Marxianity
Stuart Reid
We shall find our most fertile field of infiltration of Marxism within the field of religion, because religious people are the most gullible and will accept almost anything if it is couched in religious language.—V. I. Lenin.
When last month the eight Roman Catholic bishops of Mozambique declared their allegiance to the Marxist regime of the Frelimo, they did so in such unequivocal language that even the Kremlin must have been shocked. 'We wish,' the bishops said, `to pledge ourselves to the revolution, which intends radically to transform society in Mozambique into a community for all people of good will, whether believers or non-believers.'
The declaration will not, however, have shocked people who have been following the progress of the churches in Africa. For the churches—especially those within the World Council of Churches—have given moral and, in some cases, financial support to the Frelimo; they have backed the MPLA in Angola (and continue to do so); and there can be little doubt that they will kneel before almost any liberationist tyrant who takes over from Ian Smith in Rhodesia.
What of truth, justice and freedom ? They seem hardly to matter. Revolution is the thing; the trend now justifies the means. Certainly at any rate, truth, justice and freedom can mean little to the bishops of Mozambique. In Mozambique, for example, all Catholic schools—some 4,000 —have been taken over by the state, and religious instruction has been replaced by Marxist indoctrination. The Frelimo know what they are about, even if the bishops don't. According to one of their policy guidelines, 'religion will become no more than an episode in the past, worthy of mention only in the history of the world communist movement'. In fact, the Frelimo are possibly understating things when they talk of a mere mention. Whole libraries are likely to be devoted to the part played by religion in the world communist movement during the second half of the twentieth century. It is already evident that churchmen, just as much as vacillating Western policy-makers, are to blame for the collapse of the Western will in the face of Marxist victories in Angola and elsewhere. Churchmen have helped to make 'freedomfighting' respectable, though their concern is mainly for those who are fighting for freedom against `racist' and `fascist' regimes in the West ; they seldom turn their eyes to the East.
This political blindness is just as pronounced in the case of South America as in the case of Africa. At a meeting at the Westminster Conference Centre, Westminster Cathedral, late in January, Bishop Helmut Frenz, Lutheran co-founder of the Chilean Peace Committee, said: `I started in Chile as a naive, liberal humanitarian. I became a highly politicised Christian.' It was soon clear that, as a highly politicised Christian, Bishop Frenz was a naive, liberal humanitarian. But not a Marxist. 'I am not a Marxist,' the bishop announced. `I am a Christian. I believe that Christianity and the Marxist ideal cannot go together [but] . . in Chile we had to struggle for them [the Marxists] because they too are the sons of God. We cannot be neutral because God is not neutral. He took the side of humanity and wherever humanity is at risk the Church must take sides. A Church which tries to be neutral is irresponsible.' In other words, in Chile at least, it is the God-ordained duty of the Church to side with the Marxists.
The World Council of Churches, meanwhile, encourages the 'third world' in its view that the evils of today are the direct result of Western capitalist exploitation, and it toadies to the tyrants of Africa by giving direct financial support to terrorists. This is, of course, pleasing to the Soviet Union, and last year the WCC considerably added to its standing in Moscow by appointing Metropolitan Nikodim to its presidency. Metropolitan Nikodim has always been a loyal servant of the state, consistently denying that there is religious persecution in the Soviet Union. In 1966, in a BBC interview, he admitted that 10,000 churches had been closed under Khrushchev but said this was due to a shortage of church funds. His remarks on being appointed to the presidency are therefore worth some attention, for they give a clear indication of WCC thinking. `The role of the Church,' he said, `is in giving moral support to people fighting for liberty. .. as one of the presidents of the WCC I now feel even more concern for this sort of work.' His moral concern does not, alas, extend to the tens of thousands of political and religious prisoners in his country.
The bias of the WCC has become so blatant that at its Fifth Assembly in Nairobi at the end of last year, the more adventurous delegates spoke out against Marxism. In an unscheduled debate on human rights and the Soviet Union, the Rev Richard Holloway of the Episcopal Church of Scotland said: `It seems to me to be an unwritten rule in the WCC that the USSR should never be castigated publicly.' He said it was time the Russians took their place among the countries berated by the WCC for `neocolonialism'. This so outraged Metropolitan Juvenaly of the Russian Orthodox Church that he interrupted Mr Holloway to say that he no longer felt he was in a Christian fellowship.
