Paul VI, from the Second Vatican Council to dialogue with the worldSt. John Paul II, theologianUntil the time of the Council, the two lines of criticism had remained external to the Church, but when the Church wanted to open itself more to the world in order to evangelize it, they became internalized in a certain way and had an important effect on some post-conciliar drifts.
The Western Front
The liberal critique was already a well established critique, incessantly repeated and centered on the clichés set by French anticlericalism, starting with Voltaire. They saw and wanted to see in the Church a remnant of the Ancien Régime, a "reactionary" institution, backward and obscurantist, anti-modern and anti-democratic, defender of superstition, oppressor of consciences and opposed to the progress of science and liberties. And they repeated it incessantly, generating the characteristic anticlerical hatred of the radical left, which Marxism also picked up later. This anticlericalism had had very harsh expressions, open persecutions, closure of Catholic institutions and massive expropriations, throughout the 19th century and was renewed in the first third of the century, with the secularist laws in France (1905), Mexico (1924) and the Spanish Republic (1931). To this was added the religious persecution opened after the Russian revolution (1917).
After the Second World War, the general climate improved, but in the most advanced countries of Europe - Switzerland, Germany, the Netherlands - criticism persisted from the most secularist intellectual sectors, from radical and materialistic scientific circles to liberal circles of a more or less Masonic character. They constantly repeated the same topics already consecrated: the Galileo case, the wars of religion, the intolerance of the Inquisition and the ecclesiastical censorship (the Index), until they stamped in the consciences an image that still lasts.
All this provoked an uncomfortable sensation of confrontation between modern culture and the Christian faith. And it put the Church in a certain way on the defensive: on the political defensive, where it could seem that the lost privileges of the Ancien Régime were being yearned for and vindicated, and on the intellectual defensive, where it could seem that the growth of science and knowledge necessarily generated the retreat of the Christian faith: Christianity could only remain among the ignorant. It was the classic accusation of obscurantism.
It was known that criticism was, in many cases, unfair. But it generated discomfort and discomfort. And for the more culturally sensitive Christians it made them see more clearly their own inadequacies, and look at them with impatience and, at times, incomprehension: the intellectual poverty of many ecclesiastical studies, the scarce scientific formation of the clergy, the rancid flavor of some inherited customs that had little to do with the Gospel: benefices and canonries, ecclesiastical pomp, baroque, grotesque manifestations of popular piety, privileges of the civil powers or of the old nobility, etcetera.
The Church has done an immense cultural work everywhere and has always counted on privileged minds, and for this reason the scornful criticism of those who considered themselves representatives of progress was all the more painful. With the desire for conciliar renewal, there was a growing sensitivity to one's own defects in order to achieve a more effective evangelization and also to achieve a new cultural and intellectual dignity, to be acceptable to the Western intellectual elites and to make a place for oneself in modern culture. This affected in a particular way the most intellectual episcopates: Holland, Germany and Switzerland; and, to a lesser extent, Belgium and France, which would take the lead in the Second Vatican Council. It was legitimate, but it needed discernment.
The Eastern Front
There is another front, which we can call the Eastern front, because it reminds us geographically of the situation of Russia in the East of Europe. In reality it was not a geographical front, but a mental front, and the problems were not directly with the immense Union of Soviet Socialist Republics; it was, in reality, internal, in each country. It is the presence of communism. Berdiaev, a Russian thinker who fled to Paris after the Russian revolution, rightly saw communism as a kind of Christian heresy, a transformation of hope: an attempt to make paradise on earth, to reach the perfect society by purely human means.
Communism is the most important of the revolutionary socialist movements, although it should not be forgotten that fascism and Nazism were also socialist and revolutionary. It had spread at the end of the 19th century as a consequence of the massification and mistreatment of the working population after the industrial revolution. The growth of a poor sector, of workers uprooted from their places of origin and their culture, and grouped in the belts of the big industrial cities, had been the breeding ground for all the socialist utopias since the middle of the 19th century. Marxism was one of them.
The Marxist charm
He succeeded in gaining a foothold because he had behind him a general theory, simple but apparently compact, about history and the structure of society. It attracted many intellectuals and ignited a revolutionary mysticism. First, it reached radicalized sectors; then, also intellectuals who wanted to place themselves in the vanguard of the future; and, finally, it was a great temptation for Christian movements, which felt challenged by this current that was going to change history. So it seemed.
Marxism is, in its origin, a philosophy; or rather, an ideology. An attempt to understand historical and social reality, resorting - it must be said - to rather elementary explanations about the formation of society and to a kind of utopian vocation for a better world. The principles of Marxist economics, purely simple, could not account for reality, and proved incapable of constructing it when they were put into practice, but its social ideals caught on in the revolutionary movements and managed to move an idealistic sector, which succeeded in triumphing in some countries, above all in Russia. There, with all the economic and political weight of an enormous society, it became communism and spread throughout the world, by political and propagandistic means.
