Man's political insignificance and social helplessness in the face of capitalism when acting on his own is glaring.
People often take refuge in escapist pursuits such as the internet and social media as a form of diversion from man's lowly position in the eyes of the economic system and his environment.
Marx's starting point was Hegelian philosophy.
The Hegelian phenomenology of the spirit is not inimical or hostile to attributing a meaningful existence to oneself. Indeed all materialism and epistemology leads to that very consciousness of one and same.
Some are against that phenomenology and those people are fascists and Nazis obsessed with Romantic idealism (Erich Von Klemperer,I shall bear witness,Folio Society,London).
I say that only a fool or worldly-blind charlatan would ignore the importance of material gifts to spiritual wellbeing.
The doctrine of materialism is closely associated with Karl Marx and the school of thought which he founded, Marxism.
His great companion was Friedrich Engels who was based in Manchester. Many reformed clergymen were drawn to materialism in England's teeming slums and in the thriving industrial hub of Manchester when Engels lived there. (Engels provided Marx with most of his insights into the factory system which Marx worked up into the three volumes of Capital).
In trying to combine absolute and relative,I propose that we should not think in terms of absolute truths or of a world where we ourselves are connected inextricably to our material conditions.
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Pope Leo the Thirteenth's opposition to revolutionary socialists (Rerum Novarum, 1883) is strange but is it not the only doctrine compatible with the belief in inalienable human rights?
Read the later Divini Redemptoris (1937) for the endorsement of Marx's great discoveries and a repetition of hostility to the revolutionary socialists and Atheistic Bolshevism. Pope Pius was the sole Western authority at the time to point out that the revolution had consumed its own leading figures.
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We could see in the pietistic anti-materialism of the Irish Church and its political speakers opposition to the Judas Syndrome,that being gluttony for drink,self-immolation and out-and-out Epicureanism. Remember that Judas drunk himself to death after being offered more food by Jesus as you would to any glutton if you feared him.
The Church teaches that the road to eternal salvation and a measure of immediate happiness lies in Christian charity and asceticism,Stoicism.
The type of materialism adored and worshipped by temporal beings is what has long been regarded by Catholic priests and scholars in Britain as Marxist gluttony. Gluttony is incompatible with the way of life preached by the followers of Jesus (see Acts). In biblical times Epicureanism was opposed to the prevalent Stoicism.
Stoicism is the proper path to understanding the early Christian enlightenment.
In English terms,materialism is historically associated with Capitalism and Progress and central to having Common Sense. That is the recent past. In our times the political belief in inalienable rights prevails. One way or another,for the thinking person,the enduring credo of human rights should prevail over the whimsies of world leaders and Anglo-Saxon materialists. The thinking person believes that the rights agenda trumps the magnificent isolation of the still active small groups of Marxists and Stalinists and Common Sense New Englanders.
Come at it as you will,both human rights thinking at a political level and Christian stoicism were sadly absent throughout history. That was, until the clash of German state cartels which fell largely under capitalist ownership with their main antagonist,Stalinism. That struggle opened up the Pandora's Box of political progress,a synthesis of Christian civility and rude materialism.
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Looked at in basic terms of individual vis-a-vis Jewry and Christianity,the Jewish guilt for usury is absolved by the Catholic Church.
The Jews attempt to engage people in borrowing so they are profligate lenders.
The Catholic Church will come up with the money to pay the debts of a multitude of good credit risks in its own good time before the hammer comes down for a court judgement against them but it too will turn up with its begging bowl at the door to have them repaid or send someone else to do it for them by means of a former church scholar. The latter realises that if the church does not have money coming in,it can not have money going out. As good stewards,they demand full repayments but they do not believe in interest on their debts. No belief in lending for a higher return? No,no belief in lending for a reward plus the original capital because the Church associates that with malefactum Iudaeorum.
If however,you suspect that your local clergyman has turned "Jewish",the hapless Italians will step forward to put you in the picture with a copy of the Latin Mass on the bookstall at the rear of the Church. If the Catholic priests locally are Jews in all but name,then they will not only charge compound interest but demand an outsize redemption fee.
In my instance, the fee demanded is "an eight figure sum if that is possible" from a parish priest who is trying to fit me up with the most profligate hussey in the town of Enniskillen.
I kid you not. No thanks,father,you have had your reward. Check your books. A soldier does not pay interest and a king should not be importuned for his shirt.
When Lenin and Stalin had had enough of Jewish lenders in the US-the witless writers referred to them as "Communist billionaires"- they went solo in terms of international trade;Lenin,in1919 and Stalin,in 1937. The purges were of the real internationalists and Free Trade-rs.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Joseph Paul Mc Carroll LL B Hons QUB
