Comments on: Christians Who Pray to ‘St. Marx’ are Building the Next Gulag

By: Fr. Johannes Jacobse

Fr. Johannes Jacobse — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 16:00:40 +0000

In reply to Bill C.. Very well said, Bill C.

By: Bill C.

Bill C. — Fri, 01 Jun 2018 13:47:30 +0000

Christian anthropology lifts man towards Heaven; Marxist anthropology reduces him to dust. There can be no union between the two. The introduction of Marxist principles into Christian communities silences of Christ’s voice through the deceptive manipulation of language and the replacement of God’s promises with materialist substitutes. Hope in the Kingdom and the charity that flows from it are lost, and souls and lives are destroyed in the demonic butcher shop of never-ending revolutionary strife.

By: Russel

Russel — Fri, 13 Oct 2017 10:00:54 +0000

I walked out of my church when I was 12 years old in part because the “pastor” was a socialist, and rather than delivering a satisfying and nourishing spiritual message from the pulpit, he subjected his congregation to a Marxist style drubbing of how “bad” we were as human beings, not because of our sinful nature, but because we hadn’t embraced a socialist set of beliefs and engaged in the restructuring of our society along Marxist lines. I still cannot understand why this man chose to be a minister of the gospel if he put all of his true intellectual stock in a bankrupt, godless intellectual construct. All these years later, I still find myself filled with loathing when I think of the minister’s desire to turn his bully pulpit into a cheap soapbox from which he could preach the gospel of Marx, and regale his congregation with homilies about class warfare and the righteousness of a great social leveling (which did NOT include him, however, in his exalted position) which would soon come to pass, in addition to all of the other horrors associated with Socialism/Marxism. I stopped being a Protestant that day, and it has only been recently that I found the Russian Orthodox Church as the fulfilling alternative to my former affiliation. Father, I appreciate so very much (in more ways than one!) your essay on the subject of the nefarious deification of Marx. The idea chills me to my very soul.

By: Michael Bauman

Michael Bauman — Tue, 13 Dec 2016 18:03:20 +0000

Father Hans, I would also suggest that what we need more if are teachers and leaders who deeply embrace the Incarnation and are able to communicate it’s reality and hope.

Unfortunately the ecclesiology of the Catholic Church long ago, IMO, did great violence to the revealed truth that God is everywhere present filling all things. In a greatly reductionist understanding it is not difficult to come to the conclusion that the Pope is the only Catholic. Recognition of His authority is recognition of His and the only way into heaven. That is not the Gospel.

The Protestants rightly rebelled against such a spirit. They just went in the direction of antihierarchal individualism which compounded the problem and gave birth to secular egalitarianism and Gnostic materialism.

What they are actually seeking is communion with the living God

Capitalism as an ideology is little better. Anyone with a heart can see that. It too has rejected the sacred reality of matter in favor of a despotic rapaciousness that looks on everything, including human beings, as capital- a physical resource to be used and exploited until it no longer has quantitative value. In our culture where nothing has intrinsic value, that is inevitable.

As you rightly point out, The Cross is essential but the Cross cannot be embraced without knowing that Jesus is fully God and fully man and always will be. His Sacramental presence and the living communion that flows from that is both impossible and inexplicable without the Incarnation.

Christ Incarnate and Him crucified at once reveals both the inherent value if all created things while at the same time proclaims the ultimate passing away of all things.