I can’t find evidence of anti-communism in the Bible?

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Curious11 said:
Fine. Then we agree. There are forms of communism that are fully compatible with Christianity
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If people wish to voluntarily give or share all they have to a community dedicated to serving the Lord, they are welcome to, yes. It is in no way obligatory, nor are the vast majority of people suited for such life.

EDIT: I’d also add that US history is replete with Christian communal societies. The only reason you don’t hear about them anymore is because they were all unsustainable and failed.
 
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The crusades were framed by Pope Urban as a defensive, just war to redress wrongs committed by the Islamic world against Christendom. In his infamous 1095 declaration, Urban said:

http://www.donparrish.com/EssayPopeUrban.html
From the confines of Jerusalem and the city of Constantinople a horrible tale has gone forth and very frequently has been brought to our ears, namely, that a race from the kingdom of the Persians…has invaded the lands of those Christians and has depopulated them by the sword, pillage and fire; it has led away a part of the captives into its own country, and a part it has destroyed by cruel tortures; it has either entirely destroyed the churches of God or appropriated them for the rites of its own religion. They destroy the altars, after having defiled them with their uncleanness. They circumcise the Christians, and the blood of the circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels, and dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then with flogging they lead the victim around until the viscera having gushed forth the victim falls prostrate upon the ground. Others they bind to a post and pierce with arrows. Others they compel to extend their necks and then, attacking them with naked swords, attempt to cut through the neck with a single blow. What shall I say of the abominable rape of the women? To speak of it is worse than to be silent.
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Even though many would dispute the validity of these claims of Muslim barbarism, the theoretical ‘means’ in that case were not illegitimate under Catholic theology, within the context of that belief. See:
A key document in the history of the legal recognition of universal rights was a Decretal, or legal pronouncement, issued by the lawyer Pope Innocent IV, about the year 1250. It concerned the rights of non-Christians.
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I maintain … that lordship, possession and jurisdiction can belong to infidels licitly and without sin, for these things were made not only for the faithful but for every rational creature as has been said. For he makes his sun to rise on the just and the wicked and he feeds the birds of the air, Matthew c.5, c.6. Accordingly we say that it is not licit for the pope or the faithful to take away from infidels their belongings or their lordships or jurisdictions because they possess them without sin.[15]
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This doctrine of infidel dominium meant that the idea of offensive holy war against unbelieving societies has always been anathema to Catholic theology. This was reaffirmed at the Council of Constance in 1414, when the Polish delegation condemned the Baltic Crusades by the Teutonic Order against northern European pagans, who had been living peacably with the Christians. Catholic Poland became their defenders against the Germans.

But the crusades were not justified on that basis, even if one disputes that Pope Urban was presenting the facts correctly.
 
The communities don’t have to specifically be set up to serve the lord. A system of secular Kibbutz is compatible with Christianity, with matters of faith left to the individual to choose their religion and church
 
So you’re saying the crusades and the inquisition are wrong and cannot be justified?
 
Curious11 said:
Communism wouldn’t care. If it’s a secular society, same rules would apply. A person’s religion would be irrelevant
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Catholics and Christians are in the world but not of the world. We live in a secular world. However, we we do not operate as the secular majority.

We are the believing minority. Today, we are the rebels.
 
What does that have to do with the compatibility of communism and Christianity?
 
Curious11 said:
The communities don’t have to specifically be set up to serve the lord. A system of secular Kibbutz is compatible with Christianity, with matters of faith left to the individual to choose their religion and church
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I suppose. My understanding is that the Church sanctions voluntary communism, particularly for those with a vocation to the religious life, and condemns it as a universal, compulsory, legally-enforced system. So long as the commune respects those basic parameters, the Church probably doesn’t have much to say.
 
What doesn’t that have to do with the compatibility. You seem to be grasping to understand these basic concepts

We Christians live in a secular world but we are not of it.

We live our faith and spirituality and we worship God , within a society of non belief that is constructed after being informed by that non belief
 
thistle said:
Communists are atheists. Check out Marx and Lenin’s many statements on religion.
The Bible is all about belief in God. By definition that means the Bible is anti-Communist!
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That is a wildly inaccurate generalization! These are the divisive statements that cause so much friction amongst peoples with differing views.
 
The church does not make prescriptions in the temporal realm (it’s outwith its remit) but it has condemned absolutism as heretical, because critiquing existing systems does lie within its remit.

The principle quod omnes tangit (what touches all should be approved by all) was already a staple of the canon lawyers and decretists of the church in the 12th century. This was a general principle of these medieval jurists which contended that the head of a corporate body (like a state) had to obtain the consent of its members in all matters which affected them. It was incorporated into the Liber Sextus Decretalium compiled under Pope Boniface VIII in 1298.

In the 16th-17th centuries, the main critiques of absolute monarchy (in the form of both divine right and secular foundations) were from Catholic and Calvinist theologians (i.e. Cardinal Bellarmine, Francisco Suarez), until liberal opponents of absolutism like John Locke emerged circa. 1689, speaking in favour of parliamentarian constitutional monarchy. And Locke was influenced by these earlier Christian exponents of the natural rights tradition, especially as filtered through the cleric Richard Hooker. (I’ve went over this particular point before on the last thread).

The political scientist Francis Fukuyama has both perceptively and persuasively argued that the rise of the modern constitutional order is a narrative of the “success of resistance to claims of absolutism and a reassertion of the primacy of law” but crucially Fukuyama, echoing many other scholars, contends that such a radical ideology was originally made far more communicable to society at large and effective when “a religious tradition gives law a sanctity, autonomy, and coherence that it otherwise might not have had”. This role was fulfilled, Fukuyama claims, by the Church in medieval Europe, to the extent that it was “the guardian" of canon law and a reinterpreted Roman law after the Gregorian Revolution.
 
