Is the Pope a Marxist?
Short answer: no. But why?
The papacy is, and always has been, political. To think otherwise requires a very idealistic view about separation of Church and State and a neglect of history.
The recent election of Pope Leo XIV was immediately examined for its political implications – in principle, not a bad thing to do. A lot of attention – perhaps too much – has been paid, however, to the reactions of right-wing MAGA Americans, including Steve Bannon and JD Vance, both Catholic.
Right-wing activist Laura Loomer, a self-professed Islamaphobe who’s said to have some influence on Donald Trump, accused the new pope of being a Marxist.
This shouldn’t be worth our attention, but the term ‘Marxist’ gets misused by the Right to dismiss anyone who upholds progressive or social-democratic values, whether they adhere to actual Marxism or not. This obscures its proper meaning, and it seemed timely to say something about it. Words such as ‘postmodern’, and philosophers such as Michel Foucault have suffered from similar maltreatment.
The simple reason why one can’t validly call the Pope a Marxist is that Marxism is atheistic.
One similarity between Christianity and Marxism, on the other hand, is that they both show concern for the poor. And they both point to a transformation that will address injustice. A movement called liberation theology – which the new Pope would have learned about in Peru – blended in some Marxist ideas in the 1960s. But that’s about where it ends.
Marxism views historical change in terms of class conflict and sees any future redemption as happening on earth, realised through a common ownership of the means of production.
In stark contrast, the Sistine Chapel houses another vision of the eventual delivery of justice: Michelangelo’s The Last Judgement.
This looks nothing at all like the future that Marx had imagined. And popes don’t challenge existing political and economic structures to the extent that Marx did. A call for peace and for greater care and support for the least well off is about as far as a pope will go.
Nonetheless, loud voices in MAGA-world sound threatened by the pope’s social values, such as his apparent concern for migrants, given his influence among conservative Catholics. Calling him a Marxist, however, was plain silly.
If anyone isn’t sure what Marx was really on about, you can listen to my podcast.
Why does Loomer’s illogical nonsense get to be “news”?
For good measure, here are some ridiculous uses of “woke”:
As with Reductio ad Hitlerum, there's also its Reductio ad Stalinum variant.
Whether Pope Leo is a Marxist or not is not the issue. The question is, is he a socialist? If so, like his predecessor he's no friend of the poor.