A Reminder

Years ago in a faculty colleague's office, that colleague and I expressed to a third professor, a young up-and-coming, stop-at-nothing type, our deep reservations toward the French Revolution. (And you wonder why I'm not in academe?) When she said that her students received a positive picture of the event, I said something to the effect that, well, lining up priests and nuns and murdering them might not be the way to go. She just shrugged, grinned, and walked away.

Today we're reminded that Chinese communist officials, whose desire for power and revenge mimics the French of old, have never really stopped acting like the Reds of old, at least not in any sphere of life that threatens their corrupt one-party rule. Their target is often the clergy, and for similar reasons the Revolutionaries of '89 struck out against priests and religious in their day: church personnel owe their allegiance to an authority that lies beyond the reach of the state. As such, they represent the hope that, with time, the iron rule of the regime can be broken. It's analogous to the trouble the Nazis (and their intellectual heirs) have with Jews: as Walker Percy said, they're a reminder that, regardless of what a utopian regime promises or attempts, history is not on their side. There remains something larger than the polity, longer lived than the state.

I discovered this story via David Mills at Mere Comments, who quotes from the press release from the Cardinal Kung Foundation relaying word of the arrests of priests in China, and says:

Well, they are Communists. I know that even among political conservatives, the ascription of wicked behavior to Communists because they are Communists is no longer done, but their being Communists does accurately explain why they act like Communists.

Yes, it would indeed.