The "Correspondence" Monthly Review Declined to Print

I submitted the "Correspondence" to the long-established socialist magazine Monthly Review in January 2016.  Since its founding in 1948, Monthly Review has been a theoretical mainstay of the Marxist left, especially the self-styled "revolutionary left."  In December 2015 it published an article by French Marxist Michael Lowy, a leading figure in one of the sections of the Trotskyist Fourth International, that was uncritically laudatory of Pope Francis's enclclical on climate change, Laudato Si'.  As a socialist influenced strongly by Marxism and Trotskyism as well as an ex-Catholic atheist, I found Lowy's paean to what was a mundane eucyclical that only repeated what scientists themselves had been saying for over a decade really over-the-top, and his embrace of "papal socialism" most untoward.  While in the absence of major activity of a strongly socialist charcter absent from the working classes in especially the advanced capitalist countries apparent for some time now, many Marxists have shifted ground in search for a new "revolutionary" substitute for the moribund proletariat--some, such as the Maoists, have embraced the peasantry and the dispossed in the Third World, while others have cast their lot with various racial and social "vanguards" that Marxist intellectuals can oorganize through the all-purpose means of the Leninist party.  But to see the Catholic Church as suddenly a force for socialism, for a new political consciousness, for a new critical awareness, given its nearly-two-millennia record of obfuscation, obscurantism, reactionary social and political policies, and open support for reactionary and repressive political regmes?  For this decidedly ex-Catholic who was himself a victim of Catholic abuse, that was too much!  Hence, this "Correspondence," whch Monthly Review declined to prnt, thus casting its lot with those who would align with alleged "Catholic social conscence" and its new PR-frendly Pope rather than those who were abused and dispossed by Catholicism itself--GF

To the Editors of Monthly Review:

 

Michael Löwy’s paean to Pope Francis’s “ecological encyclopedia” (as he calls it) in the December 2015 issue of Monthly Review, “Laudato Si—The Popes Anti-Systemic Encyclical,” http://monthlyreview.org/2015/12/01/laudato-sithe-popes-anti-systemic-encyclical/,

is, by far, too much a glossing-over of the dark side of both the Pope and the Catholic Church;   it is able to extend fulsome praise to Laudato Si’ only by overlooking, by separating it out abstractly from, the many other failures and considerable limitations of Pope Francis’s refurbished Catholicism itself.  For ex-Catholic atheists and Marxists such as myself, these failures and limitations are especially glaring; and while we are perhaps willing to march partially with the Pope on ecological concerns, on so many issues which still fester in Catholicism, issues on which leadership and eloquence from Pope Francis have been noticeably lacking, we must dissent and demur.  The supposed “anti-systemic” critique of global capitalism, which Löwy sees in Laudato Si’, simply cannot cancel out  the inaction, indeed even the hidebound reaction, that is still integral to the Catholicism of Pope Francis just as much as it is of his predecessors, and which is still part and parcel of Catholic theology and ethical teachings.  The Pope is more than “naïve,” as Löwy would have it; despite certain advances he’s promulgated in some areas of Catholic teaching (which have actually garnered more favorable publicity than actual substance would justify—i.e., they are more achievements in public relations than they are in loosening the grip of reaction on official Catholicism), the Pope is still preaching doctrine that, while partially recognizing the Twenty-First Century, in other crucial ways is still mired in the medieval scholasticism that is the Catholic Church’s continuing legacy as a whole—whether we wish to recognize it or not. 

These concerns of mine as precisely an ex-Catholic Marxist and atheist moved me to prepare the following flyer I distributed to a meeting here in Indianapolis, Indiana, that was convened to discuss Laudato Si’.  In trying to write with an appropriate balance, especially to the audience gathered that was primarily comprised of religious believers, I think I achieved precisely this in the short space of less than 650 words, and summed up my arguments appropriately in my very subtitle:  “Kudos to the Pope, but Not to Catholicism.”  I present this flyer below as a contribution to discussion of the Pope’s encyclical and the ongoing nature of Catholicism itself.

