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The Catholic Church stared down and outlived communism
By Michael Coren
November 19, 2009
Michael Coren
It was 20 years this month when the Berlin Wall came down and Europe was liberated. The bricks and barbed wire were, of course, merely icons of a far greater evil — the communism that incarcerated, brutalized and murdered hundreds of millions of people, many of them far from Europe. For those who mistakenly think the church is politically irrelevant, let them study the truth about the rise and fall of communism.
I always recall reading author Loung Ung’s book First They Killed My Father in which she wrote of 1975 when the Marxist Khmer Rouge took over her country. Her father, a policeman, was the first to be exterminated, followed by most of her family and friends. They were not alone. Millions of Cambodians, including women and children, were murdered in the name of Lenin and Mao, and many liberal and socialist opinion-shapers in the west said that the Khmer Rouge was simply being misunderstood.
I always recall reading author Loung Ung’s book First They Killed My Father in which she wrote of 1975 when the Marxist Khmer Rouge took over her country. Her father, a policeman, was the first to be exterminated, followed by most of her family and friends. They were not alone. Millions of Cambodians, including women and children, were murdered in the name of Lenin and Mao, and many liberal and socialist opinion-shapers in the west said that the Khmer Rouge was simply being misunderstood.
The same was said of Stalin’s Russia and it’s no coincidence that British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge — later to become a Catholic — was one of the few voices shouting out that the Soviet Union was a gigantic murder camp. For that crime he was ostracized by entire chunks of the British, Canadian and American media.
Yet Stalin was only one communist dictator. True, he wiped out tens of millions of his own people and slaughtered Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Romanians, Germans, Bulgarians and so many more. But he was not alone. Mao exterminated entire regions and classes. He fired his simple and bloody followers with the sort of hatred that even Hitler failed to achieve. Mobs ran through towns and cities ripping their opponents apart. Unlike the monster in Berlin, the communist dictators did not have the means of mass killing. They used whatever was at hand.
Beyond Russia and China there were puppet regimes in Asia and Africa, repugnant little quagmires of darkness where, according to one eyewitness, “the smell of blood drenched your clothing.” But, again, whilst during the war against Nazism the press condemned Hitlerism, so many people of influence not only refused to criticize communism but even praised it. There are still political parties in Canada that praise Lenin and Marx.
When Lenin launched his campaign against the Kulaks, wealthy peasants, he and his people said that there were “sub-humans who stank and lived like animals. Even their children are scum and no mercy must be shown them. Like flies they must be exterminated.” The communists said this because they wanted the Kulaks’ land and property, and they got it. You’ll be pushed to find a memorial to those poor souls anywhere in the world. As you will to most other such victims of atheistic Marxism.
The reason this is all so pertinent to Catholics is because the church, often alone, stood firm against communism and suffered condemnation, sometimes from fellow travellers within its own ranks, for doing so. We know of Pope John Paul II’s heroic opposition to the Soviets but the Catholic struggle began generations before this.
Catholic priests were murdered, nuns raped, lay people massacred by communists and their allies in Poland, Spain, Vietnam, Russia, China and anywhere Marxism enjoyed any influence. For years these claims were rejected as mythology and hysteria but now we have documented evidence. The reason for the particular hatred of Catholicism is obvious. The church represented a core humanity and respect for freedom, individualism and anti-materialism that ran directly contrary to the communist notion of collective order and economic dictatorship.
Papal encyclicals, statements by bishops, actions by priests all proved to international communism that the central enemy was less capitalism but something far more sacred and timeless. Bankers and businessmen they could work with, the prelates and the prayerful had to go. Some Catholics dangerously and childishly assumed that the improvement of the poorest of humanity could be achieved in alliance with the far left. They are known in Marxian language as “useful idiots.”
The wall came down and the people and their churches flourished once again. All through the era of communism their propagandists told us that God was dead. Really? Seems to me that communism is dead but that God and His church lives on.
Yet Stalin was only one communist dictator. True, he wiped out tens of millions of his own people and slaughtered Poles, Hungarians, Slovaks, Czechs, Romanians, Germans, Bulgarians and so many more. But he was not alone. Mao exterminated entire regions and classes. He fired his simple and bloody followers with the sort of hatred that even Hitler failed to achieve. Mobs ran through towns and cities ripping their opponents apart. Unlike the monster in Berlin, the communist dictators did not have the means of mass killing. They used whatever was at hand.
Beyond Russia and China there were puppet regimes in Asia and Africa, repugnant little quagmires of darkness where, according to one eyewitness, “the smell of blood drenched your clothing.” But, again, whilst during the war against Nazism the press condemned Hitlerism, so many people of influence not only refused to criticize communism but even praised it. There are still political parties in Canada that praise Lenin and Marx.
When Lenin launched his campaign against the Kulaks, wealthy peasants, he and his people said that there were “sub-humans who stank and lived like animals. Even their children are scum and no mercy must be shown them. Like flies they must be exterminated.” The communists said this because they wanted the Kulaks’ land and property, and they got it. You’ll be pushed to find a memorial to those poor souls anywhere in the world. As you will to most other such victims of atheistic Marxism.
The reason this is all so pertinent to Catholics is because the church, often alone, stood firm against communism and suffered condemnation, sometimes from fellow travellers within its own ranks, for doing so. We know of Pope John Paul II’s heroic opposition to the Soviets but the Catholic struggle began generations before this.
Catholic priests were murdered, nuns raped, lay people massacred by communists and their allies in Poland, Spain, Vietnam, Russia, China and anywhere Marxism enjoyed any influence. For years these claims were rejected as mythology and hysteria but now we have documented evidence. The reason for the particular hatred of Catholicism is obvious. The church represented a core humanity and respect for freedom, individualism and anti-materialism that ran directly contrary to the communist notion of collective order and economic dictatorship.
Papal encyclicals, statements by bishops, actions by priests all proved to international communism that the central enemy was less capitalism but something far more sacred and timeless. Bankers and businessmen they could work with, the prelates and the prayerful had to go. Some Catholics dangerously and childishly assumed that the improvement of the poorest of humanity could be achieved in alliance with the far left. They are known in Marxian language as “useful idiots.”
The wall came down and the people and their churches flourished once again. All through the era of communism their propagandists told us that God was dead. Really? Seems to me that communism is dead but that God and His church lives on.
Michael Coren