FROM DIALOGUE TO EPILOGUE

MARXISM AND CATHOLICISM TOMORROW

FROM DIALOGUE TO EPILOGUE

MARXISM AND CATHOLICISM
TOMORROW
by

FREDERICK J. ADELMANN, S.J .

MARTINUS NUHOFF / THE HAGUE / 1968

ISBN 9789401184014
ISBN 97894-0119108-1 (eBook)
00110.1007/97894-01191081

o 1968

by Martinus Nijhoff, The Hague, Netherlands

Softcover reprint of the hardcooer I$t edition 1968

All rights reserl'fd, including Ihe right /0 translate or to

reproduce this book or parts thereof in any form.

To my Mother and Father

in appreciation

Pour celie derniere etude, tu sais que mes idees etaient

absolument pretes. La dite etude ne sera pas longue, mais claire et substantielle.
Teilhard de Chardin

THE COMMUNIST CREED

I believe in Matter the omnipotent creator of heaven and earth, and in man
its only begotten son, our master which is conceived of the evolutionary
process, born of the qualitative leap and the dialectic process, suffered
under the antithetical bourgeoisie, was crucified in the revolution, died and
was buried, descended to the proletariat and in the October Revolution
rose again from the dead in the synthesis of the "Aufgehoben" and ascended into the classless society of the Communist State and sits as the synthesis
of matter, father almighty; and from thence Humanity will come to judge
the living and the dead. I believe in the Dialectic, the holy Communist
Party, the communion of comrades, the remission of exploitation, the evolution of the body and life in the classless society forever, Amen.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to the following publishers for permission to quote from various appropriate works during the course of this
study:
George Allen & Unwin, Ltd., for Hegel, The Phenomenology of Mind
(tr. J. B. Baille; The Guild Press, Association Press, America Press, Herder
and Herder and copyrighted in 1966 by the America Press for excerpts
from The Documents of the Second Vatican Council, (W. M. Abbot, S.J.
(ed.), (tr. J. Gallagher); Benziger & Co. and Johannes Verlag for Hans Urs
von Balthasar, Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe; George Braziller, Inc. for G.
Szczensy, The Future of Unbelief; Columbia University Press for V. V.
Zenkovsky, A History of Russian Philosophy; Herder & Co. for Branco
Bosnjak, "Zum Sinn des Unglaubens" in Marxistisches und Christliches
Weltverstiindnis; Indiana University Press for F. H. Parker, The Story of
Western Philosophy; The Monthly Review Press for Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man; Penguin Books, Ltd. for Yevtushenko, Selected Poems;
and F. A. Praeger, Inc. for Gustav Wetter, Soviet Ideology Today.
Also, I am indebted to Professor Richardson of Harvard University for
reading the text and making valuable suggestions to me; and also to Mr.
Thomas Wall, my research assistant who helped in various details bothersome to the writer until youthful genius points out the proper solution.
Finally, I am grateful to Rev. Michael P. Walsh, president of Boston
College, for his encouragement and offer of a suitable leave that made this
volume possible.

FOREWORD

This is an authentic book. Its style fits its situation. The encounter between
Marxism and Catholicism was yesterday diatribe, is today dialogue, and
tomorrow will be epilogue. The virtue of Father Adelmann's writing is to
make us aware that we are in via. Happenings are everywhere, not just in
hippieland. In Salzburg and South Bend, in Chiem see and Cambridge
conversations are going on - conversations that are no less than confessions. For Catholics and Marxists are listening to each other and are
changing their minds. It has been the peculiar good fortune of the author
of this book to have been both recorder and participant in these changes.
He has experienced the transition from diatribe to dialogue in his own
thoughts and feelings, and he has here written not an outsider's account,
but an insider's recounting. He is not simply this volume's author, but also
one of its case of characters. Hence the style of his writing is apperceptively
autobiographical. It fits the situation. He is a character in a play, who is
also that drama's author. His essay, then, is not simply a discussion of the
relation between Catholicism and Marxism today, but is a contribution toward a new relation between them and tomorrow.
A second characteristic of this volume is the consistency between its
content and its context. Father Adelmann has rightly chosen to discuss
those very issues which underlie the possibility of dialogue between heretofore unspeaking opponents. For it is with respect to these issues, that is,
the presupposition of the possibility of dialogue itself, that a development
in the relation between Catholicism and Marxism has already taken place.
The shift from confrontation to conversation has required a changed understanding of man and personal freedom on both sides. And it is to Father
Adelmann's credit to have focussed the content of his volume on these two
topics. By their newly deepened understanding of the dignity of the person
and his freedom to shape even the social conditions that also shape him,
Catholicism and Marxism have moved beyond ideology. For now the fruitfulness of discussion concerning the full systems of both philosophies is
admitted on both sides. Now is acknowledged the possibility of meaningful
disagreement and, hopefully, agreement. Having granted the presupposition

FOREWORD

of dialogue, the way is now open to concord. It may not come in our time;
and we cannot yet imagine the conditions under which it might come; but
we tarry not; we are in via.
Finally, it is to the author's credit to have undertaken significant steps
toward revising our historical understanding of the origins and continuities
of both systems. Father Adelmann knows that all institutions tend to misread their history and, in their zeal for truth, sometimes misunderstand even
their own intentions. Hence, he has initiated, in a modest, though suggestive
way, a demythologizing of both Marxist and Catholic histories. On the one
hand, he draws our attention to the personalism of the early Marx and, on
the other hand, he frankly acknowledges the diversities, even errors, in the
administration of authority within the Catholic Church. He writes here as
a Catholic speaking to Catholics - urging a more charitable judgment on
the stranger while requiring a yet harsher judgment on oneself. This is the
bias of humility, and such a bias is needed, I believe, to offset the tendency
to misrepresent historical confrontations in reverse terms- as if the stranger
were the sole fount of evil while from our own heart flows only good. I believe that the tendency and effect of this book is a consistent expression of
the teaching of Pope John and the ecumenical counsels that are urged on
men today.
Herbert W. Richardson
Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, Massachusetts, U.S.A.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

The Communist Creed

VII

Acknowledgements

IX

FOREWORD

XI

PREFACE

INTRODUCTION

CHAPTER I: Marxism
The Person
The Dialectic
Freedom

19
29

CHAPTER II: Catholicism

The Person
Authority
The World

37
39
46
53

CHAPTER III: Coexistence

What the Marxists Must Do
What the Catholics Must Do
Epilogue

60
67

BIBLIOGRAPHY

84

INDEX

88

11
11

71

82

PREFACE

The dialogue between Marxists and Catholics has been going on for some
time now, but it is important to inform people about this. It is also important to point out the necessity for continuing this dialogue in order to
ensure the safety of man on this planet. However, we must also work to
include in future dialogue that other part of the world - namely, the nonChristian world embracing Africa and Eastern countries - or we will not be
truly following the principles of either Christianity or Marxism. This volume
has not been able to participate in this latter task, but I do realize its importance for the future of man. Very practically, I do hope that this work
will appeal to college students especially, but also to people of all faiths
who have an interest in the changes occurring within the Catholic Church
and Marxism. Some people, unfortunately, think that changes except on
the periphery of any situation, are destructive of what is essential. I think
that such an attitude stems from a static view of reality which has been
fostered by not widening one's intellectual horizons so as to encompass
contemporary insights. Although there is much truth resident in paying
heed to what classical physics or metaphysics has had to say, if such a
systematization of reality is continuously adopted as an absolute, it becomes
trivial for our day. And this would be so, it seems to me, because such a
posture misses the fluid process of life so often emphasized by great thinkers
and experienced by all of us. To retreat into the security of opposing
change is to miss the adventure of living as well as its challenge. To join
the vanguard of changers without studying its implications for the future is
liable to stifle the very exercise of freedom in practice. Process, itself, is
meaningless unless some abiding principle becomes discernible. If there is
to be a true evolution of dogma, then the discovery of permanent truth
must be realized and preserved in the midst of adjustments to the contemporary scene.
What I say here about the old and the young mentality applies, too, to
the Marxists. The dogmatism among their tenets must evolve according to
its own principles. To oppose this development will stifle all personal creativity. But in the long run for all of us, there is no substitute for dedicated

PREFACE

intellectual effort; the work of challenging each statement made by any

author - including this one.
Even as I write these lines, I am mindful of some of the shortcomings
of this essay, but if one expects perfection in the sense of saying the last
word, then he has denied all that I say about change and evolution. Although the dialogue between Christians and Marxists has begun, yet its
advance has been restricted, not only due to a previous mistrust on both
sides but also because of the intellectual ferment currently going on within
both centers. If there are deficiencies in this exposition, these will be due
in part, at least to this crisis prevalent not only in the Church but throughout the world. As Father Martin D' Arcy once said: "let us remember that
the Bark of Peter is not sinking, it is only being buffeted."
Chestnut Hill, 1968

Frederick J. Adelmann, S.J.

INTRODUCTION

When I was an undergraduate at Boston College in 1937, I wrote an article

for the college literary publication entitled "Dialectical Materialism." I still
remember my analysis of the Hegelian Dialectic in terms of thesis, antithesis and synthesis and my fears about the inroads of communism into the
life of America in those depression years. I likened communism to the
great impersonal chain stores then reaching their maturity and foreboding
what I thought would result in the monopoly of one of them. Across the
Charles River some of my friends were actively joining left wing organizations that were, in a strange destiny, to encroach on their later political
and professional careers in the face of Senator Joseph McCarthy. It is significant that our lives were to take such disparate paths for so many years
because of our college milieu. At Boston College in those days we were
strongly committed to the Catholic side of things. Our philosophy courses
were a basis for the defense of the faith and we were proud of them. At
least we were taught committed positions and our commitment was to the
faith. The result, of course, in hidden providential ways of grace led me
into the Jesuit Order where I felt that I could speak the truth and concern
myself with eschatological things. My college classmates later were swooped up into a World War that even now they do not like to talk about but,
nonetheless, the philosophy of their early days served as a motivating force
in their valiant efforts both for God and country.
But the years have wrought many changes and that communism that I
despised and feared has reared a more friendly and powerful head over the
globe. Basically my animosity was centered on its atheism; it was God's
enemy and hence mine. This situation prevailed until very recent times in
my mind. And then something happened. From my studies and its example,
I began to see that communism was doing some good things for life and
for men. Its progress appeared as an answer to the quest of the ordinary
man in the face of exploitation. Of course, never for a moment was I blind
to the exploitation of communism itself. Communism until very recently
meant to me totalitarian force, Siberian labor camps, the October Bloody
Revolution, brain-washing and the "WalJ." But this was Stalin's commu-

INTRODUCTION

nism. Stalin, to my way of thinking never smiled but when Krushchev came
to America, he did. And despite the cold reception we gave him and his
antics at the U.N., nevertheless he did talk about peaceful coexistence. But
then he seemed to take it all back when he said, "We shall bury you."
However, for one studying Marxism new currents were flowing in the
stream of all we knew of it hitherto, and 1 refer to the beginnings of the
intellectual stirrings of the Marxists themselves and the breakdown of restraint on their burgeoning ideas. This was the real breakthrough for me.
Then, 1 suppose for the first time, it dawned on me that it was possible for
a Catholic to talk with communists and work toward a dialogue. This
possibility congealed at a meeting in 1964 of the American Philosophical
Association in Washington, D.C. Through an odd set of circumstances 1
found myself invited to sit at the same table at the banquet with two
Marxist philosophers from the Soviet Union and their embassy interpreter.
1 broke the initial frigidity of the atmosphere by discussing the virtue of
caviar, especially of Beluga and then we went on to discuss the writings of
Fr. Gustav Wetter, a Jesuit who had written on Dialectical Materialism.
My Russian colleagues knew him well and had in fact exchanged New
Year's cards with each other. Then suddenly the name of Pope John XXIII
came up and one of the Marxist professors said: "I met him when he was
the Cardinal of Venice, he welcomed us there to a philosophy convention
and we have also exchanged New Year's cards." The ice melted and from
that moment on, something affected me and 1 knew that 1 as a Jesuit and
Catholic priest could really understand them because as our conversation
progressed, 1 realized that we had a philosophical link in realism. Often 1
had felt miles apart from the positivism of the language analysts, although
today I think a dialogue here is also in the offing. But, in general, a kind
of crass materialism was prevalent among most of my colleagues at this
meeting.
At a meeting of this same Association several years later in New York
one of the Catholic representatives at a panel discussion of the Association
for the Study of Marxism was unable to be present and my friend Professor
John Somerville of Hunter College asked if I would substitute. In the
course of my remarks I mentioned my philosophical kinship with the
Marxists on the basis of realism and my hope for further dialogue. After
the meeting I was besieged by delegates from various liberal movements to
lend my name to their causes. I begged off because they were alien to my
true interest. But at a subsequent convention in Boston I had an interesting
dialogue with several new delegates from the Soviet Union and prodded
them on the notion of existence that resulted in a sympathetic hearing of
my position.
In the fall of 1966 I went on sabbatical leave to Munich, Germany
where I attended the lectures of Karl Rahner on the role of the Church in
the modem world. I travelled through Communist East Germany to Berlin

INTRODUCTION

and visited in the communist sector of East Berlin. I was able too, to learn
much from the recent travels of Fr. Huber in Russia and spoke with some
who had been at the Paulus-Gesellschaft meetings on a Catholic-Marxist
Dialogue at Chiem see in Germany. This volume is the result of reflecting
on all these experiences and it is a pledge of my interest in furthering such
a dialogue.
Naturally, in writing a book of this kind one must consider the reader.
It is geared for the contemporary undergraduate college student. It does
not probe deeply either into the philosophy of Marxism or the theology of
Catholicism. But it presupposes that today the ordinary interested college
student has some basic knowledge of both without being necessarily either
a Marxist or a Catholic. Hence, I have not presented either a catechism of
Catholicism or a primer of Marxism but rather a documented study of
what I think are the key points in each as they face one another in an age
of dialogue. I take full responsibility for any errors of judgment or innovations and with a kind of Marxian notion of freedom in mind I humbly
submit that what I say n:ay be only the first word on the matter. My
purpose here is neither to win popularity in either arena nor to attain an
already too long delayed academic promotion. It is rather to create that
objective work - personally - that Karl Marx realized is in each of us and
the fulfillment of which is so necessary to make us real persons; and also
to use my talents for the greater glory of God which is a Jesuit's motto and
the pledge of an eternal reward. I do not expect to be around long enough
to witness actual co-existence but I do hope to see a continued furthering
of the dialogue and hope that this "opus minor" plays its role in that necessary and valuable venture.
One thing that I have learned over the years is that it is well nigh impossible for a philosopher to sell his birthright. Here the phenomenologists
seem to be on the right track when they speak of the reservoir of past
experiences in one's life that colors all they do and say. It is for this very
reason that so many Catholics today are finding it difficult to accept the
new liturgy and other changes. "But it just doesn't seem right," many avow,
"to eat meat on Friday." So too, having been brought up on an intellectual
pabulum of Thomism for so many years, I do not think that I'll ever be
de-thomized despite the current upheaval going on in Catholic intellectual
circles. As modem as we think we are, we just aren't. A scholastic at the
Jesuit seminary in Pullach said something similar about one of his professors. He intimated that the old boy was trying very hard to be broadminded but the student realized that he was always working from a strictly
Thomistic background. This is interesting and of course the basic question
is, ought we to make the breakthrough? Is Thomism so outmoded? I shall
go further into this point but I warn the reader what to expect. But by the
same token, this habitual set of epistemological coordinates holds for almost everyone else doing philosophy including the Marxists.

INTRODUCTION

There are two possibilities of avoiding the difficulty to a degree. The

first is to try to get a whole new perspective. This means not setting up the
questions but trying to ask intelligent questions within a new framework.
Thus it might mean starting with a concrete problem and letting matters go
where they will. In the final analysis it probably comes down to some
things that Wittgenstein has to say about the neuroticism or worse of the
philosopher who begins by thinking that something is wrong. Hence the
solution might be to begin by thinking that things are after all pretty normal
and this means starting with common sense. The second possibility is to
ask ultimate questions so as to reduce the presuppositions; maybe then we
can even agree on a "point de depart." But at least I hope you see the
problem.
There are several other problems only touched on in the course of this
present work. First the need for some new formulations for the proofs of
God's existence which will analyze what is meant by saying something is
real. If that aspect of things which energizes and permeates them is seen as
coming ultimately from the outside of the whole experienced world, and so
beyond the mere formation of the world, as to be unanalyzable except in
relation to God, then we have made a start in a very important direction
and in a far more important matter. Secondly, to do this we must distinguish carefully between the knowledge we make and the knowledge that
comes to us willy-nilly, viz., between the areas of constructural knowledge
and existential knowledge.
A further study should be made on the notion of the person in its historical development. When we start to push the idea of "person" back
through history along the lines of development from person to individual
to substance to mask, I think that we are only getting a part of the story.
Such a historical retracing is interesting from the purely theological aspect,
but I think that our new idea that a person is self-conscious spirit, and thus
free, has emanated from a different lineage. Only in our day has this notion
come fully into philosophy especially through phenomenology and existentialism. But Hegel saw the genealogy when he wrote:
In Stoicism, self-consciousness is the bare and simple freedom of itself. In Scepticism, it realizes itself, negates the other side of determinate existence, but, in so doing.
really doubles itself, and is itself now a duality. In this way the duplication, which
previously was divided between two individuals, the lord and the bondsman, is concentrated into one. Thus we have here that dualizing of self-consciousness within itself, which lies essentially within the notion of mind; but the unity of the two elements
is not yet present. Hence Unhappy Consciousness, the Alienated Soul which is the
consciousness of self as a divided nature, a doubled and merely contradictory being.1
1 The quotation given above from Hegel is to be found in The Phenomenology of
Mind, trans. by J. B. Baille, 2nd ed. (London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1949),
pp. 250-251.

INTRODUCTION

Cartesian dualism set up another barrier toward arnvmg at the true

notion of the person which, I think, led to a root difficulty in Kant. In this
day and age of respect for the body, especially under the influence of
Merleau-Ponty, we recall that the philosopher who wrote the Critique of
Pure Reason made the body a wall between reason and the world. In this
sense he estranged man's spirit more than his predecessors. And when the
whole culture loses its vision of the world as penneated with spirit, it falls
into more anguish and alienation. These ideas are involved in any study of
Marxism or Catholicism but the history of the person has not yet been
adequately studied. It is interesting to note that in the Syntopicon where
the great ideas are summed up in their historical lineage, no topic on the
"person" is offered.
Yet when all that the philosopher can say is said there still remain insoluble problems because there is resident in men a latent ignorance and a
latent violence. For the first, there is some hope of eradication in the millennia to come. But, as one associates daily not only in the groves of academe but more especially in the streets and on the comers everywhere, one
can not but feel that the project is disheartening. This means that men and
women by the circumstances of their lives and the indolence of nature
make it easy for some other power to direct them. And, in fact, the second
state of affairs is even worse. The latent violence in men and women and
even in children is not due simply to lack of knowledge. It is due to their
incarnation and thus the violence and greed and dishonesty is part and
parcel of their nature that can only be overcome by virtue and by grace.
And this requires among other things will power not just knowledge. Still,
today the world is concentrating on a different exercise of will power.
Virtue and grace should really mean self-control and restraint over man's
animal inclinations, which are good "in se" but in man require control or
else there simply is no man. The world's type of will power is the will to
do what I want in the sense of what I feel, and this is really at times simply
an animal drive. Today this kind of will power, as self-control, is being
weakened by a denial of it and by supplying the incentives of a purely
material culture all across the world. Pope Paul's recent encyclical Popuforum Progressio is aimed at this situation, so too, in a way was Karl
Marx's Das Kapital. And I suppose this is one reason why the Wall Street
Journal referred to the recent encyclical as "warmed over Marxism."
One way to find out what is really bothering contemporary western man
is to talk to bright young college students. There one will find that today
the key problems about life have moved to an interior tunnoil within man's
soul. Modem youth, believe it or not, is simply not going to get excited
about war, they no longer care about this problem, it is not radical enough.
The fear about an all out nuclear explosion belongs to the middle age
bracket of mankind; such talk is irrelevant and distracting to the thoughts
of the young. So too, the war against poverty does not really bother a

INTRODUCTION

generation of hippies that goes around in grubby attire and wonders if

working for a living is, after all, very important. Thus we begin to see that
the problems have moved from an exterior challenge to utter interiority
because the notion of final cause or goals of life has died and this is
probably what is really meant by saying that God is dead. The current joke
among collegians that God is not really dead but that He just doesn't want
to get involved, typifies the way things are going. This attitude is due in
great part to crass materialism encouraged by modern technocracy with its
emphasis on techniques, that is, on formal causality. How to get more and
more things done, to make more money, to have more fun is the basic
philosophy of the generation in command. And it is against this that the
rebellion is aimed. But because there is as yet no realization or reincarnating of final causality, the future looks bleak.
Nonetheless, the new persons have their problems and they are the same
old problems that we all have about the real meaning of life and death and
freedom. But now freedom revolves not about goals but about free-wheeling through life. If you tell your child, do this or you may do this and this
and that but not this, the child will simply turn toward what is forbidden.
The same holds for college students and adults. There is a deep down
tendency or awareness of freedom that rebels against frustration. But to be
human is to reason about a situation and, in the final analysis, to learn how
to control it. Modern youth, however, handles this problem, it seems to
me, in one of two ways. Either they seek an escape from these interior
problems of existence, death and freedom by taking a trip on LSD or by
becoming immersed in the practical affairs of their own personal life along
the lines of the simple "know how" of formal causality. They strive competitively in the creative or academic spheres or even in the area of animal
pleasure so as to distract themselves from the real challenge.
At root the new humanism with all its interest in music and art and
learning is a de-humanization. It is such because it is materialism and has
forgotten final causality or consideration of the goals of life. An interiorization of problems to the extent of cutting off goals of life results in egocentricity. This selfishness unconsciously has resulted in a social disease,
the symptoms of which can be detected in such reactions as hatred of
parents, a revolt and revulsion at being called "my" son or "my" daughter
as if the child were owned by the parents and used merely as tools for the
pride or pleasure of parents. The sickness is detected in a concentration on
animal living and the resuLutions of moral problems in a sub-moral way.
A basic intolerance arises that sees no good or value in the old - either old
people or old ways of doing things. Catholicism of the past is considered as
a sham existence and the young can see no saints produced nor any asceticism practised although both were there. Thus, they are against the "establishment," be it the government, the hierarchy or the college administration. And the worst part of the apparent dialogue is that the establish-

INTRODUCTION

Plent tries to sympathize without really seeing the roots of the problem.
Hence, when the college administrator tries to be liberal the student sees
that what is happening is that the so-called liberal really hasn't given up
any of his positions but thinks that he can win over the opposition by
compromise, patience and liberal words. They are often wise enough to
note that the same holds for the student groups too. They, too, want to
convert the adtr.inistration without thinking out the consequences.
In the dialectical process which seems to be at work here, one must remember that as the thesis A and the antithesis B move toward the synthesis, nothing of either A or B will remain after the "Aufgehoben." But, and
here is a very important point, both A and B are needed in order to have
the new synthesis. The modern world of the establishment forgets the first
fact and youth forgets the second. Instead of a humanism that is really no
humanism at all because it shows up on analysis as only materialism, we
need a hominisation, in the sense of reintroducing final causality and an
efficient causality. This means that man must realize that God is working
both purposively and dynamically in the world and in men's souls. The
Greek idea of the holiness of matter must be restored and the secular
transformed into the sacral. But this means that men must be able to
realize that some things are real even though not measurable. Instead of
materialism we must have a revival of mysticism which means, precisely,
that features of reality exist that cannot be proven or observed sensibly but
are nonetheless necessarily present in the cosmos and working in men.
Only then will men reflect on existence, death and freedom. Only then will
they solve freedom in terms of final and efficient causality. Only then, will
they respect the true power of will and also the need of God's grace. As a
result there will be a rebirth of faith and of the humility to pray once again.
The value of this book, then, should be to offer the key themes stirring
in each of these movements on the contemporary scene. While we are often
dismayed by the happenings we read about in the newspapers, we can take
hope from what is occurring behind the scenes in intellectual circles, both
Marxist and Christian. These thinkers faced with the same problems, and
taking advantage of the insights evolving about the "person," will hopefully
press on toward that dialogue that is our one assurance of peace on earth.
Other books have dealt with either Marxism or Catholicism, but here I
have tried to combine the busy lanes of thought into a throughway.

