Copperblade
What do you think the difference between what we’re talking about as “communism” is, and what the earliest christians did when they took everything was held in common?..I don’t think it’s necessary that any form of communism must be bad.
The system itself is gravely flawed, unlike the free enterprise laws developed by the great Catholic Late Scholastics.
Pius XI declared emphatically in
Quadragesimo Anno, 1931, #120:
“We have also summoned Communism and Socialism again to judgment and have found all their forms, even the most modified, to wander far from the precepts of the Gospel.” (#128).
See post #21:
“Voluntary sharing and communal living in a religious community have nothing to do with Communism or other such forced appropriations and destruction of freedom.
“We see in Acts 4:34-35,
A Catholic Commentary On Holy Scripture, Thomas Nelson and Sons, 1953:
(This) shows “that property was sold, from time to time, by the owners of it, according as the Church’s need dictated. The sharing of goods was always voluntary. The story of Ananias and Saphira, cf. 5:4, makes it clear that they were not bound to sell, and that after they had, the price was still theirs. When Barnabas gave all his property, such exceptional generosity was chronicled. There are examples of houses held privately in Jerusalem, !2:12; 21:16. St James, in his Epistle, reveals the existence of rich and poor there. The community of goods does not seem to have been very successful, 6:1, and other churches had continually to send alms, voluntarily, ‘each man according to his ability’, to Jerusalem, 11:29.”
So religious communities may have prayer in common, goods in common and spiritual goals, but they are not the evil of communism which has no spiritual objectives and aims to direct and control everyone and everything to evil.
