Please pray for the family of Alfie Evans, the 23 month old child who died
at 2:30 AM British time on April 28.
British socialized medicine could not diagnose his problem,
refused to let him go elsewhere, and took him off life support. Remarkably,
Alfie lived from Monday to Saturday without the use of his ventilator.
I ask you to pray for the family and not for little Alfie,
who died in his baptismal innocence, and is most certainly in the bosom of
Almighty God. They can kill the body, but they cannot kill the soul.
Tuesday, May 1, we will celebrate
the feast of Saint Joseph the Worker, a relatively new feast in the Catholic
calendar, going back only to May of 1955, during the pontificate of the
saintly Pope Pius XII. Some ill‑informed Catholics hold that Pope Pius was
giving in to the Marxists by recognizing May 1 as a worker’s holiday—but
that could not be farther from the truth.
The Catholic Popes have condemned
socialism since the time of Karl Marx (1818-1883). Leo XIII (1810-1903) and
Marx were contemporaries, and Leo’s encyclical Rerum novarum is a
devastating critique of socialism in all its forms, written in May of 1891,
just shortly after Marx’ death.
You can read Leo’s encyclical in several places around the internet, and it
is in print in a great book, The Popes Against Modern Errors.
Leo’s major premise is that
Socialism is unjust because it deprives workers of the right to sustain and
improve their living their conditions by amassing private property, and by
invading the rights of the family. Thirty years later, the Russian
revolution proved Leo correct as many starved to death. Saturday, Leo was
again proved correct as a child died as the result of the invaded rights of
a little boy’s parents.
Today there are people who claim
that a moderate socialism is possible under a benevolent government—they
miss the point socialism is based on theft of property and disruption of
families and communities. Leo XIII put it this way:
Socialists, therefore, by endeavoring to transfer the possessions of
individuals to the community at large, strike at the interests of
every wage-earner, since they would deprive him of the liberty of
disposing of his wages, and thereby of all hope and possibility of
increasing his resources and of bettering his condition in life.
The socialists, therefore, in setting aside the parent and setting
up a State supervision, act against natural justice, and destroy the
structure of the home.
Leo favored the establishment of
labor unions as long as they observed Christian principles—he compared them
favorably to the medieval gilds.
He wrote several paragraphs about the right of workers to organize
themselves.
In Quadragesimo Anno, forty
years later, on the anniversary of Rerum novarum, Pope Pius XI would
renew the condemnation of socialism, with the “benefit” of seeing how Lenin
and Stalin actually implemented the false doctrines of Marx. Pope Pius
would write:
Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms;
no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true Socialist.
Both Leo XIII and Pius XI favored
labor organizations, although Pope Pius advocated that specifically Catholic
unions be formed.
The Italian Christian Workers'
Association has enjoyed mixed success in organizing Catholic workers in
Italy. It was to this organization that Pope Pius XII was speaking when he
instituted the feast of Saint Joseph the Workman.
Pope Pius’ intention was to Christianize the observance of May first—much as
the early Church Christianized the pagan celebration of the Roman Sun god,
Sol invictus by celebrating Christmas rather arbitrarily on the same
day.
As might be expected, Pope Pius
renewed the papal condemnation of Marxism:
... always by religious reasons, the Church condemned the various
systems of Marxist socialism, and condemns them again today, as is
his permanent right and duty to preserve the currents and influences
men, who they endanger their eternal salvation.
Jesus Christ does not wait for … the way to penetrate the social
realities, with systems that are not derived from Him, be they
called "secular humanism" or "socialism purged by materialism." His
divine kingdom of truth and justice is present in the regions where
the opposition between classes incessantly threatens to have the
upper hand.
The position of the Church is clear:
“One cannot be a socialist and a Christian.” It is up to us as workers,
employers, citizens, parents, and Christians to work for its elimination
wherever possible.
Join us for Mass on Tuesday if
possible. Pray to Saint Joseph. Pray to Alfie Evans and Charlie Gard.
Pray that, if nothing else, the “death panels” be abolished!