CHAPTER

MARXISM

The Person
Marxism is the philosophy behind communism. Marxism is speculative,
communism practical. This is not to say that Marxism is not concerned
with "praxis"; it is rather to say that it is concerned with ideas and hence
when one gets involved in a discussion of Marxism, one can rise above
geography, nationality and political emotions. Every communist is a Marxist, but not every Marxist is a communist. The reason is that some Marxists
are simply theoreticians, some might say dreamers. One might work out a
peaceful co-existence with the communists that would really be only a
practical accomodation for the time being, but this would not necessarily
imply a dialogue or a change in anyone's ideas. But to work out a true
"modus vivendi" with Marxism is something more radical for it implies an
exchange and a change of ideas on the level of philosophy. It would be a
true "aggiornamento."
Karl Marx was the founder of Marxism; he was not the founder of
communism. The Twelve Apostles have as much claim to this title as does
Marx. Incidentally, Karl Marx was a German, a Protestant of Jewish
ancestry on his father's side and never set foot on Russian soil where his
ideas took their most vital root. And although it is quite necessary for the
student of communism to know Russian, it is sufficient for the Marxist
scholar to know German. In his early writings Karl Marx was quite philosophical but as the movement grew he concentrated on economics and
history and getting things done. His sincerity and self-sacrifice for the cause
were genuine and remarkable. His personal and family sufferings in poverty
and illness kept his mind on this world which makes him quite different
from many other philosophers.
A concern for this world has marked the communist movement over the
past seventy-five years and has always been a pledge to the masses of the
sincerity of the system. Even in the early history of the movement, divergent groups developed, some holding for a non-revolutionary implementation like the Mensheviki and others like Lenin who moved into

12

MARXISM

the revolutionary camp. In Russia a dispute had arisen between these two
groups and we know from history that the Bolsheviki won out. I
There are many Marxists around the world today who although thcy
mayor may not be card-carrying party members, seem to be more concerned with the philosophy of Marxism than with allegiance to any political
faction. Thus, there are British Marxists like John Lewis, and Frenchmen
like Sartre and Germans like Bloch who are far more concerned with international peace than they are with the communistic revolution. After Stalin's
death and the stabilization of communism in the satellite countries, the
intellectual life of Marxists began to break out into the open. This was due
in part to contact with philosophical and literary ideas from the noncommunist world and the courage to speak out according to existentialist
ideas - no matter what the cost. Furthermore, the philosophical idea of the
"person" as developed by the phenomenologists and the existentialists has
made a deep impression on Marxists. The notion of the "person" though
was somehow native to the East Europeans for their own Dostoyevsky had
said that if God does not exist, all will become mine and everything is
permitted. But for forty years in Russia there was a festering wound of
freedom that Krushchev was to lance. In a highly monitored science, only
competition with the west allowed the beginnings of secret unorthodox
ideas about quantum mechanics and Einstein to burgeon forth into a new
scientific liberalism. This revolution nurtured new ideas paralleled among
other intellectuals in regard to the "person" that has resulted in a "revision"
within Marxism itself.2
Just as a new phenomenon has arisen in the Catholic Church because
Vatican Council II has brought to the fore the notion of the "person"; so
too, in the philosophy of Marxism, a kind of ecumenism is occurring in
which the idea of the person is undergoing a new evolution. Marxist intellectuals in recent years have started to probe anew into the writings of the
young Marx and we find here a kind of spiritual diary in which the emphasis is on the human individual as a person who has suffered alienation not
only by the economic forces of capitalism but also by man's own attitude
toward his environment. 3 Here the seeds are sown for a new notion that
man is autonomous and should not be used as a thing or object or part in
the process of his temporal development. Marx believed that through labor
a man makes his own world, i.e. a person actually creates the world by the
selections he makes of career and materials and by his interacting with
1 G. A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism (trans. Peter Heath, New York: Frederick
A. Praeger, 1958), p. 72. Also A. James Gregor, A Survey of Marxism (New York:
Random House, 1965), pp. 119-120.
2 G. A. Wetter, Soviet Ideology Today (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1966),
pp. 15-29.
3 N. Lobkowicz, "Karl Marx's Attitude toward Religion" in The Review of Politics, University of Notre Dame, vol. 26, No.3 (July 1964), pp. 319-352.

MARXISM

13

others; in other words, man really creates according to Marx.4 Man is no

longer to be looked on as a mere individual, as a machine or a chunk of
matter nor is he to be treated in abstracto. When man is called a person,
he is really called, "called" by a name, and regarded as a concrete spiritual
being with powers of reflection and self-consciousness. He is consequently
free and responsible for his choices; he is sacred and precious to the extent
that the world must respect his isolation. In other words he is the center
of the universe and with other men must not function as a "part" for the
good of the whole but the whole human society must be alerted to his
dignity as a deciding autonomy who is different from other ponderables.
It may seem strange for them to root the importance of the person in his
spiritual nature but this is precisely what the Marxists are doing. They are not
vulgar materialists who place n~an simply as another material thing in the
world. Marxists do not think that man's spirit was created by God or that
it will live forever in another life, but they do recognize that he is different.
And this difference resides in his power to realize that he is above all other
things; that he can reflect on his situation; that he can transcend even himself in his consciousness and that he is free to make many internal decisions
regardless of outside forces. ~
This means that there is a new law, a kind of jus humanum introduced
into human society, which results in the new Marxist humanism. Once
Marxism matured and freedom developed among the intellectuals, new
questions - human questions - began to arise and although the effects of
this humanism have not yet seeped down to the practical and political levels
to any significant degree, we can perceive the stirrings in what is called by
the Chinese "revisionism." Krushchev's reinterpretation of Lenin's idea of
peaceful co-existence, Liebermann's revival of competition and individual
initiative in economic policy, the use of idealistic physics - all of these are
revelations of the stirrings of the human spirit within the Marxist fold. And
the philosophers among them are beginning to ask hitherto unorthodox
questions about existence, the meaning of life and death and truth: 6
4 Roger Garaudy, "Vom Bannfluch zum Dialog" a chapter in Der Dialog (Hamburg: Rowohlt, 1966), pp. 68-119. Also Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical
Manuscripts (edited by T. B. Bottomore). These appear in Erich Fromm's Marx's
Concept of Man (New York: Frederick Ungar Publishing Company, 1961). All later
references to the early manuscripts of Karl Marx will refer to this edition. On this
point see especially "Alienated Labor" pp. 93-107.
5 Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, pp. 102-103: "While, therefore, alienated labor
takes away the object of production from man, it also takes away his species-life,
his real objectivity as a species-being, and changes 111s advantage ~ver animals into
a disadvantage insofar as his inorganic body, nature, is taken from him." Also cf.
Lenin, Materialism and Empirio-Criticism (vol. XIV of the collected works of Lenin)
(Moscow, 1952), p. 249 et seq.
6 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man (New York: Monthly Review Press), pp.
34-35. Also G. A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, pp. 405-475. And in this connection let us remember that Professor Schaff is a Marxist!

14

MARXISM

The traditional mystification of a problem does not abolish either the problem or
the possibility of its scientific analysis. "What is the meaning of life?" "What is man's
place in the universe?" It seems difficult to express oneself scientifically on such hazy
topics. And yet if one should assert ten times over that these are typical pseudoproblems, problems would remain. Let us consider, therefore, what is behind the
haze.
'Vanity, vanity, all is vanity!" These words, repeated, in various forms in all philosophies of the East, seem to appeal to many who in old age begin to reflect on life
and death. It is possible to shrug this off with a compassionate smile as nonsense.
And yet the words echo a problem which cannot simply be ignored. Nor can the
questions "Why?" "What for?" which force their way to the lips of people tired of
the diversities and illusions of life. This applies all the more to the compulsive
questions which come from reflection on death - why all this effort to stay alive if
we are going to die anyway? It is difficult to evade the feeling that death is senseless
- avoidable, accidental death especially. Of course, we can ask: senseless from what
point of view? From the point of view of the progression of nature death is entirely
sensible. But from the point of view of a given individual, death is senseless and
places in doubt everything he does. Religion has tried to counter this feeling of
senselessness. The old and very wise religions of the East pointed to "nirvana" as the
final goal, thus giving death a clear meaning. Other more primitive religions instill
faith in a life after death. But what is to be done when religious belief itself loses all
sense?

A reflective Marxist, like any of us, thinks of death. The Marxists are
forever saying, like Nietzsche, that the healthy man does not think about
death. They think that the existentialists have made a fetish out of the idea
of death. But I think that, not unlike Lady Macbeth, they protest too much
because although they may say that they are not worried about dying, they
certainly are always talking about death even if it is to say that it ought not
to be talked about. I read recently that Krushchev had been converted to
Christianity and whether this is true or not, I thought that perhaps the
former chairman got to thinking about death. I used to find it very difficult
to give the meditation on death to a group of healthy, robust college
students during retreats but as one travels the road a little further along,
one cannot help but pause on this trite, inevitable fact, if he is reflective.
A Marxist must read obituary notices with some of my feelings. It usually
happens this way. The obituary is brief, not too many details, but I recall
that the deceased was the principal of my high school. He was quite important when I was a student there. I can see him now lounging about in the
same brown suit, ambitioning perhaps to become something more, interested in local politics, and his family and friends. When his car stopped at the
traffic light people looked up - until yesterday. He died and was buried
and has been removed from the vital statistics. He will walk those corridors
no more; he is not to be conjured with ever again. It's over for him. He
has, as a conscious item, vanished.
This is death and as we ponder on how many people that we have
known, people who were somewhat important, this doctor, that teacher or
colleague, we realize that they have passed away as even the Christian

MARXISM

15

Scientists admit and we are faced with the inevitable fact of death, the fact
that I too must die. Everyone must think of this sometime if he is reflective.
One wonders, will I leave suddenly, consciously, asleep or awake, in pain
or in a sudden accident? Will it be by drowning in the swirling sea or burning in a fiery plane or just falling off to sleep? Nonetheless its inevitability
will dawn on me because I am a person. But we keep pushing the thought
away from us; we push the very real possibility that it might happen in a
minute back to five minutes, back to tomorrow, next week, next year, to
sometime. This is the one time that the most existential person likes to talk
in such abstractions as "people die," "death is like taxes, inevitable,"
"death will even it all out," "the paper is full of death notices," "the deaths
in Vietnam are horrible," "deaths on the highway are mounting"; but never
is it my death, that "I" must die. Yet this is the one event that we must go
through and go through alone; it's not a lottery and there are no substitution rules.
Still, in our infrequent musings, we ask is it the end? Is there a lethal
river to cross, a new and frightening and awesome experience to face? Will
we awaken to the really real? Or will it be the end and I, without knowing
it, will crumble into dust? And this dust awaits a new chemical generation
without me being conscious of the thing: these particles will organize themselves again in the mineral or plant or animal world to form in the continuous process of eternal evolution a "thou." Maybe this last is true. But
maybe not, too. This by-myself-ness, this self-awareness that I now have is
at the apex of the current evolutionary process. I am said to be spiritual;
I am described by my difference from other things not self-conscious. I
know that I am free, even free to end it all right now if I want. Thus,
Camus thought that the only real problem for philosophers was suicide.
But yet, I've heard that I might live on, possibly never go out of existence,
that there is an Other Person, greater, waiting for me in a new life, the life
of the spirit. Great books have been written about this. Great minds have
accepted this. Even I myself often think of such a possibility and so transcend this life. And many, many people have and still do believe this,
people from different ages and lands and races and religions. The poets
sing of immortality, the philosophers demonstrate it; a Teilhard de Chardin
held it; and great theologians like a Rahner would die for it. There's a
mighty lot of evidence for the affirmation of the after-life.
Does it seem that this "me" can die really, totally? I'm beyond my body,
intimate me that it is; I am more than its matter and the material particles
all around me. I can stand apart as it were, and study them. I can pull myself up to nobler values and ideals and ideas. I can even yearn for the
death of this body and sin, and yet not want to die. I can look back into
history and forward to the great beyond. I seem to transcend space and
time. I can talk and think about life and death, being and existence and the

16

MARXISM

causes and purposes and possibilities of all this. In the words of Rahner, I
can transcend to an absolute future.
In the evolutionary process does it seem possible that I who have arrived with others to this point of perfection and development, could reverse
the process and fall back into nothingness, rendering all my labor and
efforts worthless? Are all my strivings to be left only to history? In the age
of the person, is it really so impersonal? Shall I never see the outcome of
all men's history and struggle? If so, why do I even now bother so much?
Is it enough for me to end up as a mere name, a series of letters on the
printed page, to have done something good and to get no lasting personal
reward? Does it not contradict evolution culminating in the dignity of the
person to think that it can all end so suddenly, dismally and finally? Is
there no hope, no abiding love? No continuation of friendships, of spouses,
of loved ones? Is there no order or orderer behind it all? I know that I can
not matter right now - at least in the ordinary sense - then does what I
have come to, end so suddenly?
Is there no embrace to receive me; no ultimate maker to satisfy me, no
real repose to rest me, no saviour to rescue me from this lame world with
all its frustrations and evils and meanness that we are all trying to overcome because we sense that we are above it? Even Camus saw that there
was some law there at the end of the road that we couldn't seem to wipe
away. And if we are honest as Sartre wants us to be, then we won't hold
onto a covert moral law, or customs, or proprieties but really fall into the
pit. In that moment at least history should rescue us, for history is that
outside series of causes and effects operating independently of us and yet
a phenomenon that we as persons can interfere with at times and control.
Dr. Salk did that. In my musings I have thought about these things and I
thank God that His grace has enabled me to hear His Word, the good
news, the message of hope. The Gospel is not only a message of ultimate
hope but also of proximate hope for those occasions when we fall. In the
midst of the evil and sufferings of this life, we can get up and begin over;
this is real Christian hope. Each day we hope to rise again and compete; to
weather the storm because we know that every sea has a coastline and our
haven is heaven. Believe me when I say that the Marxists are thinking
these same thoughts for as persons, as brothers of the same human family,
they must; and as orphans who do not know their Father, they are yet
ready for adoption. And since we are free, we are free to become adopted
sons of God by His grace if we hearken to His Word.
Yevtushenko, the contemporary Russian poet sounds the lament of the
human person when he writes these lines: j
7 Yevtushenko, Selected Poems (translated by Peter Levi, S. J. and Robin MilnerGulland, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962). All of the quotes of Yevtushenko used here
are taken from this volume.

MARXISM

17

"Nowadays, he said, we all behave

as if we were a sort of philosopher,
It's the times that we live in. People are thinking.
Where, what, how - the answers don't come running."
"he turns me over roughly ... without a word
without a word - as if I weren't a person."
"Don't worry. Yours is no unique condition,
Your type of search and conflict and construction,
don't worry if you have no answer ready
to the lasting question."
"Fear hems me in
I am conscious that these minutes are short.
and that the colors in my eyes will vanish
when your face sets." (The sun)
PEOPLE

No people are uninteresting

Their fate is like the chronicle of planets
Nothing in them is not particular
and planet is dissimilar from planet.
And if a man lived in obscurity
making his friends in that obscurity
obscurity is not uninteresting.
To each his world is private
and in that world one excellent minute.
And in that world one tragic minute
These are private
In any man who dies there dies with him
his first snow and kiss and fight,
It goes with him.
They are left books and bridges
and printed canvas and machinery.
Whose fate is to survive.
But what has gone is also not nothing:
By the rule of the game something has gone.
Not people die but worlds die in them ...

And the Yugoslav Marxist, Bosnjak writes: 8

Always, then, that man is mortal, introduces the question about life and the meaning of existence which is a problem for every man ...
Everyone, then, who believes in God believes this because he wishes for himself
immortality ... If human life were eternal then man would have once more a philosophy and a theology ... There shall always remain another question. Is man
master of his being, i.e. is he the highest stuff? If man is the highest kind of being,
then there is no room left for eschatology. But if he holds on to an eschatology, then
he recognizes beyond himself the existence of God as the highest essence.
S Branco Bosnjak. "Zum Sinn des Unglaubens" a chapter in Marxistisches und
ChristlicJles Weltverstiindnis (Herausgegeben von der Arbeitsgemeinschaft WeItgesprach) (Wien: Herder, 1966), pp. 44-45.

18

MARXISM

Running through the poetry of Yevtushenko and the writings of Bosnjak

and Schaff are themes that belong to contemporary Marxism. First, there
is the emphasis on the person - the concrete, existential human being
whose private life is never unimportant even though no other can adequately probe it. I can know you, but always as "other." Even when I regard you as a "thou," as another person, it is always a regard, never complete knowledge. This existentialism that gets into Marxism is due to a
rebellion against technocracy and conformity. Secondly, the Marxists are
inquiring about ultimates even though they have no answers to these
questions. Professor Adam Schaff of Warsaw thinks that the existentialists
have posed the correct questions but that only the Marxists will be able to
answer them. But all of this is a new phenomenon among Marxists: not the
having of these questions or of answers to them but the candid admission
of their perplexing presence.
To have openly posed these questions about existence and death is a
helpful sign in any intellectual culture. And, further, they are posed in a
tolerant frame of mind that hopes for answers someday. In fact things have
gone so far that some Marxists think that the new society will be different
from any we have had before and will be the society of freedom. Yet, as of
today, the Marxist character carries on, it faces the challenge of the only
life it knows, life on this earth. "I frightened - don't feel like dancing, but
you can't not dance." 9 The Marxist faces the world in which he finds himself with cool pride; he disdains weakness. The man who says, "God is in
His heaven, all's right with the world" is a fool. Rather the Marxist says
"there's much to be done, how much can I do?"
Professor Schaff at the end of the previous quote writes:
Attempts to ridicule all this do not help at all. The fact alone of some agnostics
undergoing death bed conversion gives much food for thought. Philosophy must take
the place of religion here. It must tackle a number of diverse questions which have
remained from the wreck of the religious view of life - the senselessness of suffering,
of broken lives, of death, and many, many other questions relating to the fate of
living, struggling, suffering and dying individuals. Can this be done scientifically, that
is, in a way that is communicable and subject to some form of verification? It certainly
can. True, not by following the same methods as in physics or chemistry, for this is
not a matter for physics or chemistry. This is why the Neo-Positivists are wrong in
their sweeping verdict that these are empty pseudo-problems. And so are those Marxists who fail just as dismally to express themselves on these questions, and who cover
their scornful silence by concentrating attention exclusively on great social processes
and their laws of development. These are undoubtedly very important and socially
decisive matters. But they do not provide automatic solutions to problems relating to
individuals.

Across the belief in the perfectibility of human nature stream the

streaks of our frailty that beget a mild hopelessness and anguish. Over
against this the Marxist bolsters his bold stance with a love of nature and a
9

Yevtushenko, Selected Poems, p. 60.

MARXISM

19

faith in the Revolution. He laments destruction especially in human death

but he loves Man; he ends up with an agnostic declaration that we must
live it up because soon we shall be eaten up. But for our purposes it is also
necessary to understand the basic workings of the philosophy behind Marxism. We have seen its new emphasis on the person, but now let us consider
the methodology at work behind these ways of thinking.
The Dialectic
This is a philosophical discussion about Marxism and Catholicism. It is
not, therefore, concerned with politics or current strifes in the cold war; it
is rather a consideration of the relation of Marxism to the ideas that were
developed in Vatican Council II. In other words, it is speculative in the
popular sense of the word; it is impractical in a way. Yet it is not impractical in another sense because what is said here is said by way of prophesy
and a hope for the future. I am often asked whether philosophy is practical
or not. And my answer is that although philosophy deals in the realm of
ideas and far away from the area of making and doing things, still the
doers and makers very often have imbibed their ideas from their philosophy professors and such ideas later on have their effect on the practical
scene. For exan1ple, a thinker like Martin Buber has had a lot to do with
college students demanding their personal freedoms; a man like Jaspers
has had a lot to do with young adults rebelling against conformity. Albert
Camus has made scholasticism wither quicker than the dry mentors of the
classroom. Professor Lasky helped to set the stage for a socialistic government in England and Hegel influenced Dewey among others who, in turn,
probably influenced many of my high school teachers.
The decrees of Vatican Council II were not thought up in the Council
sessions but had been taught by Rahner and others for over twenty years.
Today's politicians were once students and some of the ideas of the professors do seep down into action. So, too, with businessmen. Plato had long
ago said that we would not have a good state until philosophers become
kings, but we all know this is a rarity. But philosophers have been kingmakers; not in the sense that they propel them into office but that they
influence their thinking once there. And usually it is not the kings and
rulers and presidents that make policy but rather the advisors and the
underlings who work close to government. This is one reason why philosophy is important and how it becomes practical.
As we look back over Marxism as a philosophy we find certain themes
that characterize it. First of all, it is not just a materialism; it worships
matter. Thus all the omnipotent qualities accorded the deity in most other
philosophies, Marxism attributes to matter. It is not a pantheism, however,
because matter is mindless and unconscious as a unique being. This is important because unlike Spinoza's philosophy or even Hegel's, it is godless.
This is relevant because it means that there is room for God to be incorpo-

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MARXISM

rated into Marxism whereas there is no place for a transcendent God in

other pantheisms.
The second theme of Marxism as a philosophy is that it is concerned
with history. The Marxian notion of history is concerned with matter in a
cosmic sense on the evolutionary march, parading as it does with dialectic
steps through space and time. The two key ideas then are the Diamat, i.e.
the dialectic at work in all facets of matter and historical materialism. 10
In the light of these principles everything else is explained. Such a philosophy is realistic not idealistic, objective not purely subjective, independent
of n:en, purposive, necessary in its evolution and all-comprehensive in the
sense that there is only matter and outside of matter there is nothing.
Matter, then, is like God in that it is infinite, eternal, real, absolute and
omnipotent. It is unlike God in the sense that it is the world and so in this
sense limited, visible and measurable at least in its effects, impersonal and
unconscious as the cosmic process. The contradictions here are that there
is no original cause, no explanation for its orderly evolution, and no overall cosmic purpose.
To offset these short-comings, man gets involved. He is willful, knowing,
and in a sense something sacred. He must interfere with the determinism
of matter to bring about the classless society. The blot in the whole picture
is the tendency of willful man to selfishly struggle against his brothers to
bring about class warfare and the tool of such egoism is money and power
whereby some are oppressed and some are oppressors. The idea of the
oppressors and the oppressed introduces the sin of unfreedom, for to
oppress is to deny to persons their freedom. Man comes into the cosmological picture late both by evolution and the philosophical system itself.
Hence, if we were to compare Marxism with the old branches of philosophy devised by Christian Wolff, we could say that first there is an ontology
wherein being is matter, secondly, a cosmology which is cosmic history and
a logic of the dialectic. But the areas of psychology and anthropology and
ethics are secondary developments still weakly defined in the philosophy
of Marxism. Needless to say there is no theodicy.
Let us come back to its ontology wherein being is equated to matter.
Matter here is to be taken in the sense of "matter as such" something like
the old scholastic notion of "being as such." Yet in Marxism "matter as
such" is not intended as a simple abstraction but rather as the idea representing all the concrete being there is. In this sense it is a concrete
universal idea. "Matter as such" then, encompasses the entire cosmos with
all its parts, its history and its potentialities. It represents the one evolving
matter, unique, eternal and self-sufficient. It includes the laws of physics as

10 I. M. Bochenski, Soviet Russia1l Dialectical Materialism (Dordrecht-Holland:

D. Reidel Publishing Company, 1963), pp. 57-83; 99-106. G. A. Wetter. Dialectical
Materialism, pp. 73-100; 280-355. Alsoo see Grundlagel! der Marxistischen Philosophie (Berlin: Dietz Verlag, 1960), pp. 123-360.

MARXISM

21

well as those of economics and hence man is a part of "matter as such." 1 t

Moreover, within "matter as such" there are two ontological sub-divisions, matter and spirit. The former refers to spatio-temporal, measurable
matter that we experience and that scientists study. The latter is found exclusively in man as the result of evolution. Spirit, therefore, although immaterial, is a species of "matter as such," a highly evolved segment of the
material universe. Yet, spirit is essentially different from and superior to
ordinary matter. Spirit has evolved from matter and is consequent upon a
qualitative leap. Man's spirit localized in the brain makes him a person and
renders him capable of intellectual and voluntary operations. By virtue of
his spirit man is self-conscious, reflective ar..d free. 12 Man as a spiritual
person can interfere with the course of historical causes and effects and
perceiving the goal of humanity can hasten it on by revolution. The consequence of this struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat will
eventuate in the classless society. Because he is free, man is responsible
for his choices and his tasks. The effects of man's spiritual life are reflected
in culture, mores and the arts. 13 The Marxists regard the current western
ideas about man as representing a "vulgar materialism," i.e. a mechanistic
or narrowly materialistic notion of man that excludes spirit. Thus the
image of man in the United States today is fast becoming the "playboy"
type. Here man is simply a high class animal with no effort made to control
man's lower appetites or animal tendencies. Rather, sensual pleasure is becoming the be-all and end-all of a man's life. Every month millions of
college students read magazines that portray this image of man. It cannot
but become the American idea. Hence, when I speak about the possibility
of Marxism co-existing with Catholicism, do not misunderstand me, I am
not saying with Americanism. This possibility is far more remote.
There are many ways of analyzing reality. Aristotle had used the method
of act-potency relationships which he saw at work in all things. Thomas
Aquinas had used the same model. To use a different method does not
mean that one or the other is false; rather it means that a philosopher or
scientist thinks that his particular method is the best for what he is trying
to do. Modern science has been using, generally, a method involving statistics and probability theory. Analysts in philosophy have their roots in
mathematical logic and the methods of scientific verification as emanating
11 H. Palk, "Geist aus Materie" in Aktuelle Ostprobleme (Herausgegeben von
Akademie-Direktor Dr. Paul Hadrossek. Als Manuskript gedriickt bei Pallottinerdruck, Limburg/Lahn: 1966), p. 16: "Von Moskau zurechtgewiesen, griff er zu der
verzweifelten Ausflucht, das Bewusstsein sei weder materiell noch immateriell. Auch
alle anderen uns bekannten Vertreter des Diamat hatten sich seit dieser Zeit an die
These der offiziellen Moskauer Lehrbiicher, das menschliche Bewusstsein sei immateriell."
12 G. A. Wetter, Soviet Ideology Today, pp. 40-51. Bochenski, Diamat, p. 111
and 161.
13 R. Garaudy, From Anathema to Dialogue (New York: Herder and Herder,
1966), pp. 74-75.

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MARXISM

from Ernst Mach and the Vienna Circle. I suppose that all explanations
participate in the idea of a "model" but there has been a shift over the
centuries as the model has less and less of a direct counterpart in reality.
When Aristotle or Thomas explained reality in terms of act and potency,
they meant that this was the way things really were. The mind could discover a basis in reality for so distinguishing reality. When Newton said that
space and time were absolute, he really meant it and that is why Kant
corrected him by making them subjective. But today, due to the fact that
scientists are probing into unobservable realities, they construct a theory
far removed from the real and then try to verify it in the experimental
order. The "model" then has become a mental construct with a basis or
origin in real data or observation and with an application later on back to
reality. But the theory or model is not "real" but only trying to say something about reality. The theory of evolution is just such a model. And as a
mater of fact I think that it has served as a key model for all modern
scientists and even for sociologists and philosophers. We see this manifested in the work of Teilhard de Chardin, in the scriptural research of Bultmann and in Karl Marx. Behind the use of the evolutionary model is the
Hegelian Dialectic. Chardin was certainly influenced by it, as were Feuerbach, Engels and Marx. Christian theologians like Karl Rahner have
threaded their intellectual needle with this dialectical strand. Hence, it
seems that social evolution is based more on the Hegelian dialectic than it
is on the physical theory of anthropological evolution which itself owes
much to Hegel.
I would like now to discuss in a somewhat non-technical fashion the
Hegelian dialectic and then to show it at work today in so many explanations of our world, especially among the Marxists. 14 In any problem before us we can detect and name one pole as the thesis. This refers to what
we can positively affirm about the fact before us. But this fact before us is
always on the move in a never static world. Next we notice other aspects
of this fact before us that differ from what we first called the thesis. If we
limit our problem, and handle only one of these variant aspects at a time,
we call it a negation of the original thesis or the antithesis. We now have
before us a dynamic situation of polarity. The reason that this situation
represents a model is because we are limiting our problem and not directly
dealing with every aspect of the real situation. In other words we are dealing with one small segment of the total reality. Now the new insight of this
method is that we must realize that motion is operating in the situation so
that the polarity is constantly undergoing a tension and this tension brings
about changes in what we called our original thesis and antithesis with the
result that a new phenomenon is developing called the synthesis. Now we
14 Cf. G. W. Hegel, Science of Logic (Johnston-Struthers, I, 42-47; II, 39-43;
66-69; 227-229; 467-476.) Here the student of philosophy may obtain a more precise analysis.

