Cathedral College of the Immaculate Conception - Annual Yearbook (Brooklyn, NY)

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CATHEDRAL C OLLEG CHEMISTRY LABORATORY BIOLQGY LABORATORY 58

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00CATHEDRAL COLLEGE The Persecution of the Catholic Church in Soviet Russia MPERIAL RUSSIA fell with a crash that could be heard above the tumult of the Great War. Out of its debris arose the Russian Republic. But the masses, inured to the boot of the oppressor, were unprepared for self-rule, and, weary of conflict, were unwilling to wage a senseless war in the name of a still moremeaningless democracy. And so the March Revolution was followed by the November Revolutiong Kerensky gave way to Lenin, Trotzky and Stalin, democracy yielded to the dictatorship of the proletariat, disorderly freedom surrendered to organized subjection. Communism was in the saddle and Anti-Christ reared his ugly head in Holy Russia. Persecution of all organized religion was an inevitable consequence of the triumph of Communism in Russia. Were it merely a social system, Com- munism Could be neutral toward religion, but because it is itself a religion with a sure conviction of its own exclusive mission, it seeks to eliminate all other creeds. Marx, the author of Communism, based his system upon the theory of economic or historical materialism which affirms that the entire course of his- tory and social life is determined by the operations of economic forces. Accordingly, spiritual life, morals, philosophy, art and all culture are merely the perverted products evolved by man in his search for the fundamental economic processes governing his existence. In Communism this theory is given color, energy, life, by the addition of Marx's own unique doctrine of the class struggle. History, it states, records a continual conflict between the classes of society. Deliverance of the human race from this irrational existence becomes the Messianic vocation of the proletariat, the class which alone pro- dues all the material goods on which society lives and yet is subjected to the exploitation of the parasitic capitalist. lt is this promise of the role of liberator which is intended to appeal to the world proletariat and to awaken its enthusiasm. lt is in this that the religious aspect of Communism takes shape. At the outset Marx founded his new dispensation on the false assump- tion that perfect happines is attainable in this life. This followed, naturally, from the materialistic philosophy which denies the existence of God, the soul, and a world to come. Man is no longer the image and likeness of God, he is the image and likeness of society. God and His divine laws are replaced by the mysterious economic forces, immortality and the Beatific Vision by the promise of an illusory and empty earthly Utopia, morality by expediency in the interests of the revolutiong Christian charity and love of neighbor by a creed of hatred, of war between the classes, of man against his brother. Such is the religion which is being forced upon the Russian people and preached to the world. There is a marked similarity between the circumstances surrounding the Russian Revolution and its French prototype. ln both cases the people were 60