have occurred in the matter of private property. But the fact that the abuses men make of an institution are very reprehensible and pernicious does not mean absolutely that the institution is not intrinsically excellent. Rather, one should tend in most instances to think the contrary: “corruptio optimi pessima" ‑ the worst is perhaps almost always the corruption of what is in itself the best. Nothing is so sacred and holy, in itself, andfrom every point of view, as the priesthood. Nothing

is worse than its corruption. And for this same reason one understands why the Holy See, so severely opposed to the abuses of private property, is even more severe when curbing the abuses of the priesthood.

There are many reasons why the institution of private property is indispensable to individuals, families, and peoples. A complete exposition of these reasons would exceed the scope of this work. Let us limit ourselves to the explanation of that which is most directly important to our theme: As we affirmed recently, this institution is necessary to the equilibrium and sanctification of man.

Being naturally endowed with intelligence and with will, man tends, by his own spiritual faculties to provide everything necessary for his welfare; from whence comes a certain number of rights. Accordingly, he has the right to seek for himself the things that he needs and to appropriate them when they have no owner. He also has the right of providing, in a stable way, for the necessities of tomorrow by taking possession of the ground, cultivating it, and producing for this cultivation his instruments of labor. In short, it is because he has a soul that man irrefragably tends to be an owner. And it is in this, say Leo XIII and St. Pius X, that this position in relation to material goods distinguishes him from irrational animals: "Man has not only the simple use of earthly goods, as do the brutes, but also the right of stable ownership, in respect to both those goods which use consumes and those which use does not consume." (Encylical Rerum Novarum). (St.Pius X, "Motu Propio" on Catholic Popular Action, Dec. 18, 1903 ‑ ASS, Vol. XXXVI, pp. 341‑343).

Now, since, in the case of man, directing his own destiny and providing his own subsistence is the proximate, necessary, and constant object of the exercise of the intelligence and the will, and owning property is the normal means for him to be sure and to feel sure of his future and to be his own master and to feel that he is his own master, it follows that to abolish private property, and as a consequence deliver the individual like a helpless ant to the direction of the State, is to deprive his mind of some of the basic conditions for its normal functioning; it is to cause the atrophy of the faculties of the soul through lack of exercise; it is, in short, to deform it profoundly. Whence arises, to a great extent, the sadness that characterizes the populations subjected to Communism, as well as the tedium, the neurosis, and the suicides which are becoming more and more frequent in certain highly socialized countries of the Occident.

It is indeed well known that the unexercised faculties of the soul tend to atrophy. It is also known, however, that adequate exercise can develop these faculties, at times even prodigiously. Upon this fact are founded a great number of didactic and ascetic practices approved by the greatest masters and consecrated by experience.

Since sanctity is the perfection of the soul, it is easy to understand how important the foregoing conclusions are to the salvation and sanctification of men. The condition of proprietorship, of itself, creates circumstances highly propitious for the right and virtuous exercise of the faculties of the soul. Without accepting the utopian ideal of a society in which each individual, without exception, is a proprietor, or in which there are not unequal fortunes, great, medium, and small, it behooves us to affirm that the greatest possible diffusion of property favors the spiritual welfare, and obviously the cultural as well, not only of individuals and families but also of society. On the other hand, proletarization creates conditions highly unfavorable to the salvation, sanctification, and cultural formation of peoples, families, and individuals.

For greater facility of exposition, let us consider now some objections to the argument expounded under this letter "c":

Do those who are not proprietors go insane in a society where there is private property? Is it impossible for them to sanctify themselves?

In responding to this objection, it is reasonable for us to consider the fact that private property is an institution which favors nonproprietors indirectly, but in a very genuine way. For when a great number of persons take adequate advantage of the moral and cultural benefits which the condition of ownership confers upon them, there results therefrom an elevated social environment, which by the natural communication of souls favors even the non-owners. Accordingly, the situation in which the non-owners find themselves in such a society is not identical with that of individuals living in a regime where no private property exists.

Is private property then the cause of the moral and cultural elevation of the peoples?

