Tag Archives: Karl Marx

The Blueprint for the Reign of the Immaculate Heart

Anthropology, Atheism, Marxism, Sexual Ethics, Theology, Theology of the Body, , , ,

Yesterday, July 13th, marked the 104th anniversary since Our Lady visited three children in Fatima Portugal and donned the prophet’s mantle warning of the dire consequences that mankind was to face for the next century.  Her prophecy that “Russia will spread her errors throughout the whole world” remains the most relevant today.  For Our Lady was not merely warning against Communism per se but was warning about the errors upon which Communism rested.  Our Lady of Fatima was telling us that the next great battle the Church would face would be against Marxism.

Our Lady anointed as her “helpmate” the second great prophet of the 20th Century, John Paul II to assist her.  He had given his papacy, like his entire life and priesthood, to Our Lady.  He even adopted as his episcopal motto, Totus Tuus (“all yours”), to show his total consecration to Mary.  So, when on May 13, 1981, the Feast of Our Lady of Fatima, just prior to giving his Wednesday Theology of the Body lecture and the announcement of the founding of the Pontifical Institute for Marriage and Family, the Pope was shot he saw it as confirmation of his prophetic mission.  He said that “one hand pulled the trigger while the other guided the bullet” away from his major arteries and organs.  Our Lady had directly intervened so that John Paul II could carry out his sacred mission of stopping the spread of the “errors” of Russia.  He eventually dealt a decisive blow when he played an instrumental role in the destruction of the Eastern Bloc. 

It is tempting to think that Communism died when the Berlin Wall fell, but nearly 2 billion people still labor under Communist regimes.  As one of them, China, continues to exercise its hegemonic aspirations, and the errors of Russian continue to spread far and wide, it becomes increasingly important to both understand and counter these errors. 

Marxism as Identity Theft

In his Encyclical Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI spoke of Marxism as a “Satanic Scourge”.  The reason for this is that it strikes at God by attempting to obliterate His image in man.  It overwrites human nature as co-Creator with God (proletariat vs bourgeois) and as men and women in marriage (exaggerated equality between the sexes).  The Marxist revolution shifts away from the family, an image of the Trinity, as the fundamental unit of society towards the individual.  The individual is merely a cog for the collective without any inherent dignity.  It employs the Sexual Revolution as the means for bringing this about—divorce, abortion, contraception, sexual promiscuity even homosexuality (since nothing un-natural)—all permitted and promoted in the name of liberation from the family and human nature. 

Likewise, complementarity is replaced with inherent conflict.  A perpetual conflict between victim and victimizing classes is set up and Marxism delivers Messianic prophecies of peace that removes even the need for government.  Everyone will be equal except, of course, for those who would be more equal than others.  To reject the inherent hierarchy in creation leads to anarchy.

This is where John Paul II enters the scene.  As he told his friend Henri de Lubac, he saw it as his mission to put an end of the pulverization of the human person that had its roots in Marxist thought: “The evil of our times consists in the first place in a kind of degradation, indeed in a pulverization, of the fundamental uniqueness of each human person…To this disintegration planned at times by atheistic ideologies, we must oppose, rather than sterile polemics, a kind of ‘recapitulation’ of the inviolable mystery of the person.” 

The means by which he would accomplish this “recapitulation” is his Theology of the Body.  He would flip the materialistic atheist’s vision of man as nothing but a collection of atoms at the service of the collective on its head.  He would say that the material exists to make the immaterial present.  Man was not just a body, but the body revealed man.  John Paul II would offer his Theology of the Body as the foundation for solving the identity crisis brought about by Marxism.

A man or woman’s identity can only be received by knowing where he or she came from.  Are they simply an accident of biology, or worse, an accident of a creation in lab?  Or, were they willed from the beginning as a directly willed act of love, the crown of creation and very good?  Karl Marx says they are the former while John Paul II affirms the latter. 

