RELIGION

The Catholic Marxists

By COLM BROGAN

THE end of the Vatican Council came as a deep relief to a multitude of Catholics who had been nearly swept off their feet by the wind of ecclesiastical change. They had been faced with more changes in four years than had hap- pened in the previous four centuries, and although they had shown exemplary loyalty, they looked forward to a period of quiet in which they might adjust themselves to the new order.

Little did they know that an exceedingly active and pugnacious school of Catholic radicals regard the Council reforms in the same light as Communists regard bourgeois reforms in the secular world, and for the same reason. They believe that superficial changes can do little good and may do much harm if they distract the masses from seeking the true solution of their ills. To the Communists, that solution is to be found in the teaching of Karl Marx. There are Catholic radicals who agree.

Catholics, and Christians in general, who find this assertion hard to believe might consider this quotation from Karl Marx : 'Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heart- less world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. . . . The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of mankind is required for their real happiness. The demand to give up the illusions about its condition is the demand to give up a situation which needs illusions.'

To Christians of simple mind and faith these words must surely mean that there can be no alliance between the Church of God and the enemies of God, so long as they remain God's enemies. But Mr Adrian Cunningham, who quotes this famous passage in a 'radical Catholic' magazine called Slant, adds the truly remark- able comment: 'I don't think there is anything here with which a Christian radical could dis- agree.' The italicising of the word illusory might suggest that Marx merely wanted to abolish superstitious accretions and the misuse of Chris- tianity as propaganda for the exploiting class. It is not easy to think of any other explanation for the use of italics, but Mr Cunningham, a postgraduate student of English, knows very much better than that. He offers further quota- tions from Marx which demonstrate that Marx regarded the total destruction of religion as not only essential to the liberation of mankind, but as its precondition. Only Christianity, said Marx, made it possible to reduce mankind to atomised antagonistic individualism, ruled by egoism and selfish need. Young Mr Cunningham quotes all this without a hint of disapproval. He even quotes a fairly vicious example of Marx's anti-Semitism without comment.

Slant is the organ of an evangelising group which calls for a synthesis with Marxism, a rejection of the Papal social encyclicals, accept- ance of the class war, the scrapping of almost all of institutional Christianity and the ranging of the Church on the side of revolutionary Socialism. The Slant group regards Clause 4 fundamentalism as merely petty bourgeois re- formism. Mr Cunningham is twenty-three years old. So is his colleague, Mr Eagleton, also of Cambridge, but the Slant movement is not merely a post-teenage affair. Mr Middleton. managing director of the Catholic publishers, Sheed and Ward, is also the manager of Slant magazine. Three Dominican priests are Catholic Marxists, Fathers Bright, McCabe and Boxer, and they have the support of a visiting Jesuit from the Congo, Father Verheagen. Other Dominicans are sympathisers.

The group will very soon publish their manifesto, which lays down the minimum conditions which the Church must meet if it is not to become totally irrelevant to the modern world. Advance leaks make it appear that the manifesto is not meant as a provocative starting- point for argument, but as an ultimatum. Authority is at the heaviest discount, if not altogether in the discard.

In a recent article in Slant, called 'The Glory has Departed,' a Dominican, Father Preston, has this timely message for the thought- less faithful: 'If we want to know what God is up to in the world, where he is making demands oo us, we read the Guardian; if we let ourselves be persuaded that it is only the Catholic Herald that will give us the low-down we will certainly fail to get his message.' Perhaps we should revise our comforting clichés. 'God Almighty first planted the Guardian' (Francis Bacon). 'One is nearer God's Heart in the Guardian than any- where else on earth' (Dorothy Frances Gurney).

