So I overheard one person I know telling another person I know that “socialism and communism are evil and the church is very clear on that” (referring to the catholic church). And I’m trying to channel my burning frustration about it into asking what people know about communism and how it has interacted with religion more generally, but also catholicism especially, now or historically. I super hard doubt what this person said was even remotely correct, but I could believe that the catholic church takes a wishy washy fence-sitting stance because it tends to on a number of things.
At any rate, it’s something I should know better because I do have catholic people in my life and so sometimes there may be a need to talk to them about these things through the framing of religion to get past the “communism is purely atheistic” type thinking.
Answers from your own knowledge or resources that go into it are both welcomed. I don’t really know how to approach looking for it on my own in this instance because a lot of western religious material is probably influenced by colonizer thinking, or in the US, influenced by red scare nonsense.
Of course, Jesus was an excellent capitalist. If he had 2 shirts, he sold one. One time at a wedding he took advantage of the huge demand for alcohol and sold watered-down wine for 10 times its price. It was a miracle! He made a killing providing quality healthcare at a premium price to the blind who needed eye correction surgery. He always preached about saving money and selling for a profit. And my favourite is when he visited the temple and congratulated all the merchants for their incredible business acumen.
Any religion is welcome. We cannot fight against religion, practice has showed us this. Religion is by definition under the influence of bourgeois control, it follows that there should be a political struggle in the religious camp as well. Liberation theology is one example of that. So if we accept people from different religious origins and beliefs in our party, it’s an opportunity in following the party line on religious places of action, such as churches, mosques, sanctuaries, etc. Churches are already a place where people share an identity, it can perfectly become a place of political organization. This is well exploited by the extreme right-wing in Brazil, for instance.
The basic policy the Party has adopted toward the religious question is that of respect for and protection of the freedom of religious belief. This is a long-term policy, one which must be continually carried out until that future time when religion will itself disappear. What do we mean by freedom of religious belief? We mean that every citizen has the freedom to believe in religion and also the freedom not to believe in religion. He or she has also the freedom to believe in this religion or that religion. Within a particular religion, he or she has the freedom to believe in this sect or that sect. A person who was previously a non-believer has the freedom to become a religious believer, and one who has been a religious believer has the freedom to become a non-believer. We Communists are atheists and must unremittingly propagate atheism. Yet at the same time we must understand that it will be fruitless and extremely harmful to use simple coercion in dealing with the people’s ideological and spiritual questions — and this includes religious questions
Jesus famously celebrated and supported self-made billionaires in the temple.
adherents can compartmentalize like they do with everything else like when the young-earth freaks use a GPS or eat corn and potatoes. materialism is fundamentally incompatible with believing in unfounded supernatural claims.