We say that property is a most important condition for the spiritual and cultural good of individuals, families, and peoples. We do not say it is the cause of sanctification. It is like the freedom of the Church, which is a condition for her development. But the Church, persecuted, flourished admirably in the catacombs. It would be exaggerated to say, for example, that it necessarily follows that the more diffused the institution of property,the more virtuous and cultured the people will be. This would amount to making that which is supernatural depend on matter and that which is cultural depend on the economy.

However, it is certain that it is not licit for any people to contravene the designs of Providence by abolishing an institution, such as private property, which has been imposed by the natural order of things, and institution constituting a very important condition for the good of souls both in the religious and the cultural planes. And any people proceeding in this way prepares the factors for its moral and cultural degradation and, therefore, for its complete ruin.

If this is so, how was it possible for so much culture to exist in Imperial Rome where the majority of the population consisted of proletarians and slaves? And how was it possible for several slaves, both in Rome and in Greece, to attain an elevated moral and cultural level?

The difference between a brightly lighted room and one with only a flickering light is not as great as the difference between a room with only a flickering light and one in total darkness. This is so because the evil produced by the total lack of an important good ‑ in this case, the light ‑ is always incomparably greater than that produced by the insufficiency of this good. The Roman society had, though to a lesser degree than was desirable, a vast and cultured propertied class: whence the existence in the Empire, at least in a certain proportion, of the cultural benefits of property. The situation would be very different in a country entirely deprived of a propertied class; from this point of view, it would be in complete darkness.

Some person may perhaps object that experience contradicts this theoretical conclusion, since among the Russian people there is an undeniable cultural and technical progress in spite of the community of goods imposed by the Marxist regime.

Even here the response is not difficult.

It is obvious that the resources drained from the four cardinal points of the compass of this vast empire are subject to the will of the Soviet government. It disposes arbitrarily of the talents, the work, and of the production of hundreds of millions of persons.

Accordingly, we see that the Soviet government was by no means lacking in the resources needed to construct a certain number of artificial environments which would represent for it a great technical or cultural development (an anti‑cultural development, we should more properly say). Without denying the volume of the results obtained in this way, we nevertheless can legitimately express some surprise that they are not much greater, since a totally anti-natural Moloch State that does not produce Moloch results in the artificial order is not really effectual.

Moreover, this hot‑house intellectual flowering is entirely cut off from the population. It does not constitute a product of the society. It does not result from a germination in the womb of the society. Rather it is obtained outside of it and with the blood extracted therefrom. It grows and manifests itself outside of society and, in a certain sense, against it.

Such production is not the index of the culture of a nation, just as the products of a hot‑house on an abandoned rural property are not a valid proof of the suitable cultivation of that property.

Returning now to the objection concerning Imperial Rome, we note that there were slaves, it is true, who attained surprising moral and intellectual levels: marvels of grace in the moral plane, and of nature, which even now fill us with wonder. These glorious exceptions, however, are not sufficient to deny the obvious truth that the servile condition is, in itself, oppressive and harmful for the soul of the slave from both the religious and the cultural point of view. And they are not sufficient to deny another obvious truth: that slavery, already in itself morally and culturally noxious, would have been incomparably more so for the slaves of antiquity if there had been no patricians and freemen and society had been composed only of men with neither autonomy nor property, such as occurs in a Communist regime.

But someone will finally ask is the religious state, then, not intrinsically harmful to souls, in view of the vows of obedience and poverty which constitute it? Don't these vows hamper man's tendency to provide for himself?

The answer is easy. This state is highly beneficial to souls which grace attracts to exceptional ways. If this state were to be lived by a whole society, it would be harmful, for that which is suitable for exceptions is not suitable for all. For this reason, the community of goods among the faithful was never generalized in the primitive Church and ended up, being eliminated. It is notable also that the Communist‑Protestant experiences of certain collective bodies in the 16th century resulted in spectacular failures.

***

These multiple arguments and objections having been pondered, the thesis holds good that it is vain to keep silent about the immorality of a complete community of goods in order to obtain, in return for this silence, the sanctification of souls through freedom of worship and a relative freedom of preaching.

