5. Facing the Problem

At first glance, and considered in itself, the prob­lem of coexistence between the Church and a "toler­ant" Communist regime might be stated as follows:

If, in a given country living under a Communist government and regime, the holders of power, far from forbidding worship and preaching, permitted one and the other, could the Church accept this lib­erty of action in order to distribute the sacraments and the bread of the word of God unfettered?

When the question is presented purely and sim­ply in these terms, the answer is necessarily affirma­tive: The Church could, and even would be obliged to accept that freedom. In this sense She could, and would be obliged to coexist with Communism. For, under no pretext whatsoever may She refuse to car­ry out her mission.

We must note, however, that this formulation of the problem is oversimplified. it makes one suppose

implicitly that the Communist government would not impose the least restriction on the liberty of the Church in carrying out her doctrinal mission. But there is no reason to believe that such a government would give the Church full freedom to teach her doctrine, since this would imply allowing her to preach all the doctrines of the Popes concerning morals, the law, and particularly concerning the family and private property, which in turn would re­sult in making every Catholic a born enemy of the regime, so that to the degree the Church extended her action She would be killing the regime. This means that the regime would be practicing suicide to the extent that it tolerated the freedom of the Church. And this would be so, above all, in coun­tries where the influence of the Church over the population is very great.

Thus, we cannot be satisfied with the resolution of the problem as it is presented in the general for­mulation above. We must see what solution should be given to this problem in the case of a Communist government which required that Catholic preaching and teaching, in order to be tolerated, conform to the following conditions:

1^st ‑ that they convey the Church's doctrine in an affirmative manner, but without making to the faithful any refutations of materialism and other errors inherent to Marxist philosophy;

2^nd ‑ that they remain silent as to the Church's thought concerning private property and the family;

       3^rd ‑or that, without criticizing directly the social and economic system of Marxism, they at least state that the legal existence of the family and private property is an ideal desirable in theory but unattainable in practice as a result of communist domination, and for this reason they recommend in the present situation that the faithful give up any attempt to abolish the Communist regime and to re­establish legally private property and the family in accordance with the principles of the Natural Law.

Could such conditions be accepted, in all con­science, tacitly or expressly, as a price for a mini­mum of legal freedom for the Church under a Com­inunist regime? In other words, could the Church re­nounce her liberty in some of these points in order to preserve it in others for the spiritual benefit of the faithful? This is the heart of the problem.