According to Father Preston, Christians live in a world where Christianity is of no relevance whatever and where atheism is so completely accepted that it is not even mentioned. 'Sur- rounded by people who clearly can make perfectly good sense of the world, understand it and change it, without bringing in God at any stage, such Christians become painfully aware of how peri- pheral their belief and practice is, even in their own lives.' They can no more change that world than they can change the colour of their skin. In fact, they often feel more godly in that briskly atheistic world than they do in church. With due respect to Father Preston, it is not clear to every- one that the atheists are making such awfully good sense of the world or are changing it very much for the better. Father Preston is a good example of what I mean by living at some distance from reality. Does he really not know that there are millions of humble people who dumbly feel that there is no meaning in the world of perfectly good sense? Has he never even heard of Billy Graham? At Cambridge, which is (naturally) the stronghold of the young Catholic Marxists, 2,000 undergraduates packed the church where Billy Graham preached and another 1,000 had to be placed elsewhere. They did not all go for the kicks. Come to think of it, Father Preston really should have heard of Billy Graham. The Guardian, God's house organ, gave his mission a send-off of quite malignant bitchiness.

Catholic Marxists have some awkward ques- tions to answer. The Slant group are quoted as saying that Marx did not consciously reject God, but cast aside the phoney escapism that passed for religion. They say, justly enough, that alienation was a key in Marx's thought, but they are remarkably disinclined to turn the key. Marx taught that the expression of the totality of man's being demanded the destruction of everything that alienates man from his work, from society, from

nature and from himself. Among the alienating forces are money, private property, commodity, imposed law, division of labour, the family and religion. Money and religion are the polarities of alienation. Money, said Marx, is the 'Beast of the Apocalypse, and, of course, a religion that is dogmatic, hierarchical and sacramental is trebly alienating, the Triple Tyrant of the Babylonian Woe. Anyone who denies that Marx's atheism was total and fundamental can be ex- cused only by ignorance. But ignorance in Dominicans is not excusable. (Marx believed that once Communism was fully realised and men lived in reasonable and intelligible relations with society, there would be no place whatever for religion in anyone's mind. He and Father Preston should have got together.) Like other Marxists, they have to explain Stalin, not to mention Lenin before Stalin, and the series of dictators who have followed him. These gentlemen and their activities are quite easily explained by anyone who is ready to admit Marx was disastrously lacking in practical knowledge and simple common sense. But this explanation is not open to Marxists, and their attempts to excuse the Master are no more than a series of wriggles. The attitude of the Catholic Marxists to the Communist parties is, to put it politely, ambivalent.

It is surely scandalous that any Catholic priest could ever vote for a Communist party candi- date in a general election, and no less scandalous that one should have decided against voting Communist only because the party pro- gramme was too bourgeois for him. It was scandalous, again, that Mr Eddie Woods of the Morning Star should have been invited to speak in the convent of Sion, where he had a body of nuns among his audience. One of the Sisters of Sion expressed great admiration for the determination and self-sacrifice of Communism. Another said, 'If only they could bring in God, it would be something wonderful.'

This good lady was the victim of a fraud. She had been led to believe that, with a little good will on both sides, God could be slotted somewhere into the dialectic. She could not be expected to know the truth about Communism, but why should she be blinded by a glaring imposition?

Is the scandal important? I believe it is so important that it cannot be safely tolerated for much longer. J. M. Keynes said that what was taught in the university classrooms of one generation was shouted in the streets of the next. This is by no means always true, but it is to the universities and other colleges, including teachers' training colleges, that the Slant group are directing their energies. Even the Newman Association, the association of Catholic university graduates, has been persuaded to give its countenance to Slant meetings. This can only be explained by the latest treason of the clerks, the fear of taking any stand which progressives could call obscurantist or reactionary.

It is the students, with their minds half- formed and half-informed, malleable and suscep- tible to fashionable sophistries, who are the potential victims, the 'little ones' of the mass media of higher education. A heavy responsibility lies on those who offer them false guidance and, if they are not checked, they will have much to answer for. Pareto, not noted for charity, said that nearly all men who deceive others begin by deceiving themselves. This excuse must be allowed to the Catholic Communists, if only to escape the judgment that Christ himself passed on those who offended against the innocent.