Moreover, even though this monstrous pact were accepted, not even by these means would the dreamed of coexistence be practical. Indeed, in a society without private property, the upright souls would always tend, by the very dynamism of their virtue, to create conditions favorable for themselves. For everything that exists tends to fight for its own survival by destroying adverse circumstances and by implanting propitious ones. On the other hand, anything ceasing to fight against circumstances gravely unfavorable to itself is destroyed by them.

Whence it is that virtue would be in a perpetual struggle against the Communist society where it flourished, and would tend perpetually to eliminate the community of goods. And the Communist society would be in a perpetual struggle against virtue and would tend to asphyxiate it. All this is just exactly the opposite of the dreamed of coexistence.

3. In regard to the third condition, it seems to us to be equally unacceptable, for the necessity of tolerating a lesser evil cannot lead to the renouncing of its total destruction.

When the Church resolves to tolerate a lesser evil, She does not thereby imply that this evil should not be combated with all efficiency. All the more so when this "lesser" evil is most grave in itself.

In other words, the Church must form in the faithful, and renew in them at every moment, a most vivid regret that it was necessary to accept the lesser evil. And with this regret, She must raise up in them the efficacious resolution to do everything to remove the circumstances that made it necessary to accept the lesser evil.

Now, acting thus, the Church would destroy the possibility of coexistence. And moreover, it seems to us, She could not act in any other way within the imperatives of her sublime mission.

7. Resolving Final Objections

In the course of this work, we have resolved several objections directly connected with the various themes handled. We will now analyze other objections which were not necessary to the development of the foregoing exposition and which fit in more conveniently for the reader in this section.

1. Defending, thus, the right of property, the Church would abandon the struggle against misery and hunger.

This objection furnishes us with an occasion to consider the catastrophic effects caused, from the point of view of temporal welfare, in a Communist State by the silence of the Church about the matter of property.

Having previously analyzed the principal objections that could be made to such silence from the point of view of the teaching mission of the Church, and from the point of view of her sanctifying mission, let us now consider a secondary, but interesting, effect of the same silence: it would be for the Church to become an accomplice to the progressive dissemination of misery in a world situation marked by the progress of collectivization.

Every man tries by an instinctive movement which is continuous, powerful, and fecund to provide first of all for his personal necessities. When it's a matter of one's own preservation, the human intelligence struggles more sharply against its limitations and grows in sharpness and agility. The will conquers sloth more easily, and faces obstacles and struggles with greater vigor.

This instinct, when held within proper bounds, should not be thwarted but, on the contrary, supported and taken advantage of as a precious factor of enrichment and progress. It should by no means be pejoratively classified as egoism. It is the love for one's self which, according to the natural order of things, ought to be below the love for the Creator and above the love for one's neighbor.

If these truths were denied, the principle of subsidiarity, presented by the Encyclical "Mater et Magistra" as a fundamental element of Catholic social doctrine, would be destroyed (cf. AAS, Vol. LIII pp. 414‑415).

Indeed, it is by virtue of this hierarchy in charity that every man should provide for himself to the extent possible from his personal resources, only receiving the help of superior groups ‑ family, corporation, State ‑ to the extent that it is impossible for him to act for himself. And it is by virtue of the same principles that the family and corporation (collective entities of whom also it must be said that "onme ens appetit suum esse") look out, first of all, directly for themselves, reporting to the State only when it is indispensable. And the same thing holds in connectionwith the relations between the State and international society.

In conclusion, everything in each man's nature, either by the dictates of his reason or by his own instinct, calls for him to appropriate goods to assure his subsistence and to make it full, decorous, and tranquil. And the desire to have possessions, and to multiply them, is a great stimulus for work, and therefore an essential factor of abundance in production.

As we see, the institution of private property, which is the necessary corollary of this desire, cannot be considered to be merely the basis of personal privileges. It is an indispensable and most efficacious condition for the prosperity of the whole social body.

Socialism and Communism affirim that the individual exists primarily for society and that he must produce directly, not for his own welfare, but for the welfare of the whole social body.

With this, the best encouragement for work ceases, production necessarily falls, and indolence and misery become generalized throughout society. And the only means ‑ obviously insufficient ‑ that the Public Power can use to stimulate production is the whip . . .

