2. Religion and religions in the Program

The self-managing society does not confine itself to eliminating or restrict­ing the individual's liberties but, as we have seen, it even seeks to form his very conscience.

These considerations naturally prompt one to ascertain to what extent the Program mutilates the rights of Reli­gion:

a) One could say that every word, every letter of the Program is laicist. There is no thought of God in it. For it, the source of all rights is not God but man, society. The Program entirely ignores the next life, Revelation, and the Church as the Mystical Body of Christ."

b) Religion, or rather, religions - as far as the Program is concerned, since it does not recognize the supernatural character of any of them - are merely social realities which have always existed and still exist. They are realities extrin­sic to the self-managing society that clash head-on with its laicism. This leads one to foresee that the self-­managing society, which tends to destroy everything extrinsic and contra­dictory to it, will work to extinguish religions "gradualistically." True, the Program guarantees free­dom of worship. But this freedom is restricted to a bare minimum in a world opposed to the Church in everything that society conceives and implements regarding the economy, social organiza­tion, political totalitarianism, perpetua­tion of the human species, the family, and even man himself. ³⁹ The Program implies such a global vision of society that it necessarily pre­ supposes - although not explicitly - a global vision of the Universe. For the Universe is, in a certain way, the context of society. A global, laicist and self-sufficient society corresponds to an anal­ogously global, laicist and self-sufficient universe.

In turn, a vision of the Universe implies either an affirmation or a denial of God, a denial perfectly real even though expressed by silence. ⁴⁰  The Program is therefore "a-theist," without God, athe­ist.

It is licit to ask whether or not the Program's silence about God is merely a "gradualist" stage leading to some kind of a plausibly evolutionist pantheism.

This reference to a possible pantheism is made because the Program attributes a kind of redemptive function to society as a whole. There the individual is rescued from the shipwreck into which his very condition as an individual puts him. It is the path to the solution of all problems. ⁴¹

The reference to evolutionism is, in turn, related to the arbitrary, anti-natu­ral and artificial character of socialist reformism, and even more closely related to the fundamental relativism that it holds. ⁴²  On the basis of very obscure philosophical concepts with whose influence it is nevertheless thor­oughly permeated, the Program denies most fundamental principles of the natural order (such as the distinction between the mission of men and women, the family, marital authority, patria potes­tas, as well as the principle of authority at all levels and in all fields, private property and the right of inheritance). The Program, warring against the work of the Creator, aims at reconstructing a human society diametrically opposed to the God-given nature of man.

All of this presupposes that nature, which the SP holds to be indefinitely malleable, can be molded by man as he wishes. This is suggestive of evolution­ism.