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The Christian Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 November 2024

Victor White O.P.
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It must not be thought, because the Christian Church condemns Marxist Communism, that she thereby identifies herself with those who attack it because it seeks to uproot the ‘existing order.’ The Christian's case against Communism is not that it is revolutionary but that it is counter-revolutionary; that it is, in theory and practice, diametrically opposed to the principles of the Christian Revolution, to the Christian conception of Society, to the Christian conception of human personality and destiny. The Christian Church has a long memory, and she cannot fail to recognize in salient features of the Hegelian-Marxist philosophy a resuscitation of the pre-Christian and pagan conceptions from which the Christian Revolution delivered civilization. This reactionary re-paganization of society is by no means a peculiar or distinctive Eeature of Communism, but it is in Communism that it finds at present its most explicit, logical and ruthless expression. A sincere and authentic Christianity will not oppose ‘Marxism by joining forces with liberalism, individualist-capitalism, bourgeoisism and suchlike representatives of the ‘existing order’ (which it finds hardly less abhorrent), but by reasserting the principles of the Christian Revolution and by revitalizing its forces. In these pages we shall attempt, so far as space permits, to sketch the basic conceptions of this Christian Revolution, as a concrete and dynamic historical reality, with a view to suggesting how it may again become a real, positive and dominant factor in social reconstruction.

Type
Research Article
Information
Blackfriars , Volume 15 , Issue 167 , February 1934 , pp. 138 - 149
Copyright
Copyright © 1934 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers

References

1 Prof. E. Magnin: L'Etat: conception païenne, conception chrétienne (Paris, 1931).

2 William Temple: Christianity and the State (pp. 6, sqq.).

3 Philipp Funk: Der Einzelne, die Kirche und der Staat in Mittelalter, in Houchland, Nov. 1933, p. 8.

4 E. Magnin: op. cit., p 21.

5 E. Magnin: op. cit., p. 22.

6 Faith and Society, p. 31.

7 P. Funk: op. loc, cit.

8 Cf. prof. D. v. hildebrand: Die korporative Idee und die natürlichen Gemeinschaften in Der kath. Gedanke, Jan., 1933.

9 Cf. P. Funk, op. cit.

10 Encyclical Ubi arcano, repeated inQuadragesimo Anno.

11 Thus Lenin: 'to draw a hard and fast line between the theoretic propagation of Atheism, between breaking down the religious beliefs of certain sections of the proletariat and the effect, the development, the general implications of the class-struggle of these sections, is to reason non-dialectically; to transform a variable, relative boundary into an absolute one.; —The Little Lenin Library, Vol. VII.

12 It is of no consequence to this argument whether or not we call Communism a‘religion.’ It is true, as a recent writer in Blackfriars had said, that‘ Communism is an economic cause…is altogether on the economic plane.’ But our case against Communism is that it recognizes no other plane, that Marxism universalizes economics and equates the economic sphere with the totality of reality. Though an ‘ absorbing enthusiasm for a cause does not make that cause a religion,’ it does certainly make that cause occupy the place which should be occupied by religion, and if it is to be really absorbing; it must logically exclude true religion.

13 Faith and Society, p. 30.

14 Pastoral Letter, Advent, 1933.

15 In The Coming Struggle for Power.