We do not deny that in a regime of private property it can happen ‑ and frequently has happened ‑that the goods produced in abundance circulate defectively in the various parts of the social body, accumulating here, and growing scarce there. This fact leads us to do everything in favor of a proportional diffusion of riches in the various social classes. But it is not a reason for us to renounce private property, and the riches which spring from it, to resign ourselves to socialist pauperism.

2. The arguments against the coexistence of the Church with a completely collectivized State are not valid for a State which is incompletely collectivized.

According to certain reports of the press, some Communist governments have expressed the resolution ("pari passu" with the concession of a certain religious liberty) to carry out a partial retreat in Socialism by admitting in fact if not in law, and provisionally, some forms of prrivate property. It will be said that in this case the regime will have a less noxious influence over souls. Could the Church not agree then that Catholic preaching and teaching would pass over in silence, not precisely the principle of private property, but the whole extension of this principle in Catholic morality?

To this it can be answered that it is not always the most brutally anti-natural regimes ‑ or the most flagrant or declared errors ‑ which succeed in deforming souls the most profoundly. Declared error and brutal injustice, for example, cause revolt and horror, while partial injustices and partial errors are more easily accepted as normal so that both the one and the other corrupt mentalities more rapidly. it was much easier to combat Arianism than semi-Arianism, Pelagianism than semi‑Pelagianism, Protestism than Jansenism, the brutal Revolution than Liberalism, Communism than a mitigated Socialism. Besides this, the Church's mission does not consist only in combating brutally radical and flagrant error, but in eliminating from the minds of the faithful each and every error, however tenuous it may be, to

3. The sense of property is so deeply rooted in the peasants Of certain regions of Europe that it can be transmitted from generation to generation, as if with the mother's milk, by the simple teaching of the Catechism within the family. As a result, the Church could be silent about the right of property for decades without prejudice to the moral formation of the faithful.

We do not deny that the sense of property is very lively in some regions of Europe. It is a notorious fact that for this very reason the Communists had to beat a retreat in their policy of confiscation and restore lands to small proprietors in Poland for example.

However, these strategic retreats, so frequent in the history of Communism, are no more than temporary policies to which the partisans of Communism resign themselves at times in order to gain a more complete victory later. As soon as circumstances become favorable, they return to the charge with redoubled energy and astuteness.

Then will be the moment of greatest danger. Exposed to a most astute and refined propaganda, the peasants will have to suffer indefinitely the Marxist ideological offensive.

Who does not tremble at the thought of seeing the younger generation of any part of the earth exposed to this risk? To suppose that the mere routine and natural sense of personal property would normally provide an adequate shield against such a great peril is to expect too much from a human factor. Really, without the direct and supernatural action of the Church preparing its children well in advance and aiding them in their struggle, the chance is very small that the faithful of any country or of any social condition will endure the trial.

Besides, as we have pointed out before, it does not seem licit to us, in any case, that the Church should suspend for years on end the exercise of her mission which consists in teaching the Law of God in all its plenitude.

4. The coexistence of the Church with a Communist State would be possible if all owners renounced their rights.

In the hypothesis of a Communist inspired tyranny, prepared to exercise every type of violence to impose, the regime of the community of goods, and of owners who persist in affirming their rights against the State (which neither created them nor can validly suppress them), what is the solution for the tension resulting therefrom?

Offhand we do not see any other except fighting. This would not be just any fight, however, but a fight to the death of all Catholics faithful to the principle of private property, Catholics placed in an attitude of legitimate defense against the exterminating action of a tyrannical power whose bestial brutality in the face of the refusal of the Church can reach inconceivable extremes. In short, it would be a revolt, a revolution with all of the atrocious episodes inherent to it, accompanied by the general impoverishment and the inevitable uncertainties regarding the outcome of the tragedy.

This being established, one might ask if the owners would not have in conscience, then, the duty of renouncing their rights in favor of the common welfare, thus allowing the establishment of a community of goods upon a morally legitimate foundation, according to which a Catholic could accept, without problems of conscience, the Communist regime.

This proposition is inconsistent. It confuses the institution of private property, as such, with the property rights of persons concretely existing at a given historical moment. Let us admit as valid the renunciation by these persons of their patrimony, imposed under the effects of a brutal menace to the common welfare; their rights in such a case would cease: From thence, however, there would not follow in any way the elimination of private property as an institution. It would continue to exist, so to speak, "in radice," in the very natural order of things, as immutably indispensable to the spiritual and material welfare of men and of nations, and as an unshakeable imperative of the Law of God.