Theology of the Body as Antidote

Theology of the Body restores the Christian vision of man’s origin through the three moments of Original Solitude, Original Unity and Original Nakedness.  Man was made to be different from and superior to the animals.  He does not come from the animals but instead is superior to them from the beginning and capable of being in relationship with God.  This Original Solitude is not all because the man Adam was also made to be in a self-giving relationship with the woman Eve in Original Unity.  Through the Original Nakedness in which they are “naked without shame” the two visibly see their vocation to love.

But knowing the beginning is not enough for our identity.  We must also know our history.  This history is not marked by conflict between victim and victimizer but Fall and Redemption by Christ who became a victim so that we didn’t have to.  Christ came to take away all of the coping mechanisms that modern Marxian psychology offers and gives to us true freedom that Marxism can never give.

Finally, to know our identity, we must know our destination.  Marxism controls and manipulates people through a fear of death.  It always try to take away man’s vision of where he is going.  The last 16 months have made this abundantly clear.  But Christ came to take away the fear of death and to clear our vision to our supreme calling, to be caught up in the life of the Trinity with the Communion of Saints.  There is no absorption into the “Collective” but a blossoming of personality such that we become who we were made to be.  John Paul II’s Eschatological Man provides the vision and spurs our desire to journey there.

It is not a coincidence that Our Lady promised that once the errors of Russia were defeated, the reign of the Immaculate Heart would be achieved. The love with which Mary loves, a love that is marked by purity, will invade the hearts of mankind–and Theology of the Body supplies the blueprint for that vision.

The Religion of the Antichrist

Abortion, Church, Church and State, Culture of Life, Defending the Faith, Devils, End Times, Marxism, Spiritual Warfare, , , , , , , , ,

When the wall separating east from west in Berlin fell, millions of people were freed from the shackles of Communism in Eastern Europe and Russia.  The man who was instrumental in this happening, St. John Paul II, saw it as part of his divine mandate to facilitate this monumental event.  But as a Catholic who had a great devotion to Our Lady of Fatima, he knew that was not the end of the story.  Russia had spread her errors practically unabated for 75 years; reaching even into our own country.  These errors were not Communism itself, but instead the ideology that underlies it—Marxism.  Marxism is alive and well and is poised to become a global religion through the likes of not just China’s hegemonic aspirations, but the World Economic Forum’s Great Reset, WHO’s universal healthcare plan (led by Marxist Director General Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus), Black Lives Matter and a whole host of other organizations.

A Global Religion?

To call Marxism a global religion, may, at first glance, seem to be an exaggeration.  Of course, properly speaking, it is not a religion at all.  Religion is always ordered to God which means that there can be only one true global religion.  It is the one founded by God Himself in the Catholic Church.  But the Devil is always on the prowl to ape Christ including by forming his own global religion.  Marxism is the “religion” of choice and should properly be seen as the religion of the Antichrist.

That Marx himself was under demonic influence can hardly be disputed.  Several of his biographers, many of whom are sympathetic to his cause, have mentioned this.  Paul Kengor, in his new book The Devil and Karl Marx, does a thorough job of compiling the case for Marx’s diabolical connections.  Viewed in this way, it also helps to understand the beguiling effect that Marxism has on a lot of people because of its inherent power of mass Demonic Oppression.  The Fathers of the Second Vatican Council were aware of this as they included several schemas on “The Care of Souls with Regard to Christians Infected with Communism” in their preparatory documents.  Unfortunately, these schemas never saw the light of day and would have been a great aid in fighting an “invention so full of errors and delusions.”

The Great Imitation

Besides the global aspirations of Marxism, there are other, more insidious ways in which it will imitate the true religion.  In taking on human flesh in the Incarnation, Christ sought to both repair and elevate human nature making it capable of sharing in the Divine Nature.  In simplest terms, Marxism is an attempt to fundamentally transform human nature through the instruments of politics and culture.  It may have failed to control economics, but that was not the end of it.  Using the Sexual Revolution, Cultural Marxists have been wildly successful in “transforming” human nature in the sexual realm.  No longer does human nature thrive through monogamous marriage, the family, and private property.  Parents are not uniquely suited to mold their children according to their nature, but instead human nature is malleable and should be molded into the image deemed useful by the State.  Free will, the mark of the Divine image in man (c.f. CCC 1704-1705), is an illusion and replaced through conditioning according to their social structure (or through the correction of “Unconscious Bias” as the remains from obsolete social structures and implemented through “Corporate Training”). 