I disagree. Just like the church supports the capitalist democracy we live in, where it is against the law for the state to nationalize entire industries without the consent of the justice system and parliament, I can imagine it could support a system where it is against the law for a group of people to take over ownership of some productive asset that is collectively owned by society in a communist society, as long as it is the law of the country, agreed upon by the people and the country does not practice imposed atheism like the Soviet Union, but respects freedom of religion
 
Which country do you refer to?

The Church is universal. That’s what the word Catholic means.
 
Liberation theology is, by its very definition, a combination of biblical social teaching and Marxist communism. Card. Ratzinger skillfully exposes the lie that bits and pieces of Marxism can be separated off from the ideology in its entirety. Marxism and any other form of modern communism is totalitarian.

He did specifically reference bible passages. There are 10 footnotes of bible passages with accompanying discussion.

Rather than dismissing the argument why don’t you engage it? Why is he wrong? On what basis do you come to your conclusions? Can you point to a modern Day form of communism that has managed to be anything but totalitarian?

This is the basis for good faith debate!
 
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Communalism is a society in which members of a community VOLUNTARILY share their wealth and possessions; where one takes according to their need and gives according to their ability. Communism forces itself upon people and INVOLUNTARILY takes the wealth from all and redistributes it; usually to fund the regime rather than the people.
 
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But the church supported the absolute monarchs, it had a stake in the system, it was one of the privileged estates along with aristocracy.
 
@curious11 Pope Emeritus Benedict XVI has stated in the past that:

EUROPE AND ITS DISCONTENTS
by Pope Benedict XVI
January 2006

But in Europe, in the nineteenth century, the two models were joined by a third, socialism, which quickly split into two different branches, one totalitarian and the other democratic. Democratic socialism managed to fit within the two existing models as a welcome counterweight to the radical liberal positions, which it developed and corrected. It also managed to appeal to various denominations. In England it became the political party of the Catholics, who had never felt at home among either the Protestant conservatives or the liberals. In Wilhelmine Germany, too, Catholic groups felt closer to democratic socialism than to the rigidly Prussian and Protestant conservative forces. In many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic social doctrine and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness.
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Many Catholics in Europe vote and have always voted for ‘social democratic’ parties that often label themselves as being “socialist”, with the full endorsement of the Church. Labour was always the traditional party of choice for British Catholics. If I may quote from a book, “The Foundations of the British Labour Party”:

“…The religiosity of tone that British socialism acquired reciprocally served to reduce tensions with the churches. In particular, it helped to reassure the Catholic hierarchy in Britain that, in contrast to the materialism and atheism detected in Continental socialist movements, the Labour Party was both compatible with Catholicism and a bulwark against Communism…Labour was thus able to draw much of the Catholic working class to its camp.…”
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Yet their “socialism” had nothing to do with Marxism, whether “pure” or “moderate” in form (until Mr Corbyn came along, that is 🤑)

(continued…)
 
As Pope Paul VI explained:

w2.vatican.va/content/paul-vi/en/apost_letters/documents/hf_p-vi_apl_19710514_octogesima-adveniens.html
Attraction of socialist currents

Some Christians are today attracted by socialist currents and their various developments. They try to recognize therein a certain number of aspirations which they carry within themselves in the name of their faith. They feel that they are part of that historical current and wish to play a part within it. Now this historical current takes on, under the same name, different forms according to different continents and cultures, even if it drew its inspiration, and still does in many cases, from ideologies incompatible with faith. Careful judgment is called for. Too often Christians attracted by socialism tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated. Distinctions must be made to guide concrete choices between the various levels of expression of socialism: a generous aspiration and a seeking for a more just society, historical movements with a political organization and aim, and an ideology which claims to give a complete and self-sufficient picture of man. Nevertheless, these distinctions must not lead one to consider such levels as completely separate and independent. The concrete link which, according to circumstances, exists between them must be clearly marked out. This insight will enable Christians to see the degree of commitment possible along these lines, while safeguarding the values, especially those of liberty, responsibility and openness to the spiritual, which guarantee the integral development of man.
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Immediately following his section on socialism and the various levels of commitment possible for Catholics, Pope Paul has two sections entitled, “Marxism” and the “neoliberal Ideology” in which he makes it clear that a Catholic cannot be a Marxian collectivist or a liberal capitalist.

A little earlier on in the Apostolic Letter he notes:
Ideologies and human liberty

Therefore the Christian who wishes to live his faith in a political activity which he thinks of as service cannot without contradicting himself adhere to ideological systems which radically or substantially go against his faith and his concept of man. He cannot adhere to the Marxist ideology, to its atheistic materialism, to its dialectic of violence and to the way it absorbs individual freedom in the collectivity, at the same time denying all transcendence to man and his personal and collective history; nor can he adhere to the (neo)liberal ideology which believes it exalts individual freedom by with drawing it from every limitation, by stimulating it through exclusive seeking of interest and power, and by considering social solidarities as more or less automatic consequences of individual initiatives, not as an aim and a major criterion of the value of the social organization…
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In 1988, Pope Benedict then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger published a collection of essays under the title of “Church, Ecumenism and Politics”

In it, he argued that capitalism is little better than national socialism or communism, in that all three propose false idols (prosperity, the Volk, and the state, respectively).

Cardinal Ratzinger said that to build a humane civilization, the West must rediscover two elements of its past: its classical Greek heritage and its common Christian identity.
 
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