And because it continues to exist thus "in radice," that is, in its root, it would spring up again at every moment. Every time, for example, that a fisherman or a hunter took something, from the sea or from the air, necessary to maintain himself and to accumulate a saving, and every time that an intellectual or a manual laborer produced more than the indispensable to live from day to day, and reserved for himself the surplus, there would be constituted again small private properties, generated in the depths of the natural order of things. And, as is normal, these properties would tend to increase ... To avoid the anti‑Communist revolution yet again, it would be necessary to be repeating the renunciations at every moment, which, as is evident, leads to the absurd.

Besides, in numerous cases, the individual could not perform such a renunciation without sinning against charity towards himself in addition, such a renunciation would frequently clash with the rights of another institution having a profound affinity with property, and even more sacred than it; that is, the family. Indeed, many would be the cases in which a member of a family could not practice such a renunciation without failing in justice or charity to his own.

PRIVATE PROPERTY AND THE PRACTICE OF JUSTICE: Now, after having described and justified this continuous revival of the right of property, we shall make a few comments that could not have been offered before with the necessary clarity.

These comments concern the virtue of justice in its relations with private property. In section VI, no. 2, letter b of this work, we spoke of the role of property in the knowledge of, and the love of, the virtue of justice. Now we will consider the role of property in the practice of justice.

Granted that the rights of property are springing up at every moment in Communist countries as in others, then it follows that the collectivist State that confiscates the goods of individuals places itself, in all morality, in the position of a thief. And those persons who receive the confiscated goods from the State are in principle, in relation to the owner who has been despoiled, like those who enrich themselves with stolen goods.

Starting from this point, any moralist will easily foresee the immense train of difficulties that the collectivization of goods will bring to the practice of the virtue of justice. These difficulties will be such that, above all in police States, they will demand frequently, perhaps at each moment, heroic acts on the part of every Catholic. This is another proof of the impossibility of coexistence between the Church and the Communist State.

5. Since Communism is so anti-natural, its existence is necessarily ephemeral. Thus, the Church could accept a "modus vivendi" with it, only for a time, until it falls from rottenness, or at least attenuates itself.

To this, various answers can be given:

a) This "ephemeral" character is, to say the least, very relative. For more than half a century Communism has been dominant in Russia. Except God, who knows the future, who can say with certainty when Communism will fall?

b) By the very fact of attenuating itself, such a regime would become milder and would, as a consequence, prolong itself, since it would be less anti-natural. This attenuation then would not be a march toward ruin but a factor of stability.

c) There are regimes which are profoundly contrary to the fundamental demands of human nature but which subsist by themselves indefinitely. Such is the case with the barbarism of certain aboriginal peoples of America or Africa, which lasted for centuries, and which would have lasted still longer by their intrinsic vitality if extrinsic factors had not eliniinated them. And even so, how costly is this process of replacing an anti-natural order by another one which is more natural!

6. At first sight, it may seem that certain gestures of "detente" of the late lamented Pope John XXIII in relation to Soviet Russia are intended to guide the spirit in a sense different from the conclusions of this work.

One must think quite the contrary.

These said gestures of John XXIII are restricted entirely to the field of international relations.

As far as the plane in which we place this study is concerned, the Pontiff himself, reaffirming in the Encyclical "Mater et Magistra" the condemnations fulminated by his predecessors against Communism, made it quite clear that there can be no demobilization of Catholics in the face of this error which the pontifical documents repudiate with supreme rigor.

And, in the same sense, there is, among others, this expressive pronouncement by Pope Paul VI: "Do not believe, moreover, that this pastoral solicitude, today assumed by the Church as a primordial program absorbing her attention and polarizing her concerns, signifies a modification of the judgment expressed about the errors disseminated in our society, and already condemned by the Church, as, for example, atheistic materialism. Trying to apply salutory and urgent remedies to a contagious and mortal disease does not mean changing one's opinion in respect to this disease, but on the contrary, it means trying to combat it not only in theory but practically; it signifies that after the diagnosis, one wishes to apply therapeutics, that is, after the doctrinal condemnation, to apply a salutary charity." (Address of September 6, 1963 to the participants of the 13th Italian Week of Pastoral Adaptation, of Orvieto ‑ AAS, Vol. LV, p. 752).

