“Communists … are opposing an economic system based on avarice, exploitation and human suffering, afflicting the comfortable and comforting the afflicted.”
This phrase could appear in a communist propaganda pamphlet or speech by Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega or any left-wing demagogue.
Yet, it appears in a significant essay in the August 5, 2019 issue of America Magazine – The Jesuit Review, featuring as cover story an article on Francis, “The Charismatic Pope.”1
From Pro-homosexual Propaganda…
In recent years, this magazine has been dedicated to defending the ideology of the homosexual movement by seeking to “normalize” acts against nature.
A quick search for the LGBT acronym on America Magazine’s web site yields no less than 47 pro-homosexual propaganda articles in the last three years alone.2 Of these, a good number are signed by, or refer to, Fr. James Martin, S.J., a leading exponent of the pro-homosexual “Catholic” movement; others were penned by Michael J. O’Loughlin, a layman, currently the national correspondent for America, who “wrote about religion and LGBT issues for The Advocate,”3 a homosexual publication.4
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Below are the titles of a few samples of these articles or reports in America. They speak for themselves:
“Spiritual insights for L.G.B.T. Catholics,” by James Martin, S.J., Mar. 7, 2018;
“How L.G.B.T Catholics are celebrating Pride Month,” by Michael J. O’Loughlin, Jun. 19, 2019;
[Same-sex] “Couple creates a new scholarship for L.G.B.T. Catholics,” by Michael J. O’Loughlin, Apr. 2, 2019;
“Building a Bridge: The Catholic Church and the LGBT Community–America Media Events,” Aug. 22, 2017;
“Father James Martin: How parishes can welcome L.G.B.T. Catholics,” by James Martin, S.J., Aug. 23, 2018.
… to Communist Propaganda
Along with its campaign in favor of the homosexual movement and rehashed modernist theology, the magazine now clearly and openly devotes itself to spreading communist propaganda.
As stated, America’s August 2019 issue features a long essay by Dean Dettloff titled “The Catholic Case for Communism” (in the printed text the title is “Not So Menacing”). The article is illustrated with a well-known photograph of the Bolivian dictator, Evo Morales, handing Pope Francis a crucifix shaped like a hammer and sickle, the communist symbol.
Who Is Dean Dettloff?
Dettloff is the correspondent of America Magazine in Toronto and a junior member of the ICS—Institute for Christian Studies—a Calvinist, liberal, graduate-level theological and philosophical school in Toronto.
In addition to his links with Jesuits and Calvinists, Dettloff is also a member of the Communist Party of Canada, according to the Communist Party USA on Facebook page, July 24 at 4:04 AM: “After 110 years of opposition to communism, Jesuit magazine America publishes an essay, ‘The Catholic Case for Communism’ by Communist Party of Canada member & co-host of the Magnificast Dean Dettloff.”
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Incidentally, it is curious to note how communists themselves welcome a change of orientation in the Jesuit magazine…
At the said ICS, Dean Dettloff teaches a distance-learning course titled “Organized Religion: Christianity and Anti-Capitalism in the U.S. and Canada,” in which he narrates, with obvious sympathy, the collaboration of leftist Christians with communist and socialist movements. But his goal is not merely historical, as he teaches “with an eye toward speculating about what Christian anti-capitalism in Canada and the United States might look like in the future.”
“Likes” on his Facebook page5 include both people and communist/socialist organizations, as well as others linked to the homosexual movement. For example, Communist Party USA, Communist Party of Canada – GTA West Club Ontario, Lesbians and Gays Support the Migrants – North East, Party for Socialism and Liberation – PSL, Jóvenes Cristianos por el Socialismo.
Let us look at his article in the magazine of the new Society of Jesus, which, unfortunately, other than its name, has hardly anything in common with the glorious Order founded by Saint Ignatius of Loyola.
“The Catholic Case for Communism”: “Soften the Perceptions of Catholics” on Communism?
Dettloff begins to build his “Catholic Case for Communism” from an essay by Dorothy Day published in that same magazine on April 19, 1933. “Day painted a sympathetic, if critical view of the communists she encountered in Depression-era New York City…. Communists are attracted to communism by their goodness, Day argued, that unerasable quality of the good that can be found within and outside the church alike, woven into our very nature.”
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Now comes what seems to be the goal of his essay, to “soften the perceptions of Catholics” regarding Communism: “By affirming the goodness that drives so many communists then and now, Day aimed to soften the perceptions of Catholics who were more comfortable with villainous caricatures of the communists of their era than with more challenging depictions of them as laborers for peace and economic justice.”
This is precisely what America has been doing with homosexuality. And now with communism.
The Goal of Both Christians and Communists: a Classless Society?
America Magazine’s Toronto correspondent wants to avoid any confusion: Christians who become “passionately” committed to communist and socialist movements do it, not because they fail to understand the goals of communism, but precisely because they share those goals. “Christians have been passionately represented in communist and socialist movements around the world. And these Christians, like their atheist comrades, are communists not because they misunderstand the final goals of communism but because they authentically understand the communist ambition of a classless society.”
“Dictatorship of the Proletariat” and Other Telltale Omissions
There is no doubt that Dettloff refers to the old communism of Marx and Lenin, with its utopia of a classless society. Prudently, however, he does not speak of the “dictatorship of the proletariat” that must be established as a condition for putting an end to inequality between social classes. As Lenin explains: “The dictatorship of the proletariat is the forcible suppression of the resistance of the exploiters, that is, of an insignificant minority of the population—of landlords and capitalists.”6
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His memory also fails concerning historical facts on the establishment of the egalitarian utopia around the world: genocides in Ukraine, China, and Cambodia, misery in Cuba and concentration camps in Siberia. He also ignores what is currently happening in Venezuela, which, from one of the richest countries in South America thanks to its oil production, in a few years of socialism has fallen into the darkest misery, “with inflation at close to 500% a year.”7
He ignores the “perverted teachings” and “wicked theories of this Socialism and Communism,”8 the philosophical absurdities of the Communist sect.
