Word: communism
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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Joseph Stalin once asked a scornful question: "How many divisions has the Pope?" An answer was prepared last week. Pius XII decreed excommunication for Roman Catholics who "knowingly and freely . . . defend and spread Communism." Those Catholics who "enlist in or show favor to the Communist Party" and those who "publish, read or disseminate" Communist publications would be denied the sacraments...
...church was trying to reduce the ignorance and the pressure that had led millions into a double allegiance to Communism and Catholicism. It wanted to sharpen the issue in the consciences of men. Confusion over this issue had created dangers for the church on both sides of the Iron Curtain. In the West the confusion arose mainly out of ignorance; in the East, out of the efforts of individuals to come to terms with the police state...
...Sunday, Father Giovanni read the excommunication decree from the pulpit. "What this means," he explained, "is that if you approve of Communism, you'll be banned from the church. We cannot give you the sacraments. This is only a religious measure . . . We are defending our church. Only that. Do you understand...
...threat of prosecution for treason "laughable nonsense." A Vatican spokesman asserted: "Excommunication has no need of a material executor who can be traced and punished. Excommunication acts upon the guilty in the secret of the conscience." On the other hand, Eastern Catholics who were terrorized into lip service to Communism would not incur the penalties of the papal edict. Priests, he added, were expected to do their duty regardless of personal consequences...
...Communists feasted on the fuzziness and played upon the bitterness. They promised (but did not deliver) material abundance. They said that Communism was not opposed to religion. Yet they also said (more quietly)-and this was a fact -that the Communist philosophy was essentially atheistic and that the only morality it recognized was based upon what was good or bad for the "world revolution." Pius XII's excommunication decree was an effort to expose the Communist duplicity. He was repeating: "Ye cannot serve God and mammon." The strength of the Pope's divisions would be measured...