The Osservatore Romano, semiofficial organ of the Vatican, has repeatedly taken an analogous position in the course of the present pontificate. One may read, for example, in the issue of March 20, 1964 of the French edition the following: "Leaving aside the more or less fictitious distinctions, it is certain that no Catholic can collaborate, directly or indirectly, with the Communists, for the ideological incompatibility between religion and materialism (dialectical and historical) corresponds to an incompatibility of methods and ends, a practical incompatibility, that is, a moral one." (Article "Le Rapport Ilitchev," by F.A.). And there appears in another article in the same issue: “For Catholicism and Communism to be reconciled, it would be necessary for Communism to cease to be Communism.” Now even in the multiple aspects of its dialectics, Communism concedes nothing in respect to its political ends and its doctrinal intransigence. And thus Communism, by its materialistic conception of Histoi:y, its negation of the rights of the person, its abolition of freedom, its State despotism, and even its unhappy economic experience, is placed in opposition to the spiritual and personalist conception of society as it proceeds from the social doctrine of Catholicism ( ... )." (Article "A propos de solution de remplacement").

Still in the same sense, it is appropriate to mention a collective Letter of the Venerable Italian Episcopate against atheistic Communism, dated November 1, 1963.

Furthermore, from Communist sources also there has been no lack of affirmations about the impossibility of an ideological truce or of a peaceful coexistence between the Church and Communism: "Those who propose the idea of peaceful coexistence in matters of ideology fall, in fact, into the anti-Communist position." (Khrushchev, cf. telegram of March 11, 1963 of the AFP and ANSA in 0 Estado de Sao Paulo of March 12, 1963). "My impression is that never, in any field whatsoever, ( ... ) will it be possible to reach a coexistence of Communism with other ideologies and therefore with religion." (Adjubei, cf. telegram of March 15, 1963 of the ANSA, UPI, and DPA in 0 Estado de Sao Paulo of March 16, 1963). "There is no conciliation possible between Catholicism and Marxism." (Palmiro Tagliatti, cf telegram of March 21, 1963 of the AFP in 0 Estado de Sao Paulo of March 22, 1963). "A peaceful coexistence of the Communist and bourgeois ideas constitutes a betrayal of the working class ( ... ). There has never been any peaceful coexistence of ideologies; it has never existed, nor will it ever exist. " (Leonid Ilitchev, Secretary of the Central Commission and President of the Ideological Commission of the CPSU, cf. telegram of June 18, 1963 of the AFP, ANSA, AP, DPA, and UPI, in O Estado de Sao Paulo of June 19, 1963). "The Soviets reject the accusation that Moscow applies the principle of peaceful coexistence to the class struggle, and they say that they do not admit it in the ideological plane either." (Open letter of CC of the CPSU, cf. telegram of the agencies cited, of July 15, 1963, in O Estado de Sao Paulo of July 17, 1963).

In view of this, it is quite evident that the militant Church has not renounced, and could not renounce, the essential freedom to fight against her terrible adversary.

7. Coexistence could be accepted as a pious fraud, that is, if the Church wished to accept coexistence with some Communist regime, She could do so with the concealed idea of cheating as much as possible on the pact established with it.

In considering the hypothesis of an explicit pact, one must answer that no one is permitted to contract to do something illicit. Thus, if the acceptance of the conditions we have been talking about is illicit, a pact of which they formed a part could not be made.

In respect to the hypothesis of an implicit pact, it should be said ‑ to consider only one aspect of it ‑ that it is naive to imagine that the Communist authorities, constituted as eminently a police organization and served by the powerful resources of modern technology, would not become immediately aware of systematic violation of such a pact.

9. Practical Conclusions

To nullify the advantages which Communism is already gaining in the Occident with its hints at greater freedom in religious and social matters, it is important and urgent to inform public opinion about the intrinsically and necessarily fraudulent character of the "freedom" it concedes to Religion, and about the impossibility of the peaceful coexistence of a Communist regime ‑ even though a moderate one ‑ with the Catholic Church.