MARXISM

23

can justifiably define these elements and give them names as long as we
realize that they are dynamic. They can be named in the midst of this
dynamism because there is a kind of constancy as long as the changes are
only quantitative, but this situation after a while bursts asunder and we
have a qualitative leap that begets an entirely new situation. However,
there is never a total destruction as a result of the change. This in itself is
a very profound and interesting philosophical problem. But the motion affects both poles in the tension and while some aspect of both the thesis and
the antithesis is preserved, the total situation is elevated. Whether or not
this change is always a development cannot be determined from within the
situation but only by moving in concentric circles beyond our original
problem. The opinion is generally held that a development and not a devolution occurs. The great model here is, of course, man's evolution. Several problems immediately arise for the philosopher: what is the original
cause of the whole business, and what is the explanation of its apparent
finality or purposiveness? The Marxists answer that the process is eternal
and hence has no first cause but they do not answer the second query.15
The above description is one of the Marxist's use of the Hegelian Dialectic.
For Hegel the purposiveness is explained by an evolving absolute Mind
which is God.
Significantly, one factor at work here is what Hegel referred to as the
"aufgehoben," a term that is hard to express adequately but which implies
a reconciliation and elevation, i.e. the motion within the polarity toward
the new synthesis. If we have carefully delimited our problem from the beginning we will observe that the synthesis can now become a new thesis in
some other moving relationship to give us further understanding of reality.
One can give a proximate explanation often in terms of one instance of the
dialectic but for one seeking more ultimate explanations or trying to determine whether or not the synthesis is a true evolution, then one must
move out in concentric circles to advance his knowledge. 16 The "aufgehoben" is probably the most important and interesting aspect of the Dialectic. It seems to be based on two factors: first, the ever-present motion
15 G. A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, p. 158 et seq. Bochenski, Soviet Russian
Dialectical Materialism, pp. 74-82. Grundlagen der Marxistischen Philosoph ie, pp.
123-159.
16 Karl Marx, Private Property and Communism, p. 138: "You must keep in mind
the 'circular movement' which is perceptible in that progression, according to which
man, in the act of generation reproduces himself; thus man always remains the
subject. But you will reply: I grant you this circular movement, but you must in turn
concede the progression which leads even further to the point where I ask: who
created the first man and nature as a whole? I can only reply: your question is itself
a product of abstraction. Ask yourself how you arrive at that question. Ask yourself
whether your question does not arise from a point of view to which I cannot reply
because it is a perverted one. Ask yourself whether that progression exists as such for
rational thought. If you ask a question about the creation of nature and man, you
abstract from nature and man. You suppose them non-existent and you want me to
demonstrate that they exist. I reply: give up your abstraction and at the same time
you abandon your question."

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~ARXISM

and secondly two contents. The privation of the contents before us assures
us of a change because of th.e dyna~ic relationship existing bctween the
two poles. Since there is no absolute destruction, the change can always be
regarc!ed as a development. The thesis is not absolute or already perfect
and hence can both give something up and receive. The negative pole or
antithesis also has the qualities of lin~itation, yet, like the positive, is powerful under the internal dynan}ism of the situation. Hence, this antithesis can
lose something or acquire something within the total process. The result of
this intcraction is the new synthesis bearing something of each pole and yet
different from either. The synthesis is more perfect than the original poles
or polarity. Such a "model" is an analysis not of either pole in isolation
but rather of the process which must include simultaneously both poles.
Unless we begin with both the thesis and the antithesis, we are not using
the Dialectic. The "aufgehoben" then means an elevation, a self-surpassing
activity. Looked at as a potential development that passes out and up
through numerous concentric circles we finally come in the philosophy of
Hegel to the Absolute or God. With Teilhard we finally come to the
Omega point which is Christ. With the Marxists we come either to the
perfect classless society of pure communism or according to some the
process is endless as it was beginningless.
The logic of Hegel is actually this dialectical method of analysis. It is
quite different from the logic of Aristotle. The logic of Hegel is his metaphysics. This is not true of Aristotle. His metaphysics is a metaphysics of
motion which is something operating in the real world. His logic is mental
as derived from the Greek word logos (I,6yo.;) which means idea. It is a
method of analysis and demonstration. It deals with what St. Thomas calls
"second intentions" or the level of the mind's ideas. Of course, our ideas
are radicated in reality but they are not tied down to a strict correspondence with concretions; they may also take the form of abstractions like
"happiness" or of constructs like geometry. The deductive method of
mathematical demonstration is closely allied to Aristotelian logic or vice
versa. But some other forms of mathematics such as set theory or topology
are close to the dialectic method ever moving outward, in an evolution toward greater perfection and development. An instance of what I mean by
this method is seen in a simple algebraic equation where we solve our
problem from inside and by gradually removing the parentheses, arrive at
a total outer solution. Perhaps the term "parentheses" could be used to
denote the entire dialectical process.
Modem man seems to prefer the dialectical model of Hegel,17 The descending vertical logic of Aristotle is a mature type of reasoning that is
deductive and has its place in certain areas of demonstration. It deals in
abstractions and begins by deducing from some general principle. The schou Ignatius Lepp, Der Lebensstil des Intellektuellell (Wiirzburg: Arena Verlag Georg
Popp, 1966), p. 173 et seq.

MARXISM

25

las tics used this method in general and in moral science in particular where
they began with the nature of man and then from this nature determined
his final purpose and followed the lines of a vertical descent to concrete
problems. But the way we really learn from childhood is not by way of this
vertical descent but according to the method of expanding our knowledge
from experience to experience, ever expanding through more and more
concentric circles. One begins even in life's ordinary tasks with a concrete
problem that is totally relevant and then one tries to solve it. In this endeavor one inevitably moves out into ever widening horizons in order to
get an adequate solution. We are always removing the parentheses. I am
not saying that one method is better than the other or that one is true and
the other false. As methods they are means and if helpful toward the end,
should be used. St. John in his Gospel uses this method of concentric
circles for he treats a problem as a situation in its Mitwelt. Then he treats
this same problem in a new situation, and then expands this same situation
once more to a new milieu. It has been said that this was the Semitic approach as opposed to the Greek, but at least it seems to be a less sophisticated yet natively more human way of dealing with our everyday problems.
Let us see how the dialectic works in the concrete. IS If we take water in
a beaker at room temperature and heat it to one hundred degrees centigrade, the original water is the thesis, the heat induced is the antithesis and
the resultant steam is the synthesis. If we consider a dog that is hungry as
a thesis, and the food set before him as the antithesis, then the consequent
nourishment would be the synthesis. If we tighten up a violin string we
ready it for tune as a new synthesis which can only be determined as a
greater perfection by an awareness of the outer circle of harmony itself. In
physics we have many examples of the dialectic as for example the magnetic field, the cathode-anode polarity and the composition and resolution
of forces. In medicine we find the synthesis of a healthy body due to a
balanced diet. In psychiatry we speak of an integrated personality as one
which is well balanced morally and emotionally within the tensions of daily
life. In sacramental theology we can speak of the symbols as the thesis and
the materials used as the antithesis and the consequent grace as the synthesis. And so we could go on into the entire panoply of life as the Marxists
do in practice, to produce a litany of examples of what is meant by the
dialectic. Their most important example is, of course, that of the struggle
between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie.
In the early "Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts" of Karl Marx
there is an especially interesting "Critique of Hegel's Dialectic and of
General Philosophy." Here we see Marx the philosopher at work and one
cannot but be impressed by his philosophical acuity and at the same time
rugged common sense. Despite his ability to permeate the intricacies of
1~ Cf. G. A. Wetter, Dial. Mat., p. 406 et seq. where the author offers us more detailed examples from science.

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MARXISM

Hegel's dialectic, Marx manifests an apostolic zeal for existential reality

and offers us besides an insight into the worth of the person that antedates
much contemporary thought. 1n The profundity of Hegel's thought and the
criticisms of Feuerbach give Marx the background for his own philosophical perceptions. Hegel discusses alienation in terms of the dialectic and the
negation of the negation. 20 Marx accepts the general method of Hegel and
imbibes many of his insights such as the idea that man is different from the
animals for he is spiritual, inorganic, conscious and intellectual. And it is
this fact of consciousness that distinguishes man from the brute kingdom in
a clear way and makes it possible for the human person to view the world
universally and to study himself as a species. Man not only knows objects
but he can know himself as an object and know that he knows.
But Marx is so thoroughly imbued with the idea of the person as a
worker that he remains throughout his philosophical ruminating a realist.
His "man" is always the man in the world and this protects him from becoming a de-personalized idealist in the sense of Hegel. In the course of his
reading of Hegel it dawned on Marx that because man is self-conscious, he
is also free. Freedom, in one sense, means that man must be allowed to
develop himself fully according to his nature. And nature here for Marx
always means the concrete physical nature of man in the sensible world.
The free man is one who can live, work and complete his life without becoming a tool of other things or other people. His objection to capitalism,
private property and machines is based on the conviction that historically
all of these things have encroached on man's free development and hence
have depersonalized him.21 If he were on the contemporary scene, I am
sure that he would think that the purveyors of pornography on our newsstands are trying to awaken unhealthy curiosity in us simply for the sake of
gold. His answer to birth control would probably be to arrange the economy so that a mother could have as many children as possible and each
would have equal opportunity with every other child. For Marx whatever
infringes on self-destruction is estrangement and radical alienation.
Now, for the socialistic thinkers like Proudhon, alienation is simply objectification in the sense that a man's work is severed from his personality
19 Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, pp. 93-118; and p. 125: "This communism which
negates the personality of man in every sphere is only the logical expression of private
property which is this negation." An attack on Proudhon's crude communism.
20 G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Mind, (trans. by J. B. BailIe 2nd edition,
London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd., 1949), pp. 250-251.
21 Karl Marx, Private Property and Communism, p. 138: "A being does not regard
himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master,
where he owes his existence to himself. A man who lives by the favor of another
considers himself a dependent being. But I live completely by another person's favor
when lowe to him not only the continuance of my life but also its creation. The
idea of creation is thus one that is difficult to eliminate from popular consciousness.
This consciousness is unable to conceive that man and nature exist on their own
account, because such an existence contradicts all the tangible facts of practical life."

MARXISM

27

and sold to the capitalists. 22 It is an alienation and objectification that is

forced upon him and ultimately deprives him of self-fulfillment. And although Marx admits all this, he probes like Hegel deeper into man's consciousness. Hegel begins to discuss man's own ideas as objects and so he
differentiates them from the knowing subject. This kind of objectification
is an interior alienation at the heart of man's conscious life. Thus, for
Hegel religion can, as an idea, become an alienation within man's consciousness. 23
But Karl Marx began to see that a person who lives by the favor of another man or is prejudiced by another idea, is to that degree deprived of
some of his independence which is the core of freedom. This realization
that freedom is identical with the autonomy of the human spirit is one of
the key ideas of the young Marx. It is this idea that man can rise above
everything else and everyone else that is at the heart of freedom. It is rooted in spirit and in consciousness and self-consciousness. In fact it should
have brought Marx to the notion of transcendence and to God. 24
But now we arrive at the absolute split between Hegel and Marx. Hegel
had based this interior alienation on the dialectic between self-consciousness and its object. By reflection, man is able to surmount this estrangement and to return to the self as non-objectified in perfect self-consciousness.
This is an example of the negation of the negation whereby the object of
consciousness being different is a negation and then consciousness negates
this again in a synthesis within its perfect self-consciousness. But Hegel's
supersession occurs on the level of abstraction. He ends up with consciousness-as-such and because of this he leaves man the person, that is himself,
and moves on to pure idealism and then on to the Absolute. 25
This is too much for Karl Marx, the true personalist. If there is one root
principle he constantly adheres to, it is, like that of Rahner, that man the
person is one. Karl Marx disdains Hegel's order of essences; he will not
allow himself to be washed up on the shores of abstraction. For him man is
Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, p. 107.
Karl Marx, Critique of Hegel's Dialectic and General Philosophy, p. 185.
2~ Ibid., p. 182: "The fact that man is an embodied, living, real, sentient, objective
being with natural powers, means that he has real, sensuous objects as the objects of
his being or that he can only express his being in real sensuous objects." And again
we read on p. 183: "But man is not merely a natural being; he is a human natural
being. He is a being for himself, and therefore a species-being; and as such he has to
express and authenticate himself in being as well as in thought."
25 Ibid., p. 184: "Thus, for example, after superseding religion, when he has recognized religion as a product of self-alienation, he then finds a confirmation of himself in religion as religion. This is the root of Hegel's false positivism or of his merely
apparent criticism; what Feuerbach calls the positing, negation and re-establishment
of religion or theology, but which has to be conceived in a more general way. Thus
reason is at home in unreason as such. Man, who has recognized that he leads an
alienated life in law, politics, etc., leads his true human life in this alienated life as
such. Self-affirmation in contradiction with itself, and with the knowledge and nature
of the object, is thus the true knowledge and life. There can no longer be any question
about Hegel's compromise with religion, the state, etc., for this lie is the lie of the
whole argument."
22
23

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MARXISM

always the man in the world. 21l This again is an example of Marx's basic
realism and it pervades to this day his entire system. Thus, though Marx
admits the distinction between thought and being, he stresses that in reality
the thing is always a one and that one's thoughts should never lose their ties
with existence. 2 ' Hence he rescues Hegel's consciousness-as-such or consciousness-in-itself back to consciousness-for-itself, and preserves the free
person in sensible reality. Here we have the real difference between Marx
and Hegel.
Marx commends Hegel for his insight into the self-creation of man as
a process and for his understanding of alienation as an interior objectification but leaves him on the question of transcendence. 2s In the Hegelian
dialectic of consciousness the knower faced with an object even of himself,
rises up to a kind of consciousness-as-such which really is not himself.
Marx rebels against this last step in the "aufgehoben" and prefers to maintain contact with the whole, concrete person living in the world. The person
is still a non-object and spiritual for Marx but as existing in the real world
and not as an abstraction in the realm of thought. As Marx says: " ... man
has to express... and authenticate himself in being as well as in thought. "211
For Hegel the negation of the object by self-consciousness is the self-confirmation of the non-objectivity, the finding of oneself, but on the level of the
abstract character of itself. Marx refuses this abstract character and ends
up with the self-consciousness of man as a concrete person in the world.
Consciousness, for Marx, is offended not by objectivity but rather by "objectivity as such." 30 Consequent on this, Marx rejects Hegel's idea of religion precisely because it has become the philosophy of religion - an abstraction. And for the very same reason Marx goes on to reject all philosophy because like religion it too has become an abstraction severed from the
world of reality.31 He believes that truth is not attained by philosophers on
the level of abstraction but by intuition on the level of experience.3'l Many
years later Lenin was to attack the philosophy of the Schoolmen because it
was idealistic. Today, many feel that metaphysics is irrelevant, and this is because they equate metaphysics with essentialism, an episode in the history
of philosophy still interpreted as true by the opponents of existentialistic
metaphysics even today. But the young Marx has disturbed the orthodox
Marxists who are restudying his early writings and trying to decide whether
we have the true Marx here or in "Das Kapital." To many he sets up a
26 Ibid., p. 182: ''The fact that man is an embodied, living, real, sentient, objective
his being, or that he can only express his being in real. sensuous objects."
27 Ibid., p. 183: u authenticate himself in being as well as in thought:'
28 Ibid., p. 177.
29 Ibid., p. 183.
30 Ibid., p. 185.
31 Ibid., p. 187.
32 Ibid., p. 192.

MARXISM

29

scandal between practical Marxism as we have had it for fifty years and the
personalism of its founder. 33

Freedom
There is no doubt that the communist world today infringes on what we
call human rights and that it restricts the individual in such a way as to
deny true human freedom. For my own part, I would hate to live behind
the iron curtain and each day we read of some new attempt to escape from
East Berlin into the western sector. The "wall" is a proof of this lack of
freedom in communist lands. Our current wars of freedom are basically
wars that aim to give people the right of self-determination. If this much
were granted there would be rr:ore peace in the contemporary world. But
the problem has much deeper roots and a totally different side which we
are often not aware of. One interesting factor that we ought to ask ourselves is, how could it happen that a Pasternak recanted and chose to remain behind the iron curtain? Or again, how can Yevtushenko come to the
United States and happily return to his native Russia without making any
pleas for asylum? There must be some good basis that allows these intellectuals to remain loyal despite a lack of freedom according to western
standards. Just as many defectors to the West are motivated by reasons
quite other than that of a quest for freedom, so too those, often, who flee
from communism do so for political reasons or because they have run
counter to the law of their land.
Fundamentally, we should realize that Marxism has always regarded the
human person as free and responsible for his choices. 34 In fact the defense
of this kind of freedom is stronger in these lands than it is in the West
where so many determinists simply deny the personal freedom of man's
will. It has always seemed strange to me that in a country like the United
States where so many intellectuals deny personal free will, these same
people preach from the rooftops the necessity of freedom. But their type of
33 Adam Schaff, The Philosophy of Man, pp. 122-123: "Creative discussion and
working out of ideas was to some extent frowned on in our country of recent years.
That was certainly wrong; and there would not have been such energetic ideological
discussions among us later on, if they had not been of social significance." Also p. 28:
"It is in this light that one may understand the ignorant attempts, made with such
boastfulness and aplomb by our revisionists, to counterpose the young Marx not only
to Engels but also to the older Marx. For such enthusiasts, Marx was finished somewhere around 1846."
34 Karl Marx, A lienated Labor, p. 98: "His work is not voluntary but imposed,
forced labor." This statement refers to an abuse. And again on page 99: "We arrive
at the result that man (the worker) feels himself to be freely active only in his animal
functions - eating, drinking and procreating, or at most also in his dwelling and in
personal adornment - while in his human functions he is reduced to an animal. The
animal becomes human and the human becomes animal." Here again Marx is attacking the unfreedom and depersonalization of man.

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MARXISM

freedom is social freedom whereby the people as a whole must abide by

the decision of the majority. These determinists do not deny that a man can
freely vote or decide but rather that his decision is formed by education or
other mores. Still, they do deny that man has any distinct power of free
will. The great defenders of free will in the world today are the existentialists like Sartre, and it is to be remembered that he is a Marxist. 3~
On this question of free will much nonsense gets in the way. For example, we are forever hearing that the free choice can be explained for this
or that reason that was in the background. But no one ever denied that
free choice needs reasons. The difficulty comes when people try to predict
free acts. I can predict that one out of ten men will jump into the river to
save my life, but I can't say who. Free will, as Marx said, is the reducing of
thought to action. 36
The problem of freedom is in the forefront of discussion today for several reasons: (1) because of the development of democracy as opposed to the
apparent dictatorial aspect of communism and (2) because of the development of the person as a psychologically free agent. Due to the impact of
existentialistic ideas on the new intelligentsia among the Marxists the
problem has become acute. 37 From the side of traditional Marxism there
is a ready-made conflict because (1) historical materialism develops with a
certain necessity in a cause-effect series; (2) Marxism has really always
held that the individual person is free in the sense that he is morally responsible for his actions.3s
The problem today could be stated for the Marxists thus: Does not historical necessity contradict the individual's freedom? As a matter of fact,
Marxism has never developed a very satisfactory ethical theory. Several
years ago, in Russia, concerted efforts were being made to have the leading
scholars especially from the area of sociology write an official textbook in
ethics. Nevertheless, it does seem evident that Marx himself did believe in
the personal freedom of man in a very profound sense because a person as
35 On this point see Professor Sydney Hook's book entitled Paradoxes of Freedom
(New York, 1961).
36 Cf. Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, p. 101: "To say that man lives from nature
means that nature is his body with which he must remain in a continuous interchange
in order not to die. The statement that the physical and mental life of man, and
nature, are interdependent means simply that nature is interdependent with itself, for
man is a part of nature." Notice here a foreshadowing of Professor McLuhan's ideas:
"nature is his body." Cf. also Professor Adam Schaff, The Philosophy of Man, p.
112: "When we speak of the freedom of the individual we are speaking of the rights
of the individual in society - for there is no individual outside of society. The moment
this truth is recognized any illusions about absolute freedom are dispersed, and the
problem opens up of determining the permissible limits of restriction of freedom, and
of fixing the demarcation line between the condition we are ready to accept as one
of freedom and that to which we must deny this splendid quality."
37 See Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man, p. 11 et seq.
38 Karl Marx, German Ideology, p. 74: "Only in community with others has each
individual the means of cultivating his gifts in all directions, only in the community,
therefore, is personal freedom possible."

MARXISM

31

a species-being and self-conscious, is necessarily free and, according to

Marx, resents the inability to be master of his own life. 39 This is the basis
for his discussion on alienation that bothers so many of the "old guard."
More recent writers like Schaff rebel against the extreme notion of freedom
set up by the Existentialists, but Schaff himself never gives us any detailed
analysis of the psychological freedom of man because he misses the important distinction between the creative power of man and the reasons that
a man has for doing something.
Everyone admits with the determinists (except some Existentialists) that
if we could study adequately any action that we have chosen, we would
find reasons and motives for our choice, else we would have acted merely
on feeling or arbitrarily. But freedom in this psychological sense is manifested in the execution of our plan, in the actual carrying out of what we
thought into the existential order. Thoughts alone would not account for
this. Thus day-dreamers don't get things done, because they haven't developed their will power. When I concentrate or attend to a problem, or
even rationalize, a process that I continue in order to get an excuse for my
choice - all of these acts are energized by what we call will power, the
moving into the existential order by a sort of creativity. Moreover, Husserl
was right when he insisted that we do not just will but that we always will
SOMETHING. This intentionality is manifested in all human acts - we do
not just know or desire, but always something, some object. This concomitant object of our acts of the will is a content from the knowing side of
our nature, but it is not that permeating dynamism of the act that we call
will power which transfers our thoughts into action. Both St. Thomas and
Karl Marx would agree with me in general on this point.
Now the trouble is that the contemporary Marxists admit this too, but
they don't want to follow such spontaneity into the Existentialist camp
where the latter group make this spontaneity absolute and a uniquely free
act. In other words the Existentialist stresses the fact that you can act, will,
or choose anything you wish and that it makes no difference what you
choose as long as you choose. To be a real person is to make your own
choice. But for the Marxists this is irrational for we are not supposed to go
around simply choosing and think that we are doing our part to make the
world better. It is very important to think out what we are choosing. For
the Existentialist, to be hemmed in by thought-out reasons is to be less free
since reason gets us nowhere anyway. Here we see the basis for the situation ethics of the Existentialist school. Moreover, the Existentialists
confine freedom to free choices, whereas choices are only means to some
goal or means of settling some situation. The situation is there in any case
39 Karl Marx, A lienated Labor, p. 100: "Man is a species-being not only in the
sense that he makes the community (his own as well as other things) his object both
practically and theoretically, but also (and this is simply another expression for the
same thing) in the sense that he treats himself as the present, living species, as a
universal, and consequently free being."

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MARXISM

and this introduces factors that necessarily restrict our possibilities and
hence our freedom if we are to use our heads. And it is this last element
that Christian philosophy insists on, and it is also what the Marxists are
trying to emphasize.
In other words, a person can will some situation or just find himself
necessarily in it, and yet it may be truly voluntary. A captain at sea in a
storm may have to cast his cargo overboard to save his life, but he does it
voluntarily. The problem about choices is a secondary problem and always
has to do with alternate possibilities within a situation. Of course, we may
be responsible for the current situation by a previous choice but in analyzing free choices we have to stay with the problem before us. Thus, if I
want to be a doctor, willing-the-end, then I must choose a medical school
out of several possible alternatives. If I will God as my goal in life, then
I am free but only within that context to choose acts that will bring me to
Him. To be sure, I can go back and deny God, but then I am faced with a
new situation that will have its free-to-choose possibilities.
Since this question of our personal power to choose is rcally known
intuitively by our own concrete experiences of concentrating and attending
and positing a~ts, it is more important here to discuss the conflict that the
Marxists perceive between this psychological act and the situation. Hegel
believed that this question of freedom was resolved by realizing that there
is a necessity in history and nature and that by virtue of our reason we
could detect this necessity, and in such a case our compliance with it was
both rational and voluntary.+o To act otherwise would be unreasonable in
the face of the over-all natural necessity of nature. Thus a man realizes
that food is necessary for his continued existence, to say that he is free to
eat or not and goes on to starve to death to prove his freedom is ridiculous.
The Marxists, perceiving a similar necessity in concrete historical materialism, hold a type of freedom not unlike that of Hege1. 41 Yet Marx
departed from Hegel's idealism and redefined man in terms of his real,
concrete, social inter-relationships.42 And a more modern Marxist writes:
"When we speak of the freedom of the individual we are speaking of the
rights of the individual in society, for there is no individual outside society.
The moment this truth is recognized any illusions about absolute freedom
are dispersed and the problem opens up of determining the permissible
limits of restriction of freedom, and of fixing the demarcation line between
the conditions we are ready to accept as one of freedom and that to which
we must deny this splendid quality." 43
40 G. W. F. Hegel, Philosophy of History, Introduction, p. 39: "(Since) the rational
has necessary existence, as being the reality and substance of things, we are free in
recognizing it as law and following it as the substance of our own being."
41 F. Engels, Anti-During, Part I, ch. xi, p. 128: "Hegel was the first to state
correctly the relation between freedom and necessity."
42 Karl Marx, A lienated Labor, p. 100.
43 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man, p. 112.

