Acts 4:32 – The community of believers was of one heart and mind, and no one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they had everything in common.
This was a freely chosen, not state imposed ideal. And no elite group of leaders was
commissioned to take from the rich and redistribute the wealth to the poor. While having first dibs on what remainders did not lend themselves to the equal distribution.
The word “covet” is a word communists should ponder if they wish to remain Christian too.
It’s mentioned about 10 times in the Bible
It implies private property - usually a bugaboo with communists. And we haven’t even gotten to “Thou Shalt Not Steal …” yet.
Atheism is a usual mark of communism and goes with it. Marx and Lenin said that “Religion is the opiate of the people …” and saw it as a hinderance to the worldwide revolution they were touting as inevitable, and international, and only to end with the destruction of communism or capitalism. They did not believe in “organized religion” or God … and most Communist and Socialist revolutions from the French through the Russian (and from Portugal and Mexico of 100 years ago, through Spain and Cuba etc. etc.) often persecuted believers, especially Catholics.
Jesus Christ said “I AM the way and the truth and the life … no one comes to the Father but through me.”
It was also Jesus who welcomed the sheep into heaven with the praise “I was hungry and YOU fed me … etc.” What their government did is not mentioned.
Calling oneself a communist … in communist circles might bring one praise and comfort.
In other circles be careful. Whatever one may MEAN by it … some people will think of the
vandalous bullies who arrested people at will and sent them to the Gulags without being guilty of anything. Of starting wars they justified by calling the initiators “liberators” and “the people’s” republic … all the while squashing every human freedom you can name.
Speech. Religion. Property. The right to defend oneself. The right to a FAIR trial.
They remember guards in Berlin shooting unarmed people in the back as they tried to flee to freedom. They remember a counter-morality of lies-being-truth if it benefitted the party.
Communism has been condemned for a long time by the Church. During the Reformation
peasant revolts sprung up and there was class warfare over property and goods that went quickly from coveting … through stealing … right up to murder (and often tied together with “false witness” for good measure.
catholicessentials.net/communism.htm
“With reference to Communism, Our Venerable Predecessor, Pius IX, of holy memory, as early as 1846 pronounced a solemn condemnation, which he confirmed in the words of the Syllabus directed against “that infamous doctrine of so-called Communism which is absolutely contrary to the natural law itself, and if once adopted would utterly destroy the rights, property and possessions of all men, and even society itself.”[1] Later on, another of Our predecessors, the immortal Leo XIII, in his Encyclical Quod Apostolici Muneris, defined Communism as “the fatal plague which insinuates itself into the very marrow of human society only to bring about its ruin.”” Encyclical On Atheistic Communism by Pope Pius XI,
Perhaps you “hunger and thirst for justice’s sake” as Jesus commended? Good for you (sincerely … not being sarcastic here)! Give freely of what YOU have.
As for calling yourself a “communist” if you are really a fine person - uh - I advise against it.
Scrape it from your shoe so to speak … or its attachment to you might make you unwelcome. Why hinder the good you might do by saddling yourself with a word so associated with the greatest
INJUSTICES perpetrated in human history.
The same thing might go for anyone who’s tempted to go around in a “White Power”
T-shirt. One might only mean that they’d rather be “white” when playing Chess pieces –
but people will think of another “White Power” meaning and the misunderstanding will be -
at least partly the T-shirt wearers’ fault.
True – the Church warns of the excesses of Capitalism too.
And Jesus warns the rich not to worship Mammon (money and riches instead of God).
But Jesus calls for the personal sacrifice that will establish justice - not an intrusive world government demanding godlike fealty to itself which considers people “the masses” instead of “holy souls created by God”.
Fulton Sheen back in the 1950s saw the Communist “East” as having “a cross without Christ” or sacrifices made to a godless “state”; while the “Christian West” preferred Christ without a cross (sacrifices disdained, pleasure elevated to god status).
**Archbishop Fulton Sheen:
**
"I believe that the whole political and religious situation of the world can be summed up in terms of the divorce of Christ from His cross. ***Put the Cross-less Christ on the right side, and the Christ-less Cross of Christ on the left. ***
Who picks up the Crossless Christ? Our decadent Western civilization. Christ is weak, effeminate, with no authority to drive buyers and sellers out of temples, and never speaks of self-discipline, restraint and mortification.
Who picks up the Christless Cross? Russia and China, where there is a dedication to a common ideology, the use of discipline and authority to keep peace and order.