10. Where the True Peril of a Hecatomb Is

As he comes to the end of the present study, many a reader will ask himself: How then can we avoid a nuclear hecatomb? It is very clear that if Catholics become firm about the principle of private property, the Communist powers, losing all hope of imposing their system on the world by peaceful means, will resort to war. In view of this, regardless of what might be said from a doctrinal angle, would it not be preferable to yield to them?

Oh, men of little faith! We would like to answer, why are you fearful. (cf. Matt. 8:26).

Wars have as their principal cause the sins of nations. For, as Saint Augustine says, the sins committed by nations cannot be recompensed or castigated in the other life, and, therefore, receive in this world the reward for their good actions and the penalty for their crimes.

Thus, to avoid wars and hecaturnbs, let us combat them in their causes: the corruption of ideas and morals, the official impiety of the laicist States, and the increasingly frequent opposition of the positive law to the Law of God. This, yes, is what exposes us to the wrath and chastisement of the Creator and which leads us more than anything else to war.

If, to avoid war, the Western nations committed a sin greater than the present ones by agreeing to live under the Communist yoke in conditions reproved by Catholic morality, they would in this way defy God's wrath and call down upon themselves the effects of His anger.

And this holds all the more so, since concessions made today in reference to the abolition of private property would have to be repeated tomorrow in relation to the abolition of the family, and so on. For, in this way, international Communism, with inexorable intransigence, proceeds by the tactic of successive impositions, a tactic inherent to its spirit. By capitulating to this tactic, into what ignominy, into what abyss, into what apostasy would we not fall?

Human existence, without necessary institutions such as property and the family, is not worth living. Would not the sacrificing of the one or the other amount to losing, for the sake of life, the very reason for living? Why live in a world transformed into an immense population of slaves hurled into an animal promiscuity?

In face of the dramatic option of the present hour, which this article tries to make evident, let us not reason like atheists who ponder pros and cons as if God did not exist.

A supreme and heroic act of fidelity in this hour could cover a multitude of sins before God, inclining Him to turn away from us the cataclysm which approaches.

An act of heroic fidelity... an act of entire and heroic confidence in the Heart of Him who said: "Learn of Me, because I am meek, and humble of heart: and you shall find rest to your souls." (Matt. 11:29).

Yes, let us trust in God. Let us trust in His Mercy, whose channel is the immaculate Heart of Mary.

What the Mother of Mercy said to the world in the Message of Fatima, is that wars are turned away by prayer, penance, and the amendment of our lives. And not by hasty, shortsighted, and fearful concessions. . .

In the face of the insidious suggestions of international Communism, may Our Lady of Fatima obtain for all of us who have the duty to fight the courage to exclaim “non possumus.” (Acts 4:20)

Note to whoever formats this: This summary was divided into sections when published in Crusade.

Summary

1. In the beginning, the policy of the Communist governments was to maintain a clear and open persecution of Religion; for the Church there was no alternative: it had to react vigorously against them. During the course of dramatic incidents, the blood of the martyrs flowed abundantly, and Communism did not succeed in extinguishing the faith in the souls of the peoples subjected to it.

After a while, certain Communist governments began changing their tactics, inaugurating an era of limited tolerance, which opened up the possibility of a tenuous freedom of worship and speech for the Church ‑ a most tenuous freedom indeed because even where those limited concessions reached their limits the Church was still openly combated by the official ideological propaganda and spied upon by the police.

2 In view of this change of procedure by the Communist authorities in some countries, two courses of action were presented to the Church: “To accept a pact with the Communist regime, or to refuse it, thus remaining in hiding. The making of this choice depends on the following moral problem: Is it licit for Catholics to accept harmonious relations with a Communist regime?”

3 This change of tactics toward Religion has been immensely beneficial for the Communist cause: Opinion in Catholic circles which formerly constituted an impassable wall for Communist propaganda became divided over which orientation to follow. Thus the greatest dike of ideological opposition to Communism was broken.

That breach was the direct work of the so‑called Catholics of the left, or progressives.