Christianity worships Christ Who made Himself a victim for our sins (c.f. 2 Cor 5:21) while Marxism worships the Victim Class.  Man’s nature is not social and marked by complementarity but instead is competitive.  It is to be informed by the narrative of oppressor versus oppressed.  There is a never-ending search of the new victim class in order to keep the worship going.  Virtuous men and women, those who are most like God are scorned and those who have been intersected by the most “axes of oppression” are exalted. 

Finally, just as Catholics offer the blood of the Innocent Lamb of God to the Father, Marxists offer the blood of innocent children through abortion to the Devil.  Marxism and abortion are always a package deal because Marxism, like all religions, needs to offer sacrifice.  The Devil throughout history has always demanded the blood of the innocent in sacrifice.  Marxism in all its instantiations always includes abortion.  It was Russia that became the first country to legalize abortion in 1920 and thanks to the Marxist feminists of the 1960s, the United States followed suit.  You can often identify a Marxist by how insistent they are that abortion is a “right”.

The Spirit of Christ animates the Christian religion and so the spirit of the antichrist animates the religion of Marxism.  The globalists who seek a One World Order are Marxists at heart.  Once a critical mass is met, then the world will be ready for the antichrist.  This is not an inevitability however and so Catholics must fight against Marxism in all its manifestations.  The Church was once instrumental in fighting Communism, but now it too has been infected with Marxists.  We need to pray that Christ will once again cleanse the Temple by setting his sights not on the money changers but the Marxists.  We have Our Lady of Fatima on our side and we can fight its spread through the First Saturday Devotion.  We can also zealously combat the errors where we see them and educate ourselves on this most pernicious enemy because there is one other thing the religion of the antichrist does—seeks to wipe out the believers of the True Faith.

The Newest Teen Idol

Anthropology, Atheism, Church and State, Politics, , , , ,

To mark his 200th birthday, the self-styled “young person’s guide to saving the world,” Teen Vogue,wrote an article on Karl Marx—“the Anti-Capitalist Scholar.”  The article is worth reading, not necessarily because it is a work of serious scholarship, but because it represents a perfect example of the propaganda that many young people are fed regarding Marxism.  Avoiding the inconvenient truth that his ideology led to deaths in the neighborhood of 150 million people (according to The Black Book of Communism) and focusing instead on the abuses of capitalism that it allegedly rectifies, Marx is presented and an underappreciated genius.  This marks the latest in a long line of attempts to paint the intellectual founder of Communism and his theories in a positive light.  Of course this is a favorite tactic of Lenin himself who thought that targeting the minds of the young and teaching them to love Marx, hate any authority and  label anyone whose ideas differ from theirs as haters (notice how “bosses”, “rich people” and even Donald Trump end up in their sights) they could be won over to Communism.  The rest of the general public, living in a post-Cold War world, remains wholly ignorant to the tenets of Marxism, let alone its inherent dangers.

In his scathing condemnation of Communism (he calls it a “satanic scourge”), Divini Redemptoris, Pope Pius XI said that Communism spread so rapidly because “too few have been able to grasp the nature of Communism. The majority instead succumb to its deception, skillfully concealed by the most extravagant promises…Thus the Communist ideal wins over many of the better minded members of the community. These in turn become the apostles of the movement among the younger intelligentsia who are still too immature to recognize the intrinsic errors of the system” (Divini Redemptoris, 15).  His assessment of Communism remains to this day one of the best overall and succinct descriptions of the goals and errors of Marxism.  It should appear on every Catholic’s reading list, especially those who view Marxism as something relegated to the dustbin of history.  It is still very much alive in places like Cuba and North Korea and in its cultural form in many countries (including our own).