MARXISM

33

With this splendid statement I totally agree and one begins to see the
similarity between the Marxists' position and that of traditional Catholic
philosophers like Maritain on this matter.44 To deny personal psychological
freedom is to submit to Stoic fatalism; to accept the absolute freedom of
the Existentialists is to fall into anarchy. Many current problems in the
world today could be solved with this distinction in mind. Also we see that
radically the problem of freedom resides in the truth that man is a person
but that, although a person be psychologically autonomous, he must necessarily be adequately defined in terms of his presence in society. Professor
Schaff continues: "He (Man) does not exist as an isolated individual autonomous in his choices and decisions which depend on his own 'free' will
alone ... His decisions and choices are always morally conditioned and so
he is never 'free' in the Existentialist sense of the term." 45 And Vatican
Council II clearly states: "For by his innermost nature man is a social
being and unless he relates himself to others, he can neither live nor develop his potential." 46
From this we can understand better what St. Thomas meant by saying
that freedom is knowledge of one's end. This will always imply some restriction in what we ought to will regarding the means, i.e. our choices, but
it is the prerogative of man as intellectual and reflective to understand what
life is all about and that it is his crowning dignity always to be able to
choose well or not so well. The sow wallowing in the mud of its sty is
absolutely free but to be a person is to see with the mind's eye the necessity
of an ordered historical evolution and the role man must play in it. Although the goal and the situation appear quite different to the Christian
and the Marxist, nonetheless, their analyses of freedom are more in unison
than those of either the Neo-Positivists or the Existentialists.
Let me quote once more from Professor Schaff:
Freedom is simply understood as the possibility of choice between different actions
in the same situation ... It follows that I am free whenever I am able to choose what
to do and when my choice depends on me ... I may be in chains and under the
threat of death but I can still choose - to live as a traitor or to die honorably, I am
still free. 4 7

The Marxist, then, resolves the problem between historical necessity and
freedom by insisting on the obligation of individuals to choose freely the
means that wi11lead to the goal. One does not have to so choose, but then
he becomes irrational, that is if he accepts the "cause of communism." Just
44 Mortimer J. Adler, The Idea of Freedom, (New York: Doubleday and Company,
Inc., 1958), p. 383: "With regard to the negative point that freedom requires the
emancipation of human labor from economic servitude and exploitation, Maritain
holds views which resemble those of Marx and Engels, and yet his theory of freedom
is opposed to theirs. He explicitly rejects the notion that historical developments will
bring forth the day when men are completely liberated from servitude."
45 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man, p. 64.
46 Vatican Council II, p. 211. (Abbott edition).
47 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Mall, pp. 73-75.

34

MARXISM

as a Dr. Salk was able to probe into the historical series of outside causes
and effects and make his personal contribution for the common good, so
too must good Marxists act for they believe that they make history.
For the Marxist the necessity of history resides in the evolution of the
universe toward perfection. But for them the world has no beginning, and
it will have no end. From the dust of the original particles to the classless
society there is a necessity at work. Since the world is eternal and dynamic,
there is no God, because there is no need of a creator. But it is still a
mystery for a Marxist as to why there should be anything at all. Aside
from the inexplicability of the order in the whole process which they admit,
they are faced with another problem from the law of entropy. According to
this second law of thermodynamics the universe like all energy systems
loses some of its dynamism that becomes at least unavailable for reentry
into the system. In other words, the world is running down. Now the
problem is, if the world had no beginning, why has it not already run
down? 48
It is difficult to discuss God with people whose lack of faith was bolstered by the testimony of the Russian astronauts who said they didn't find
48 G. A. Wetter, Soviet Ideology Today, p. 36: "The main topics of concern here
are: the conservation laws of mass and energy; refutation of the theory of the 'heatdeath'; and the possibility of interpreting the 'red-shift' in such a way as to avoid the
assumption of an expanding universe and hence of postulating a temporal beginning
for the expansion itself ... As to this whole controversy about the 'heat-death,' the
fundamental point is that the law of entropy really offers no basis for any conclusive
proof of the existence of God. Unlike the first law of thermodynamics, the second is
merely statistical in character and does not wholly exclude its opposite, namely the
occurrence of the state of diminished entropy (as happened at the outset of our present
epoch); it merely makes this exceedingly improbable. Given a universe existing from
all eternity and abandoned to the chance gyrations of its atoms, it would go on for
an enormously, unimaginably (but not infinitely) long time, before eventually happening to attain to such a state; for the mathematical possibility of this is not absolutely
nil. If the law of entropy can thus provide no evidence in favor of an act of creation,
still less can it be cited against such a possibility. The question of God's existence
cannot be settled, one way or the other, by arguments drawn from physics. The
decision rests on philosophical grounds." I tend to agree with what Professor Wetter
says here but we must remember how much emphasis the Marxists have tended to
give to the law of entropy in proving the eternity of the world. The point still remains, if this is true why has it not already run down. Cf. G. A. Wetter, Dialectical
Materialism, p. 430: "The laws of the conservation of mass and energy which have
been combined by means of the principle of the inertia of energy (E = mel!) into a
common law of conservation, have been regarded, ever since Engels' day, as a proof
of the eternity of the world. Engels saw in the law of conservation of energy a proof
of the fact that the universe is both indestructible and incapable of being created,
and hence must have existed from all eternity (F. Engels, Dialectics of Nature, pp.
93-94). Lenin likewise saw in this law "the establishment of the basic principles of
materialism,' (ME, p. 318,)" Cf. V. A. Ambarzumyan, Problema vozniknoveniya
zvezd v svete novykh rabot sovetskikh astrofizikov (The Problem of the Origin of the
Stars in the Light of Recent Work by Soviet Astro physicists), in Vestnik Akademii Nauk
USSR, 1953 (12), pp. 49-60. On the current status of the discussion concerning the
"heat-death" problem, cf. Johannes Boor, "Das Problem der Entropie des Weltalls
und der Dialeketische Marxismus" in Ost-Europa Naturwissenschaft, vol. TIl, No.2,
pp.l05-117.

MARXISM

35

God in outer space. The Marxists like to ask theists, who made God? They
do not seem to realize that causality is in a sense an anthropomorphism
and that you only ask about the maker when a thing has to be made. If we
mean by God a being that is totally independent, then one can't reasonably
ask who made him. Of course, the fact of God's existence is reasoned to
from the causality that is legitimately asked about everything we know in
experience. 49 The world as a totality or in its parts does not manifest unmadeness nor independence. And basically this is because the world is not
a perfect "one." And the Marxists should be the first to see this because
they admit the dyadic condition of the world when they assert the dialectic
as its first principle.
A follow-up of this question of freedom and of God is the question of
ethics and religion. For example, Kolakowski, a Polish Marxist, published
a book in 1957 entitled, "Responsibility and History" which touches un
this point. 50 If man is free and history is necessary, then how are the two
compatible? We have seen that according to the Hegelian notion of
freedom, a person is free to choose within the goal decided upon. In order
for this to work, one must be committed to the communist cause as the goal
of man and the norm of morality. If this is accepted as natural faith, then
we can come back to our original query about Pasternak and Yevtushenko
and say that they are committed to the cause of communism and this is how
they can say they are free although believers in communism. But this further
shows us that communism is in a sense a religion.
Karl Marx had said that "religion is the opium of the people" but today
the Marxists are trying to explain away his harsh dictum. Some say that he
said some very flattering things about religion even in the same paragraph
about the opium. Others say he was attatking religion in the form of
"myths" which is being clarified today by the theologians themselves. It is
true that Marx seems to be attacking Hegel's idea of religion as an abstraction or the clericalism that he knew so well in Germany.51 The Church
authorities always seemed to be on the side of those who were making life
miserable for Karl Marx. Today, in Russia religion is unknown as clericalism. What few monks remain live a shadowy existence in fear and courage.
The great churches of Russia are museums and relics of a bygone era.
Religion has become a curiosity or it takes the new form of a quest for the
49 Karl Marx, Private Property and Communism. pp. 138-139: Here Marx tries
to avoid the question of causality by asserting that it deals with the abstract order.
As a matter of fact for St. Thomas and present day Neo-Thomists it does just the
opposite. The second proof of St. Thomas for the existence of God depends on efficient causality as causing a thing to come to be in the order of existence.
50 For developments in ethical theory and reference to Kolakowski, cf. George L.
Kline, "Theoretische Ethik im Russischen Friihmarxismus" in Forschungen zur Osteuropiiischen Geschichte, Band 9, (Berlin-Wiesbaden, 1963), pp. 270-279.
51 Branco Bosnjak, Marxistisches und Christliches Weltverstiindnis, p. 62; also p.
58, where Marx is said not to be discussing theology but religion as something illusory.

36

MARXISM

absolute. Because of this latter interest there is hope that an existential

faith in the living God may be an answer to their anguish about freedom
and death. 52

52 Ignatius Lepp, Atheism in our Time (trans. by B. Murchland, New York: The
MacMillan Company, 1966), pp. 96 ff.

CHAPTER

II

CATHOLICISM

One hears it said that the Second Vatican Council is greatly overrated in
importance because it really said nothing new, at least from the viewpoint
of dogmatic theology, and in a certain sense this is true. I cannot think of a
single new doctrine taught in Vatican II or anything that cannot be footnoted by a reference to a preceding council, Father of the Church or ecclesiastical document. Some liturgical practices have been changed but this
was to be expected in a council convened to renew pastoral care rather than
beliefs. Yet, I think to underrate its accomplishments misses the point.
There is something new in Vatican II and this over and above the pastoral
suggestions and liturgical practices evident to all.
The new in Vatican II is the explicitation of past implications and the
realization of the importance of three key elements always present to some
degree in the Church but never stressed or properly interrelated. These are
(1) a new emphasis on the implications of "person"; (2) a realization that
the Church is deeply involved in the history of the world; (3) a shift theologically toward centralizing on the "Word." All previous councils spent
their time correcting past history or present abuses; this one proposes what
is to be done. As Professor Wolfson said to me several years ago, and I
agree, heresies progressed for centuries before the Church finally anathematized. The Pelagians didn't suddenly deny the need for grace and immediately a synod was called to correct them. Their ideas were developing
for centuries and only when the situation became so serious that it infected
the whole Church was it condemned. Furthermore, after the Pelagians were
condemned, the teachers in the Church began to think like semi-Pelagians
and after a long period of time they too brought about a new council to
meet the challenge.
Students of Catholic theology had for many years discussed what was
called the "evolution of dogma" but it was always retroactive; it was always explaining developments that had already occurred in terms of their
past history with its implications for what had now happened. It was not
predictive; it was not looking toward the future. But one of the new phenomena of Vatican II is that it not only stresses an evolution of dogma in

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CA THOLICISM

a futural sense, but it implies that there is an evolution occurring in the

cosmos in all its facets - sociological, historical, technical and theological.
Moreover, the council documents are so concerned with this aspect of
history that they even realize that the Church and the Council itself are
involved in this very evolutionary process. This looking toward the future
by the Council is one of the reasons why its work is not done but rather
only beginning. It is one of the reasons why theologians have been stirred
with new intellectual vigor, curiosity and daring that give the appearance
of internal conflict and confusion. The scholarly theologian is participating
in this very evolution even in his suggestion of new interpretations and in
his use of the latest methods of scriptural interpretation. If the Church were
to get overly excited about these tendencies among theologians, it would
be contradicting the very spirit of the Council. And this point serves to
bring out, I think, what is meant by saying that although the Council didn't
propose any new doctrine, it did instill a new spirit into the Church, and its
ramifications and impact will be felt for centuries.
The theme of the Council is unity manifested in these three key ideas:
man is a one - a person; the Church is a one - the People of God; the
world is a one - whose soul is the Church. Hence by unity here we do not
mean simply "fellowship"; the idea is much more profound. Many years
ago Rahner realized that it was philosophically incorrect to say that man
is a creature composed of body and souP It is true that there is in man a
spiritual and a material element but their unity is so pervasive and permeating that separation becomes unnatural. The spirit of man energizes his
matter so that he has a spiritualized body. His body then is as sacred as his
soul; this is what is meant by human incarnation. Incarnation means from
the etymology of the word to exist in the flesh but philosophically and
theologically it means more. The supreme example is Christ where the
Divine Person takes on spiritualized flesh but even in us men God divinizes
us in a lesser but still wondrous fashion. From this idea, the theme of unity
is expanded analogously but still truly to relate men in the Church and the
Church to the World. Let us hear the words of the Council Fathers:
But the society furnished with hierarchical agencies and the Mystical Body of
Christ are not to be considered as two realities, nor are the visible assembly and the
spiritual community, nor are the earthly Church and the Church enriched with
heavenly things. Rather they form one inter-locked reality which is composed of a
divine and a human element. For this reason, by an excellent analogy this reality is
compared to the mystery of the Incarnate Word.2

Emphasizing this insight we now see that one cannot speak of the Church
as the hierarchy or as a building. One sees too on the basis of this idea of
St. Thomas also realized this but many subsequent scholastics forgot it.
Vat. II, p. 23, The Documents oj the Second Vatican Council, edited with notes
and comments by Walter .\1. Abbott, S.J., and translated by Msgr. J. Gallagher, will
serve as the source for all the quotations made in this chapter to the Council. This
text is an Angelus Book published by the America Press in New York in 1966.
1

CA THOLICISM

39

the Church, why the laymen must be included in its activities. One sees
also that the Church must necessarily be involved with the world in a spiritmatter relationship. And finally, one sees how man himself as a person
united from the spiritual and material elements in him is adequately defined only when this relation to the world is taken into account.
For by his innermost nature man is a social being, and unless he relates himself to
others he can neither live nor develop his potential. 3

The themes of the Council are then (1) an emphasis on the new philosophical notion of the "person," (2) a new interest in evolution whereby the
"People of God" are considered as persons involved in the history of the
world and (3) the new emphasis on the primacy given to the "Word" of
God as the source of our faith.
The Person

On almost every page of the documents of Vatican II we encounter the

word "person." A person is able to say "no." He can stand over against
and above the world. From existential and phenomenological philosophy,
the notion of person means one who is spiritual in the sense that he is selfconscious and free. A person is a "bei-sich-selbst-sein," an autonomous
being who realizes he is different from things and even distinct from other
persons. In his self-conscious awareness he can reach out to transcendence.
More than this he can choose and has to make his own decisions about the
really important questions in life.
The roots of this new notion of the person are in the New Testament
where Christ taught the sacredness of personal dignity and that the choice
of our destiny was freely our own. The world was not ready to cultivate the
seeds of the true notion of the person that Christ insisted on. st. Paul still
asked slaves to obey their masters. Yet the New Testament taught that men
are not "things" but have an eternal destiny and a sacrosanct worth that
neither Plato's juridicism nor Pharisaic law had developed so clearly. The
Sabbath was not more important than brotherly love; the justice of stoning
a woman taken in adultery was to be tempered by a recognition of our own
personal frailty; the free choice to follow the Master in personal love, not
to be engulfed by the desire for the kingdom; the "ifs" of the program not
to be categorized by the power of the Almighty. In such an analysis of
human character is perceived the true notion of the "person" as a selfconscious free spirit incarnate in the world, and one who must responsibly
choose his own goals and never be treated as a mere tool of human society.
Despite what St. Paul has to say personally to slaves on obedience, he does
stress the idea that we are all persons and Augustine realized it too in his
3 Vat. II, p. 211. Here there is a coincidence with Marx's way of defining man.
C. Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, p. 48; and Critique of Hegel's Dialectic, p. 192.

40

CA THOLICISM

transcendent prayer that "my heart can find no rest until it rest in Thee,
God." But the obstacles of history were too unpropitious for its rapid
growth. Even through medieval times history dealt with the nations,
"gentes" not men and although certain basic human rights were protected
at least theoretically; man was an "animal rationale," an abstraction. He
was one among many things even though he crowned the earthly creation
by his endowments of intellect and will.
Later the stress given to the individual in the seventeenth century philosophy was rooted not in the personal freedom of man but centered
around his right to property.-I Again the idea was trying to work its way
through history and economics. In modem thought man came under the
scope of scientific methodology wherein his personal freedom was disregarded and he was treated as a determined statistic that science hoped to
make determinable and perfect. But Kierkegaard in his rebellion against
the abstractions of Hegel and the statistics of science realized that man was
free in a spontaneous way and his contemporary, the poet Gerard Manley
Hopkins, and the philosopher Nietzsche, were prepared by paying attention
to the concrete situations in life to simultaneously discover similar insights
into the true meaning of the "person." 5 In our own day this idea has developed further under the impetus given to the existential study of man by
such philosophers as Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger, Camus and Marcel, to
mention but the most prominent.
Karl Marx in his early writings had caught a glimmer of this insight.
Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Berdyaev were able to share in history's revelation of what was happening to man. At any rate today man is regarded
as a subject not as an object, as a self-conscious free autonomy and not as
a "thing." Even things, to be anything at all for us, must be known by us
as persons. The person, then, is a knower but more, a lover; he is free and
mature but also responsible and plays an important role in the course that
history will take, and also in the theme of his own autobiography. If he
says "no" in response to truth he will become as "ruthless" as Ruth in
Pinter's "Homecoming." Man as a person has the power even to cease to
care and can deprive himself not only of life but can deprive life itself of

4 Francis H. Parker, The Story of Western Philosophy. (Bloomington, Ind.: The

Indiana University Press, 1967) pp. 241-242: "In Locke's 'state of nature' prior to
the social contract individual human rights exist, but common power to enforce them
does not; so this common power is created by the social contract. These natural rights
are for Locke, life, liberty and estate; and all of these together he calls property, for
they are what is naturally proper to every man."
5
Each mortal thing does one thing and the same:
Deals out that being indoors each one dwells;
Selves-goes itself; myself it speaks and spells,
Crying 'what I do in me': for that I came.
From No. 34 of the Poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins, edited by Robert Bridges,
5th edition (London: Oxford University Press, 1938), p. 53. Also see Vat. ll, pp.
210-215, and J. Maritain, The Person and the Common Good (Notre Dame, Ind.:
University of Notre Dame Press, 1960), p. 40.

CA THOLICISM

41

all values and if enough men say "no," the process of history itself can
make a turn for the worse. It is in this sense that Sartre can blame himself
for Hitler. This is the danger in human existence but also the challenge.
Every person, then, is free and answerable. And this is the sort of being
who makes up the Church and peoples the earth. The new notion has
made some significant changes because the "person" has rebelled against
the "establishment" not only as a "status quo" but as an institutional
structure that gains power by sheer force and dwarfs man's autonomous
freedom. What can the person do against the institution? This has resulted
in the crisis of authority, a rebellion of the new persons against all authority, parental, civil and ecclesiastical.
The persons who attended Vatican II remedied this situation to a startling
degree in their resolutions concerning the importance of the person in the
midst of evolutionary change and the need to limit authority. In analyzing
the texts of the Council one must realize the previous work of theologians like Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Kung and Haring. What the Council finally
declared is often the official approval of their themes. Thus in line with the
development of the notion of "person," conscience gains a new aura of
respect. Conscience is a term that refers to our ability to make up our own
minds." If it is going to function practically in our lives then we have to
have some knowledge. No one can make up his mind in an intellectual
vacuum. Throughout the history of western civilization persons did not always develop sufficient knowledge for ethical solutions. The specialists in
these matters were the theologians and the priests, and living in a Catholic
world, people could rather easily conform to the "mores" or in doubt confer with a confessor. When this was unfeasible all sorts of casuistry evolved
such as probabilism, tutiorism and equiprobabilism which in turn led to
much scrupulosity and moral infantilism. For example, the "casus conscientiae" gave a detailed solution that was able to be applied by the confessor to other cases although in the concrete no two cases are exactly the
same. Helpful though the case method is even in civil law, we know today
that to cross the gap from the abstract consideration to the concrete case
is fraught with difficulty. St. Thomas saw this difficulty when he said that
one cannot expect to get the same certitude in the existential order that one
gets in the metaphysical order.' The result often was a formal conformity
to the law or a hair-splitting juridicism that made one feel that he was freed
from moral responsibility either by the laws of logic or by someone in authority taking the blame.
Theoretically this solution should not have developed because Christian
thought was always the defender, in a way, of personal dignity and had set
down that the moral determinants were not only the moral principles in
6 Bernard Wiring, The Law of Christ, (Westminster Press, 1961), Vol. II, p. 213,
p.244.
, St. Thomas, Summa Theal., I-II, 96, a. 1, ad 3.

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CA THOLICISM

general, but also the circumstances and the intention. The difficulty arose
because the moralists treated even the circumstances objectively and
abstractly whereas these are the truly personal elements that change with
each individual case and must be resolved in the last analysis by the person
involved. He can get help in forming his conscience, but really no one can
do it for him because no one knows exactly the quality of his motive or
the milieu of the act. However, again the scandal of history intervened.
The fact of the matter is that the ordinary person was not yet well enough
educated in many instances to help himself. The "person" had not sufficiently evolved as a philosophical idea and authority was extended beyond
rationality to a mere dictate of will. The fact that the superior commanded
an act was considered sufficient. This, too, is hard to understand when one
realizes that St. Thomas had taught that authority that was not rational was
no authority at all. 8 Thus, problems concerned with sex were looked on too
objectively in the sense that man's generative faculties were not referred to
his personality; marriage was regarded as a physical and natural process to
beget children with the pleasure aspect relegated to a secondary and permissive sphere. The person cannot form his conscience without the general
principles and here we avoid situation ethics but by the same token neither
can anyone else form it for him. It is part of his answerability as a person
to think about the motive and analyze the situation and then draw the conclusion that is conscience.
Thus we see that the role of the Church in the age of the "person" is to
present the guidelines for moral action; to work out and to teach according
to revelation and tradition the moral principles for living in the world. 9 The
Church is also charged with the role of sanctifying by the Eucharistic Sacrifice and the other sacraments and devotions that will nourish the man in
the world. It is further endowed with that jurisdiction proper for the above
mentioned functions. In the moral sphere then the Church cannot and
should not, for example, tell a President Kennedy what to do about Cuba's
missile bases. This is the responsibility of a President Kennedy. The Church
has the duty to teach the general moral principles involved. The work of
reasoning in the light of the situation toward a decision is the responsibility
of the person with the help of God's grace.
Continuing along these lines then, how do I form my conscience? I am
in a situation in the world, and I must often decide to do this or that; shall
I burn my draft card or not? My conscience is not ready-made; it is not the
voice of an alter ego; it is not a scintilla that immediately illuminates my
mind. Rather I must form it; I must make up my own mind. Now, of
course, the situation is very important; that's the problem; it is the situation
that I must solve either by choosing or rejecting among alternatives. But
Ibid.
[) Haring, Law of Christ. (Three volumes tr. by E. G. Kaiser, Cork: The Mercier
Press, 1960), vol. 1, pp. 42-45.
8

CA T HOLICISM

43

there are general principles needed to settle the concrete problem. Even to
think in a concrete situation there is always a core of general principles
giving the imperative. The moral case before me is a kind of "Rad" or circle
and the hub is the general principle. The situation is not itself adequate for
my reflection and final decision because the principles must be there too.
I do not just choose to burn my draft card or not to. To act with such
arbitrariness is to act on feelings or emotions alone and this is not to be a
man, not to be a person. A person is free, but he is also reflective and selfconscious. He always wills something. some object, just as he has to love
something or some one and to choose arbitrarily on the basis of feeling
alone is to empty his world of all values and to reduce his person to the
animal kingdom or even to thinghood. A person is a subject who can reflect
on the objective order as he knows it, and this is a person's very essence,
namely to be able to stand over against and even above objects.
The possibilities of ethical action are only able to be resolved by reflection on the general principles. This is how one finds out what is allowed. These abstract principles don't wean force, they mean reasonableness.
I have a natural inclination that is born in me to tend toward what is good
(this is not conscience but an element in it), but the problem is to decide what is good. Notice, too, that this natural tendency that all men experience toward the good is the root of the moral "ought" and that this
imperative is not found in the law but in me. The moral "ought" then is
subjective and personal. Many philosophers have found difficulty with the
moral ought because they are always discussing it as if it were something
objective. But, really, laws and authority are supposed to be rational and
although they carry with them a certain moral force or imperative, this
force, in the last analysis, can really never force me for I am free. I may
have to go to jail for burning my draft card or even in some cases die, but
I can choose under normal human circumstances.
This is the difficulty with Kant's ethics. Suppose someone simply says,
yes, but I don't want to be good. Here Kant has no answer. The true
answer is that if you're a person and are not just operating on feelings, then
you are aware intuitively of your tendency toward whatever is good. You
may err in deciding because this can be a very complicated problem, or
you may never do the good you decide on because it is too hard or difficult.
But the real ground of the moral "ought" is in you because you are a
person. All parents know that they can issue imperatives to their children
and these have a certain semblance to the moral "ought," but that their
orders are really compelling, and have to be because the children are not
yet answerable persons. There is a distinction, then, between the just
power of law and authority and the real responsibility in the person. The
formation of conscience must take into consideration both aspects of human
situations.
In the formation of my conscience, for example, about burning a draft

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CA THOLICISM

card, I should get my general principles from specialists in theology or

political theory or history or from the needs of human society. This investigation is still a kind of reflection on the general principles. There can be no
duty arising out of the absolute principles alone. This has been one of the
errors of much past ethical history. It is a general principle that man should
get married but the absolute can't say "you." So, finally, your conscience
may say "burn your draft card" because you think it is the best thing to do
here and now in this situation. And this would be a good act even though
you may go to jail for it. 10
But what has all this to do with Catholicism and the Council? Simply
this, that the new emphasis on the "person" means that there is a new
regard for him as free and as answerable. In other words, he must now at
this mature period of history make up his own mind and be ready to take
the consequences not only for life's situations but even for eternity. This
means that the Church aims at the ideal even for underdeveloped lands
where a patient educational process is required because persons must be
taught to reflect on these principles and on their personal situation in the
world and then make up their own mind. The institutionalized Church
must itself reflect on general principles and make use of all avenues of
science in coming to its conclusions regarding the guidelines it is to set
down for the People of God.
The question arises then, can the Church be imperative? Yes, the Church
can be imperative regarding the general principles of behavior but cannot
decide the ad hoc situation. We have mentioned above what the Church's
attitude should be in regard to the Cuban missile bases. Another example
would be, should Pius the Twelfth have favored either side in World War
II? Once the principles of justice have been clarified in general it seems to
me that Pius would not be able to know enough circumstances to take
sides.
The first consequence of this new notion of the person for the whole
People of God is the new responsibility placed on the laity and its role in
spreading the Word and offering Sacrifice to God. l l The institutionalized
Church becomes more restricted though nevertheless authoritative within its
proper sphere. The Church becomes the People of God not simply a visible
hierarchic structure. 12 The existence of the Church is dependent on the
laity, not on an institution of the clergy. The mentality of the laity should
create the Church as an institution. Thus, the priest takes on a new role
as a preacher of the Word and an offerer of sacrifice in conjunction with
the laity.13 One of his primary functions, consequently, is to offer the
10 Professor Karl Rahner stressed this point in his lectures at the University of
Munich in the fall of 1966. Cf. Vat. II, p. 214.
11 Vat. II, pp. 199-308; 489-520.
12 Vat. II, p. 22.
13 Vat. II, p.446: "This work is done mainly through the ministry of the Word and
of the sacraments which are entrusted in a special way to the clergy. But the laity,

CATHOLICISM

45

Eucharistic Sacrifice in union with other persons making up the people of

God, which is the Church. 14 The bishops and priests still function as the
chief teachers, but in the missionary activity of the Church the active
Christian must also take part. The Church is now defined with a new
emphasis as the Sacrament of salvation. 15
Because of this new notion of the person, there is a fresh idea of the
Church as an inter-personal relationship between all the members. Rahner's
ideas seem to be in the background here. Every great thinker usually has
only one or two major insights that run thematically through his thought.
In Rahner, I think that this theme is his emphasis on unity in the midst of
change. He stresses first, the unity of man as a person. Though composed
of body and soul, Rahner insists that these are not to be looked on as
dichotomous elements. The human person is an existing body necessarily
vivified by his spirit and thereby integrated into a person. 1G So it is false to
lump his body into the category of things or his soul into a choir of angels.
You can't separate one from the other and have an existing human person.
Augustine tended to look on man as if he were an angel driving a jeep.
Thomas had the correct notion but left it to be developed by his students
and this was his error. But at any rate Rahner having been a student once
of Heidegger talks about a person in a physical, concrete, existential relation to the Umwelt.
By situating man in the world and its inter-personal relationships, Rahner can give full play to a person's feelings and emotions as well as to his
ability to transcend these. It is but another application then, for Rahner to
apply such a unity to the Church. The Church is a one, a unified sign of
salvation, a unified People of God, the Mystical Body of Christ. He reads
the old ideas about the Church as about man in terms of the person. The
Church is like the soul of the world. I i But Church and world become a one
in the evolving history of time. 18 There are two ramifications of this idea
of the Church: first, in the Church itself and secondly, in the Church's relation to the world.
Regarding the first point, the Church as the "People of God" does away
with the "Establishment," with the opposition between "we" and "they,"
superiors versus subjects, clerics versus lay, monolithic structure versus
too, have their very important roles to play, if they are to be 'fellow workers of the
truth.' "
14 Vat. II, p. 535.
15 Vat. II, p. 584: "The Church has been divinely sent to all nations that she might
be the universal sacrament of salvation.' "
16 We see Rahner's ideas incorporated into the Council: esp. Vat. II, p. 22: Cf.
Karl Rahner, Gefahren im Heutigen Katholizismus (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,
1955); Thomas Sartory, Eine Neuinterpretatioll des Glaubens (Einsiedeln: Benziger
Verlag, 1966); and Hans Drs Von Balthasar, Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag, 1963).
17 Vat. II, p. 224. Also Vat. II, p. 239: "She (the Church) serves as a leaven and as
a kind of soul for human society."
18 Vat. II, p. 243.

