In God They Trust

The Pope heads an organisation with 1.3 billion followers who are encouraged to put their trust in a god and to pray to this god to solve the major problems of the day, thus diminishing people's faith in their own ability to sort out their own problems and undermining the likelihood of workers uniting and organising with a common objective. It has been part of the foundation of reaction since the start, whether it was urging the masses to obey the Caesars, supporting the feudal hierarchical order, opposing the Protestant reformation or siding with the capitalist class against the workers, determined always to stifle the anger of the oppressed with promises of reward in heaven for their sufferings if they struggle on uncomplainingly, and an eternity in the sulphurous pits of hell if they organised to better their lot. The Roman Catholic Church, like the Protestant churches is a whole-hearted supporter of private property. The Roman Catholic Church arrogated onto itself the role of arbiter in things appertaining not only to matters of what it called ‘morality’ but to all forms of human behaviour and even juridical practice. According to Pope Leo XIII (Encyclical, Immortale Dei ‘On the Christian Constitution of States’, November 1885) canon law is effectively superior to the civil law, having derived from Jesus Christ through Peter and the apostles to the Church.

While people have become disillusioned about political realities, it hasn't inspired them with revolution, just revulsion. Religion may profit from this, since it feeds on despair like flies feed on cow-shit. Ignorance is still rife, despite our literacy and sophistication. Our culture has certainly not kept pace with our discoveries. But it is having to change, whether people like it or not. We aren't cowed by the priests like we used to be. Science made fools of them. The Pope will not end the Catholic Church's stance on abortion, for example, even though every Catholic with a rudimentary scientific education knows that there is no divine spark at conception, unseeable until nine months later; the entire process of human reproduction is now well known and it would be expected in any doctor's surgery that in practice no-one would hold such a belief. Few believe in the Pope, as being anything but a left over from bygone times. But nevertheless rather than obeying the Pope, we choose the form of our own mental domination, just as in work we no longer slave for one master but can choose from hundreds to slave for. The pagan backdrop of Catholicism is filled by that of Hinduism or Buddhism removed from their own social contexts of native exploitation, generating a thousand and one cults and sects.

Tom Paine wrote, tolerance is for Popes: it implies someone with the power or right to ‘tolerate’. Socialists seek a society of universal equality - the world over - based upon the free association of producers. For us, the whole community means the whole community. Which necessarily excludes working with ‘faith groups’ whether Catholic, Christian or Islamic whose antiquated views serve only to divide the working class, and conceal the real causes of their social subordination. The Catholic Church's calls for “just" wages, "just" prices and "just" profits instead of real change .

Pope Benedict XVI raised an interesting question when he visited Auschwitz. "In a place like this, words fail. In the end, there can only be a dread silence - a silence which is itself a heartfelt cry to God. Why Lord, did you remain silent? How could you tolerate all this?" A good question, but we doubt if the Holy Father has had any reply. God has remained singularly silent since biblical times.

Karl Marx, who so famously described religion as “...the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”, underwent a reappraisal by the Roman Catholic Church in La Civiltà Cattolica, a Jesuit paper, which is vetted in advance by the Vatican Secretariat of State in an article that was republished in L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican newspaper, to add further papal endorsement. The article reads “We have to ask ourselves, with Marx, whether the forms of alienation of which he spoke have their origin in the capitalist system. If money as such does not multiply on its own, how are we to explain the accumulation of wealth in the hands of the few?”
The Pope himself has said "The emergencies of famine and the environment demonstrate with growing clarity that the logic of profit, if predominant, increases the disproportion between the rich and the poor and leads to a ruinous exploitation of the planet. Capitalism should not be considered the only valid model of economic organisation."
The Vatican has always tried to position itself as a helper of the poor. As James Connolly explained as far back as 1908 "...the Catholic Church always accepts the established order, even if it has warred upon those who had striven to establish such order...the Church 'does not put all her eggs in one basket' and the man who imagines that in the supreme hour of the proletarian struggle for victory the Church will definitely line up with the forces of capitalism, and pledge her very existence as a Church upon the hazardous chance of the capitalists winning, simply does not understand the first thing about the policy of the Church...When that day comes the Papal Encyclical against socialism will be conveniently forgotten by the Papal historians..."

SOYMB does NOT offer its welcome to The Pope on his visit to the UK.