The radical movement’s agenda includes communist ideals and goals opposed to traditional Church teaching about God, society, and human nature.
As leftist activism and violence increase, Americans must understand that the leftist agenda represents not just a political movement but a worldview contrary to that of the Catholic faith. Wherever the left has dominated, a radical hatred toward the faith and those who belong to it is displayed.
However, until the left is in control, this anti-Catholic hatred is kept in check and hidden. Leftist propaganda couches itself in terms that seek sympathy and not raise alarm. This deception makes it even more dangerous.
The left’s hostility toward religion manifests itself in many ways, whether it be the Antifa militants burning Bibles or the religious left that dresses up its Marxist ideas in religious terms. In an attempt to legitimise their call for violent revolution, for example, so-called liberation theologians propose a Christian version of class struggle.
Today, the leftist movement is radicalising by proposing an agenda with new communist ideals and goals opposed to traditional Church teaching about God, society, and human nature. The left now incorporates postmodern thought into its twisted body of doctrine. Communism today goes beyond the Soviet state capitalism of old and embraces gender theory and identity politics, so contrary to the Church’s teaching on creation.
This leftist vision threatens American and its love for freedom. The faithful need to be fully aware of the extent of this hatred, to fight effectively against the left’s nefarious agenda.
There are many reasons why the left hates the Catholic faith. The following list of 17 reasons serves as an introduction to understanding the scope of the fight between these two opposing worldviews:
- The left hates the notion of a transcendent and personal God. These attributes are the opposite of its gnostic and egalitarian vision. Since the left hates all superiority, it considers an almighty and loving God “oppressive.” Instead, the left identifies with Satan, the devil, an inferior, created being, a damned angel, and the supposed victim of the Creator’s eternal justice and thus one who is “oppressed,” “disenfranchised,” “discriminated,” and “marginalised to the peripheries.”
- The left hates the Church’s moral law, which is based on natural law — a set of objective societal norms, valid for all times, places and peoples. The left teaches that morality is relative — “If it feels good, do it!” was the hippie rallying cry — and promotes its own set of evolving norms on everything that favours its revolution.
- The left hates the Church’s concept of the family as society’s basic unit, founded on the sacrament of marriage and the transmitter from one generation to another of morality, religion, tradition and property. The left sees the family as an oppressive institution that must be destroyed, mutilated and defamed.
- The left hates the institution of marriage defined as the union of one man and one woman to the exclusion of all others, open to children and responsible for their education. The left hates marriage because it reinforces morality. The left favours “free love” and sexual deviation.
- The left hates the Church teaching that private property is just and necessary for society’s good order. It sees property as a source of inequality and tries to undermine and limit it in every way possible. The left’s ideal is to confiscate all private property, making it State- or collective-owned, because “the earth belongs to everyone.”
- The left hates the Church’s hierarchical nature. It hates the Christ-established division between a Teaching Church — the pope, bishops and priests which teaches, governs, and sanctifies the faithful — and the Learning Church, the faithful, which allows itself to be taught, governed, and sanctified by the clergy. Instead of seeing in this division the path to Heaven, the left sees a class of oppressors to be crushed and another of oppressed in need of liberation. Thus, the left likes to promote class struggle inside the Church.
- The left hates the Church’s charity, which seeks to harmonise society, uniting all in the love of God and neighbour. The left, however, wants class struggle and strife. It espouses hatred and violence as the natural means to change society.
- The left hates the Catholic teaching on sin because it affirms the existence of a higher law and a God who deserves to be obeyed. Moreover, it hates the Church teaching that people are responsible for their acts and that these have consequences, which can be eternal damnation and punishment. Thus, the left denies free will and individual responsibility. It ascribes all blame for evil to social structures that must be overthrown.
- The left hates the Church’s love of the poor, which seeks to alleviate the sufferings of the unfortunate instead of inciting them to revolt against those who have more. The left hates the gratitude, which the Church teaches the poor must have toward those who help them. It sees this gratitude as humiliating and oppressive.
- The left hates the concept of the immortal soul that makes each human being uniquely endowed with God-given dignity. The left says the soul is a myth and treats people as mere biological matter to be used and abused in its revolutionary processes. Leftist regimes support abortion, for example.
- The left hates the notion of grace, whereby a person participates in God’s uncreated divine life and becomes capable of supernatural acts. The left’s egalitarian philosophy hates dependency, especially dependency on God and supernatural life.
- The left hates liturgy whereby individuals render official worship and praise to God through the Church with all Her rites, ceremonies, prayers and sacraments. It hates this recognition of God’s infinite superiority, which it considers oppressive. It desires a god on equal terms with humanity and a “democratic” people’s Church without priesthood or liturgy.
- The left hates the Church’s proclamation of the Truth and Her office as its guardian. All is relative and evolving for the left, and therefore, objective and immutable truth does not exist.
- The left hates beauty. Wherever the left dominates, one finds ugliness enshrined in its buildings, art and culture. This is because leftists deny the metaphysical foundations of beauty and embrace stark and utilitarian materialism.
- The left hates the Church teaching on human nature, sanctification and identity. Thus, there is a constant attempt to re-engineer human nature and create the “new socialist man.” Leftists try to deconstruct identity, gender and being. The left embraces fantasies disconnected from reality.
- The left hates the notion of Christian order guided and inspired by Church teaching and God’s higher law. Such an order instils terror in the leftist soul, which rebels against any attempt to order society according to principles and rules suited to human nature. The left hates discipline and effort, even when they lead to happiness. Its society is liberal, anarchical and disordered, oriented by a vision of the universe that sees everything as the chaos of matter in constant motion. Such a perspective leads to despair.
- The left hates reality as embraced by the Church and its Thomist philosophy. The most radical schools of the left see reality as an oppressive structure or social construct. The left subscribes to idealistic philosophies, drugs and “deconstruction” as the means to deny reality and embrace utopianism and nihilism.
The above list is not complete. Given that the leftist worldview encompasses every field of human action where the Church has influence, many more hatreds could be identified. Likewise, not all leftists embrace equally the hatreds listed above. The drift leftward is a process that adapts to individual characteristics. However, all leftists tend in the direction of these hatreds of the Catholic faith.
The radical left now so active in America will take these hatreds to an extreme. They seek to make these hatreds the norms by which their “brave new world” will operate. Their use of violence, riots and vandalism give a glimpse into this world. The symbolic display of guillotines at protests and during residential area terror marches points to anti-Christian, anti-Western hatreds never seen before in America.
The left is not a political movement or a political party. It is a philosophical-religious worldview that expresses itself socially, economically, politically, scientifically, artistically, educationally and culturally. Thus, to be fully efficacious, opposition to the left and its programs must be based on the solid understanding that its worldview is diametrically opposed to that of the Catholic faith.
By John Horvat II – scholar, researcher, educator, international speaker, and author of the book Return to Order, as well as the author of hundreds of published articles.