4 This relaxation of tensions (detente) inaugurated by Communism can only be the fruit of political designs; that is, to reduce the growing tensions behind the Iron Curtain or to achieve the psychological demobilization of the West, or to accomplish both of these ends. These are the very results which have been gradually and implacably achieved by international Communism.

Therefore, it has become indispensable for Catholics to resolve the moral and tactical problem created for them by this fact.

The potential of this study is evident in that an earlier edition penetrated the Iron Curtain and had great repercussions among Catholics there.

5 If a Communist regime were to offer freedom of worship to the Church on the condition that She keep silent about certain errors of Marxism ‑ especially the denial of private property or of the family ‑ could the Church accept such a proposal? As a condition for obtaining this freedom of worship, could the Church at least agree to recommend to Catholics that they desist from every effort to restore private property and the family, holding the abolition of these institutions to be censurable only in thesis but placidly acceptable in practice by virtue of the conditions imposed by the regime?

6 Under such conditions, Catholics must reject a peaceful coexistence of the Church with Communism:

1st argument‑The temporal order exerts a profound formative ‑ or deformative ‑ action over the mentalities of peoples and the souls of individuals. The Church cannot, therefore, accept a freedom which would involve Her being silent about the errors of the Communist regime, thus creating the impression among the people that She does not condemn them.

2nd argument ‑ By renouncing the teaching of the precepts of the Decalogue which are the basis of private property (7th and 10th Commandments), the Church would present a disfigured image of God Himself. Such a condition would be gravely prejudicial to the love of God, the practice of justice, and the full development of the faculties of man, and, as a consequence, to his sanctification.

3rd argument ‑ The Church cannot accept Communism as a "fait accompli" and a lesser evil.

7 There is a collateral but tragic effect of the silence of the Church about the principle of private property. By not speaking out, She would be consenting to the progressive spread of misery which would flow from the replacement of private property by collective ownership.

‑ Even in a State which is not completely collectivized, it is an obligation of the Church to make the whole truth shine before the eyes of all.

‑ Even though the sense of property be impossible to extirpate in certain regions of Europe because it is so deeply rooted, the Church cannot maintain silence about the right of property without prejudice to the moral formation of the faithful.

‑ The institution of private property must exist because it belongs to the very natural order of things. Accordingly, even if the proprietors were to renounce their rights of property under the pressure of a Communist state, the Church would not be able to accept a peaceful coexistence with that state.

‑ Nor could the Church accept a Communist regime in a passing way, hoping that it would collapse from its own corruption or attenuate itself.

‑ The diplomatic relations of the Holy See with the Communist countries are on a different plane from the matter considered in this study. The traditional official and semi‑official teaching of the Vatican affirms the impossibility of any ideological truce, of any peaceful coexistence between the Church and Communism. There is no lack of declarations from Communist sources to the same effect.

‑ Finally, the Church could not accept coexistence with a Communist state as a pious fraud ("pia fraus"). It would be naive to think that the Communist would not immediately become aware of violations of the pact.

8 A pact of the Church with a Communist regime, under the conditions desired by the Communists, would have as its effect the formation of new generations of Catholics who would perhaps recite the Creed with their lips but whose minds and hearts would be completely saturated with all of the errors of Communism.

9 It is important and urgent to show the intrinsically and necessarily fraudulent character of the "freedom" offered to Religion by Communism.

10 The sins of nations constitute the principal cause of wars. If in order to avoid a nuclear hecatomb, the nations of the West were to commit the enormous sin of accepting Communism, they would call upon themselves the effects of the divine anger. At Fatima, Our Lady said that wars are warded off by prayer, penance, and the amendment of our lives. May She give us the courage to exclaim in the face of Communism: "non possumus."

Caption for picture of Cardinal Mindzenty

Cardinal Mindszenty, ex‑archbishop of Esztergom and former Primate of Hungary, is a symbol of heroic resistance to Communism: peaceful coexistence between the Church and a Communist reaime is imnossible.

Caption for picture of Cardinal Wyszynski

Cardinal Wyszynski's efforts to achieve a "modus vivendi" have not disarmed the hatred of the Communists: this is a proof that there is no possibility of harmonious relations