The Church and hope
In a discussion that eventually ended up dealing with fascism and the Catholic Church, a fairly well-known (infamous?) ex-Catholic blogger made the following claim punctuated by a personal comment directed to me:
Fascism accusations are a bit strange coming from Catholics – Catholicism is authoritarian, hierarchical, demands obedience, is male-ruled, regulates everything down to the smallest details and what not – the fascism in Austria was manned by devout clergy and laypeople, citing Rerum Novarum etc. as inspiration, approved by the Pope. Too bad they waged war, literally, on union people.
It actually surprises me that you, Michael I., are Catholic. Especially since the “forces of reaction are back in the saddle in many places.
Gerald is not the first person to tell me that he or she is “surprised” that I am Catholic, not in the sense that they see me believing things or acting in ways that are contrary to the faith, but they don’t understand how I can have the political views that I do and still remain a Catholic when the Catholic Church has so often aligned itself with life-denying politics (such as the case of american Republicatholicism). I recognize, though, that the Catholic faith, which I will never ever reject, has both a liberating tendency and an oppressive tendency, an aspect that simply upholds the status quo as well as an aspect that seeks to subvert the status quo in promotion of the Reign of God. Catholicism certainly can be authoritarian and hierarchical, and it can certainly demand obedience, etc. . . . But it also has aspects—not often seen by critics—that are very much the opposite of those things. It is certainly easy to be overwhelmed by the Church’s oppressive aspects. For me, it’s a question of where I find hope. The Church is way bigger than its members who seem to have Jesus all wrong. I even find hope among some of what Gerald calls the “forces of reaction,” believe it or not.
In short I hope to continue “surprising” folks like Gerald for a long time to come. Catholicism, at its core, is radical, liberating, even revolutionary despite the many ways we fail at living out its full implications. I am definitely in favor of critical study of the Church, but I hope when folks like Gerald do their studying they can find something about the Church in which they can find hope.
“Infamous” is right =)
I’d say I find great things about Catholics more so than about the organization. I’ve also found a new interest in the person of Jesus, currently reading “Jesus for the Non-Religious” by John Shelby Spong.
I feel compelled to defend Chancellor Dollfuss. He was a good and holy man, and the Christian Social party and ethos is an inspiring one (the union of aristocracy, shopkeepers, and working-class Christians against the forces of socialism and liberal capitalism).
Dollfuss was greatly pained by his inability to make the Socialists see his point of view. He repeatedly tried to get them to join his government and offered them cabinet ministries, but there was no convincing them, and this was one of the greatest failures of the republican era in Austrian history.
In the case of “wag[ing] war, literally, on union people”, we must remember that the working class was very deeply divided between the Christian unions on the one hand and the Socialist unions on the other. What Mr. Naus is referring to is 1934 Februaraufstand at the Karl Marx-Hof in Vienna. The Karl Marx-Hof was one of the better projects of the Austrian Socialists when they were in government, a housing project for working people including bathing facilities, kindergartens, doctors offices, small commercial premises, a library, but of course (like at Nowa Huta in Poland later in the century) there was no church. A project for a Christ-less society.
When the Socialists built the Karl Marx-Hof they put guns and ammunition in between the walls, “just in case” they needed to be retrieved later. (To be fair, most of the political parties in Austria at the time had arms and paramilitary wings, “just in case”). When the February crisis erupted, the Socialists’ paramilitary group seized the Karl Marx-Hof and liberated the weapons they had hidden in the structure’s framework. They held out in the complex for many days, refusing to evacuate the civilians inside (in many cases their own families) and eventually the decision was made to use light artillery to bombard the rebels, after which the rebels quickly surrendered.
Of course, the Socialists never did join Dollfuss’s government (though many individual socialists did) and he was caught in a three-way battle between Austrian Marxist Socialists and German National Socialists. He had tried to align with the Socialists against the Nazis but they would not join him. Eventually he was killed by the Nazis in an attempted putsch, and the rest is history.
Andrew, what are you talking about?
I was referring to Mr. Naus’s comment that: “the fascism in Austria was manned by devout clergy and laypeople, citing Rerum Novarum etc. as inspiration, approved by the Pope. Too bad they waged war, literally, on union people.”
(He was referring to the “Austrofascism” of the Dollfuss regime and not the later, antithetical Nazism of the anschluss).