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CATHOLICISM

persons.!!! Looking at the Church in itself it is a sign of salvation, a sacrament and hence like all sacraments is visible. And if a people of God is
visible, it is a society.20 Thus what belongs necessarily to any visible society
will belong to it. But the idea of society is not that of the twelfth century
or even of the eighteenth, because of the new idea of the person. The
e:1~phasis today is on the fact that the members are free members. They
must be free to get into the society or to get out of it. The Church is not
exactly like the man-made society that we call the state for it is a free and
loving association with God. Its purpose is salvific not socialistic. It is a
perpetual love affair and force alone can mar its conquest. 21
In regard to the second impact of this idea of the Church we now see
that there is a job to be done by all the members not only to save their own
souls but to save all men's souls. Each must be a living witness of the
Word. Since persons can no longer be considered in isolation from interpersonal relationships, they must have a concern for others. This is one of
the reasons why the Council stresses the role of the layman in the Church,
as a witness, as participant in the liturgy and as a counsellor in its organized activities. The Spirit of God is in the whole Church as a charismatic
gift keeping it unerring in belief. The "we-they" polarity has already been
dissolved?2

Authority

Notwithstanding these new views, as a visible society in an analogous

way, the Church assumes the structure common to all visible societies. If
a society is a union of persons for some common good, then it must have
some visible signs to differentiate it in a plurality of societies. If it is basically eschatological, then it is not temporal or political. If it is to be above
any definite political, social or economic form of society, then it will have
some characteristic structure that sets it apart. 23
More than this, if it is to be a union of free persons, then some idea must
unite them and some power inherent in it be able to adopt the means neces19 Vat. II, p. 470: " ... superiors should in appropriate manner consult the members
and give them a hearing."
20 Vat. II, p. 23.
21 Thomas J. Sartory, Eine Neuinterpretation des Glaubens, pp. 12-13.
22 Vat. II, p. 29: "The body of the faithful as a whole, anointed as they are by the
Holy One (cf. Jo. 2: 20, 27), cannot err in matters of belief, thanks to a supernatural
sense of the faith which characterizes the 'People of God' as a whole, it manifests
this unerring quality when 'from the bishops down to the last member of the laity,'
it shows universal agreement in matters of faith and morals."
23 Vat. II, p. 241: "Christ, to be sure, gave to His Church no proper mission in the
political, economic or social order. The purpose which He set before her is a religious
one. But out of this religious mission itself comes a function, a light, and an energy
which can serve to structure and consolidate the human community according to the
divine law."

CA THOLICISM

47

sary to attain its goal. In other words, there must be an orderly way of
operating, and so too, for the People of God, there must be an orderer or
orderers to preserve its unification as a community. Thus, if the People of
God are to perdure, rites of initiation must be clarified, means of sanctification formularized and rules for running the operation decided upon.
Simply stated, there must be some kind of architectonic structure. 24 After
all the missionary activities must be organized, its members functionalized
and its rights safeguarded when once determined. As I said above, the
power resident in the Church does not originate democratically; it comes
directly from above. One must here distinguish between power and force;
the former is a right to give an order to a person as a person; the latter is
physical compulsion. Physical force should be limited to certain other
human societies but has no place in the Church. Parents, for example, may
use physical force to the extent that children are not yet fully developed
persons and when the appeal to reason falls on deaf ears. In civil society
a similar situation may arise. But in all societies authority must be present,
and it is basically and essentially possessive of power not force. This latter
is only secondary and not at all necessary for authority. The power of
authority must be rational, i.e. reasonable, but there must also be present
someone to exercise authority, i.e. a will to have the act executed in the
existential order and hence there should be a mutual will-reaction in the
other person who realizes that the one giving the order has the right and
duty to give it. If one does not see the reasonableness of the order, then he
has a right to ask the reasons and in case of a dispute to call in others to
judge the reasons and arbitrate the case. If the reasons cannot be given to
the one asked to obey, at least he has a right to know that others think it
reasonable and on this basis his compliance is not irrationaP5
For the Catholic, this authoritative power in the Church comes directly
from Christ who is God who said to the Apostles and not directly to the
People of God "who heareth you heareth me" and "whatsoever you bind
on earth, will be bound in heaven." 26 To say that these commissions were
given to all the People of God renders them meaningless. As Ignatius Lepp
has said, the People of God today are not looking for a purely "spiritual"
religion. 27 In other words they will accept a proper visible society and its
necessary authority but what they object to and fear is an extension of this
authority far beyond the eschatological purposes of religion in a way that
24 Cf. Karl Rahner, Gefahren im Heutigen Kath., p. 37: "Das andere ware ein
kirchlicher Etatismus, der vergisst, dass auch die Kirche filr den Menschen und nicht
der Mensch fUr die Kirche da ist und dass aile kirchenamtlichen Organisationsformen
und Ordnungen, selbst wenn sie notwendig und gottlichen Rechtes sind, doch subsidiaren Charakter haben, das private religiose Gemeinschaftsleben nicht aufsaugen,
sondern fordern, bewahren und erganzen sollen."
25 J. Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, pp. 50-51.
~6 Mt. 16: 19; 18: 18; 28 : 16,20.
27 I. Lepp, Atheism Today, p. 160; Vat. II, p. 49 et seq.

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CA THOLICISM

parallels the civil society and adheres to Hellenistic and Roman accretions
that make the Church ar~haic.
Formerly, the acceptance of authoritative power in any society meant
that the individual members were ruled on the basis of the common good.
This was the ultimate purpose of a society and the members functioned as
a means for the end and so were to sacrifice their personal rights whenever
they contravened the common good. This appeared logical in the textbooks
and has been practiced by communism, various totalitarianisms and the
Church in the past. But this is the scandal, the road-block in history at that
point where the notion of the person had not yet evolved unto its present
stage of development. Once one realizes that the person comes first, and
that societies, all societies, only exist for persons, we get a new insight.28
Once, too, we realize that a person is sacredly free and that to deny this
self-conscious autonomy is to destroy him, we have the new problem regarding the common good and the crisis of authority.
Today the common good is fast becoming the good of all. The old
common good was an abstraction; the new, a concrete good for all persons.
This is both Christian and Marxist. 29 To say that society is a whole composed of persons is to say that society is a whole composed of wholes. 30 In
man his organs operate for the good of the whole; if one becomes diseased,
cut it out. In a machine the gears and nuts and bolts are parts that are
replaceable. All of these parts work primarily for the good of the whole.
The leucocytes in man's physical organism are ready by nature to become
martyrs for the health of the whole organism. But, in a human society this
is not exactly true because the society exists for the parts and the parts are
greater in value than the whole. A society is real only in the sense that real
inter-personal relationships exist between very real persons. I think that the
analogy of society to a living organism can be overdrawn, and this happened in the theory of the corporate state and can happen if we read too much
into the notion of the Church as the Mystical Body. St. Paul uses the analogy of the body in discussing the Church in order to show that there have
to be different functionaries in the Church if it is to be organized, but not
to indicate that each member exists primarily for the good of the whole.
Some theological writers went so far as to say that as Christ was the head
so the Blessed Mother was the neck of the Mystical Body and this only
shows to what absurdity too close a parallelism can lead.
Man's goal is God; this then is his only Absolute. All else is relativized,
for below God man is the only social absolute. 31 This immediately means
that all authority is limited. The authority of the state is limited in the
K. Rahner, Gefahren im Heutigell Kath., p. 37.
Vat. II, p. 230: "God did not create man for life in isolation but for the formation of social unity"; and p. 226: "In our times a special obligation binds us to
make ourselves the neighbour of absolutely every person ... "
30 J. Maritain, The Person and the Common Good, pp. 56-57.
31 K. Rahner, Gefahren im Heutigen Kath., p. 37.
28
29

CATHOLICISM

49

sense that it must respect what we call the inalienable rights of man. To
violate these is to bring about alienation. Once a person realizes that he
must be in society, certain new relationships to others dawn on him. These
relations help to develop him as a person and hence he must give up some
of his freedom to be a true man; just as he must do if he wants to be a true
athlete or a true anything else. Thus a man is not free to be a murderer in
society and the consequent infringement of his rights by incarceration is
necessary for the real common safety of his fellow persons. This is a case
where because he violated power, he succumbs to force. As Dr. Johnson
once said, I may be sitting opposite a man at dinner who thinks that it is
perfectly all right to lop off his fingers and in a certain sense this may be
all right except that he may very soon think that it's perfectly all right to
lop off mine. So, although people can think what they want, they sometimes get into trouble when they start to put their ideas into practice.
But living with others does not in the ordinary case mean that man gives
up all his freedom. in fact this can never occur as long as he is a person.
He is always free to believe, to love and to think as he pleases. Ordinarily,
a person has a right to whatever is necessary for his life or to marry and
beget children and even to suffer, but sometimes in his arbitrariness a conflict arises and others' rights are endangered. These situations must be solved on the basis of the hierarchy of values, and civil society has a right at
times to restrain him. Consequently, living in society is not a giving up of
all our rights but only of some that are necessary for life itself in society.
As we move through the documents, we see that Vatican II did not
change the Catholic Church; the Church was ready to change; it had to
change. Due to progress, sociological evolution, education on a more extensive level and better communications between people - all of these
quantitative impacts caused a bursting forth into a qualitative change manifested by the spirit of Vatican II. This is the really shocking fact, namely,
that the change is not just quantitative but qualitative; we have a new
Church or at least a new idea of the Church. As in all dialectical processes
something of the old remains, and this is why the Catholic Church is still
the Church that Christ founded and that has its unique yet turbulent history. But it is a new and changed Church. 32
Moreover, the Church is the "People," not the hierarchy.33 This is the
universal leap within the Church and the most important qualitative change.
The primary thing to understand is that this is a growth and maturation
and not a rebellion against authority. Yet it means that the whole old medieval idea of the Church as a separate institution has gone. This will have
repercussions that will seem unruly. One of the aftermaths is that laymen
are demanding a part in deciding financial matters. Laymen are making
32 Vat. II, p. 17: "By the power of the gospel He makes the Church grow, perpetually renews her, and leads her to perfect union with her Spouse."
33 Vat. II, p. 22.

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CA THOLICISM

their consensus felt even on doctrinal matters. For a time there will be confusion, but it is a growth and this is the optimistic note. 3 -'
Now the first point to analyze in this change is the role of the authority
in the Church. It is clear that the traditional power of authority must be
preserved but within a proper framework. In other words, the pope and the
bishops do have a distinct role in the Church to teach, to sanctify and to
rule. 3 :; But in all three there must be proper limitation, the dropping of
non-essential historical accretions and more lay participation. There seems
to be less difficulty in regard to the power of sanctifying and hence we can
discuss this first. The power of sanctifying centers around the Eucharist as
the prime Sacrifice and the other sacraments which give the grace-life to
all the people. By the power of sanctifying is really meant the administrating of the sacraments or the special service to the people given by the
bishops and priests. Hence, to sanctify belongs properly to God's grace; the
cleric is only a minister, a servant, a channel of grace in cooperation with a
symbol. 36
But in the question of "ruling" some clarifications are required. First,
"ruling" pertains to that power of jurisdiction also real and reasonable
which belongs to the Church as a society of persons. Here the Church
comes closer to civil societies than in its other aspects but even here the
comparison is only analogous, and the making of this powcr univocal has
been one of the scandals of the historical institution. 37 As a society the
Church has obtained even this ruling power directly and historically from
God and not by a consensus of the people, hence it is not a pure democracy. Secondly, since it is a free association, its sanctions must be spiritual by
nature and not physically compulsive. Thirdly, its ruling power must be
exercised within its incarnational aspect so that its decrees pertain to qualifications for its members in their various hierarchic functions and for the
organization of its missionary activities in horizontal and vertical directions.
This "ruling power" is necessary because the Church is a kind of soul of
the world, is in-earn ate, is mingled with matter. Its members are incarnate;
34 This role of the layman is especially stated in Vat. II, pp. 489-522, where the
Decree on the Apostolate of the Laity is discussed. See too the article, "The Dutch
Pastoral Council" by I. van Rijn in America (vol. 116, No. 11, March 18, 1967). An
interesting comment by Fr. Smulders appears in that article: "Do the bishops have
the final word, or can this be spoken by the bishops and the people? In other words,
is the whole community, in the visible consensus of bishops and people the final
bearer of authority, or are the bishops the only bearers of it? Does the whole community, taught and guided by the bishops, bind itself, or do the bishops bind it?"
Vat. II seems to answer this by asserting that in the last analysis the bishops bind it;
d. p. 43: "For in virtue of his office ... the Roman Pontiff has full, supreme and
universal power over the church. And he can always exercise his power freely ... But
this power (that of the college of bishops) can be exercised only with the consent of
the Roman Pontiff." (Nothing is said of the consent of all the people in this context.
These texts refer to universal jurisdiction not to local.)
35 Vat. II, p. 38. Also Mt. 28 : 16-20, Mk 16: 15, Lk 24 : 45-48; Jn 20: 21-23.
36 Vat. II, p. 41.
37 Cf. John L. McKenzie, Authority in the New Testament and Vat. II, p. 47.

CA THOLICISM

51

they are not pure spirits but embodied souls and because of this embodiment, the members as persons are by nature necessarily involved with and
even properly defined in terms of the world. Hence the incamational
Church takes on some of the aspects of a worldly and human society and
consequently has to have some limited rules and organization. For the
future Church, then, in the light of this new idea, there will be much limitation of ecclesiastical authority but never its destruction. Once understood,
both the hierarchy, the clergy and the laity will realize that liberal elements
are not trying to destroy the Church.:1R
However, the major difficulty for the future Church resides in the area
of its teaching authority. There are two aspects of this power: (1) its solemn
enduring definitions or dogmas proposed for belief by all the "People of
God," and (2) its contemporary teaching authority about matters of faith
and morals. Under the first, the questions of faith, i.e. what to believe, are
emphasized at least historically more than moral matters. Under the ordinary and contemporary teaching the emphasis would be greater on the side
of pertinent moral questions such as birth control, abortion and usury.
The reason is that the teaching on these questions by the nature of the case
changes more readily in the light of new scientific evidence and the changing ncores of the people. The point to remember is that the day by day
teaching of the living Church will often be changed, or we simply would
not have a teacher to tum to. :lD I think that this has been a difficulty for the
Jewish religion.
In the new Church with its emphasis on all the people of God even the
teaching structure of the institution has evolved. Due to more extensive
education and expanded lines of communication, it is realized more clearly
than ever before that the Spirit of God charismatically guides faith in the
whole Church, in the People of God. It is not exclusively the possession of
the pope or of the college of bishops with the pope. However, the pope
and the bishops have a professional role in teaching and enunciating the
correct positions on faith and morality for and to the whole Church, but
also they have the obligation of sounding out how the People of God feel
on such matters. Thus, too, the pope has this duty in particular through
~8 K. Rahner, Gefahren im Heutigen Kath., p. 23: "Die Kirche als Gnadengemeinschaft liegt im Bereich der geistig-personalen, gnadenhaft erhohten Einzelheit als
deren korrelater Begriff, die Kirche als rechtlich stmkturierte Gesellschaft gehort als
Korrelat zum Einzelnen, insofern er letztlich durch seine materiell-biologische \Vesensschicht univokes Glied einer Vielzahl von Gleichen ist und damm ontologisch und
sittlich Subjekt einsinniger Gesetze, einer von aussen regelnden Autoritat, zwanghafter
Beeinflussung usw. sein kann und sein muss."
3D Vat. II, p. 48: "This religious submission of will and of mind must be shown in
a special way to the authentic teaching authority of the Roman Pontiff, even when
he is not speaking ex cathedra. That is, it must be shown in such a way that his
supreme magisterium is acknowledged with reverence, the judgments made by him
are sincerely adhered to, and according to his manifest mind and will. His mind and
will in the matter may be known chiefly either from the character of the documents,
from his frequent repetition of the same doctrine or from his manner of speaking."

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CA THOLICISM

communicating directly with the bishops around the world. Consequently,

what to do or what to believe is taught by the institutionalized Church, and
the people of the Church turn to it for the moral principles needed for the
resolutions of problems on faith and morals. But in the last analysis, of
course, each person must make up his own conscience on the basis of a
general principle finalized by the institution but conjoined with his own
situation and intentions. The "faith" is ever a free commitment, though
within its commitment arises a certain necessity.
The final determination of the conflict of what is to be done depends
on the teaching Church. But the carrying out of the decrees depends on the
subjective effort of the individual person's conscience and activity. Still this
does not mean that the teaching authority must get a general consensus
down to each last member, for this is practically impossible and such a
pure democracy has never existed. And yet the inerrancy of the People of
God would have to be that universal and perfect even according to what
the Council itself says on the matter. Hence, we see that in the last analysis, because we are incarnate, we turn to authority for the content of what
we should do.
Despite all this, someone may ask what would happen if the pope were
to teach something that is not in harmony with the consensus within the
Church? Is it not possible that frailty of human nature might bring a whole
people to naught, or that the powers of darkness could overshadow the
body of Christendom. and in this case would we not look to the pope as
the infallible teacher to direct us?
It is an historical fact, that many bishops and consequently a large segment of the laity have in times past become infected with heresy. It is likewise an historical fact that in such cases the Bishop of Rome has always
been considered the final judge. In this day and age, at least, when the
pope uses his plenipotentiary power of setting forth a doctrine to be believed by all the People of God, he previously makes certain that all the
bishops have been consulted. These bishops, in turn, have a duty to attune
their ears to the stirrings of the Holy Spirit among the laity. For the Catholic, there really should be no difficulty in the exercise of this kind of power.
It is a commitment made under the influence of the grace of the faith.
But, when the pope teaches day by day, he uses that ordinary authority
necessary for a living Church, and, in this case other circumstances should
be taken into consideration. For example, the wording of the proposal, the
intention of the Pontiff, the seriousness with which he intends to bind the
faithful, the reasons adduced and the opinions of the other bishops on the
matter. However, preference is to be accorded the judgment of the Bishop
of Rome because he is the living teacher. According to the norm of the
hierarchy of values, ordinarily the greater good, namely the preservation of
order and unity within the society, demands a sacrifice on the part of the

CA THOLICISM

53

People of God, none of whom claims individually to possess a like authority in such matters.
All this pertains, of course, to a rather serious matter of faith or moral
principles and not to a question of administrative policy or to a juridical
decision. For those of us who are Catholics, our committed faith makes
impossible a situation where a Bishop of Rome would attempt to bind a
universal people over against the opinion of all the bishops and all the
people. This, for us, is simply an impossible case, provided, of course, that
the pope is neither senile nor mentally unbalanced. As St. Augustine said in
the fourth century in his dispute with Cyprian: "Roma locuta est, casus
clausus est."
So then I think that such a situation becomes only a theoretical question
in this day and age. First of all, modern popes are not so alienated from
their bishops and people as to be unaware of the consensus. Secondly,
neither the weakness of nature nor the power of the devil can thwart the
stirrings of the Spirit to such a degree. This would contradict the very belief
in the Church as a People of God to whom Christ has promised His
guidance and against which the gates of hell shall not prevai1. 40
One essential notion should be reemphasized, and this is that faith is a
gift from God by His grace. It is a free gift for free persons, and one does
not get it by proofs from reason, nor does it depend on scientific evidence.
But once possessed, the Catholic intellectual should be able to expand the
meaningfulness of his faith by further reasoning as Anselm once said. The
work of Teilhard de Chardin has helped the modern intellectual in this
endeavor not so much by the new insights that he gave, but by his ability
to adapt modern scientific methods to an explanation of the matters of the
faith. 41
The World

When man was wrapped in a world of mystery, he tended to pray to

gods to offset the hidden forces endangering him. There was more room in
those days for mystery, miracles and superstition. 42 How often as a child in
the midst of a thunder-storm we prayed that God would protect us (and
as a matter of fact, I still do), but a new attitude has evolved. Certainly,
when a boy learns in physics class the phenomena that bring about thunder
and lightning, the situation appears more natural and less fearsome even
though still under the long range plans and power of God. The more
we know about nature the less we fear it. When we enter the operating
40 There are many problems concerned with this area that hopefully wiII be discussed at the next Synod.
41 I. Lepp, Der Lebensstil des lntellektuellen (Wiirzburg: Arena-Verlag Georg Popp,
1966), p. 173 et seq.
42 Vat. II, p. 205: " ... more critical ability to distinguish religion from a magical
view of the world and from the superstitions that still circulate purifies religion ... "

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CA THOLICISM

room of a hospital, we realize how much depends on the skill of the surgeon
and the scientific facilities in operation all around us. What I am trying to
say here is that God lets the material causes and effects take their course.
And He expects us to use our reason in probing into these things and to
realize how much He has left to us. I do not mean that God has been
superseded, but that He lingers in the background furnishing the overall
energy for all life's happenings and rarely interferes with them. The dichotomy between the natural and the supernatural, science and religion,
the Church and the world, body and soul, is disappearing as new knowledge synthesizes the old in a process of unification. We no longer opt for
spirit or matter, but rather we see "Geist in Welt" and "Geist aus Materie"
in the sense that spirit is united with the material world on all occasions, in
me and in my relations to the world and even in God's relation to His
creation as the pourer-in of energy and as a resident landlord by His allpervasive presence. 43 This has made it hard today for the Catholic student
who learns his religion or philosophy in a class where everything is logically tied into a neat synthesis that remains intact long after he realizes that it
is experientially irrelevant. He steps into a physics class that deals not with
God's world, the supernatural or the spiritual and yet solves relevant
problems. On Sunday the contemporary person hears the revealed Word of
God, then moves into an alien world where he must compete to win his
daily bread. People aren't saying that Aquinas' theses are false but only
that they don't seem to matter. What is this "prime matter" that the philosophers talk about in a day of nuclear physics? Or what is this substance
of bread that goes in the consecration when we know that in a philosophical sense it is hard to say what the substance of anything is any more? I
am not saying that Christ does not come in that moment but is there not a
more meaningful way to express it?
I think that Teilhard de Chardin saw the light early because here was a
man who was not running scared of science. 44 He used the scientific
method that many Catholics are using every day in their professional careers. But Teilhard knew how to apply this technique to the Divine milieu.
I do not think that Teilhard was a great philosopher or a great theologian
or a great anthropologist, but he was a great thinker because of his knowledge of all these areas in the light of evolution in its forward looking
aspect. And this daring insight has certainly affected the modern Catholic
Church and so, too, Marxism.
Another theme of Vatican Council II is the relation of the Church to the
evolving history of the world. On this point the work of Teilhard de Chardin
has made its greatest impact. We detect also the influence of Rahner and
deLubac here. Teilhard looked forward to the gathering up of cosmic forces
43 Vat. II, p. 22. These ideas form the key insight of Rahner's philosophy, in my
opinion.
44 Vat. II, p. 204, n. 1.