Marxism and Conflict

Rather than focusing in this essay on each of these errors, there is one particular aspect that draws our attention.  In the last paragraph of the Teen Vogue article, the author says “While you may not necessarily identify as a Marxist, socialist, or communist, you can still use Karl Marx’s ideas to use history and class struggles to better understand how the current sociopolitical climate in America came to be.”  This plea for open-mindedness towards Marxism is really a thinly veiled attempt to promote it.  It rests on an important assumption attached to Marx’s philosophy that paves the way for the whole package—his dialectical and historical materialism.

Marx’s interpretation of history is simple; it is a process that is driven inevitably forward by the law of dialectics.  In this vision of history, all social change comes about through class conflicts produced by economic causes.  As Marx put it, “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1 ).  This growth occurs according to the pattern of the dialectic.  Thesis generates its own antithesis and from this conflict a synthesis emerges.  This synthesis becomes the new thesis and the process continues until it reaches its end—the Communist society.  For Marx, the rise of Capitalism had reduced society to only two classes, the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.  What he proposed was a single world-wide revolution that abolishes the Bourgeoisie and puts an end to class conflict forever under the “dictatorship of the Proletariat.”

To organize the young around the view that all of history is oppression is the key to the spread of the Marxist revolution (or any revolution for that matter).  This is also at the heart of the challenge by cultural Marxism that we face.  The dialectic of oppression is the predominant social vernacular of our day.  The rich oppress the poor, men oppress women, white men oppress black men, religious majority oppress the sexual libertines and on and on.  We must see this for what it is—something the Holy Father warned about, “The preachers of Communism are also proficient in exploiting racial antagonisms and political divisions and oppositions” (DR, 15).

Marx’s vision of history is not historical but religious instead.  He offers no evidence to support his claim that all of history is conflict and accepts no explanation to the contrary.  In fact, if we look at history then there are plenty of examples of cooperative societies (including the family and apprentice/master relationships) that were not in perpetual conflict.  The Christian High Middle Ages were not a period of economic conflict either.  Historian Christopher Dawson has shown conclusively that history has been moved not by economic factors, but religious ones.  Of course there is some truth to the fact that when the cooperative elements broke down, conflict ensued.  But still that can hardly be the lens through which we view all history.

One could refute Marx based on his unproven assumption, but there is a more important anthropological assumption that needs to be challenged.  For Marx the goal is the perfection of society and thus each individual exists for the sake of the whole.  Each man becomes a cog in the machine of society and thus is expendable, leaving him without any true rights.  In the Christian conception of man, society exists for the individual; not in the liberalist sense of individualism couched in a social contract, but because each man only finds his individual perfection by contributing to the whole.   Man is social by nature because He is made in the image of God, Who, as a communion of Person, is social by nature too.

Conflict and Complementarity

This is ultimately why the conflict theory of history doesn’t fly.  Society is formed by men who are all made in God’s image, thus giving them a certain equality.  But this equality does not mean we are destined for a classless society.  The message is not one of conflict but complementarity in which each man and woman finds and is satisfied with their own station in life.  They are fulfilled only by finding this station and living out of it.  This place is predetermined only in the sense that it is part of God’s providential plan and not based upon the preconceived ideas of other men and women.  Richer and poorer depend equally upon each other for their own personal fulfillment.  Men and women, black and white, likewise are the same.  When done well without social agitation from cultural Marxists, this can become a reality.

Perhaps this sounds more utopian than Marxism itself.  This vision will not put an end to oppression because the problem is not in the social structure but in the human heart.  “The poor you will always have with you” because there will always be Original Sin and its accompanying oppression.  But it is not a social revolution that will put an end to that but a revolution of each man against himself.  But this revolution will never come about unless we live out of the truth.  The exterior must support the interior.  The revolutionary language of oppression will never bring about this revolution but only further alienates us from each other and from ourselves.  It’s time we pull the mask off Marxism and call it when we see it.