“It Is True That Marx, Engels, Lenin Were Atheists, but…”
The “Catholic-Communist” author is not embarrassed by atheism, which is the essence of communism. He states: “It is true that Marx, Engels, Lenin and several other major communists were committed Enlightenment thinkers, atheists …”
However, Dettloff emphasizes that they were not the only modern atheists, and justifies them as follows: “[T]heir atheism is understandable, when Christianity has so often been a force allied to the ruling powers that exploit the poor.”
He goes on to stress that “Catholics have found plenty of philosophical resources in non-Christian sources in the past; why not moderns?”
The “philosophical resources in non-Christian sources in the past” were mainly the works of pagan Greek and Roman philosophers.
To compare Aristotle with Marx, for example, is sheer absurdity. The former was a pagan who nevertheless followed natural law and accepted the existence of God; the latter denied that same law and God’s existence.
Eternal and Natural Law: The Foundation of Morals and Law
But, according to America’s communist correspondent, not even militant atheism is a hindrance for Catholics to join them in the struggle—including armed struggle—for a classless society. This is precisely what liberation theologians such as Friar Beto and the brothers, Fathers Ernesto and Fernando Cardenal, and Fr. Camilo Torres, among others, have done by supporting or joining communist guerrilla movements.
Hatred of Divine and Natural Law: The Meeting Point of Modernism, Homosexual Ideology, and Communism
Dettloff’s article is long but only repeats worn-out clichés of communist propaganda, and so it is not worthy of additional analysis, something which in any case has already been done by others.
What we want to point out here is how the new Society of Jesus, already known for preaching modernist doctrines and propagating homosexual ideology, is seeking with this essay to make clear its new, openly communist orientation.
Taking a Principled not a Personal Stand
As practicing Catholics, we are filled with compassion and pray for those who struggle against violent temptation to sin, be it toward homosexual sin or otherwise.
We are conscious of the enormous difference between these individuals who struggle with their weaknesses and strive to overcome them and others who transform their sin into a reason for pride, and try to impose their lifestyle on society as a whole, in flagrant opposition to traditional Christian morality and natural law. However, we pray for them too.
According to the expression attributed to Saint Augustine, we “hate the sin but love the sinner.” And to love the sinner, as the same Doctor of the Church explains, is to wish for him the best we can possibly desire for ourselves, namely, “that he may love God with a perfect affection.” (St. Augustine, Of the Morals of the Catholic Church, No. 49, www.newadvent.org/fathers/1401.htm)
Modernism and the homosexual and communist ideologies share a common hatred of the natural law that God placed in man’s rational nature, and of Divine Revelation. Homosexual practice runs counter to human nature in its moral action, and communism runs counter to man’s social nature by imposing utopian and dictatorial equality. Modernism rejects the notion of a transcendent God and thus, as Saint Pius X taught, leads to atheism.9
The Equality Myth, a Founding Legend
By taking this position and adding communist propaganda to its agenda, America Magazine – The Jesuit Review (or rather the magazine of the new Society of Jesus) – is entirely consistent with the philosophical and theological errors once preached by Jesuit Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, which lead to pantheism.
With this essay by an open and avowed communist correspondent, America Magazine has sought to convey a clear message: Just as it has worked in recent years to soften Catholic resistance to the homosexual ideology, from now on it will do the same for Communism.
Updated August 16, 2019.
Footnotes
- August 5, 2019. Vol. 221, no. 3, https://www.americamagazine.org/magazine/2019/august-5-2019.
- See https://www.americamagazine.org/search?search_api_fulltext=LGBT&sort_by=search_api_relevance&sort_order=DESC, accessed July 30, 2019.
- https://www.mikeoloughlin.com/about, accessed July 30, 2019.
- The pro-homosexual publication The Advocate states: “In his new book, The Tweetable Pope, former Advocate reporter Michael O’Loughlin … writes of the pope’s complicated history with LGBT rights.” “Recalling the Time When Pope Francis Advocated for Civil Unions,” The Advocate, Sept. 23, 2015, https://www.advocate.com/books/2015/9/23/recalling-time-pope-francis-advocated-civil-unions.
- https://www.facebook.com/DeanCDettloff/likes?lst=1391869724%3A100009642877771%3A1564582235.
- Vladimir Lenin, Speech to Communist International Congress in 1919, Great Speeches, Aug. 22, 2018, http://www.greatspeeches.net/2018/08/vladimir-lenin-dictatorship-of.html.
- “Venezuelans Now On A Forced Starvation Diet — Thanks, Socialism!” Investor’s Business Daily, Feb. 21, 2017, https://www.investors.com/politics/editorials/venezuelans-now-on-a-forced-starvation-diet-thanks-socialism/.
- Pius IX, encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum, Dec. 8, 1849.
- “Modernism leads to the annihilation of all religion. The first step in this direction was taken by Protestantism; the second is made by Modernism; the next will plunge headlong into atheism.” Saint Pius X, encyclical Pascendi Dominici Gregis, Sept. 8, 1907, http://w2.vatican.va/content/pius-x/en/encyclicals/documents/hf_p-x_enc_19070908_pascendi-dominici-gregis.html.