 

POPE FRANCIS’S CLIMATE CHANGE ENCYCLICAL—

KUDOS TO THE POPE, BUT NOT TO CATHOLICISM!

written on June 22, 2015

 by George Fish, Indianapolis, Indiana:

ex-Catholic, atheist, democrat, socialist, humanist, secularist

 

While we can indeed take heart at the Pope’s recent, very positive and needed, affirmative encyclical message and call for action on climate change, Laudato Si’—a message issued so strongly, so urgently, and with such scientific validity it upset climate-change denialists and conservative Catholics to a degree that drove them into frothing rage—let it not stand as a vindication or a prettifying of a still-ugly and ominously regressive Catholic Church.  Of course, we who are secular and democratic in our instincts should be delighted at the viciousness and obtuseness it has excited among the likes of the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue and Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, notoriously right-wing Catholics and ardent opponents of both science and secularism.  Yet that not serve as pretext for overlooking the still-seamy underside, indeed, even the public face, of official Catholicism:  as illustrated by remarks, and their lack, from Pope Francis himself.

In all honesty, even as we celebrate the Pope’s directness and scientific correctness evinced in Laudato Si’, let us also pointedly note that scientists and secularists have been saying the very same things as the Pope is now saying, and for a good decade previously.  And in honesty, let us also pointedly note that Pope Francis, ever true to official Catholicism even in its open obscurantism, felt obliged to gratuitously insert into his climate change encyclical yet more inappropriate, dogmatic and obscurantist screeds against not only abortion, but even birth control, “officially Catholic” positions even much of the forced-to-remain-silent Catholic lay body objects to; not to mention all of us outside of the Catholic Church who are sick and tired of hearing these monotonous, one-sided mantras that indicate so firmly that Catholicism has yet to actually enter the 21^st Century.

Let us not also forget the Pope’s, and the Vatican’s, denunciation of the recent historic vote in traditionally-Catholic Ireland firmly upholding same-sex marriage, a fundamentally decent political and human rights position the still-viciously homophobic Catholic Church insists on repeatedly negating and denouncing; thus denying in its ecclesiastical fulminations the fundamental dignity and humanity or non-heterosexual humanity.  Let us not forget either the Pope’s own backhanded approval given to the Muslim fanatics who committed the Charlie Hedbo massacre, as the Pope himself gave backhanded justification to the murders of the magazine’s staff for “offending” another religion—as if the magazine’s open secularism and anti-clericalism even justified horrific mass murder!  Let us also note the Pope’s own glaring silence on the ethnic cleansing being carried out today in Myanmar (Burma) and Sri Lanka that is being fomented by chauvinistic Buddhist monks.  As well his silence on the ever-prevailing atrocities continually carried out in the name of Islam not only by supposedly “rogue” groups such as ISIS, but even by Islamic states themselves, as in Saudi Arabia and under the military dictatorship in Egypt—not to mention the Islamic suppression of the Arab Spring!

 

Nor let us forget the still-festering scandal within Catholicism due to rampant priest-pedophilia, and the Vatican’s still-prevailing do-nothing-effective approach to it (Pope Francis did nothing more except appoint yet another commission to “study” the problem).  Nor let us forget the centuries of abuse and suffering meted out to Catholics and non-Catholics alike through the official actions of the Church, in the rampant abuse and abuse of power in the Catholic school system, and the systematic oppression meted out to whole populations, even those that were comprised of stalwart Catholics, in such Catholic countries as Ireland, Spain, and throughout Latin America.  Despite the Pope’s new encouraging words on climate change, Catholicism still has a lot to answer for before the body of secular, democratic humanity.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:  George Fish is an ex-Catholic Marxist atheist and writer whose work has appeared in many publications of the socialist and alternative press.  He contributed what many regard as one of the best short expositions of Marxist atheism so far published, “Two Kinds of Atheism,” in the February 1988 issue of Monthly Review.  He may be contacted via e-mail at georgefish666@yahoo.com. 

