Pick a Side, Comrade: Why You Can’t Be a Catholic and a Democratic Socialist
By now, it’s a tired trope: the latte-sipping, Birkenstock-wearing, seminary-educated progressive “Catholic” who says things like “Jesus was the first socialist,” while retweeting Bernie Sanders and knitting eco-scarves out of recycled Vatican II pamphlets. These are the same people who clutch their felt banners in one hand and a copy of the Communist Manifesto in the other, insisting that using government force to redistribute wealth is somehow a moral act of Christian charity. Lately they’ve even found a new socialist darling to adore – Zohran Mamdani, a New York politician who proudly wears the “democratic socialist” label. Mamdani sailed to a shocking primary victory on a platform of free everything: from rent freezes to government-run grocery stores. Progressive Catholics on Twitter cheered him on, mistaking his coercive utopianism for Christian compassion.
It’s not. It’s theft. At gunpoint. And it’s a theological abomination.
Let’s set the record straight.
I. You Can’t Be Both: Christ Is Not Karl
There is no such thing as “Christian socialism,” much less “Catholic democratic socialism.” That’s like saying “Christian Satanism” or “Catholic Freemasonry.” The Church has condemned socialism explicitly, repeatedly, and unambiguously for over a century.
Pope St. Pius X—who never once wore a rainbow stole or held a “dialogue” with Marxist guerillas—wrote in Fin Dalla Prima Nostra that “Socialism... is based on a theory of society peculiar to itself, and irreconcilable with true Christianity.”[1] He wasn’t being subtle. Truth isn’t subtle when souls are at stake. In the same vein, Pope Pius XI reiterated that even moderate socialism remains incompatible with the faith, calling it “fundamentally contrary to Christian truth” and warning that no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.
Leo XIII, in his landmark encyclical Rerum Novarum, declared that “the main tenet of socialism, the community of goods, must be utterly rejected, since it only injures those whom it would seem meant to benefit.”[2] In other words, socialism fails even on its own terms. It pretends to help the poor, while robbing them of dignity, initiative, and private property. All it accomplishes is making everyone equally miserable – a point the Popes saw with prophetic clarity long before The New York Times started fawning over Marxists in cassocks.
II. Charity with a Gun Is Not Charity
Christian charity is voluntary and personal, flowing from love of God and neighbor. It is not extorted through bureaucratic theft backed by the IRS and enforced by a SWAT team if you don’t comply. You cannot practice true charity at the barrel of a government gun.
St. Thomas Aquinas defined caritas (charity) as an act of the will – an interior movement of love – not an act of the state. “Charity is the friendship of man for God,” and its works are done freely in grace, not under compulsion[3]. Forcing a man to “give” under threat of fines or imprisonment isn’t charity at all—it’s legalized plunder. And that’s not just me talking. That’s Aristotle, Cicero, and even the cranky Frenchman Frédéric Bastiat, all of whom warned that legal plunder is what happens when the law takes from some what belongs to them and gives it to others to whom it does not belong[4].
When politicians promise to “freeze rents” or “cancel debt” by fiat, they are not performing acts of mercy – they are seizing one man’s property to bestow it on someone else, under the false pretense of virtue. New York’s current socialist experiment is a perfect example: Assemblyman Zohran Mamdani has vowed to “Freeze the rent” for four years on nearly a million apartments. What a benevolent gift to tenants, right? Except it’s not a gift at all – it’s coercion. It’s effectively government ordering landlords to provide “charity,” at their own expense, under pain of law. As Bastiat would say, that’s legalized robbery, not love.
In Caritas in Veritate, Pope Benedict XVI affirmed that “charity is not reducible to social justice or government-provided welfare.”[5] Bureaucratic redistribution depersonalizes the poor, turning them into statistics and wards of the state instead of beloved neighbors. Writing a check to the IRS for an ever-expanding welfare state is not the same as personally feeding the hungry or clothing the naked out of genuine love. Government largesse funded by other people’s money does not fulfill the commandment to love your neighbor as yourself; it instead breeds a culture of entitlement and resentment. The cruel irony is that big-government policies often hurt the very people they claim to help. Rent control, for instance, has wrought havoc in cities for decades by causing housing shortages and slums – a point on which virtually all economists (left and right) agree. Even some progressives are starting to admit that when you cap rents by law, landlords simply convert apartments to condos, abandon buildings, or never build more housing in the first place. The result? Less affordable housing overall. Government compulsion cannot create the love or creativity that true charity generates; it can only shackle the very human spirit that God intends to be free.
Government redistribution isn't feeding the poor—it's simply extortion wrapped in a welfare check.
III. “Democratic” Socialism Is Just Marxism with Better Branding
So-called “democratic socialism” is like putting lipstick on Karl Marx’s pig. It’s the same beast underneath, squealing about equality while rooting through your wallet. Adding the word “democratic” in front of an error doesn’t make it magically true. (If a majority voted to resurrect the golden calf, it would still be idolatry.)
The entire structure of Marxism is rooted in envy, class warfare, and the rejection of natural law and the divine order. It denies original sin and personal responsibility, reducing man to a economic automaton shaped purely by material conditions. Marxism sees man not as an image-bearer of God with an immortal soul, but as a meat puppet controlled by economic forces. It preaches that all of society can be engineered by the state – that utopia will emerge if we just seize enough private property and “spread the wealth around.” And it fuels this fantasy by stoking the deadly sin of envy: urging the have-nots to take from the haves, under the banner of “justice.”
