{"id":32290,"date":"2017-03-20T01:00:28","date_gmt":"2017-03-20T05:00:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=32290"},"modified":"2017-03-10T09:15:49","modified_gmt":"2017-03-10T14:15:49","slug":"qotd-the-christian-church-and-the-communist-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2017\/03\/20\/qotd-the-christian-church-and-the-communist-party\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: The Christian church and the Communist Party"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>That people believe what they want to believe, was among the discoveries of my adolescence. Reading obituaries of Robert Conquest (1917\u20132015; died Monday), the shock of this discovery comes back. I was then both an Atheist and a Cold Warrior. This insight into human nature and denature appeared to buttress both of these convictions: for it seemed to me that the Communist Party and the Christian Religion were products of blind faith, perpetuated by people who \u201cwanted to believe,\u201d and therefore believed what they wanted.<\/p>\n<p>Much was once said about the Alice-in-Wonderland parody of the Roman Church that the Communist Party offered. Immortal Christ founded the one, infallible Marx the other. Officially-recognized \u201capostles\u201d followed from each (Peter, Paul, John, in one case; Lenin, Stalin, Mao, in the other). The Party like the Church is a bureaucracy, under a hierarchy to be obeyed without thought or hesitation. Each has a form of \u201cconfession,\u201d and all the other \u201csacraments\u201d can be paired. Advancement requires strict fidelity to doctrine. Both institutions hunt \u201cheresies\u201d and canonize \u201csaints.\u201d They thrive on persecution. The utopia of perfect Scientific Socialism is a destination like Heaven. And so on: I haven\u2019t the energy to redraw the whole chart.<\/p>\n<p>That the Communist faith is \u201cmaterialist,\u201d and that of the Church \u201cspiritual,\u201d makes the parody more amusing. One might also say that Satan is a parody of Our Lord. In logic, however, a parody does not constitute a refutation.<\/p>\n<p>David Warren, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.davidwarrenonline.com\/2015\/08\/06\/transfiguration\/\" target=\"_blank\">&#8220;Transfiguration&#8221;, <em>Essays in Idleness<\/em><\/a>, 2015-08-06.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>That people believe what they want to believe, was among the discoveries of my adolescence. Reading obituaries of Robert Conquest (1917\u20132015; died Monday), the shock of this discovery comes back. I was then both an Atheist and a Cold Warrior. This insight into human nature and denature appeared to buttress both of these convictions: for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[53,41,11],"tags":[447,360,780],"class_list":["post-32290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-quotations","category-religion","tag-atheism","tag-christianity","tag-communism"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-8oO","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32290"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":32291,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32290\/revisions\/32291"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}