 

 

The "Correspondence" Monthly Review Declined to Prnt

I submitted the "Correspondence" to the long-established socialist magazine Monthly Review in January 2016.  Since its founding in 1948, Monthly Review has been a theoretical mainstay of the Marxist left, especially the self-styled "revolutionary left."  In December 2015 it published an article by French Marxist Michael Lowy, a leading figure in one of the sections of the Trotskyist Fourth International, that was uncritically laudatory of Pope Francis's enclclical on climate change, Laudato Si'.  As a socialist influenced strongly by Marxism and Trotskyism as well as an ex-Catholic atheist, I found Lowy's paean to what was a mundane eucyclical that only repeated what scientists themselves had been saying for over a decade really over-the-top, and his embrace of "papal socialism" most untoward.  While in the absence of major activity of a strongly socialist charcter absent from the working classes in especially the advanced capitalist countries apparent for some time now, many Marxists have shifted ground in search for a new "revolutionary" substitute for the moribund proletariat--some, such as the Maoists, have embraced the peasantry and the dispossed in the Third World, while others have cast their lot with various racial and social "vanguards" that Marxist intellectuals can oorganize through the all-purpose means of the Leninist party.  But to see the Catholic Church as suddenly a force for socialism, for a new political consciousness, for a new critical awareness, given its nearly-two-millennia record of obfuscation, obscurantism, reactionary social and political policies, and open support for reactionary and repressive political regmes?  For this decidedly ex-Catholic who was himself a victim of Catholic abuse, that was too much!  Hence, this "Correspondence," whch Monthly Review declined to prnt, thus casting its lot with those who would align with alleged "Catholic social conscence" and its new PR-frendly Pope rather than those who were abused and dispossed by Catholicism itself--GF

To the Editors of Monthly Review:

 

Michael Löwy’s paean to Pope Francis’s “ecological encyclopedia” (as he calls it) in the December 2015 issue of Monthly Review, “Laudato Si—The Popes Anti-Systemic Encyclical,” http://monthlyreview.org/2015/12/01/laudato-sithe-popes-anti-systemic-encyclical/,

is, by far, too much a glossing-over of the dark side of both the Pope and the Catholic Church;   it is able to extend fulsome praise to Laudato Si’ only by overlooking, by separating it out abstractly from, the many other failures and considerable limitations of Pope Francis’s refurbished Catholicism itself.  For ex-Catholic atheists and Marxists such as myself, these failures and limitations are especially glaring; and while we are perhaps willing to march partially with the Pope on ecological concerns, on so many issues which still fester in Catholicism, issues on which leadership and eloquence from Pope Francis have been noticeably lacking, we must dissent and demur.  The supposed “anti-systemic” critique of global capitalism, which Löwy sees in Laudato Si’, simply cannot cancel out  the inaction, indeed even the hidebound reaction, that is still integral to the Catholicism of Pope Francis just as much as it is of his predecessors, and which is still part and parcel of Catholic theology and ethical teachings.  The Pope is more than “naïve,” as Löwy would have it; despite certain advances he’s promulgated in some areas of Catholic teaching (which have actually garnered more favorable publicity than actual substance would justify—i.e., they are more achievements in public relations than they are in loosening the grip of reaction on official Catholicism), the Pope is still preaching doctrine that, while partially recognizing the Twenty-First Century, in other crucial ways is still mired in the medieval scholasticism that is the Catholic Church’s continuing legacy as a whole—whether we wish to recognize it or not. 

These concerns of mine as precisely an ex-Catholic Marxist and atheist moved me to prepare the following flyer I distributed to a meeting here in Indianapolis, Indiana, that was convened to discuss Laudato Si’.  In trying to write with an appropriate balance, especially to the audience gathered that was primarily comprised of religious believers, I think I achieved precisely this in the short space of less than 650 words, and summed up my arguments appropriately in my very subtitle:  “Kudos to the Pope, but Not to Catholicism.”  I present this flyer below as a contribution to discussion of the Pope’s encyclical and the ongoing nature of Catholicism itself.

