French Cardinals, In Letter On Communism, Say :

" CHURCH DOES NOT RANGE HERSELF ON ONE OF
TWO SIDES ,1
The Church is not engaged in an anti Communist crusade, neither is it, through the recent Holy Office decree, supporting the capitalist regime.
i These points are made by the four Cardinals of France in a letter issued last week and in which they also call upon the Catholics of France to understand and follow the decree which forbids them to joinor give support to Communism.
The concluding section, which has the widest application, reads as follows:
" A Catholic will do well to preserve himself from saying that, in the midst of a conflict which ranges Communist versus anti-Communist forces, the Church has now ranked herself on one of two sides.
" The Church refuses to enter into a crusade ' in which are intermixed so many rivalries and interests of a temporal and economic order: she knows that in such a case she would be compromising the purity of her mission, which is essentially spiritual. "No more does she do so today than in the last world war.
" In view of the Holy Office decree, a Catholic should not fall under the illusion, held all too frequently, that the unfavourable judgment passed by the Holy See on one doctrine signifies an approbation of the opposite doctrine.
CAPITALISM
" In condemning the action of Communist parties, the Church does not identify herself with any capitalist regime.
"It is as well to know that even in the idea of capitalism, that is to say in the absolute value which it bestows on property, without reference to the common good and to the dignity of work, there is a materialism rejected by Christian teaching.
" Those Catholics who, through their rank in society and their power in the economic life of nations, their class egotism or their attachment to the riches of the world are ensnared into resisting a transformation of the social structure, are certainly not acting in the spirit of Jesus Christ.
"They are, without doubt, the accomplices of the enemies of the
Church, and serve as agents for the Communist revolution.
" We well understand the sufferings which the workers, faced with the Communist condemnation, have resented. We know that they saw in it above all a party which agitated and was resolved to abolish the social injustices from which they suffered, and to give to the workers their place as free men, in their job as in the place of residence."
UNJUST REGIME
The• letter recalls how for more than fifty years the Popes have not ceased from their teaching that the workers' condition in the existing regime is unjust. and continues: "She is thus involved with no capitalist organisation; but no more is she taking part in a Communist organisation which, having deprived capitalism of its privileges, deposits them and concentrates them in the hands of an all-powerful State.
" A man cannot be an instrument of profit, neither for the service of those who formerly had the privileges, nor in the service of the State. He must enjoy personal liberty, see that his dignity as worker is respected and have his just share of the prosperity which he has helped to create.
" That is why the Church never ceases to encourage her priests and those militant Christian workers who, in their Catholic action movements and the Christian syndicate organisations, are in contact with the spiritual and material needs of the workers and who, as Cardinal Suhard, our colleague of greatly venerated meniory,t wrote shortly before his death, 'share their
storms, their sorrows d also their hopes The Cardinals conclude their letter with an affirmation that " when the Communist error has lost the command which today it exercises over a too great number of minds, humanity will again recognise that it is the Church of Jesus Christ, which, in her heroic stand against her persecutors, has saved the true idea of man and his dignity.
" The decree of the Holy Office, because it defends the truth, constitutes for Christians, and with them for all men, a decisive act of liberation."
The letter is signed by Cardinal Lienart, Bishop of Lille; Cardinal Gerlier, Archbishop of Lyon; Cardinal Saliege. Archbishop of Toulouse; and Cardinal Rogues, Archbishop of Rennes.