The Hope of the People
The Marxists say
that religion
is the dope of the people.
Religion is not the dope of the people,
it is the hope of the people.
Modern society
is a materialist society
because Christians have failed
to translate the spiritual
into the material.
If Christians knew
how to make a lasting impression
on the materialist depression
through spiritual expression
Marxists would not say
that religion
is the dope of the people.
As Raymond de Becker says:
“The social task of the laity
is the sanctification
of secular life,
or more exactly,
the creation
of a Christian secular life.”
The Christian Front
The Christians
who consider religion
the hope of the people
should not unite
with the Marxists
who consider religion
the dope of the people.
As the editors of the Christian Front say:
“Marxism not only falsifies
the origin and the end of man
but it seeks to make of him
an anonymous animal,
a servant
of the proletarian State.”
The editors of the Christian Front
are not liberals,
they think that men
“must take their choice
to stand for Christianity
or to stand for what opposes it.”
They ask the Christians
“to dissociate themselves
from an un-Christian social order
and prepare the way
for a social order
compatible with their beliefs.”
The New Apologetics
In his lectures
on the New Christendom
Jacques Maritain
emphasizes the necessity
of laying the foundations
of a new social order.
Laying the foundations
of a new social order
is the task of the laity.
The task of the laity
is to do the pioneer work
of creating order
out of chaos.
The clergy teach the principles;
the task of the laity
is to apply them
without involving the clergy
in the application.
The application to the social problems
by the Catholic laity
of the Catholic principles
taught by the Catholic clergy
is a new kind of apologetics,
a kind of apologetics
Catholics will not have
to apologize for.