 

POPE FRANCIS’S CLIMATE CHANGE ENCYCLICAL—

KUDOS TO THE POPE, BUT NOT TO CATHOLICISM!

written on June 22, 2015

 by George Fish, Indianapolis, Indiana:

ex-Catholic, atheist, democrat, socialist, humanist, secularist

 

While we can indeed take heart at the Pope’s recent, very positive and needed, affirmative encyclical message and call for action on climate change, Laudato Si’—a message issued so strongly, so urgently, and with such scientific validity it upset climate-change denialists and conservative Catholics to a degree that drove them into frothing rage—let it not stand as a vindication or a prettifying of a still-ugly and ominously regressive Catholic Church.  Of course, we who are secular and democratic in our instincts should be delighted at the viciousness and obtuseness it has excited among the likes of the Catholic League’s Bill Donohue and Republican Presidential Candidate Rick Santorum, notoriously right-wing Catholics and ardent opponents of both science and secularism.  Yet that not serve as pretext for overlooking the still-seamy underside, indeed, even the public face, of official Catholicism:  as illustrated by remarks, and their lack, from Pope Francis himself.

In all honesty, even as we celebrate the Pope’s directness and scientific correctness evinced in Laudato Si’, let us also pointedly note that scientists and secularists have been saying the very same things as the Pope is now saying, and for a good decade previously.  And in honesty, let us also pointedly note that Pope Francis, ever true to official Catholicism even in its open obscurantism, felt obliged to gratuitously insert into his climate change encyclical yet more inappropriate, dogmatic and obscurantist screeds against not only abortion, but even birth control, “officially Catholic” positions even much of the forced-to-remain-silent Catholic lay body objects to; not to mention all of us outside of the Catholic Church who are sick and tired of hearing these monotonous, one-sided mantras that indicate so firmly that Catholicism has yet to actually enter the 21^st Century.

Let us not also forget the Pope’s, and the Vatican’s, denunciation of the recent historic vote in traditionally-Catholic Ireland firmly upholding same-sex marriage, a fundamentally decent political and human rights position the still-viciously homophobic Catholic Church insists on repeatedly negating and denouncing; thus denying in its ecclesiastical fulminations the fundamental dignity and humanity or non-heterosexual humanity.  Let us not forget either the Pope’s own backhanded approval given to the Muslim fanatics who committed the Charlie Hedbo massacre, as the Pope himself gave backhanded justification to the murders of the magazine’s staff for “offending” another religion—as if the magazine’s open secularism and anti-clericalism even justified horrific mass murder!  Let us also note the Pope’s own glaring silence on the ethnic cleansing being carried out today in Myanmar (Burma) and Sri Lanka that is being fomented by chauvinistic Buddhist monks.  As well his silence on the ever-prevailing atrocities continually carried out in the name of Islam not only by supposedly “rogue” groups such as ISIS, but even by Islamic states themselves, as in Saudi Arabia and under the military dictatorship in Egypt—not to mention the Islamic suppression of the Arab Spring!

 

Nor let us forget the still-festering scandal within Catholicism due to rampant priest-pedophilia, and the Vatican’s still-prevailing do-nothing-effective approach to it (Pope Francis did nothing more except appoint yet another commission to “study” the problem).  Nor let us forget the centuries of abuse and suffering meted out to Catholics and non-Catholics alike through the official actions of the Church, in the rampant abuse and abuse of power in the Catholic school system, and the systematic oppression meted out to whole populations, even those that were comprised of stalwart Catholics, in such Catholic countries as Ireland, Spain, and throughout Latin America.  Despite the Pope’s new encouraging words on climate change, Catholicism still has a lot to answer for before the body of secular, democratic humanity.

 

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE:  George Fish is an ex-Catholic Marxist atheist and writer whose work has appeared in many publications of the socialist and alternative press.  He contributed what many regard as one of the best short expositions of Marxist atheism so far published, “Two Kinds of Atheism,” in the February 1988 issue of Monthly Review.  He may be contacted via e-mail at georgefish666@yahoo.com.