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"Niebuhr Finds Similarity in
Communism, Christianity"
Harvard
Law Record - November 18, 1947 - Page 1
reprinted by permission
Dr. Reinhold Niebuhr and the Reverend John A. O'Brien, S.J. discussed the incompatibility of Christianity and Communism before a record Law School Forum audience of 1600 at Rindge Technical auditorium last Friday night.
Hundreds had to be turned away from the meeting at which Father O'Brien of Boston College declared that Marxian communism is irreconcilable with the tenets of Christianity. The Jesuit priest stated flatly: "The communist cannot be a Christian and the Christian cannot be a communist."
Although unwilling to say the communism as developed in the Soviet is compatible with Christianity, nevertheless Dr. Niebuhr, professor at the Union Theological Seminary who describes himself as a "heretic," found similarity in the spiritual idealism that motivated both ideologies. While declaring that communism is based on the fundamental misconception that private property is the basis of social evil, the Protestant theologian pointed out that whereas early Christians regarded private property as a necessary evil, a protective religious aura has been developed about the ambiguities of the social and economic systems so that the Church now regards the absoluteness of private property as the basis of social virtue.
Father O'Brien postulated four essentials of the Marxian philosophy which make it incompatible with the Christian concept of God and the spiritual nature of mankind -- the materialism of communism, its mechanistic conception of history, the excessive emphasis of economic factors and encouragement of the class struggle.