CATHOLICISM

55

into the Omega Point, Christ, who is also the Alpha. Today evolution has
been expanded to include the social and historical processes that regard the
perfection of man as a person in some distant future. The cosmic forces are
encompassed in the divine and change is regarded as necessary and selfperfecting. The Church then as the People of God is necessarily tied up
with the world process of history. It is a kind of soul of the world. 45
The "world" can be variously regarded, as the sheer cosmic processes,
the spirit of vanity or existential reality involving us as knowers.4G It is this
last that becomes holy in the new theme of history which is the world's
evolution. And at the heart of this Weltanschauung stands the person. The
question then is how can the Christian be a man in the world today? Over
against the newly stressed eschatological Church we have a new emphasis
in the Council to divest ourselves of a ghetto mentality. Yet, even in the
eschatological framework is man's thinking about his personal death primary? The answer seems to be No. His living in the world as a Christian is his
primary concern. If he lives in the world as a witness to Christ, as a
Christian, he will save his soul. 4 7
In the light of this we begin to see what Rahner means by anonymous
Christians and what Lepp means by believers who are not believers. 48 We
always believed that those who believed in God but did not know the true
Church and did what was in them possible, saved their souls and somehow
belonged to the Church. But Rahner, it seems, implies more. He indicates
that those who develop their personal talents properly and naturally in
justice and charity by a constant good life are fulfilling Christ's will. And
Lepp means that those Christians who profess their faith in words but by
their habitual attitude of mind, daily conversation, and deeds are no differ45 Vat. II, p. 200: "That is why the community realizes that it is truly and intimately linked with mankind and in history." Vat. II, p. 261: "Thus we are witnesses
of the birth of a new humanism, one in which man is defined first of all by his responsibility toward his brothers and toward history." And again, Vat. II, p. 202: "Today
the human race is passing through a new stage of its history. Profound and rapid
changes are spreading by degrees around the whole world. Triggered by the intelligence
and creative energies of man, these changes recoil upon him, upon his decisions and
desires, both individual and collective and upon his manner of thinking and acting with
respect to things and to people. Hence, we can already speak of a true social and cultural
transformation, one which has repercussions on man's religious life as well." And again,
(p. 204), 'Thus the human race has passed from a rather static concept of reality to a
more dynamic, evolutionary one. In consequence there has arisen a new series of
problems, a series as important as can be, calling for new efforts of analysis and
synthesis. "
46 For these ideas I am indebted to Rahner.
47 John A. T. Robinson, Honest to God (Philadelphia: The Westminster Press,
1963), pp. 99-104 and p. 137: "And what BonhOffer meant by authentic Christian
worldlines is echoed quite independently by the Roman Catholic, Fr. Yves Con gar,
in his designation of a layman as one for whom the things of this world are "really
interesting in themselves,' for whom, 'their truth is not as it were swallowed up and
destroyed by a higher reference' - for instance, by how far they can be turned to the
service of the Church or used as occasions of evangelism."
48 Ibid., pp. 99-104. And also I. Lepp, Atheism in Our Time, p. 156 et seq.

56

CA THOLICISM

ent from the worldling, the atheist, or agnostic are really non-believers
even though they may not be fully conscious of this.
Hence, we have to be in the world, that is, among men and material
things, and we have to compete with men professionally and socially, loving
each and trying not by force but by bdng a witness to the teachings of
Christ to bring them to eternal salvation. Christ taught that we are not to
be of the world. This means that we are not to share in worldliness in the
sense of thinking and acting like those who attach all their hopes to this
world and do not believe in God or in Him whom the Father sent. This is
the world that hates Christ and will hate the followers of Christ. Jesus has
predicted that this situation will continue until the end of time. 49 But
though the world in this sense will hate Christianity, the true Christian
must still love each person, for this is the special commandment of Christ.
And in this connection Christ gives us an insight into what is meant by a
person, for He says, "I have not called you slaves, for the slave knows not
what the Master does, but 1 have called you friends because all things that
I have heard from my Father 1 have made known to you." 50 We have
constantly stated that to be a slave or a servant is a depersonalization and
alienation. On the other hand, Christ opposes the notion of slave by that of
friend, and it is this type of inter-human relationship that brings out what
is meant by a person. And then Jesus gives the reason why he has not called his followers slaves but friends, "because 1 have made known to you all
things that 1 have heard from my Father." The slave is not taken into
confidence; he is given orders without the reasons; he does not know the
master's future plans or real thoughts; he is treated as a chattel. But Christ
talks to other persons, and it is a wonderful thing when someone really just
talks to you. But it is not just impersonal chatter which Jaspers calls the
"on dit" kind of talk. Rather it is Christ's innermost thoughts and even
fears that he communicates to His disciples; not merely His anguish about
His coming passion, but all things that His Father has told Him. He speaks
about the meaning of existence, the after-life, what is right and wrong, and
the need to love each person as a brother. It is this unmasking of hypocrisy and revelation of the heart's secrets and temptations, feelings and
fears, in candor and sincerity, that plays a key role in essential Christianity.
Consequently, if a man develops his "person" properly, he will be good
and attain salvation. "Properly," of course, means hopefully as a hearer of
49 Vat. II, p. 24; p. 72: "The Apostle has sounded the warning: 'let those who
make use of this world not get bogged down in it. For the structure of this world is
passing away' (cf. I Cor. 7: 31)." Also Jh. 15: 18-20: "If the world hates you, know
that it has hated me before you. If you were of the world, the world would love what
is its own. But because you are not of the world, but I have chosen you out of the
world, therefore the world hates you." And, Rom. 12: 52: "Be not conformed to this
world." Cf. Vat. II, p. 235: "By the world is here meant that spirit of vanity and
malice which transforms into an instrument of sin those human energies intended for
the service of God and man."
50 In. 15 : 14.

CA THOLICISM

57

the "Word" and then as a witness. Thus, the eschatological aspect of the
Church must be emphasized concretely. The Church, in a sense, is not of
this world. It is spiritual not material; it aims toward perfection in union
with God at the end of time and in this sense is not a temporal kingdom; it
elevates men to the true noble ideals of perfection and thus is distinct from
the vanity of this world which tends downward toward the things of matter,
alienation and degeneration. But the world-church is the Church today,
working in the concrete with UNESCO and other similar organizations. ,>1
The Christian must realize the social evolution going on. Free personal
faith is the "in thing" that has characterized Vatican II and must characterize the Church's missionary activities.
Stemming from Teilhard and thematically developed by the Council is
the idea that God pervades the world.:i2 The world is holy. The unity then
between the world and God in a very real sense is history, and this unity
was explicated and made manifest in the Incarnation, and so from here
on, in history, Christ is with the world. This is not meant in a pantheistic
sense; it is not identifying God with the world as if there were no God outside the world, but rather it is the fact that God is energizing the world. In
the words of John MacQuarrie the creative act was when God "let it be,"
but the point is that God did not just let the world be, but that He keeps it
being. And He does this by diffusing Himself throughout it, yet making
sure that He does not infringe on what He allows to be on its own. Still it
could not even be on its own without His all-pervading presence continually energizing it. This is what Teilhard de Chardin calls the "Divine Milieu."
It is seen, then, that the world is not essentially static but dynamic in an
evolutionary sense and so too must be its ever present counterpart in these
days, the Church. God by His presence in and through the world forms a
kind of parallelism of cooperation with the world's evolution, and in this
situation nothing is stable or unchanging. 53 So too, the God-centered life
parallel to world history has another parallel in the instance of the individual Christian and his relation to the world, his Mitwelt. Man must come
to see the world, the Umwelt, as God's world, and the Church's function is
to make the Mitwelt and the Umwelt one, and to sanctify the relationship.54
We find an example of the historically concrete in the Old Testament,
the New Testament and tradition. The Church is not identical with the
Kingdom of God for the Kingdom of God exists wherever God shares His
life which happens to be constantly and always in the concrete existential
Vat. II, p. 290-320.
Vat. II, p. 230.
53 Vat. II, p. 208: 'The Church also maintains that beneath all changes there are
many realities that do not change and which have their ultimate foundation in Christ
who is the same yesterday, today, yes, and forever."
54 Gustav Siewerth, Der Mensch und sein Leib (Einsiedeln: Johannes Verlag,
1953), pp. 80-81.
51

52

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CA THOLICISM

world. Thus, the Kingdom of God is not only in the Church but becomes
coexistent with the history of the world. The Church is the inner history
of grace and love. The holy sharing by God of His life, and the kingdom of
God is in the concrete material world. The history of the love of God is
the history of the world. The Church is in part, this kingdom of God in the
world; it is the sacrament of thc kingdom, the sign of God; it is brotherhood in practicality. 55
The problem of evil, then, arises not only from personal sin but also
from personal negligence. There is stili a great mystery here that has its
full answer hidden in divine providence that can be somewhat assuaged by
faith, hope and charity. But when an orphanage burns down and the twelve
little children are burned to death, it is our human task to try to discover
who didn't do what he should have done in the world to prevent this. This
idea has its side-effects for Christians in meeting their social responsibilities
in the world that God has let them manage for the most part. These notions
mean that the Church of the future will be truly Catholic, that it will allow
an evolution of dogma and that it must meet the needs of a contemporary
world in developing its moral guidelines. It means that it must exist in a
world of pluralistic societies unlike the unified west of medieval Christianity. Its missionary apostolate will receive a new impetus in the realization
that God is present throughout the world and that the Church must be
respectfully concerned for the community of all men. The science of the
world, the technocracy of the world and even the opinion of the world
must be listened to, for the Church is the soul of the world, the Body of
Christ made up of persons in the world and to sever one from the other
would be to commit suicide. The individual Christian must adequately be
defined in terms of his social relationships and in his relation to the world. 56
Alienation means to be a stranger in the world, and the Church must help
to remedy this. No longer should the Christian live for Sundays only and
then find on weekdays that his theology or philosophy is incompatible with
the world and other persons.
The Christian then is a hearer of the "Word," and he must carry his
witness into the workaday world. He must equip himself not only to hear
the Word but to preach it and to make responsible moral decisions according to the guidelines set down by the institutionalized and eschatological
Church. He must see in scientific method something sacred although inadequate, and he must be able to fulfill this inadequacy by his faith and
share it with other self-conscious persons who like him can transcend this
50 I am indebted to Rahner for these ideas on the difference between the Kingdom
of God and the Church.
56 Vat. II, p. 224: "Man's social nature makes it evident that the progress of the
human person and the advance of society itself hinge on each other. For the beginning, the subject and the goal of all social institutions is and must be the human
person which for its part and by its very nature stands completely in need of social
life. This social life is not something added to man."

CATHOLICISM

59

world and its visible aspects. Indeed, if Vatican II limits the institutionalized aspect of the Church, it inaugurates a new and serious responsibility on
all the People of God to be witnesses of Christ in the world.
Within the People of God, then, there should be released a new creativity even with regard to things theological, moral and liturgical. These should
develop according to evolving history and become new responses to new
challenges and manifest a daring in which the subjects, persons, do not
fear superiors, also persons. Though the People of God must turn to the
teaching Church to find out in detail where the "Word" is, yet even here
the institutional Church depends upon its own scholars and researchers to
furnish the content that will serve as a basis for doctrine. Once we regard
one another as brothers, obliged with a heavy responsibility to nourish in
freedom and with good consciences the Body of Christ from the environment of the world, will the Church grow. When someone says, then, that
the Second Vatican Council really didn't change anything, let him realize
that in a sense it didn't, but nonetheless, there is a new face of the Church
exposed to the changing world that cannot go unnoticed to the careful
student of Vatican II who keeps in mind the thematic insights of the
"person," of the evolving world in history and the stress placed on the
kerygmatic approach to the Revelation of God. 5 '

5. Vatican Council II has limited the institutionalized Church by stressing the role
of the person, especially the layman and by the newly emphasized definition of the
Church as the "People of God," embracing all persons, lay and clerical.

CHAPTER

III

COEXISTENCE

While Karl Marx was writing the Communist Manifesto, Pope Leo the
Thirteenth was composing his encyclical on the "Conditions of the Working Classes" - De Rerum Novarum. 1 This was considered at the time to be
a giant step forward in liberal thinking. In light of past history, it was. But
it was also a belated attempt to win the laboring class of Europe back to a
Church that for too long had in practice affiliated itself with the regimes in
power. Still, there is some excuse for the slowness of approach of those
days. The institutional Church needed state help and a certain practical jolt
would have to be given to the whole ecclesial framework that people just
didn't seem ready for. Many of the powerful ecclesiastics believed that the
Rock of Peter signified not only permanence but immobility. To many
both inside and out the Catholic Church was looked on as a monolithic
structure; there she stands with her century old liturgy, vestments, doctrine
and creed, and these had withstood all the changes of the Reformation.
This was its boast, and for some even its mark of genuineness. But this was
before evolution was seen in its sociological and historical implications and
before the notion of the "person" had fully developed.
Forty years later Pius XI issued a more liberal encyclical aimed at a
corporate society and geared to offset the now advancing Marxism in the
form of atheistic communism in Russia. 2 The battle was on, the forces were
arrayed along clearly demarcated lines, and the standards were atheism or
theism. And for those days this was a wise counsel, for Russian communism was set for violent world revolution as the only way for it to survive.
1 See Roger Garaudy's "Vom Bannfluch zum Dialog" in Der Dialog (Hamburg:
Rowohlt Taschenbuch Verlag, 1966), pp. 93-94: "Die Grundthese wird dann von
Papst Pius X am 18. Dezember 1903 in ihrer ganzen Allgemeinheit entwickelt: 'Die
menschliche Gesellschaft, so wie sie Gott eingerichtet hat, ist aus ungleichen Elemen ten zusammengesetzt. Foiglich entspricht es der von Gott gewollten Ordnung,
dass es in der menschlichen Gesellschaft Fuersten und Untertanen, Unternehmer und
Proletarier, Reiche und Arme, Gelehrte und Unwissende, Adlige und Plebejer gibt ...
Die Enzyklika 'Quadragesimo Anno' (1931) zog ausdriicklich folgende Schlussfolgerung: 'Die Arbeiter sollen ohne Groll die Stelle einnehmen, die die gottliche Vorsehung ihnen zugewiesen hat.' "
2 Pius XI. encyclical letter "Quadragesimo Anno," AAS 23 (1931).

DIALOGUE

61

It was in those days that Stalin said: "The Pope? How many divisions has
he?"
Because of his background in diplomacy Pius XII tried to guide the
Church in a defensive way through the ordeals of facism, nazism and
communism. It is easier in retrospect and without sufficient evidence to
blame him for using the very valid moral principle of the hierarchy of
values, perhaps incorrectly at times, yet theoretically from what we know
of his character he was on the side of the angels.
The cardinals of the Catholic Church probably thought that by electing
the elderly cardinal from Venice as the next pope they would put the
Church in a kind of deep freeze during the cold war. ButJohn XXIII opened the windows and the fresh air that ventilated the Vatican introduced the
warm zephyrs of a world that melted that ice as John in tum melted the
world by his personal charity and charm. It seems that John thought that
the Church was isolating itself from the world, the material world of the
natural, and he suggested that the Church get involved, first, with a pastoral "aggiomamento" and, secondly, with a plan of reconciling those outside,
especially the Orthodox.
We all know the far-reaching consequences, probably far beyond the
dreams of the beloved peasant from Bergamo. But he put his fingers on
the key in the encyclicals Mater et Magistra and Pacem in Terris when he
perceived that in the history of mankind an evolution was taking place and
that one participant of this evolution was communism itself. He saw the
possibility of a separation between its economic and social themes and its
over-all philosophy, and if this were possible, so too would be a dialogue
between Marxists and Catholics. 3 The Vatican Council II pursued similar
thoughts and declared that the Catholic Church was making an appeal to
all men in the interests of unity and peace for the human family. One gets
the impression throughout the documents of Vatican II that the Fathers
had their eye on the Marxist world. -1 They seem to open up their arms in
a beckoning way to embrace that segment of mankind with a special
warmth. But, of course, not unconditionally; but even this was a new development. Moreover, it was speculative for at this very time Cardinal
Mindzenty was still imprisoned in the American embassy in Hungary;
Cardinal Wyszinsky was carrying on a running polemic with Gomulka; the
3 Cf. John XXIII, encyclical letter "Mater et Magistra," AAS 53 (1961); and "Pacem
in Terris" AAS 55 (1963) esp. p. 226; also pp. 59-67.
4 This Council, Vatican II, is addressed to the whole of humanity, p. 200. Further
on page 204: "At the same time 'socialization' brings further ties without, however,
always promoting appropriate personal development and truly personal relationships
(personalization)." Also p. 207: "In addition, nations try harder every day to bring
about a kind of universal community." And p. 208: "Thinking that they have found
serenity in an interpretation of reality everywhere proposed these days, many look
forward to a genuine and total emancipation of humanity wrought solely by human
effort. They are convinced that the future role of man over the earth will satisfy every
desire of his heart."

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DIALOGUE

Church was by no means free in Russia, Czechoslovakia or Yugoslavia.

But about this time Paul VI set up a commission under Cardinal Koenig of
Vienna to study the possibilities of a dialogue with atheists.
In the past few years this dialogue has begun on the intellectual level in
earnest. And I am not speaking now about the area of practical diplomacy
where, for example, the pope has been in contact with North Vietnam and
probably the Chinese in hopes of bringing peace to the Far East, or on the
renewal of diplomatic relations between Yugoslavia and the Vatican, or of
the release of Cardinal Beran and many priests formerly imprisoned behind
the Iron Curtain.
But what I refer to are such phenomena as the meeting at Salzburg in
April 1965 under the auspices of the Paulus-gesellschaft at which there
was a real dialogue between Marxists and Catholics, representing the areas
of philosophy and theology. A second meeting was held a year later at
Chiem see in West Germany. At this meeting about three hundred and fifty
persons were in attendance representing Marxists and Christians. Included
were Rahner and Garaudy who had attended the previous meeting. Some
Marxists like Professor Adam Schaff sent regrets at not being able to come
due to illness while others like Cesari Luporini from Italy were able to be
present. Father Jules Girardi who is a member of the new Secretariat for
Unbelievers was also present. 3
In N ovem ber 1966 the Katholische Akademie of Bavaria held a seminar
on "Current Problems of Soviet Philosophy" in Munich. A month later a
similar meeting on Marxism was held at the University of Munich although
not under Catholic auspices. At the first meeting no Marxists were on the
program of speakers but Catholic professors interested in Marxism indicated the basis for further cooperation with the Marxist philosophy. At the
second meeting there was an attempt by Professor Lucio LombardoRadice, a Marxist from Rome to separate what he called metaphysical
problems from Marxism which he considered to be a socio-economic theory
and in this regard he quoted his friend, Professor Girardi, mentioned
above.
In France Professor Roger Garaudy took time out of his Party and professional duties to answer his Catholic critics, a recognition which was
certainly an advance toward melting the intellectual cold war.6 In the past
year Garaudy has spoken before Catholic audiences in Great Britain and
the United States where he has received a warm welcome. Professor Schaff
5 A report on this meeting is given by Peter Hebblethwaite, S.J., "Learning from
Marxists" in the Month, June 1966 (vol. 35, No.6), pp. 360-368. Also in the introduction to the following books: Schriften zum Weltgespriich 1 - Marxistisches und
Christ fiches Weltverstiindnis mit einem Nachwort vall Iring Fetscher (Wien-Freiburg: Herder, 1966). And Del' Dialog oder ;fndert sich das Verhiiltnis zwischen Katholizismus and Marxismus? (Hamburg: Rowohlt Verlag, 1966).
6 Professor Garaudy has several chapters in the above-mentioned volume entitled
Del' Dialog.

DIALOGUE

63

of Warsaw had accepted an invitation to attend a lecture sponsored by the

Harvard Divinity School and Boston College a year ago but again was
prevented by illness from coming. At Notre Dame University in May 1966
an interesting institute on Marxism was held that brought together many
leading scholars of Marxism here in the United States and Europe, all of
whom were interested in dialogue.
In Spain the Jesuit, Father Alvarez Bolado, has been writing on Marxism in the Jesuit Journal "Razon y fe." In France Jesuits like Fessard,
Calvez and deLubac and the Dominican Dubarle have become involved in
the dialogue. German Jesuits like Wetter, Rahner, Huber, Ogiermann and
Falk have been doing scholarly research in Russian and Marxian studies as
well as representatives of other religious orders. 7 For example, in Switzerland the Dominican Professor I. M. Bochenski has established a center for
East European Studies that has been publishing an excellent journal for
about ten years. ~ The "Russicum" in Rome, a special graduate seminary,
has for years had the only chair in Marxist Philosophy in the West. It is
surprising how many young priests and seminarians are pursuing studies
these days on the graduate level in Marxism and related topics. Catholic
college students and Catholics in other universities are numerous in classes
in Russian or allied subjects, and many plan to do doctoral work in Marxism. In the United States, some Catholics both lay and clerical, including
the author, have participated in the meetings of the Society for the Study
of Marxism. At Harvard University during March and April of 1967,
meetings have been held in which such noted scholars as Harvey Cox and
Robert Cohen have discussed the dialogue from religious aspects with Fr.
Oliva Blanchette of Boston College as a commentator. I heard recently
that Professor Sydney Hook had suggested that there must be a few Catholic priests here in the United States who are communists just according to
the law of averages. I do not believe that this is true, but certainly there are
many Catholic priests interested in the study of Marxism.
What has brought about even the concept of Catholicism's coexistence
with Marxism? As can be seen from the preceding chapters the reason
lies in the changes already evident in each system. The common notion,
however, is found explicitly in the "person" not only as a spiritually con7 We have mentioned Fr. Wetter's two books, Dialectical Materialism and Soviet
Ideology Today. Hans Urs Von Balthasar in Glaubhaft ist nur Liebe. p. 47 has this
to say about Fessard: "Es ist zumindest sehr gefahrlich, wenn Gaston Fessard, SJ.
das Exerzitienbuch nach Hegel interpretiert (La Dialectique des Exercices spirituels
de S. Ignace de Loyola, Aubier 1956); wenn auch gewiss Gottes Selbsterschliessung
im Bund sich in die dialektische Struktur des WeIt- und Geschichtslogos einschreibt,
so ist Gott doch niemals seiber dieser Logos, dessen der den ken de Christ - wie dialektisch und existentiell auch immer - sich vergewissern kann. Deshalb ist es richtig,
wenn Erich Przywara (Analogia Entis I-II, 1962) die gesamte Dialektik weltlichen
Denkens in Philosophie und Theologie sich in sich seiber verbinden Iasst - angesichts
des immer unbewaltigten, je-grosser aufgehenden Mysteriums der gottIichen Liebe."
8 Studies in SOl'iet Thought. A quarterly of the Institute of East-European Studies
at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

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DIALOGUE

scious subject that is necessarily involved in the world but also as an autonomous free subject that can no longer be considered as a part of any
society in the sense of a means simply subjoined for the good of the whole.
Rather, as has been said before, society, any society, exists for the persons
who are "wholes" in their own right, and the society is a "whole of wholes"
not of parts.9
Up to now, despite the theological judgment that persons were sacred
and had a special dignity in the perennial view of Christianity, in the practical order a society was considered more important than its members. The
common good was often the norm of morality. This introduced the "wethey" opposition, i.e., between the prowers that be and the subjects. But today this opposition is being synthesized into togetherness that demands
identification between all the members because the "person" has been
rescued from "thinghood," and from objectivity to subjectivity and concreteness. This fact also demands on the part of each an identification with
the "cause" if the society is to dissolve the former dichotomy between the
"we" and "they." In a sense this evolution of the person has affected both
Catholicism and Marxism at their very roots and it is in my opinion the
reason why a dialogue is possible.
Another germ for dialogue is due to technocracy which has brought the
human family closer together (1) in a fearful self-defense against nuclear
war and (2) from an expanded and more prosperous economy and (3) due
to the advance in communications. This has had the effect on Catholicism
of making it aware that its mission is really and truly to all men everywhere. It has affected Marxists generally. but especially in Italy, Germany
and France, in mitigating their strong views against private enterprise.
General De Gaulle in France and Kiesinger in Germany have made overtures on the diplomatic and economic levels to satellite countries that have
reciprocated. There is a new turmoil in Spain in which good Catholics now
think that they can be good socialists and vice versa. This same tendency
has moved across Latin America and is manifested in recent attempts by
priests to demand of the great landowners a division demanded by the
moral law. And all this despite obstinate opposition on the part of some
members of the hierarchy. The upshot of these practical maneuvers is
that the Church is gradually learning to accomodate itself not by compromise with evil but by understanding that very few things in the world are
evil.
9 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man, p. 135: "We may leave aside here the
question of the origin and social source of the differences which distinguish a Marxist from a Thomist, an Existentialist or an adherent of any other form of non-Marxist
philosophy. But Thomists, Existentialists, Marxists and all, if they are to retain their
common sense in matters of philosophy, must agree that the advocates of private
property in means of production and those who advocate the social ownership of the
means of production entertain different values and different ideas of the proper way
of running a modern society. And this is precisely a difference of ideology." Also see
Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, p. 93 et seq. J. Maritain, The Persall alld the Common
Good, pp. 56-57.

