Posted on 01/16/2018 1:38:23 PM PST by heterosupremacist
Catholic League president Bill Donohue comments on recent remarks made by Russian president Vladimir Putin:
Russian president Vladimir Putin is making some waves with his recent statement equating communism to Christianity. He said that “communist ideology is very similar to Christianity,” crediting Soviet communism for preaching “freedom, brotherhood, equality.” Though he admitted that religious persecution took place under Soviet rule, he nonetheless lauded it for its ideological commitment to these ideals.
Pope Francis himself said in 2016 that it has been noted many times that “it is the communists who think like Christians.” By that he meant the communists profess a commitment to the poor.
So is Putin saying the same thing as the pope? Not at all.
The pope was saying that although the communists have adopted the rhetoric of Christianity (with regards to the needy), they have done so dishonestly: He said the “communists have stolen our flag,” meaning they have ripped off our legacy to serve their own interests. In fact, he pointedly said in 2013 that “The Marxist ideology is wrong.”
Putin believes that the state should serve the poor. That is not the Christian way: people must serve the poor, albeit there is a role for the state. “The family constitutes the best ‘social capital,'” Pope Francis said a few years ago in his trip to Ecuador. “It cannot be replaced by other institutions.” In doing so, he was enunciating the Catholic principle of subsidiarity, meaning that those closest to the problem are best suited to fix it. That is an anathema in Soviet discourse, something shared by Putin.
If Putin were right, then the most communist nation in the world would also be the greatest champion of the poor...
(Excerpt) Read more at catholicleague.org ...
You can take the thug out of the KGB, but you can’t take the KGB out of the thug.
maybe he was simply mis-translated and was just equating the Pope to Communism.
Well, with the current Pope, he has a point.
Communism is a heresy of Christianity.
Sadly, there ARE some Christian theologians who have written or taught what amount to communist ideology...
(such as...those that thought that private property should be burdened by a ‘social welfare’ requirement... whereby the Church hierarchy would have the power to require you to give your property to the church or other “more needy” people OUTRIGHT ...or....that the church hierarchy should be permitted to require you to let other people use your property (whether your home or land or money or other stuff).
While NOT Biblical, there have been such ‘teachings’ by some church fathers, popes, etc.
so Putin is not entirely off his gourd ... alas!
(Plus, there are some folks who believe that communism was largely a scheme hatched by SOME within the RC Church to suppress Orthodoxy...I am not advancing that POV, just noting it since it seems possibly related here?). No flames please! thank you thank you
What was it called? Liberation theology?
“It stressed both heightened awareness of the “sinful” socioeconomic structures that caused social inequities “
That would be free markets, boys and girls.
Do you know how much beef the Russian government has been giving the Polish, the Baltic states, and Ukraine for tearing down their THOUSANDS of Lenin statues and ugly Soviet monuments?
Do you know that Stalin’s popularity in Russia has tripled since the collapse of the USSR in the 1990s and numerous busts and statues of his have been erected in the past five years alone? (Especially around the time of the Crimea annexation.)
Do you know that average Russians today refuse to concede that the Cold War was ever lost or even ended?
Do you know how much the Russians resent Americans taking any credit for World War II?
Yeah. You should go there. Its perfectly safe, beautiful, and friendly — but the more you dig in, you realize the Soviet psyche is as strong as ever even among so-called Christians.
heaven may be like communism, because their is no human element there, only higher consciousness... but on earth, human nature goes against everything communistic.
Russia is not even socialist. It is the most corrupt form of oligarchic capitalism.
Biggest gap between rich and poor in the WORLD.
Thanks to Putin.
Are you saying communism would better?
For being a really smart guy, this is really stupid!
Well, he right in the sense Communism basically stole everything from Christianity. Its utopian vision is the heaven from Christianity and it replaces God with a man they equate to the savior.
Stalin, Mao, Kim, Castro, were all worshipped as messianic figures by state established media. And the promise was always that if the people follow the “great leader” he will lead them to a paradise filled with riches and there is no greed or war.
It’s essentially Christianity without Christ.
No just that Putin is not one to lecture anyone on Christian brotherhood.
You have been deceived. Watch in the next five years: as his system unravels as the USSR did in the 90s and all his geopolitical moves (allying with Iran, buddying up with Assad, propping North Korea, chumming with the Turks and Sudanese, helping Cuba and Venezuela, and unleashing chaos in East Ukraine) will backfire.
Truthsearcher wrote:
Stalin, Mao, Kim, Castro, were all worshipped as messianic figures by state established media.
You forgot to mention barack hussein...
Communism is not better sparklite but it is Putin trying to combine a caricatured capitalism with nostalgia for the superpower ethos of the USSR with some Orthodox externals thrown in.
Barring a Moscow monument or two to those pesky “repressions” and “excesses” of the Stalin era: as far as Putin is concerned, Stalin is a hero and the victor of World War II. (Which they don’t even call WWII, but “The Great Patriotic War” for the Russian homeland.)
The country barely acknowledges the Gulag anymore. FACT. And if you are an archeologist of its victims, you may be faced with punitive psychiatry. Look it up. Someone as recent as last week was subjected to such punishment for his investigations into Stalin’s mass murders.
Need to take away the vodka and the Tolstoy that Vlad’s gotten into.
So you get a sense of Russia’s current political atmosphere:
Last week, Russian historian who exposed Stalin’s crimes faces enforced psychiatric testing
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