In the event, the Assembly did not denounce Russian imperialism. Instead, in a document entitled Disarmament—the Helsinki Agreement, it referred to the 'alleged' denial of religious liberty within the Soviet Union. In another document, the South African involvement in Angola was condemned, but no mention was made of the Russian intervention. It might have upset the Russian Orthodox delegates.
The Marxist leanings of churchmen are beginning to alarm church establishments. Just before Christmas, the Vatican, with the anxious eye on the growing strength (and 'respectability') of the Italian Communist Party, felt moved to restate the Church's traditional teaching: `One cannot be simultaneously a Marxist and Christian.' It was a bit late in the day, however, for what sounded very much like pique. After all, the Church's Ostpolitik—in whose name Cardinal Mindszenty was stripped of the Primacy of Hungary—has given some Catholics the strong impression that Marxism and Christianity are compatible, or at the very least have enough in common to allow the two to work together in harmony. The Ostpolitik of the Catholic Church has been thoroughly examined, and discredited, in Marxism and the Church of Rome, issued by the Institute for the Study of conflict, of which Brian Crozier is the director. The booklet was written by Herve Leclerc, a French journalist who died recently. M Leclerc traced the leftward swing of the Church to the French Revolution and its murderous cry of `liberte, egalite, fraternite,' but he makes it clear that most of the damage has occurred since the pontificate of John XXIII, who threw open the windows of the Vatican to the world without first looking to see what was outside. Thus: 'In fact, although the new Pope [John] held steadfast to sound doctrine, he was anxious to mark his reign by an audacious act of liberalism. His dream was to melt the Russian ice.' It was not the dream of a wise man. On March 7, 1963, Pope John began the thaw by receiving Khrushchev's son-Inlaw, Adjubei, in the Vatican. A month later, the Italian Communist Party gained one million extra votes. M Leclerc wrote: `The subsequent history of this dialogue Is inherent in this juxtaposition of cause and effect : each step which the Church of Rome took towards Communism brought an electoral, tactical or strategic victory for the enemies of religion.'
The second Vatican Council, as M. Lee:lere showed, provided the enemies of rellgion with a stunning victory. The Church was anxious that observers from the Russian Orthodox Church—men hand-picked
by the Kremlin—should attend the Council; and they did, but only after having first been assured that there would be no condemnations of communism. Not surprisingly, there was a strong reaction from those bishops old enough, or open enough, to remember Pope Pius XI's outspoken attacks on communism. `Communism,' pronounced Pius XI in 1937, 'is intrinsically wrong and no one who would save Christian civilisation may collaborate with it in any field whatsoever.' In October 1965 believing that what was intrinsically wrong in 1937 could not become even moderately right twenty-eight years later, 448 bishops (almost a quarter of the world's episcopacy) signed a petition asking the Council formally to condemn communism. But the petition went unheeded. According to M. Leclerc, it was deliberately, and illegally, blocked by the 'progressives'. (It should be borne in mind that neither Pope John nor Pope Paul was responsible for everything that was said and done in the name of the Council, and in this case no blame attaches to Pope Paul.) As a result communism was not explicitly condemned by the Council, though a footnote referring to earlier condemnations was added by Pope Paul to the constitution on the Church and the Modern World.
It would be unjust and absurd to suggest that the established churches are knowingly serving the purposes of the Kremlin. All the same there has been a marked change of emphasis in pastoral matters among the churches since the war. Fr Paul Crane, the Jesuit, puts the blame on the emergence of secular theology, with its emphasis on the 'here and now' and this 'day and age'.
In the February issue of his magazine, Christian Order, Fr Crane writes: 'The new "Christian" finds his own authority in the struggle for a better world: this is his essential task . .. There is identity, then, between the new "Christian" and Marxists as blood brothers and allies, for each has a temporal paradise to work for as his ultimate goal and each sees his essential task .. . as bound up with its achievement. For the Catholic (new "Christian") liberationist this is what his religion is all about; this and nothing else.'
For all their apparent worldliness, however, the secular theologians are innocents abroad. They simply do not know what's going on. It is almost as if the British Cabinet had met to consider the problems facing Britain in 1940 and had issued a communiqué in which the fact that we were at war with Hitler was not even mentioned.
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