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65

Another factor that has brought world Marxism and Catholicism nearer
in orbit is the fact of growing socialism. If one-third of the world today is
communistic, two-thirds of it is socialistic. Formerly, the Church tried to
stave off this movement because it saw in its protagonists atheistic and anticlerical elements and a tendency to wipe out private property and those
governments friendly to the Church. The futility of this position is now
recognized and the fears are allayed by a new courage to meet alien elements on the proper ground of intellectual dialogue. Creeping socialism
has matured into a romping child that has caught the fancy of the developing nations. Aside from the satellite countries that were forcibly subjected
to communism after World War II, it is interesting how many states have
become socialistic either peacefully and democratically or by an internal
"coup" without any outside assistance or instigation. Serious abuses in
many lands by Catholic landowners and a rethinking of the notion of
private property in the light of contemporary society have brought about a
change in Catholic attitudes toward socialism. It is important to recall that
the idea of the right to private property, as emanating from the natural
law, was an innovation of the 10th century.10 The pressures on the daily
life of even white collar workers in a technocracy have resulted in an
awareness of a new kind of alienation that must be met with new socioeconomic ideas.
A third element has been the growth of technocracy and science. This,
too, has had its impact in both systems. Aside from the political prosperity
that technocracy and science have accomplished all over the world, its
principal effects for our discussion are its development of horrifying nuclear armaments that have literally put the fear of God back into the world.
And, secondly, the development of communication that has withered up old
lines of demarcation based on cultures, geography, religion and race. The
evolution in the means of communication has led to expanded education,
cultural exchanges and an interchange of ideas. Scientific method is respected by the Church and hitherto idealistic science has now been accepted by the Marxists. 11 The interest manifested and the insights recog10 Cf. the article on "Private Property" by Edward Duff in the New Catholic
Encyclopedia. New York: McGraw Hill Company, 1967, vol. XI, pp. 849-855: "The
obligation of sharing one's wealth was emphasized in the patristic age, since common
ownership was judged to be God's original plan, vitiated by the fall of man, whose
avarice makes necessary and legitimate the institution of private property as a human
invention and not a part of the absolute law of nature. St. Augustine viewed property
as the creation of positive rather than of divine law, being elaborated by the state as
an instrument for maintaining order among fallen men.
The distribution of material goods among men, the actuating of the right to procure and dispose of property, St. Thomas assigns to conventions among men, including acts by the state (ST I1a IIae, 66.2 ad 1.).
In consequence, it is as a general social institution that private property is said to
be unchangeable and dictated by the natural law."
11 Vat. II, p. 231: "Hence many benefits once looked for, especially from heavenly
power, man has now enterprisingly procured for himself." And p. 234: "Therefore,

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nized in the works of Teilhard de Chardin have caused the Catholic community to accept posthumously evolution in the mood of the father of the
prodigal son. And these same writings of Teilhard are now being translated
into Russian and although the attention paid to him is not a sign that
Marxists are accepting evolution, for they always have, it is a sign of a
certain openness toward completing the cosmic picture with spiritual elements. 12
Thus, the Church has, under these influences, turned toward the world
and the Marxists toward the developing "person" and his rights in society.
From the cult of the personality they have moved to the cult of persons.
The Chinese who have been lagging fifty years behind the Russians in their
development call this tendency of the western Marxists "revisionism" and
this dispute is at the basis of the struggle between them.
Since Russia is the heart of the Marxist movement, let us recall the
significant historical and cultural features that make dialogue with Catholicism feasible. Historically, Moscow was considered the third Rome after
Constantinople. After Russia was converted to Christianity there developed
a deep eschatological and messianic theme. The Christianity of the Greeks
that enveloped the slavic peoples brought with it the notion of the holiness
of matter and the realization of "Geist in Welt." Their devotion to the icon
was more than art, and the harmony of their symphony and ballet in
modern times manifested the spirit of the Russian people as a community.
Their philosophy which developed in Russia around the time of the Reforif methodological investigation within every branch of learning is carried out in a
genuinely scientific manner and in accord with moral norms, it never truly conflicts
with faith. For earthly matters and the concerns of faith derive from the same God.
Indeed, whoever labors to penetrate the secrets of reality with a humble and steady
mind, is, even unawares, being led by the hand of God, who holds all things in existence, and gives them their identity." And then follows a new exhortation in this
regard: "Consequently we cannot but deplore certain habits of mind, sometimes
found, too, among Christians, which do not sufficiently attend to the rightful independence of science. The arguments and controversies which they spark lead many
minds to conclude that faith and science are mutually opposed." And G. A. Wetter,
Soviet Ideology Today, p. 250: " ... and since then (Stalin's day) Soviet ideology has
also begun to detach other mental phenomena from the system, starting with formal
logic and the contents of the five areas of science."
12 For example the Marxist from Zagreb, Professor Bosnjak writes: "Damit in
Verbindung erkJart Teilhard de Chardin auch das Phanomen des Christentums. Der
Punkt 'Omega' ist kein solches Ziel. das man wahrend des Lebens nicht fiihlen und
das sich einem erst am Ende enthullen wurde. Dieser Punkt ist der standige Sinn als
Zentrum des Universums. Gott oder das Omega ist das Zentrum der Zentren. Deswegen hat auch das Dogma von Jesus fur Teilhard de Chardin eine andere Bedeutung als in der christlichen Dogmatik. Jesus sammeIt die gesamte Geisteskraft urn sich
herum. Ein Ende wird erst dann eintreten, wenn sich die gesamte Kraft auch angesammeIt hat und wenn alles transformiert wird. Dann wtirde nur Gott verbleiben als
alles in allem, d.h. das ware eine Personal-union mit dem Universum. Und das ist
eigentlich Pantheismus." Cf. Marxistisches und Christliches Weltverstiindnis, pp. 5354. The new point that Teilhard introduces into Christian thought is that we do not
wait until another life to fulfill our goal, but that we begin it here in this world as
we work out our lives with the help of the divine energy. The Marxists, of course,
turn this into Pantheism.

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67

mation had little that was original in it and owed much to Aristotle, Plato
and Dionysius. 13 The text books used in the monastic seminaries in the 17th
and the 18th centuries were scholastic in tone and method. Russia passed
from feudalism to communism without either a renaissance or a reformation, and the peasants were the back-bone of the land until the October
Revolution. Society was stratified into the peasant class, the clerical, the
military and the aristocracy and in the midst of these dichotomies there
was little opportunity for the notion of "person" to evolve.
On the other hand, communism has developed in Russia along the lines
of a religious faith. People must have a faith and here it has its parallel
with the historical church. Communism has its holy scripture in the writings
of Marx and Lenin. It has its pope in a Stalin or a Krushchev; it has its
crecd in the "Manifesto" and its dogma in the definitions and decrees of
the Party Congresses. It worships matter in the trinity of the dialectic and
vows to propagate the faith by violence and revolutionary activities. It
demands undying allegiance and issues anathemas for those of the fold who
do not submit to and recant their doctrinal errors. It has conceived th~
common good as the norm of morality and the human members as tools of
the state and the means of production, and all is softened by the hope of
the heaven of the classless society. What Christianity, in an overly paternalistic and often misinterpreted way, accomplished in past history, on supposedly supernatural grounds, the communists in more recent days have
imitated on purely natural ones. Fortunately both have changed. The
Church more than the Marxists. But my point is that like repentant sinners
the experiences of the past condition them both for an easier reconciliation.
The visible forms of legitimate social structure will not be obliterated in an
anarchy such as seems to be emerging in America but will evolve according
to the dialectic.
But what is necessary for a meaningful dialogue between Marxism and
Catholicism? The answer revolves around two other questions: (1) What
must the Marxist do? and (2) What must the Catholics do?
What the Marxists Must Do?
In regard to the first question, the Marxists must change their attitude
toward theism, by adopting a tolerant attitude that will make dialogue
possible. What does this imply? It means not excluding the theistic position
as a valid stance in any meaningful discussion and offering liberty of
13 V. V. Zenkovsky, A History oj Russian Philosophy. (Trans. by George L. Kline.
2 volumes) New York: Columbia University Press, 1953), Vol. I, p. 46: "The figure
of Cyril Stavrovetski is typical in this connection; he published a book called a
'Mirror of Theology' (1618) in which the influence of Thomism could already be
felt." And on p. 48: "Moscow was still jealous in its quest for Greek scholars (the
brothers Lichud et al), but the fashion for everything Little-Russian prevailed." Cf. also
pp.20-54; 103-104.

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practice. It means, at the minimum, peaceful coexistence. But before this

can eventuate what does it involve on the theoretical level? It means that
there must be a change within the framework of Marxist philosophy itself.
This could occur by redefining Marxism in terms of economic and sociological theory rather than treating it as an ontology or meta-physical system.
The Marxist Lombardi-Ranine of Italy thinks that this is possible.14
But, to my mind, this solution is impossible precisely because Marxism
is an ontology and a complete philosophy. Marxism is not merely socialism,
but is a Weltanschauung; its roots are not in economics, but in man; not in
sociology, but in metaphysics. Not only is this verified in the writings of
Marx, Engels and Lenin but is most recently stated in the official textbook
of Marxism. lO
Marxism establishes its philosophy in the opening lines of this textbook
by insisting on the reality of the objective world and an emphasis on the
unique being of matter. It follows up these declarations with a discussion
of the importance of history in evolutionary terms and an analysis of
cosmic reality in terms of the dialectic. 16 This is the foundation of Marxism
as a philosophy, and what it says about man as a part of the cosmos and
his relation to work is not done in terms of economics, but in terms of
alienation. Although the treatment of man is secondary because he is a part
of the over-all material world, yet from the writings of the young Marx, we
realize that the consideration given to him is important. The ideas in the
"Communist Manifesto" are socialistic and basically economic, but this is a
minor treatise. We must read "Das Kapital" in the light of the life of Marx
who at this time was concerned with practical economics rather than with
the philosophical ideas that engrossed his attention when he was conceiving
his system. Accordingly, to ask the Marxists to limit their theory to its
sociological and economic aspects is to dilute it of all its substance both in
the light of its historical development and its overall purpose. I do not
think that this is possible when one realizes that they are committed by
this philosophy to what they hold to be the truth.
Does this mean, then, that no real meaningful dialogue or eventual coexistence is possible? Does this mean that all we can expect from our discussion is a kind of cold war tolerance for practical reasons of avoiding
nuclear war and preserving the human race? I think not. There is more to
the dialectic than that. I believe that Marxism can intrinsically be revised
so as to tolerate theism without ceasing to be a philosophy or a metaphysics
14 See Bosnjak, Marxistisches und Christliches Verstiindnis, p. 54: "Sobald die Religion als eine Privatsache anerkannt worden ist, wird sie mit dem Sozialismus koexistent."
15 Cf. Grundlagen der Marxistischen Philosoph ie, p. 11: "Der Marxismus stellt
eine einheitliche, harmonische Lehre dar, die drei Bestandteile hat: die Philosophie,
die politische 6konomie und die Theorie des wissenschaftlichen Sozialismus. Diese
drei Bestandteile des Marxismus stehen in einem inneren, untrennbaren Zusammenhang miteinander."
16 Cf. I. M. Bochenski, Soviet Russian Dial. Mat., pp. 57-74.

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69

and yet retain its essential insight into human life on this planet. Indeed,
this very type of revision is already occurring to the chagrin of many world
communists.
We see its manifestation in the development of the "person" within
Marxism. The continuing discussion about the meaning of the young Marx's
ideas on alienation is in the background of this current debate. We see it in
the refinement of the notion of the human spirit and the defense of a
person's basic rights in the face of literary censorship and the anathemas
of new ideas in philosophy. These latter phenomena show the stirrings
within the Marxist camp. Stalin's banning of new ideas in logic would not
even happen today. Yevtushenko's poem against the anti-semites within
the fold would not have found a publisher twenty-five years ago. Lysenko's
off again on again genetic theories is a sign of more openness to unorthodox ideas in soviet science. Professor Robert Havemann's resignation because he taught a non-violent type of socialism, formerly would not mean
simply the loss of his chair but probably the loss of his life. All of these
incidents are signs of an evolution in the right direction.
Revisionism is, then, a part of the dialectic. This is probably the best
insight that the Marxists have had in some time. Marxism in theory cannot
stand pat; it must evolve. But in the evolution something of the original
thesis must remain in the synthesis. The question is what is essential and
what is not. At this point all that I am asking for is a tolerance of theism
not its acceptance, though I think that this too can be accomodated to a
truly genuine Marxism. But if this tolerance is not granted, then no
meaningful dialogue will ever get off the ground. And a tolerance of theism
is a valid position in a pluralistic world and is consonant with the very
evolution of the person that is affecting both systems of thought. Even
more, the anguish of the human spirit in the face of death, the need for
hope in the brevity of life's span, the realization of the person as free and
self-conscious give pause to the Marxist intellectual that his already
fashioned notion of matter is adequate and that transcendence is irnpossible.17 The "revisionism" realized now as so necessary in modern scientific
theory opens up once more the possibility of a cause outside the cosmos.
There is today among many Marxists an intuition that not only physical
motion but psychic motion, i.e. love, may be due to an all-pervading in17 Adam Schaff, A Phil. of Man, p. 130: "But hunger and want are not the only
widespread social causes of unhappiness. Such are also the lack of freedom, national
oppression, economic exploitation of racial persecution and all other expressions of
social inequality. In all such cases people are deprived of what they need ... Obviously, there are other deprivations which also make the individual unhappy. For
instance, unrequited love or unsatisfied ambition. These are so common that they
can be regarded as typical social phenomena. But there is a basic difference between
such deprivations and those which we have considered above ... Hence, social intervention is P<lssible to remove deprivations of the first category, since by changing the
social relations the source of the individual's unhappiness can be eliminated. But
society cannot intervene to remove deprivations of the second sort."

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visible yet real presence. Albeit such new insights can leave intact the
realism of the objective world and the analysis of reality in terms of the
dynamism of the dialectic and its relation to evolving history.
This preservation of something of the true thesis in the Marxian dialectic
should offer no difficulty to Catholicism that now realizes that it should
remain aloof from ideology and not be tied down to anyone philosophical
system. 1R With the Church's attention now being vigorously drawn toward
the evolving world and the realization that the kingdom of God is history,
the Hegelian dialectic or the Marxists' view of the world in se should not
be an obstacle for compatibility.19 In fact, Catholicism should consider the
realism of Marxism ;:nd its allegiance to matter as something objective and
real, as a common and necessary plank to bridge these two much more
intricate philosophical systems. (I mean philosophical here in the sense of
each having a definite world-view.)
The second thing that the ~1arxists must do is to give up violence as a
means of bringing about communism in practice. The notion of revolution
and force as a necessary means for propagating practical Marxism has been
upheld in both the writings of Marx and Lenin. The principle that the end
justifies the means is functioning here and in this sense two contradictories
seem to be involved. First, in the light of the new idea of the "person" as
free and possessing inalienable rights, the old notion of force and violence
should be rejected as incompatible, for in this case persons are treated as
mere things and tools for the over-all good of the state. Secondly, the
inevitability of the dialectic at work in the social milieu evolving ever upward toward the communistic ideal should supplant and outlaw the old idea
of violent revolution. Finally, the new theme of peaceful coexistence and
pleas for international peace and disarmament in the face of modern
warfare, should carry the logical implication that the renouncement of
force should begin at home.
We know that the early dispute among the Russian Marxists, i.e. between the Mensheviki and the Bolsheviki, revolved precisely around this
point of the necessity of violent social revolution and upheavals and that
Lenin's Bolsheviki won the day. We know, too, that Rosa Luxemburg,
Kautsky and other German Marxists rebelled against the idea that violence
and revolution are essential to Marxism, and the resulting off-shoot was the
deciduous Social Democrat Party that has had so much success in Europe
in recent times. 20 Karl Marx's reasons for violence have turned out to be
unwarranted in the light of evolving history. The conditions of the working
classes have not deteriorated over the years in countries not yet communistic or even socialistic and further, we have witnessed the peaceful instauration of Marxism or at least of socialism.
Vat. II, p. 450.
Vat. II, p. 260.
20 Sydney Hook, Marx and the Marxists. (New York: D. van Nostrand Co., Inc.,
1953), p. 102. Cf. also Rosa Luxemburg, The Russian Rem/ution (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1961), pp. 81 et seq.
18
Ul

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71

Lenin was a practical man. He linked up the idea of "praxis" with that
of violent revolution and made it a necessary element of Marxism. 21 In
retrospect it seems that if he had not adopted such an attitude in the face
of the political and military situation prevailing in Russia in 1917, communism would never have gained a foothold. Kerensky's milder socialism
would probably have endured especially with the backing that he was
getting from the Wilson administration in America. It was Lenin who
originated the idea of "peaceful coexistence" but in a different context than
that popularized by Krushchev. 22 But through all, the lesson for us is that
violent revolution as a necessary means of propagating Marxism must be
abandoned if the Marxists and the Catholics are ever to have a serious
dialogue, and the hope is that the Marxists will be as eager students in the
school of hard experience. In summation, then, since the world is involved
in the throes of a constant dialectical evolution according to the Marxists,
it should be evident that violence is outmoded. Even the smallest "coup
d' etat" today could ignite a world catastrophe. It is difficult today to
justify a war in any sense. As Pope Paul said at the United Nations, "There
must be no more war." With the development of the idea of the person
among Marxists and the consequent realization that no person is a mere
object to be manipulated by the state, the idea of violent revolution contradicts this thesis.
Finally, Marxism, while rejecting the mote in Catholic eyes, forgets the
beam in its own. It excoriates Catholicism for its excessive juridicism, its
neglect of persons especially as workers, the propaganda of the Church's
missionary activity on a universal scale, its archaic regard for modern
science and evolution, its authoritarian and political power plays. Yet, in
Marxism too, we find a parallel, fused with more violent means. Maybe
the Marxists ought to have a Kremlin Council to examine their conscience
as the Catholics have done, and then they could both sit down as repentant
sinners and make a firm purpose of amendment for the future.
What the Catholics Must Do

But what must the Catholics do? From the Marxist point of view, several things: (1) allay the fear of the Church as a political power, (2) learn to
accept modern science, and (3) become involved with the workers and the
world. 23
21 G. A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, p. 114. This is especially emphasized in
Lenin's work published in 1902, entitled: What is to be done?
22 G. A. Wetter, Dialectical Materialism, p. 123.
23 These ideas are set forth in a general way in the writings of the Marxists,
Garaudy and Bosnjak, and also in the writings of the former Marxist, Ignatius Lepp.
Cf. esp. Garaudy, Del' Dialog, pp. 67-94. Also Bosnjak, Marxistisches und Christliches Weltverstiindnis, pp. 43-54.

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To the European Marxist the Church has vaguely loomed as a mighty

spectre influencing kings and governments and holding a dominant sway
over the laity's political choices. History does not prove the charge false.
In this authoritarian sense the Church appears as quite worldly. Moreover,
priests often seemed isolated from the working man, affiliated with the rich
and powerful and conservative in their thinking. It was customary for the
Church to inculcate patience in the midst of oppression and the lesson
taught was that we have not here a lasting resting place. 24 The Marxist is
really afraid of the Church because of its influence in political circles, and
above all because by an appeal to conscience it directs the voting power
and reaction of the faithful Christian on social questions. Actually, this
influence is greatly exaggerated today, but it is kept alive in plays and
novels, and there are just enough priests around who think that it is their
apostolic vocation to form the consciences of the misguided to lend
credence to the universal opinion. The Church, to some, is that perennial
monster ready to fling anathemas and ban books in an otherwise dull life.
The Marxists want the Church to become more eschatological and restricted in its authority. And as a matter of fact, so does Vatican Council
IU 5 The Church as the assembly of God is primarily concerned with
spiritual things, death, judgment, heaven and hell. As the "People of God"
it is a people on the move toward God, and it is interested in the things of
God and not those of Caesar. The Marxists want the Church to be truly
eschatological and consequently above any ideology as Vatican II has also
decreed, and then it could coexist with Marxism or socialism; they want
the Church not to be tied down to anyone philosophical system, which is
also clearly proposed in the most recent Council, for then say the Marxists
the dialectic would no longer be an alien framework for Catholics to operate in. The Marxists would like to see a Church that is not a state, has no
legates of ambassadorial rank, no political maneuvering about laws applicable to everyone in a pluralistic society, no index of prohibited books and
no Catholic political parties. 2G
But for us Catholics does not even the eschatological Church (1) have to
be a visible society and (2) have to state in no uncertain terms the doctrine
of Christ on moral and social issues and (3) have to give guidelines for
personal ethical conduct? Even the Marxists would, I believe, agree if we
clarify our remarks.
First, there simply is no "People of God" if they are not somehow
distinguished from the "People not of God." The Church is the sacrament
of Christ. But a sacrament is a visible sign instituted by Christ to give
grace. Hence, the Church always was, is and must be visible. The Church
Cf. Garaudy, Der Dialog, pp. 91-94.
Vat. II, p. 63.
26 One of the Dutch bishops recently made it clear in Holland that Catholics are
under no obligation to support Cat.. 'ic political parties.
24

25

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73

is the Mystical Body of Christ, but a body must be visible and organized.
The Church is made up of persons and so is a society. But not all persons
actually belong to the Church. Those who have faith in Jesus Christ belong
to the Church. But the ordinary way of getting the grace of faith is through
baptism. As the words of the rite attest when the question is asked of the
one to be baptized or of the sponsor, "what do you ask of the Church of
God?" and the answer is, "faith." So the Church has an initiation rite. But
someone must determine what form this is to take. In an evolving Church
one cannot fall back solely on primitive revelation for how things should
be done in an age of technocracy.
Again, the Church stands for something; it has a commitment, a content
of belief in God, in the Incarnation and the sacraments to mention but a
few objects of its creed. This pertains to its eschatological nature as a society of persons. From scripture and tradition it is seen as a society endowed
like all societies with organization, authority and rules. Traditionally and
repeatedly affirmed by Councils up to the most recent is the fact of the
Church's authority to teach, sanctify and to rule. The trouble has arisen
because of an over-expansion of these areas and at times an over-lapping
beyond the proper limits of each in an eschatological society. For example,
how often has she ruled as if she were teaching or taught as if it were a
question of ruling, or with full eschatological authority pronounced on
some trivial practical abuse! The major work before the Church in its institutional aspect consequent on Vatican II is to limit properly its own
'luthority.
The Church is not a democracy, although it can adopt more democratic
practices into its life and, as a matter of fact, the Church is and has been
more democratic in many of its practices than those societies which incorporate the title of democracy in their very name. Its pope is elected; its
decrees emanate from a democratic council; its religious orders have always elected their superior-generals. But this is not the point. The Church
is not a democracy because it is the unique society in history whose authoritative power comes directly from God. It is too bad that the Church
allowed the impression to be promulgated in history that it was not unique
in this respect and that kings and rulers also received their authority directly from God. Today the crisis of authority does not reside in the
question about its origin but about its very existence. Yet, since the Church
is admittedly eschatological and has the work of telling persons what is
right or wrong in general, it is very important that people realize that its
authority comes from God or very few would take it seriously. Like every
society the Church has persons as members, a hierarchical structure of
officers and a committed position. And being eschatological, its personal
members freely enter or leave; its officers rule in those matters pertaining
to its incarnational aspects, and the means necessary to attain its eschatological goal. Thus, the Church could cease to be Vatican State as it ceased

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to control the papal states; it could cease to have legates in embassies as it

ce<:sed to influence the Holy Roman Empire; it could cease to be embroiled in politics as it relinquished the rights for princes to appoint bishops.
But it could not cease to speak out against the error of racism or of nuclear
war or of enforced child labor. Nor could it sidestep its moral obligation to
teach moral obligations. It has to say something about bribery and rape
and arson. Nor could the institutional Church, albeit eschatological, make
no rules for the sacraments or about the qualifications for the priesthood
or for the need for prayer and penance. Most of all it must decide what
books are the revealed Word of God and what norms are to be used in its
interpretation. Otherwise there simply is no institutional Church and so no
recognized "People of God" but only people of people.
Still we should remember that although the analysis of institutional ecclesiastical authority is not worked out in detail, Vatican Council II has
shown where the work will take us. This work will be a work of limiting
and such limitation of authority to its eschatological goal and along the
lines of teaching general moral principles will meet understanding, if not
acceptance, from those Marxists who lean toward tolerance in a pluralistic
world. ~7 This development is tied in with the theme of the "person" that
has colored the discussion so far. Christ wants a free, loving service, and
hence compulsion to enter into the love affair is alien to its whole mood.
Yet, once a member of the Church moral suasion, like fear of God, is a
salutary moral incentivc, and here any compulsion is to be understood not
as force but as a moral obligation seen to arise.
Next the Marxists want the Church to learn to live in a more amicable
and involved sense with modern science. From what we have seen about
the need to limit ecclesiastical authority and to recognize anew the dignity
of the individual person, such an attitude seems to me inevitable. One
would think that after episodes like that of Galileo, Teilhard de Chardin
would have had an easier time of it. But something has happened in this
area that did not exist in the historical past. In those days there was no
science as we know it today. "Scientia," the Latin word for science, referred
to all knowledge. Theology and philosophy were science in those days and
by those days I mean from Augustine, or if you want, Aristotle; and it would
still be true up to the eighteenth century. For example, Newton's most
famous opus was entitled Principia Mathematica Philosophiae Naturalis.
Not only was it originally written in Latin, the language of all science, but
it was called a treatise in Natural Philosophy. Hence, in one sense Galileo
was a colleague of Bellarmine. One was not thought to be wandering out
of his field if as a theologian he began discussing astronomy. Both Aristotle
and Albert the Great although philosophers or theologians were no mean
biologists for their time. This demarcation between what we call science
today and theology or philosophy has gradually evolved and like so many
27

Bosnjak, Marxistisches ulld Christiiclzes Weitl'crstiilldllis, pp. 44-45.

