Jesuit America magazine offers ‘Catholic case for Communism’

July 24, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — The Jesuit-run America magazine published an article this week claiming that the Catholic faith can be reconciled with the ideology of communism, despite the fact that communist regimes are responsible for the deaths of countless millions through executions, labor camps, starvation, and numerous other cruel projects of social engineering.

Writer Dean Detloff identifies Catholic pacifist and civil rights leader Dorothy Day in “The Catholic Case for Communism” as a faulty critic of communism. Day, a co-founder of the Catholic Worker movement, was a critic of unbridled capitalism, who also found fault with communism. He writes that Day taught that Catholics should “hate communism but love the communist” and that even while “goodness” attracts some people to the communist movement, it has “the distinct view of tearing down the church.”

Multiple popes have condemned communism explicitly in various encyclicals. For example, Pius IX referred to socialism and communism in Nostis et Nobiscum (1849) as espousing “wicked theories,” and Leo XIII wrote of “that sect of men who, under various and almost barbarous names, are called socialists, communists, or nihilists, and who, spread all over the world, and bound together by the closest ties in a wicked confederacy … strive to bring to a head … the overthrow of all civil society whatsoever” (Quod Apostolici Muneris, 1878). Other popes who have criticized socialism include Pius XI, John XXIII, and Benedict XVI.

Detloff writes:
He goes on to say:
Seeing parallels between The Communist Manifesto, penned by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, and Catholic teaching on private property, Detloff opines:
History has recorded that communist governments, movements, and insurgencies have been responsible for the deaths of millions of people. According to Professor R.J. Rummel of the University of Hawaii, the communist Soviet Union was responsible for 61 million deaths, of which dictator Josef Stalin was responsible for 43 million. Under dictator Mao Tse-tung, communist China killed 77 million, while the communist Cambodian government under dictator Pol Pot killed 2 million out of the country’s total seven million people. Marxist insurgencies in Latin America and Africa were responsible for decades of turmoil and thousands of deaths and assassinations in the decades after the Second World War.

In an email response to LifeSiteNews, Catholic investigative journalist Stephanie Block said of Detloff’s attempt to reconcile Marxism and the Catholic faith:

Detloff asserted that “any good communist is quick to admit” the many “mistakes” committed in the name of communism. After noting American communists’ support for Adolf Hitler and their attacks on Jewish groups and trade unions following the Soviet Union’s secret pact with Nazi Germany, as well as communists’ willingness to see millions killed to advance their goals, Catholic League president William Donohue commented, “The communists made no ‘mistakes.’ That is a myth.” Donohue wrote that there is a “direct line between Marxist ideology and genocide.” He quoted Russian author Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, who said Josef “Stalin did not pervert Marxism — he perfected it.” Donohue opined: “To those who understand human nature, none of this is surprising. To those who don’t, it is a mystery.”