Church and Communism: An interview with Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller
Vatican (kath.net) “When I look at the Gospel sociologically, then yes, I am a communist, and Jesus is one, too.”
With this dictum, Pope Francis explains the intention of the Gospel. In doing so, he approximates communism with Christianity, even puts it on the same level, since it allegedly exhibits an intention compatible with that of Christianity. This assessment gives rise to the suspicion that he does not regard the teachings of communism as reprehensible, but that, on the contrary, they can also be used to lead a life under Christian auspices.
Communism, whose plan-economy order proved to be disastrous and without a future in 1989/90, is nevertheless presented to the astonished faithful as the ideal for leading a successful life. Although Marx’s philosophy, upon which communism is based, has proved to be unsuitable, its appeal is apparently still unbroken. The general consensus seems to be that the idea is very good, only the people who have put it into action are unsuitable. With the right personnel, as Marx also assumed, it would seem possible to establish in the world what is described by the religious concept of paradise. Contemporaries must realize that the communist utopia seems to be ineradicable.
Even in the Roman Church, Marx’s ideas continue to be used to present a better life to the world and to emphasize the Christian demand for charity. This is why Francis apparently sees communism as the promise of salvation in order to free the world from poverty so that all people can lead a dignified life. However, the experiences of recent history, which can be seen in the collapse of the communist systems in the Soviet Union, but also in the GDR, give rise to considerable doubts as to whether Marx’s ideas could actually help to build a better world.
It therefore makes perfect sense to discuss the relationship between Christianity and communism with theologian and philosopher Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller in order to find out whether the ideas of communism can be used to provide a foundation for the demands and ideas of Christianity and to bring them to life.
Lothar C. Rilinger: Let us start with a theological question. Does God, the Triune God of Christianity, have a place in communism?
Cardinal Gerhard Ludwig Müller: “God is love” (1 John 4:8-12). This truth is the sum of all our knowledge of God. He loved us so much that he gave his only Son on the cross so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life (cf. Jn 3:16).
Communism, as we encounter it in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and in the writings of Karl Marx and his political-ideological disciples Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Pol Pot, as well as their accomplices and satellites, is atheism at its core. This manifests itself in the triad “godless-merciless-loveless”, as none other than Alexander Solzhenitsyn, one of its most prominent victims, stated in his work “Archipelago Gulag”. Marx not only denies the existence of God as the origin of all creation and the goal of every person’s pursuit of truth and happiness. He declares religion in general to be a dangerous illusion and a self-destructive opiate of the people and for the people. It is only an irony of history that the very de-Christianization of Western civilization is destroying people mentally and physically through the mass use of real drugs, and that the legal liberalization of drug use is celebrated as progress—on the road to self-destruction. As early as 1905, in his text “Socialism and Religion”, Vladimir I. Lenin, the founder of the Soviet Union and leading figure of the atheistic New World Order, brought Marxist atheism to its ruthless epitome: “The revolutionary proletariat will succeed in making religion a really private affair, so far as the state is concerned. And in this political system, cleansed of medieval mildew, the proletariat will wage a broad and open struggle for the elimination of economic slavery, the true source of the religious humbugging of mankind.”
The consequence of the denial of God as the creator of a good world that reflects his goodness and love, and as the redeemer of mankind from sin and death, manifests itself in the nihilistic image of man, which shows its satanic grimace on every page and in every action of dialectical and historical materialism. In his novel “The Demons”, Fyodor Dostoyevsky had already prophesied the consequences of atheistic socialism. For Marx, man is not a person created in the image and likeness of God, endowed with inalienable dignity, but an ensemble of ideological and social conditions. Man is completely at the mercy of the collective—state, nation, class, race—and is nothing more than material for the establishment of a utopian social order. For without God, there are no inalienable human rights from the natural and revealed will of their divine Creator, but only from the pure will to power of despots and autocrats.
