Catholicism and Communism

[buritobr]

Usually, communist parties and communist movements were strong in the countries where the majority of the population is Catholic. Latin America, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Greece and Russia (concerning the last two, orthodox is catholic too) used to have strong communist parties/movements. USA, Canada and the protestant Northern Europe had never had mass communist parties. (the exception is Germany, where the KPD used to be stronger in the protestant North than in the catholic Bavaria).

What is the explanation of this relation between Catholic population and strong communist parties/movements? Coincidence? Usually, catholics are not communists and communists are not catholic.

[Mr. Reactionary]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberation_theology

[Small L]

This is just my first thought, and I may be totally off base..

Majority Catholic countries have historically favored the Catholic Church to the point that the Church is associated with the State (both in people's minds and in fact). Since Communism is anti-clerical, it holds a special appeal for people who want to diminish the Church's favored position in those countries. Basically, I think the success of Communism in these countries is in part a reaction to Catholicism.

[Famous Mortimer]

This is just my first thought, and I may be totally off base..

Majority Catholic countries have historically favored the Catholic Church to the point that the Church is associated with the State (both in people's minds and in fact). Since Communism is anti-clerical, it holds a special appeal for people who want to diminish the Church's favored position in those countries. Basically, I think the success of Communism in these countries is in part a reaction to Catholicism.

This is exactly it.

[Ismail]

This is just my first thought, and I may be totally off base..

Majority Catholic countries have historically favored the Catholic Church to the point that the Church is associated with the State (both in people's minds and in fact). Since Communism is anti-clerical, it holds a special appeal for people who want to diminish the Church's favored position in those countries. Basically, I think the success of Communism in these countries is in part a reaction to Catholicism.

This is exactly it.

Obviously the Communists were no huge fans of the Catholic Church being a large landowner in many countries or teaching believers that supporting socialists was a bad thing, but the Communists still directed much of their blows against the capitalists or feudal landowners who actually dominated the political and much of the economic life of their countries.

For example during the Spanish Civil War the Communists were very vocal about the fact that many workers and peasants, especially those under Anarchist direction, were shooting up churches and clergymen. The Communists argued this was an infantile and objectively harmful activity and they did their best to put a stop to it. In the 1960s-80s pro-Soviet Communists were keen on building up links with the Catholic clergy, particularly in Latin America where a growing number of said clergy were adherents of Liberation Theology.

So I don't think the average worker or peasant in a country like Italy thought "I don't like the Catholic Church, therefore I'm going to become a commie." In fact efforts to limit the temporal power of the Church in these countries were associated with liberal parties who advocated secular education and moderate land reform. The Communists supported limiting the power of the Church to the spiritual realm as well, but their main focus (besides abolishing capitalism) was in organizing workers in trade unions against their employers and arguing that they were better representatives of the workers' interests than the socialist/social-democratic parties.

[Georg Ebner]

While the "Conservatives" of the 20th century have been "rational" (=utilitaristic) Liberals, Communism has been an antiChristian and atheistic church with saints, popes, dogmata, councils,  excommunications and very much mysticism (monism, masses, maschines, ...). US:SU=Nominalism: NeoPlatonism