Reflections from F. Giordano
My friend Francesco Giordano, a doctoral student in Italian Studies at the University of Chicago and a Roman Catholic seminarian, has recently composed these thought-provoking reflections:
"I was reading Gramsci this last quarter, and I found enormous similarities with Christianity in his communist ideology. Indeed, he was talking about the lifting up of masses to render them more intellectual, paralleling this to the attempts made by the Church's religious orders for centuries.
It is indeed true that the Church's struggles over the centuries have been to "raise the bar" of pious practices, rendering them more thoughtful. There has always been a tension between the intellectuals and the ignorant masses. However, the Church offered them more than something naturally elevating; the Church offered them supernatural grace.
This is where the communists cannot go. They cannot offer grace, and they know that they cannot elevate the masses intellectually. Not everyone has such capacities. Not everyone is called to lead. Not everyone is called to be a shepherd. But, everyone is called to grace. What the Church knew since the start, they knew as well. Their ideals would simply remain ideals.
Something cynical in me questions their ideals as simple fronts because I believe they were actually simply attacking the Church from without and from within, using the power of similar ideals. Their "ideals" led to totalitarianism because without God that is the only place where we can go since a human nature that is afflicted by the concupiscence of the flesh, by sin has to be controlled somehow. If the conscience which has a fear of God does not act internally, then an external force has to be used.The totalitarianism, in turn, led to wars which continued to lower the morale of the masses, and, before you know it, few believe in God, a God that is forgotten.
I am reminded of Jeremiah 6 here. Religion continues to be attacked, internally and externally. Internally, we see today how weare attacked by crazy liturgists and by various movements (from homosexuals to communists and secretive Masons) that have easy access to a people that is ignorant of its history with God. Externally, we see today how strong secularism has become. We are trying to compete with the secular media to get the message of Christ to people who are too ignorant to care. It is no wonder that other external forces like Islam have such easy access. We must pray and work to overcome these forces. I think of the Battle of Lepanto all the time; the Turks fought us 3:1, and they lost! That is my hope. Christ has already won, and we are simply here to bring His victory to fulfillment. Beyond us, He is also quite capable of using nature to show His strength."
"I was reading Gramsci this last quarter, and I found enormous similarities with Christianity in his communist ideology. Indeed, he was talking about the lifting up of masses to render them more intellectual, paralleling this to the attempts made by the Church's religious orders for centuries.
It is indeed true that the Church's struggles over the centuries have been to "raise the bar" of pious practices, rendering them more thoughtful. There has always been a tension between the intellectuals and the ignorant masses. However, the Church offered them more than something naturally elevating; the Church offered them supernatural grace.
This is where the communists cannot go. They cannot offer grace, and they know that they cannot elevate the masses intellectually. Not everyone has such capacities. Not everyone is called to lead. Not everyone is called to be a shepherd. But, everyone is called to grace. What the Church knew since the start, they knew as well. Their ideals would simply remain ideals.
Something cynical in me questions their ideals as simple fronts because I believe they were actually simply attacking the Church from without and from within, using the power of similar ideals. Their "ideals" led to totalitarianism because without God that is the only place where we can go since a human nature that is afflicted by the concupiscence of the flesh, by sin has to be controlled somehow. If the conscience which has a fear of God does not act internally, then an external force has to be used.The totalitarianism, in turn, led to wars which continued to lower the morale of the masses, and, before you know it, few believe in God, a God that is forgotten.
I am reminded of Jeremiah 6 here. Religion continues to be attacked, internally and externally. Internally, we see today how weare attacked by crazy liturgists and by various movements (from homosexuals to communists and secretive Masons) that have easy access to a people that is ignorant of its history with God. Externally, we see today how strong secularism has become. We are trying to compete with the secular media to get the message of Christ to people who are too ignorant to care. It is no wonder that other external forces like Islam have such easy access. We must pray and work to overcome these forces. I think of the Battle of Lepanto all the time; the Turks fought us 3:1, and they lost! That is my hope. Christ has already won, and we are simply here to bring His victory to fulfillment. Beyond us, He is also quite capable of using nature to show His strength."
posted by Texanglican (R.W. Foster+) | 7:24 AM
2 Comments:
If only Francesco had a blog... :-)
Hi, Jay here. As always, the insights of my commendable friend Francesco Emmanuel Maximilian Giordano are most illuminating. I agree with him that successful communist movements have not only tended toward totalitarianism but have typically degenerated into barbarity due to their atheism. Like most Catholics in more-or-less democratic societies, I laud twentieth century Popes and their bishops for their criticisms of totalitarian movements of the left. But if I laud the hierarchy for these criticisms, then I must reproach it for the ecclesiastical patronage enjoyed by totalitarians of the right(Spanish, Italian, and Vicy fascists). The pattern is perfectly apparent. If the totalitarians in question supported the traditional privelege and property rights of the church, Catholic hierarchical structures were content to call them friends. This is, of course, rank hypocrisy. Though ordained and sustained by God, the institutional church is also a human institution and no one ought to be surprised to see it behaving like one. Fortunately the church is not coextensive with its institutional structure and leadership.
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