: Hmm.: I suppose communism, by the same logic, is also above reproach. It advocates freedom for workers, plans to renumerate them heavily, and claims to stand for the poor and underprivileged. What sort of cruel monster could be against such a noble venture?
Search me. I support many of the short- and long-term goals of the communists, as you know. In any case, the fundamental problem with your essay is that you persist in denying the difference between militant communism, and the communism that has come to power in country after country either by the ballot box or by peaceful protest. Even if your criticisms of militant communism were valid (they're not, not all of them, by a long shot) they would be irrelevant to the question of democratic communism. I suppose your argument is that peaceful or democratic communism, where it exists, is a front for militant communism, a way for the Stalinists to creep into power as it were. But we can immediately see that this is false, because in general whenevr democratic communism has come into power, they have suppressed the Stalinists with far more vigor than the right ever did. For example: the Marxist Robert Mugabe's crushing of a pro-Soviet insurrection in the early '80s, for which he is still condemned by hypocrites in the Western press. The bloody Maoist uprisings in India were crushed by Jyoti Basu, a Communist, which no pre-communist administration was able to do. Today Nepal, home of one of the most powerful Communsit Parties, is fighing a war against the Maoists who are condemned by mainstream comumunists. Nicaragua, where the Marxist-leninists scorned the Sandinsitas and refused to join their coalition. Grenada, the hoem of the only Stalinist coup in the Western Hemisphere- against, you guessed it, a Communist administration. Therefore, your association of teh militant and teh democratic forms of communism cannot stand.
: It is, to a Christian, the perculiar trait of the Jesuit zealot to marry "good works" and killing that perhaps is at the root of most criticisms.
I do not believe the Archbishop killed anyone. perhaps you can correct me. See above, my comments are applicable right here.
: Communists seem to see this relationship far more clearly when they comment on an earlier Catholic 'liberation' program (known as the Crusades) or a precurser to the more modern Communist system of ideological purity enforcement (known as the Inquisition).
Just as the Inquisition says nothing about Catholicism as a whole, nor does Stalinism tell us anything about communism.
:Neither policies, of course, bothered to obtain the approval of the Left intelligensia, which seems to be at the root of all this approbation in any case.
No, the intelligentsia has always been pretty much irrelevant.
"It is better to take one step with teh people than ten steps without them." - Thomas Sankara
: I suppose if Christ had come off the cross, sword in hand, and done some serious liberation (like the Sadduccees had been waiting so long for), the connection might be a bit clearer in my mind.
You lose me here. We had to sing hymns sometimes in high school, and my popersonal favorite whas always William Blake's 'Jerusalem", whose martial imagery is only too plain:
"I will not cease from mental fight,
'Nor shall my sword sleep in my hand,
"Till we have built Jerusalem
"In England's green and pleasant land."
And JC Himself said, 'I have not come to bring peace, but a sword..."
Martial imagery has been a part of Christianity form teh beginning, this is undeniable.
:Even if he had stored some weapons for Barrabas, or something similar ... (Jennifer Casolo, though hardly virtuous, doesn't quite measure up to Ms. Magdelaine)
Who is Jennifer Casolo?
: As it stands, however, I think the late Archbishop, like that old Russian Grand Inquisitor, or ol' Scratch (the original Red) back in the day, he seems to be preaching an unsold product. Sorry.
Really? Liberation theology, or variants thereof (Christian socialism, etcetera) were, as i recall, very popular in Nicaragua, Tanzania, Zambia, as well as in Brazil and other South American nations.
: The "Doc" (still buffooning with the expected pomposity, and all that ...)
I didn't call you a pompous buffoon, and I wish no one had.
-NJ
