more beneficial to your readers if you could determine the exact point under discussion in order to prevent your correspondents from wandering unto far or nearby fields, and thus obscure the suhject ; a hit of Joadism may prove useful. The point is 'not " did Pius IX and Leo XIII condemn Socialiem," there is no doubt that they did. But does that condemnation affect every type-of Socialism In our lintel
It is evident from the text that the one condemned by the Popes was against private property, against Christ
ianity, and revolutionary in character. Any such Socialism that may now e .t
will still be under the condemnation.
My contention is that the Socialism of the time of Pius IX and Leo XIII has
undergone many divisions, many trans formattons, many changes to the extent that there is at present a type of Socialism which does not fall under any condemnation. Pius XL so often quoted bn W. Gribbin, was aware of this fact. " Since the days of Leo the Socielism . . has. no less than the economic regime, undergone pro found changes. At that time Socialism could almost be termed a tingle system, which defended certain definite and
mutually coherent doctrines'' Nowa
days it has in the main become divided into two opposing and often bitterly hoatile camps, neither of which. however. has abandoned the anti-Christian basis !which was ever characteristic of Socialism."
But the Pope goes further, and Oil is very important " If these changes
continue, it may well come about that
gradually these tenets of mitigated Socialism will no longer be different
front the programme of those who seek to reform human society according to Christian principles. For it is rightly contended that certain forms of property must be reserved to the State, since they carry with them a power too great to be left to private individuals without injury to the community at large." The Pope, therefore, has fore seen the time when a cerfffin kind of Socialism would be identical to the movement of social reforms advocated by the Church. There is at present, in many countries. a kind of Socialism which has a great deal in common with the Christian teaching.
Can any man tell me what fundamental differences exist between the social programme issued by our Bishops, or the Hierarchies of America and Irelend, and that of the Socialist Parties in those countries (they call themselves Labour Party, but the name matters very little)? They are not against private property as tindersmod by the Catholic Church, e.g., the right for a man to possess a house, land or a business; they ale not on the whole anti-Christian, they are not revolutionary, but seek the changes by constitutional means; no man in his senses can say that such parties are condemned by. the Church, they are not, that is why the Catholics are free to join them, May I end by stating that the sentence " no one can he at the same time a sincere Catholic and a true Socialist " has been misunderstoodby many: the word " true" here does
not mean sincere but complete, complete in die sense understood and condemned by Pius IX and Leo XIII.
A. ATEL (REV.)
East Cowes.