A reader writes:

Last night a school mate of mine (we're graduate students) started talking about how she had been reading Marx lately (insert expletive here) and thought he was just brilliant (and misunderstood, because leaders of Communist countries totally abused his ideas), followed closely by why she thinks European Union is a fantastic idea, and why the U.S. should definitely have national health care.

I managed to stammer out that I didn't think any of that was a good idea, but to my great embarrassment I could not articulate why (perhaps I have not spent enough time reading your blog). I have never been interested in politics or these kinds of social questions, and never bothered to learn about them beyond skimming "The Communist Manifesto" and "Rerum Novarum" in freshman Western Civ a few years ago, but clearly it is time for me to step up to the plate and learn to defend my heretofore hazily negative position on these subjects.

Could you (or your blog readers) please recommend some reading for me, either online or in books?

I suspect the reason Marx is so beloved and perennial is because he comes closer than most philosophers to scratching an itch that is as old as the fall: the promise of heaven on earth. No matter how many times commies fail, we always hear some excuse for it: they meant well, true communism has never been tried, Marx's thought has been perverted, etc. The idea of getting to heaven without the dying part has roots as old as the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

That said, I have no confidence that the notion of an EU (which, as I understand it is a sort of "United States of Europe") is particularly Marxist, nor that a national health care system is either Marxist nor an intrinsically bad idea. I don't say it's a good idea either. I merely say that, unlike Marxism (which *is* atheistic communism despite the lies of some True Believers--and which the Church has repeatedly condemned) I see no particular reason for thinking there is a "the" Catholic position on the EU or national health care. The Church says that the State has the obligation to care for the common good and that people have a right to such basic human things as food, shelter and care for sickness. But it leave the question of how to organize society to achieve those ends up to human ingenuity and does not subscribe to a particular political theory or economic scheme. So I'd be cautious about trying to enlist the Church in support of a basically conservative gut instinct and making her a cheerleader for or against the EU or national health care. On the matter of communism you are on much more solid ground. Pius XI writes against it and John Paul II does the autopsy on it.

But be careful not to conflate the Church's condemnation of communism with some vast theory that the Church is for or against the EU or national health care. The Church does not micromanage such matters.