Socialism is a political and economic theory that advocates State ownership of the means of production and distribution of goods. The latest national victim of Socialism is Venezuela. It has insufficient bread to feed its people and the production of bread for the Eucharist is affected.
The Stream reported that the Catholic organization Jesus’ Servants requested aid and flour donations to be able to maintain the Eucharistic celebrations in different Venezuelan churches.
In order to produce anything, Venezuelan businesses depend on government imports of raw materials. The government controls products that enter and leave Venezuela. Victor Maldonado, executive director of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Services in Caracas, explained that flour shortages are due to the monopoly of imports of all edible goods. According to Maldonado, the Maduro government stopped importing wheat flour, which is not produced in Venezuela.
He said, “The government monopolized the imports of all foodstuffs and everything that the government monopolizes ends up being a trap of inefficiency and corruption. The consumer must pay the price but even so companies collapse.” So, the Venezuelans have no bread, the staple of life.
This is an example of how profoundly anti-human and anti-Christian Socialism really is! Utopians, atheists and materialists created Socialism. Its goal is an earthly paradise without God and Christianity. But, it’s such a failure even in material terms that it drives people to starvation.
Socialism offers heaven on earth. However, they deliver an earthly hell. In an honest regulated market system, you cannot prosper without meeting other people’s needs. In Socialism, you cannot prosper at all.
The United States has the best economy that the world has ever known. It has helped the most people to meet their human needs through free market regulated and restrained capitalism with personal charity.
Five popes, including Saint John Paul II, have condemned Socialism. These popes were gifted with wisdom from God to teach the truth about what is good and what is evil. Socialism is evil.
As Pope Leo XIII wrote,
And in addition to injustice, it is only too evident what an upset and disturbance there would be in all classes, and to how intolerable and hateful a slavery citizens would be subjected. The door would be thrown open to envy, to mutual invective, and to discord; the sources of wealth themselves would run dry, for no one would have any interest in exerting his talents or his industry; and that ideal equality about which they entertain pleasant dreams would be in reality the leveling down of all to a like condition of misery and degradation.
Hence, it is clear that the main tenet of Socialism, community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit, is directly contrary to the natural rights of mankind, and would introduce confusion and disorder into the commonweal. The first and most fundamental principle, therefore, if one would undertake to alleviate the condition of the masses, must be the inviolability of private property.
The popes have said that Socialism is unjust, false, tyrannical, and even a “diabolical” counterfeit of Christian charity. Socialism denigrates the meaning and dignity of human beings, human rights, private property, the principle of subsidiarity and trust in God. Subsidiarity is a Catholic social principle that advocates the use of lower mediating organizations such as municipal corporations, associations and families before resort to the State. The fundamental error of Socialism is anthropological. It is based upon a wrong view of human nature whereby people are subordinated to the State when, in fact, people pre-existed the State which should be subordinate to them.
St. John Paul II wrote, “By intervening directly and depriving society of its responsibility, the Social Assistance State leads to a loss of human energies and an inordinate increase of public agencies, which are dominated more by bureaucratic ways of thinking than by concern for serving their clients, and which are accompanied by an enormous increase in spending. In fact, it would appear that needs are best understood and satisfied by people who are closest to them and who act as neighbors to those in need” [through the principle of subsidiarity].
Let us pray through Our Lady of America that we will be protected from the evils of Socialism and that the production of bread for our Eucharistic celebrations is never endangered.
Please sign the Petition for our Bishops to solemnly process and display her statue as a safeguard for our country, as she promised.
Read the full story here.
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