Bleeding paradoxes
The truth is that with the benefit of hindsight one can judge the tragic ridiculousness of almost everything: of doctrine, expectations, etcetera. And the achievements are striking for their mixture of megalomania and gray inhumanity, apart from an inexhaustible history of outrages. But two things cannot be denied. The first, that he had an enormous political success. The second, that he had the mystical aura of taking the side of the most disadvantaged. He was the voice that spoke on behalf of the poor. Or, at least, so it seemed and so they wanted it to seem.
What was so shocking was that, at the same time, the movement was tightly directed by the police and propaganda apparatus of such unmythical characters as Stalin, with a dictatorial and totalitarian regime unparalleled in history, and with arbitrary rule, purges and atrocities beyond compare. Incredible paradoxes. Reality, as is often repeated, surpasses fiction.
Ecclesial impact
The fact is that the Church was, on the one hand, challenged to see some sectors of the proletarian population who, having been uprooted from their places of origin, had lost their faith and were being badly reached. On the other hand, it felt a kind of temptation, which grew throughout the twentieth century until the crisis of the system. The more socially sensitive Christians felt admiration for the Marxist commitment ("they really give their lives for the poor"). It must be said that this was also due to a constant propaganda that distorted the situation and concealed its sinister aspects, fiercely persecuting and denigrating any dissident or critic.
The fact is that the Marxist wing criticized the Church as an ally of the rich and an accomplice of the bourgeois system it wanted to overturn. And, at the same time, it tempted those with a greater social conscience. This produced an enormous and growing impact on the life of the Church throughout the 20th century. Especially in the most committed sectors: the Christian lay organizations and some religious orders.
In the sixties, it became an epidemic that affected the Christian bases of the whole civilized world. And it would have a long epigone in some aspects of liberation theology, until it was resolved with the fall of communism (1989) and the discernment made by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, then presided over by Joseph Ratzinger.
Discomfort and ambiguity of the world
In short, it was an uncomfortable situation on both fronts, although it only made sensitive minds uncomfortable. And it had this double dimension: a feeling of a purely defensive attitude, and a feeling of the shortcomings of evangelization. There was certainly a question of intellectual and Christian honesty, if one wanted to evangelize the modern world. It was not possible to evangelize without listening, making amends for one's own mistakes and recognizing the good and the just in others.
But it is not possible to use the word "world" without confronting the deep echoes that this word awakens in Christian language. For, on the one hand, the "world" is God's creation, where human beings work honestly; but it also represents, in the language of St. John, everything in man that is opposed to God. The two things are not really separable, because there is no such thing as the purely natural: by its origin everything comes from God and is ordered to God, and after sin, there is nothing naturally good and innocent unless God saves it from sin. God alone saves: neither critical intelligence nor utopia saves.
Need for discernment
It is true that there were many things to fix in the Church, and external criticism made us see what, at times, we did not want to see. But it was necessary to discern. The (enlightened-Masonic) world was rightly irritated by clericalism, laziness and ecclesiastical pomposity, but it was also irritated by the love of God and the Ten Commandments.
For its part, the Marxist world accused the Church of caring little for the poor. And it was right, because everything is little, although no human institution has been as concerned about the poor as the Church in all its history. And it was also necessary to discern, because Marxist mysticism had a touch of idealistic romanticism, but it was encouraged by blatant propaganda and directed by an immense machinery of power, which only sought to impose a world dictatorship, with the good intention of making everything better.
They wanted to create an ideal world, a paradise, where, as in the Soviet Union, the Church would have no place. Moreover, they were willing to go beyond anything, because, for them, the end justified the means. History would show, once again, that the harsh reality could not be changed by any utopia, although perhaps no other utopia in history made such violent pressure to change it. In the meantime, many Christians changed their hope. They preferred the hope conveyed by Marxist propaganda, which promised heaven on earth, to the hope conveyed by the Church, which only promised heaven in heaven, although it also called for commitment to earth.
The memory of Benedict XVI
In his first and famous address to the Curia in December 2005, Benedict XVI considered "Those who hoped that with this fundamental 'yes' to the modern age all tensions would disappear and the 'openness to the world' thus achieved would transform everything into pure harmony, had underestimated the inner tensions and also the contradictions of the modern age itself; they had underestimated the dangerous fragility of human nature, which in every period of history and in every historical situation is a threat to man's path. [The Council could not have intended to abolish this contradiction of the Gospel with regard to the dangers and errors of man. On the other hand, there can be no doubt that it wished to eliminate erroneous or superfluous contradictions, in order to present to today's world the requirement of the Gospel in all its grandeur and purity. [Now this dialogue must be carried out with great openness of mind, but also with the clarity of discernment of mind that the world rightly expects of us at this very moment. Thus today we can turn our gaze with gratitude to the Second Vatican Council: if we read it and accept it guided by a correct hermeneutic, it can be and become more and more a great force for the ever necessary renewal of the Church".
To continue reading
Marxism. Theory and practice of a revolution
Fernando Ocáriz.
220 pages.
Ed. Palabra, 1975
Marxism and Christianity
Alasdair McIntyre.
144 pages.
New Beginning, 2007
Marxism and Christianity
José Miguel Ibáñez Langlois.
Ed. Palabra, 1974
