So I overheard one person I know telling another person I know that “socialism and communism are evil and the church is very clear on that” (referring to the catholic church). And I’m trying to channel my burning frustration about it into asking what people know about communism and how it has interacted with religion more generally, but also catholicism especially, now or historically. I super hard doubt what this person said was even remotely correct, but I could believe that the catholic church takes a wishy washy fence-sitting stance because it tends to on a number of things.
At any rate, it’s something I should know better because I do have catholic people in my life and so sometimes there may be a need to talk to them about these things through the framing of religion to get past the “communism is purely atheistic” type thinking.
Answers from your own knowledge or resources that go into it are both welcomed. I don’t really know how to approach looking for it on my own in this instance because a lot of western religious material is probably influenced by colonizer thinking, or in the US, influenced by red scare nonsense.
Excellent, I share similar views, comrade. The fact that very easily religion “suddenly” became a phenomenon on post-Soviet countries is a testament that even with constant materialist anti-religion propaganda, you’ll just give people reason to be bitter with your regime, even if you give them all they need. Because religion is a matter of identity, something fostered through generations of family lineage, and in summary acquired socially. We can’t change this through intervention, we can only help the political struggle against bourgeois ideology and exploitation in religion