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75

other humanistic affairs has only become clear in our time. Science today
is typified by the use of scientific methodology which in turn limits itself
to experimental verification and the use of mathematics. Now at least we
know how to define a science. Psychology and sociology have developed
generally along the lines of scientific method, and hence are now called
sciences. Formerly, psychology was the study of the soul and was a philosophical discipline. Sociology before Comte was really ethics or moral
science, both aspects of philosophy.
This is not the place to treat of the problems lately occurring among
scientists themselves about scientific method. Yet one of the first changes
in scientific method occurred with the realization that the objects studied
were no longer directly visible either on the macro- or microscopic levels.
Thus, no one directly perceived either the curvature of space or an electron. Consequently, a shift occurred in the method of verification, and
the use of "models" was introduced. This meant that the entities being
discussed belonged to the constructural level of the mind and were not as
such in reality. Of course, science is practical and so theories were devised
and conclusions arrived at that hit upon some aspects of reality but not the
whole of it. Hence, revisability became a very important element in scientific methodology. Secondly, mathematics found a new location in the
division of knowledge. It was always considered deductive in opposition to
strict experimental science and now it has definitely come closer to logic
under the impetus of Frege, Goedel, Russel, Boole and others. Not only
can it do a lot of internal gymnastics that lead to constructs, topology and
probability theory, but the point again is, that it is now clearly recognized,
that it too, deals with mental entities and not directly as such with real
things. The mathematician may start with a circle and discover some intricate relationships here, but he does not care at all whether what he is
studying exists or not. If scholars in all these fields could only realize explicitly when they are dealing with mental constructs and when they are
talking about reality, many pseudo-difficulties would vanish.
Philosophy and theology on the other hand, especially if they are metaphysical or personal, belong to the level of reality and the existential order.
Of course, this is an over-simplification because many analytic philosophers use the method of logic, and hence are dealing with language or
mental realities as representing things, but they are not dealing with things
in themselves. Again theologians who follow Bultmann are using the scientific theory of "models" in their study of sacred scripture, and phenomenologists believe that reality is only able to be studied as known, and hence
in this sense we are not directly studying the independently real. When
Crick and Watson explained the genetic codification of life according to the
DNA helix, this was not meant as an exact replica of the way things are in
reality. It does mean that they have discovered some aspects of the way
things are, and because of their work some future scientist may be able to

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unravel the mystery of life. When Heisenberg discussed the principle of

indeterminacy, he did not mean that your son was not responsible for
breaking my pane of glass with his snowball. He meant that statistically
speaking with a quasi-infinite array of random experiences your son would
be able to throw his snowball through my window without breaking it at
all. But this is a model so far removed from reality that Heisenburg probably taught his son never to throw snowballs through anyone's pane of
glass. All of this has made us aware of scientific methodology in a new
light, and it is for this reason that I cannot see the Church of the future
repeating the mistakes of the past.
And so we begin to see that the Church's new attitude toward science
doesn't come from having Catholic chemists or professional biologists or
Catholic Schools of engineering. It is a more basic problem touched on
long ago by Thomas Aquinas under the strange title of a commentary
written on the Trinity according to Boethius. 28 But, although Thomas was
on the right track, he was unacquainted with statistical prediction and the
use of models simply because the area of science like that of theology had
not yet evolved so far. This is hard for a non-evolutionist to see, but it is
harder for me to see how an evolutionist can miss the point.
Finally, the Marxists think that the Catholics must become more involved in the world. It is interesting that the Marxists want us to do just
about the same things as Vatican Council II wants us to do. 2u Does not
this in itself augur well for a future dialogue? As we have seen from the
unity of man, i.e. he is not a dichotomy of body and soul, but a person
who has both; man's spiritualized body is elevated to a level unknown in
the days of that early ascetic Evagrius of Pontus. And the world of men,
too, is spiritualized by the Holy Spirit which broods over it, so that the
Church is necessarily intermingled with the world. But, as mentioned above, the world here does not mean worldliness in the sense of the cult of
sensuality or the idolization of the material.
Contemporary Marxism defends personal freedom, but not without encountering a serious problem. Philosophers down the ages have been aware of four types of causality emanating from Aristotle that are important
for our discussion of freedom. These four causes are efficient, final, formal
and material. Different philosophers over the centuries have not felt the
need for all of these causes in their discussions. But for the philosophical
realist such as the Marxists and most scholastic philosophers they play an
important role. For example, in discussing material things in the world, it
seems proper to ask about each type of causality. If we were to talk about
spirits, three types would be invoked, namely all but the material cause.
When we speak about ideas, two types of causality are involved, formal
28 A critical edition of St. Thomas' Commentary on the 'De Trinitate' of Boethius,
has been published by Fr. Wyser, o.P. at Fribourg University in Switzerland.
29 Vat. II, pp. 194-300.

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77

and final. And when we refer to God, we are limited except in analogous
terminology to speak only of one, namely the efficient cause and even here
uniquely in the sense that He has no cause but is the source of all thingsl
He is Existence itself which is the essence of efficient causality. God is a
self-mover, a creator, a willer, free and loving.
Now, the problem of personal freedom for the Marxist comes to this,
namely, that we have a new phenomenon to deal with. Personal freedom
means that man is a self-mover. And this differs from the other causalities
found in Marxism. In the philosophy of Marxism everything is explained
on the axes of two types of causality, the vertical or evolutionary causeeffect series of necessary development and/or the horizontal dialectical
tension, also necessary and determining under the proper conditions. According to this view everything that acts or even that which remains stationary, does so necessarily in a cause-effect series or tension. The problem
arises then, when it is realized that human freedom is exempt from both
of these types of causality. First of all to be free means in some way or
other not to be determined or necessitated. Of course, our free choices do
not mean that they are not somehow determined or acted on by causes.
We do not choose in a vacuum; we always will something as a goal that we
have already chosen and then make later choices about the means to attain
our goal. These goals or means are ideas that we have in mind and in
causal terms are examples of either final or formal causality. Thus, we do
act on account of motives. People who try to do away with man's freedom
by asserting that he has acted on some motive misunderstand the traditional explanation of human freedom. It is impossible to make a free choice
without some reason or motive operating. Where, then, does freedom really
reside? What is the essence of freedom? It resides along the lines of efficient causality in the sense that to be free is to move oneself into action.
A person can choose this or that, to act or not to act. He thus can determine himself, make his own choice and his own decision. He is a selfconscious, reflective being and so free. This means that he is not necessitated, not determined in his final choice by any causality even though he is
motivated by many things or attracted by many goals. A person is not only
self-conscious and aware, he is autonomous. For a man to realize many
possibilities and then to be forced to adopt one would introduce a basic
frustration into his rational being.
At the present time in Marxism, we have much evidence that the person
is considered in this light as a self-conscious and free being. Karl Marx in
his early writings simply asserts this.30 The present editors of the Yugoslavic Journal "Praxis", including Professor Petrovic, hold this opinion.
Adam Schaff under the impact of the Existentialists believes that the
30 Karl Marx, Alienated Labor, p. 101: "Or, rather, he is only a self-conscious
being, i.e. his own life is an object for him, because he is a species-being. Only for
this reason is his activity free activity."

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human person is free. Kolakowski in Poland and Lukacs in Hungary, both

ethicians, hold that man is free. But if freedom means anything, it means
that man in some sense is undetermined. This means that man in some
sense is above the necessity of the two lines of causality hitherto held adequate to explain all reality in Marxist thought.
How, then, do the Marxists try to solve this problem and with what
results? First of all, it must be said that not much work has yet been done
on this problem, but at least it is being realized as a problem. Szczesny who
is probably not a Marxist but speaks for "The Future of Unbelief," the
title of his book, tries to explain the problem this way.31 He believes that
freedom means not absolute freedom, that would be anarchy, but merely
freedom from our instinctual tendencies. Nevertheless, he continues, man
is not free to dehumanize himself, or at least if he does so act, he is acting
unfreely in the sense of irrationally. His thought has several valuable insights. First, he realizes that human freedom does not mean absolute
freedom, in other words, there is some determination present. Secondly, he
does not think that human freedom is simply choosing or even choosing
irrationally. He is far from Sartrian existentialism on this point. But his is
not a very profound philosophical analysis along the lines of causality.
Except for the existentialist, I think that everyone agrees that we have to
have a goal and a motive or several motives before we humanly choose.
31 Gerhard Szczesny, The Future of Unbelief. Translated from the German by
Edward B. Garside. (New York: George Braziller, 1961), pp. 163-164: "The very
word and concept of 'freedom' tends to give us a false impression of what freedom
really is. The point is, the structure of a language reflects that understanding of the
world in vogue during its formative period. And since we are insensibly guided in our
thinking by available linguistic images and concepts, we must constantly bear in mind
that they must be tested for current applicability... The same holds true for
'freedom.' It is not to be thought of as a condition, but as a 'freeing oneself from'
while simultaneously 'binding oneself to' something else. In sum, here freedom represents a transfer of self-committment. A man who follows a moral motive rather
than an instinctual stimulus, because of the greater strength of his striving toward
the human, releases himself from the causal connectedness of the animal level and
binds himself to the 'motivational' connectedness of the moral sphere. This act which
has the coloration of his particular character, he feels to be 'free,' since at the
moment when it occurs, he is conscious of leaving the instinctual drive behind. Man
behaves 'freely,' therefore, when he identifies himself with the level that makes him
specifically human. Nevertheless when he has done this, his decisions are still bound
by causality and motivation, that is, by the general lawfulness of the sphere from
which causality and motivation now emanate. There is no invasion of necessity by
freedom in this situation. Freedom as freedom from all bonds and obligations would
be absolute lawlessness, something that can neither be found nor seriously desired.
Wherever there is will, there is likewise constraint. Real freedom would be freedom
from the will not freedom of the will." Ibid., p. 175: "However release from the realm
of instinct does not mean that this new creature can act without cause or motive, that
is, freely." Ibid., p. 191: ''Today morality by command evokes resistance because
modern man, at least as a civilized member of the middle class, has grown accustomed to thinking of himself as making decisions on the basis of his own, freely operating insight. Therefore, all moral systems which deny that a sound basis for human
behavior is found in man himself, and which undertake to propagate the view that
human behavior can be effectively induced only by transcendental regulation, are
actually lending support to immorality."

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79

But, as was said above, this comes from the side of formal and final causality. And the problem remains. Either a person is determined necessarily
to act or he isn't. If the motive, whatever it is, determines the person to
choose necessarily, then he simply is not free. He may think that he acted
freely but he really didn't. And in this question of freedom we know from
experience as we look ahead to the choices that are possible, that we are
free. In other words, we intuit this power of self autonomous action.
Professor Markovic of Belgrade University tries to solve the problem
similarly by asserting that man is determined by final causality, that is, the
goal to which he is attracted or committed determines him. But then again if
this is all there is to freedom, then man simply is not free. 32 If Professor
Markovic would admit that the committment to a goal is a free choice
among many, then he would be faced with the problem all over again.
Once we commit ourselves to a goal, we must go on and choose means in
the light of that goal. Here, the person manifests his power of free choice
in an especial way.
The heart of the problem resides around the idea that to be free is to be
a free mover, i.e. to freely choose this or that possible way of acting. The
possibilities come from the side of knowledge. But the decision is something more than an idea, it is the personal resolve, the will-act to select one
possibility over the other. This is along the lines of movement or motion or
efficient causality. To be a free mover is to be a free efficient cause. Man,
if he is a free efficient cause in the face of determinisms coming at him
from all sides, by way of ideas, still remains a person and free. But this
reservoir of latent power residing in the person making him ever ready to
choose freely does not come from final, formal or material causality.
Those, like the Marxists who are acquainted with the Aristotelian causes
and use them so adeptly in their physics ought to be the first to admit that
the free person, as free, is operating along the lines of efficient causality
despite the involvement of the other types of causality.
Granted that a person has this power of free-wheeling movement, how is
it to be explained? This is indeed a mystery for all of us. Here we have a
reality, a being, that can move itself in some of its acts. It moves forms, in
the sense that it prosecutes some and abandons others, sometimes regretting
its mistakes, always feeling a certain answerability for its choices. But what is
this power? Probably, it is best to say what it is not. When the Marxists
speak about the conversion of mass and energy, they are not like so many
positivists who say that matter is broken down and changed into something
that is not matter. Marxists say that all reality is matter in some sense and
so is physical energy. They list numerous experiments that energy submits
to according to the laws of physics to prove their point. But, in the case of
free psychical willing we have a different kind of energy. This is an instance
32

1967.

These ideas are the result of a personal conversation with Prof. Markovic in

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of self-reflective energy that can bend back perfectly on itself not like my
curling finger that only coincides with other material parts. Here is selfconscious energy that results in making me free, able to move myself in a
decision. When this occurs we have perfect form and pure self-motion.
This self-motion operates along the lines of appetite and desire; not only
towards a goal (final causality) but moving as efficient causality, as appetite
always does, toward the existential order not just in the realm of ideas
(formal causality).
Consequently, in this case, we have a special kind of efficient causality
that differs from the usual cause-effect series in which we always seek the
preceding cause back infinitely as, indeed, the Marxists do in retracing
evolutionary development. Thus, we have something quite different from
the usual Marxist causality, namely that of the dialectic which always
moves into action necessarily, never freely. In fact, this reservoir of freewheeling power that constitutes the person, seems to be so unique, that
it strains the intellect to conceive of it as resulting from a qualitative leap
in the evolutionary process, as the Marxist would probably try to explain its origin. But that explanation is inadequate for an entity that has
characteristics so alien to and so superior to ordinary experiences of matter.
Moreover, the purposiveness of freedom is left blind by such a purely evolutionary process without God in the picture. Indeed, we simply have a
new phenomenon here that does not abide by the principles of causality
hitherto thought sufficient by all the proponents of Marxism, wedded as
they are to a determinism and necessity in all of nature. Consequently,
there does seem to be a problem here about the origin of this distinctly new
phenomenon in reality. How could a necessitating axis of Marxist causality
evolve into a free self-movement? It is not sufficient to say it occurred by
a qualitative leap for this is different from all other qualitative leaps. In all
other qualitative leaps, quanta of matter erupt into a new kind of material
being. But here we have a new entity that disdains both matter and necessity.
All that we can do is to describe our experiences. A self-conscious,
perfectly reflective, free, autonomous person has a reservoir of energy that
is above all the rules of matter as we know them elsewhere. All other
matter is in motion in a cause-effect series of efficient causality. No other
being in our direct experience is a self-mover in the sense of a free person.
In the case of man, this reservoir of activity in its primary state is ready by
nature to move toward what is human as the better thing to do. Yet it can
move to a lower level or to any particular good or refrain from moving.
Is this resident energy then God? For the Christian thinking along the
lines of St. Thomas Aquinas and Teilhard de Chardin, the answer is affirmative but with several qualifications. We must speak about the person
who has this energy and we know that he did not make himself; he either
evolved or was created immediately, but he is not God in the sense of the

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81

uncreated One. For the Christian, this energy of freedom did not evolve
but was created by God, and what is more, it is constantly being given,
poured in and conserved. Moreover, the person is not God because he does
not possess absolute freedom. His free choices are determined by final and
formal causes. He is only free along the lines of efficient casuality. But the
human person is very much like God because he is free and self-moving.
He has the power to choose and to love, attributes properly of God. God
has made the human person a kind of creator for that is what this power
of freedom means.
For the Christian what really is happening here, is that God who is
Existence itself not only makes things in the beginning but keeps them in
existence by sharing his existence with all things. From the atom to the
spirit, God participates being. He does this concentrically, if you will, or
as a parallel force. Thus God is not only the original cause of the evolutionary process and its guiding purpose, but He energizes all creation by
His divine power. In man, He energizes in a more intimate manner by
bequeathing this reservoir of existence, of efficient causality in such a way
as to allow man to share in his divinity to the extent of being a quasicreator and acting freely. God gives the energy, constantly and always, but
man selects the possibilities. Man manipUlates his God-given energy according to his own self-moving choices. This is an act of love on God's
part and results in making man capable of being a reciprocal lover, for
unless love is free, it is no true love. This is not pantheism, for both God
and the creature remain distinct poles in this participation. 33 God does not
give His power up but only shares it terminally. He allows himself to be
used as a true lover does, but neither the creature becomes God nor God
the creature; yet God by his power energizes, divinizes the creature to
make him what he is. This discussion really does not explain the mystery
of being. It still leaves the material world shrouded in unknowns to be
probed by science, but it offers the Christian in accordance with faith a
description of man's freedom consonant with Revelation and for the Marxists a problem as yet unanswered.
The work then of the Church is in the world. It preaches to men in the
world; it sanctifies their divinized bodies and regards even matter as holy.
But it has realistic notions about matter and machines and gold, and it
realizes that these are not persons. Hence their influence can never encroach on the free decision of a man to choose his work. Work itself must
not be evaluated aside from the person who creates it. And the work performed somewhat autonomously by the machine must be organized by
society so that it resounds in an over-all harmony to bring more leisure to
33 On this point see Teilhard de Chardin, Genese d'une pensee. Lettres 1914-1919.
(Paris: Bernard Grasset Editeur, 1961), p. 350 et passim. Also John P. Rock, S.J.
"Divine Providence in St. Thomas Aquinas," in The Quest jor the Absolute. Edited
by Frederick J. Adelmann, S.J. (Hague: M. Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 67-104.

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persons so as to develop their personalities in an unalienated life. Work has

evolved since Karl Marx addressed the workers of the world with the exhortation to unite despite the anguish caused by their shackles. Work is
bound to evolve in this age of automation and cybernetics. Still I think
that the Marxists have a point if we consider a man's work his McLuhanian
media. For not only does labor massage his personality but so do television and the films and his total environment. Christian men are needed
who will go into the world armed with the knowledge of the person and his
dignity so that his environment does not master him. His primary job in
life is to do a good job there. If he does, he does not have to worry about
the hereafter. When a person develops his existential being properly, he is
perfecting his God-given nature. To flee from the world, to disdain or fear
it, is to bury one's talent against the advice of the Master of talents. To
live successfully is in the final analysis to make good free choices, not arbitrarily but out of love for myself and others including God.
When God said "love your neighbor as yourself," He did not mean to
stop loving yourself. It is only in proper self-love that one develops all his
powers. It is the duty of society, as Marx said, to make sure that the environment (work) is not so arranged as to alienate this possibility for selfdevelopment. And Marx realized that a person was not made merely to
eat, drink and have sex relations, but that as a person he was endowed
with higher powers.34 The Church must teach men to be witnesses to the
Word in their daily lives and that each must professionally make a contribution for other men in this world if he is going to reap the eternal reward
for service rendered. This is the role that the Church must perform; insist
on "praxis," on doing what is proper and good in the existential order so
that men will not be pressed down with pharasaic burdens and miss the
whole point of their existence. St. Ignatius would probably say to modem
man, "what doth it profit a man if he lose his role in the world and suffer
the loss of his immortal soul."
Epilogue

These then are what the Catholics want the Marxists to do and what the
Marxists want the Catholics to do, and the strange thing is that both want
each to do the same things. Yet coexistence will be very difficult because
of the problem of evil and original sin, and also because heaven is not to
be transferred to this world. The perfectibility of man is still a key theme
of the Marxists. They think that with education man will be perfect. 35
34 Karl Marx, Alienated Lahor, p. 99: "Eating, drinking and procreating are, of
course, also genuine human functions. But abstractly considered, apart from the
environment of other human activities, and turned into final and sole ends, they are
animal functions."
35 Adam Schaff, A Philosophy of Man, p. 134: "Our theory of happiness is a
theory of the social conditions necessary for happiness. Whether under such con-

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83

Many Americans manifest the same lack of insight in their attempt to solve
the problems of the Negro. The Catholic should realize that the problem of
evil is not merely material such as earthquakes and food shortages, but that
it lies principally within men themselves. The sensuality of the flesh in its
local quest for pleasure makes men selfish instead of transcendent; it makes
persons bored who know not God; it makes men lonely in their quest for
love, and all this leads to a constant strife and struggle on the personal
level in jealousies and meannesses whose ramifications are only seen in the
wider spheres of the strife between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. This
preponderance toward matter and the flesh and money is due to the lack
of clear vision once ordained by the Creator but botched by Adam. That
unfortunate (or fortunate) free decision of our progenitor marked us a
different race than we appear to be. This is the frailty of our nature. For
the Christian, the Holy Spirit has bent over the wounded world to aid its
limping trek toward peace. But because free decision is an undiminished
characteristic of man, he can still refuse the solicitation of warm love and
bright wings and choose to work it out alone. For the Catholic, life means
at best that he must carry his cross to the end and for the Church it means
a realization that the Mystical Body of Christ must fill out the plethora of
His sufferings by a constantly renewed Calvary in the course of evolution.
Such does not promise well for the coexistence of Catholicism and Marxism. But as these two great movements in the world face one another, the
thesis and the antithesis must synthesize according to Marxism and the
result of the "aufgehoben" will be the preservation of the best of each toward the production of the best of all. The tension is here, but perfection
comes only hereafter. If the Marxists do not really accept such an evolving
dialectic or think that one of the poles has nothing to contribute, then the
conflict will endure for all time. But at any rate for the Catholic the conflict with the powers of evil, regardless of who plays the role, will endure
till the end of time. This would be terrifying if time were the end.

ditions each and every individual will enjoy complete happiness depends on the individual. It is not possible to guarantee happiness to everyone - to serve it to them on
a plate, so to speak; but it is possible to create suitable conditions for the happiness
of all. Marxist socialism concentrates its attention on creating such conditions for
happiness."

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INDEX

Albert the Great, 74

Alienation, 26
Analytic Philosophy 75
Anselm, 53
Aquinas, Thomas, 21, 31, 41, 42,54,65,76,
80
Aristotle, 21, 24, 74
Aufgehoben, 23-24, 28
Augustine, 53
Authority, concept of, 46-53
Beran, 62
Berdyaev,40
Blanchette, Oliva, 63
Bloch, 12
Bochenski, I. M., 20 (footnote 10), 63, 68
(footnote 16)
Bolado, Alvarez, 63
Bolshevik, 12, 70
Bonh6ffer, 55 (footnote 47)
Boole,75
Boor, Johannes, 34 (footnote 48)
Bosnjak, Branco, 17 (footnote 8), 18, 35
(footnote 51), 66 (footnote 12), 68 (footnote 14), 74 (footnote 27)
Bourgeoisie, 25
Buber, Martin, 19
Bultmann, 22, 75
Calvez,63
Camus, 19, 40
Causality, 76-77
Cesari-Luporini, 62
Common good, notion of, 48
Cosmology, 20
Congar, Yves, 55 (footnote 47)
Cox, Harvey, 63

Das Kapital, 68
De Chardin, Teilhard, 15, 22, 53, 54, 57
66,73,74
De Gaulle, 64
Death, notion of, 54
De Lubac, 63
De Rerum Novarum, encyclical, 60
Determinism, notion of, 20
Dewey, 19
Dialectic, 35, 19-29
Dialogue, 61-67
Diamat, 20
Dostoyevsky, 12, 40
Duff, Edward, 65 (footnote 10)
Einstein, 12
Engels, 34 (footnote 48), 32 (footnote
41)
Equiprobabilism, 41
Evagrius of Pontus, 76
Existentialism, 30, 31, 33, 35, 77
Falk, H., 21 (footnote 11), 63
Fascism, 61
Fessard,63
Feuerbach, 22, 26
Freedom, 26, 29-36
Free will, 30
Frege,75
Galileo, 74
Garaudy, Roger, 13 (footnote 4),60,62,71
(footnote 23)
Geist in Welt, 66
Girardi, Jules, 62
Goedel,75

88

INDEX

Haring, Bernard, 41, 42 (footnote 9)

Havermann, Robert 69
Hegel, 19, 22-23 (his notion of dialectic),
24, 26, 27, 28
Heidegger, Martin, 40
Hadrossek, Paul, 21 (footnote 11)
Hook, Sidney, 30 (footnote 35), 63, 71
(footnote 20)
Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 40
Huber, 63
Husserl,31
Intentionality, 31
Jaspers, 19, 56
John XXIII, 61
Jus humanum, 13
Kant, 43
Kerygma, 59
Kierkegaard, 40
Kiesinger, 64
Kline, George L., 35 (footnote 50)
Koenig, 62
Kolakowski, 35, 78
Krushchev, 13, 14,67,71
Kling, 41
Lasky, 19
Lenin, 11, 13 (footnote 5), 34 (footnote 48),
70-71
Leo XIII, 60
Lepp, Ignace, 24 (footnote 17), 36 (footnote 52), 47, 55, 71 (footnote 23)
Lewis, John, 12
Liebermann, 13
Lombardi-Ranine, 68
Luxemburg, Rosa, 70, 71 (footnote 20)
Lukacs, 78
Mach, Ernst, 22
MacQuarrie, John, 57
Marcel, Gabriel, 40
Maritain, Jacques, 33, 40 (footnote 5), 47
(footnote 25), 48 (footnote 30), 64 (footnote 9)
Markovic, 79
Marx, Karl, 13 (footnoet 5), 13, 23 (footnote 16), 25, 27, 29 (footnote 34), 83
Mater et Magistra, encyclical, 61
Materialism, 19
Matter, concept of in Marxism, 20,21
McKenzie, John, 50, (footnote 37)

Mensheviki, 11, 70
Mindzenty, 61
Mitwelt,57
Mystical Body, concept of, 45, 48, 73
Nazism, 61
Newton, 74
Nietzsche, 14
Objectification, 27
Objectivity, 28
Ontology, 20
Pacem in Terris, encyclical, 61
Pantheism, 19
Pasternak, 29, 35
Paulus-Gesellschaft, 62
Pelagians, 37
Person, notion of, 12-13
Petrovic, 77
Pinter, 40
Pius XII, 61
Plato, 39
Probabilism, 41
Proudhon, 26
Rahner, Karl, 15, 19, 22, 41, 44 (footnote
10),45,48 (footnote 31),51 (footnote 38),
54, 58 (footnote 55)
Revisionism, 69
Robinson, John A. T., 55 (footnote 47)
Russell,75
Saint John, 25
Saint Paul, 39
Salk,34
Sartory, Thomas, 45 (footnote 16),
(footnote 21)
Sartre, Jean-Paul, 12, 16,40
Schaff, Adam, 13 (footnote 6), 18,
(footnote 33), 30 (footnote 37), 33, 62,
(footnote 9), 69 (footnote 17), 77, 78,
(footnote 35)
Schillebeeckx, 41
Scientia, notion of, 74
Scientific method, 75
Self-consciousness, (in Hegel), 28
Social Democratic Party, 70
Spinoza, 19
Stalin, 61, 67
Szczesny, Gerhard, 78
Tutiorism,41

46
26
64
82

INDEX

Umwelt,45

89

note 5), 20 (footnote 10), 34 (footnote 48)

66 (footnote 11), 71 (footnote 21)
Wolff, Christian, 20
Wyszinsky, 61

Van Rijn, I., 50 (footnote 34)

Vatican Council II, 12, 19, 37, 38, 39, 44,
46,47,49,50,51,54,55,56,58,59,73,74
Vienna Circle, 22

Yevtushenko, 16-17, 18,29,35,69

Wetter, G. A., 12 (footnote 1), 13 (foot-

Zenkovsky, V. V., 67 (footnote 13)