That’s why Marxism always leads to gulags, bread lines, and re-education camps. The 20th century’s body count – about 100 million dead under socialist regimes – is not an accident or an aberration. It’s the inevitable fruit of a godless ideology that treats human beings as clay for central planners to mold. Marxism isn’t just one error among many. It’s the error of the modern world, a virus that has plagued humanity for over a century. (Our Lady of Fatima warned in 1917 that Russia’s Marxist errors would spread throughout the world if we did not repent, and boy, was she right. Now you can even major in Marxist studies at Georgetown – Kyrie eleison.)
Crucially, at its core Marxism rejects the two pillars of a moral society: family and faith. Don’t take my word for it—Karl Marx himself openly demanded the “abolition of the family” gutenberg.org. The Communist Manifesto drips with contempt for the “bourgeois” family and the “hallowed co-relation of parent and child,” declaring these sacred bonds nothing more than tools of capitalist oppression gutenberg.org. Marx and Engels sneered that raising children should be handed over to society, not parents, and that marriage is just a bourgeois contract that will vanish once private property is abolished gutenberg.org. Likewise, Marxism has no room for God – religion is simply “the opiate of the people,” a drug to sedate the masses. The Church, in the Marxist view, must be neutered or destroyed because it competes with loyalty to the Party. As Pope Pius XI observed in 1937, Communism is inherently atheistic and anti-family: it “rejects any divinely-constituted authority, including the authority of parents,” stripping man of his liberty and reducing the family to a purely material arrangement with no binding moral tiesvatican.vavatican.va. Under Communist regimes, mothers were yanked out of the home and children were turned over to state indoctrinators – exactly as Marx’s doctrine prescribed.
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Faith in God was crushed because the only permissible god is the revolution itself. In the Soviet Union, priests and monks were executed or exiled en masse, churches were razed or converted to museums of atheism, and generations grew up knowing only the gospel of Marx.
This is what lies at the heart of the “democratic socialism” that modern progressives swoon over. They might not be marching in Lenin’s footsteps yet, but they are walking down the same primrose path – one paved with good intentions and ending in the destruction of every freedom that matters. When Zohran Mamdani and his comrades wax poetic about “equality” and “people over profits,” they are drawing from the same poisoned well. Mamdani may not be calling for gulags (he’s too busy calling for government grocery stores), but the difference is of degree, not kind. His platform to have the city “hold or push prices far below market levels” on everything from rent to wages to food is straight out of the Marxist playbook of state economic control. And make no mistake, coercive control of prices or property – even done “democratically” – will inexorably lead to coercive control of people.
History has shown time and again that when the state plays God in the economic realm, it inevitably decides it must play God in the moral and spiritual realm too. And that road leads to the gulag and the guillotine. As the Popes have taught, Marxism is not an error to be dialogued with or “baptized” – it is an evil to be defeated. Our culture’s current flirtation with democratic socialism is just Marx in a trendy new outfit, selling the same old poison in a craft beer bottle.
IV. Dante’s Vestibule: Where the Lukewarm Go to Gnash Their Teeth
In Inferno Canto III, Dante describes the fate of those pitiable souls who tried to stand in the middle – the lukewarm who refused to take sides between good and evil. They are stripped of all distinction, chasing a blank banner for eternity while hornets sting them and maggots consume their blood and tears. These are the souls rejected by both Heaven and Hell for their cowardly indecision. Sound familiar?
The so-called “Catholic socialist” is exactly this: a fence-sitter trying to wear both a halo and a hammer-and-sickle. They want to sing Ave Maria on Sunday but chant “¡Viva la Revolución!” on Monday. They try to claim the Name above every name while worshiping at the altar of the almighty State. But you cannot serve both Christ and dialectical materialism. You cannot be both hot and cold. You will be spat out (Rev. 3:16).
The Church, in her wisdom, has zero tolerance for this spiritual muddle. Pope John Paul II – who knew a thing or two about living under socialism – flatly rejected the idea of a “third way” between capitalism and socialism. In Centesimus Annus he reminded the world that any system that diminishes personal freedom and responsibility is incompatible with human dignity, even if it sails under a banner of social justice[7]. There is no magical hybrid of Marx and Jesus that’s going to save the world. Either Christ is Lord, or the State is lord. Choose.
Mamdani and his ilk boast of a coming “people’s city” where rent is frozen, wages are dictated, groceries are nationalized – essentially, Heaven on Earth achieved by City Council vote. But their vision is a godless one, and tragically, some Catholics are cheering for it from the sidelines, hoping they can somehow reconcile this new socialism with their faith. They are like Dante’s futile souls, chasing a blank banner labeled “liberation” that in truth stands for nothing but their own confusion. They mouth pious platitudes about caring for the poor, all while voting for policies that destroy the very foundations of charity and truth.
It’s time to wake up. There is no middle ground here. Pick a side. Do you stand with the Church, or with an ideology the Church has condemned as “a plague” and “a satanic scourge” on humanityvatican.vavatican.va? Do you believe salvation comes from Christ, or from Five-Year Plans and rent control boards? The fence is on fire, and sitting on it will only get you burned.
V. True Catholic Social Teaching Is Not Socialism (It’s Virtue and Freedom)
Here’s the irony: authentic Catholic social teaching – the real deal, from the Apostles to Aquinas to Mother Teresa – actually provides everything the Christian socialist claims to want: care for the poor, justice for workers, the common good. But it does so without destroying freedom or family, and without idolizing the state. The Church’s vision of social order affirms subsidiarity, not state totalitarianism. It teaches that what individuals or small communities can do, should not be taken over by a higher authorityvatican.vavatican.va. In other words, higher levels of government must not absorb the functions that lower levels (like families, churches, local charities) can perform on their own[8]. That includes feeding the poor, educating children, caring for the sick – all those works of mercy that socialist regimes keep claiming only they can handle. Catholic teaching says nonsense: those duties belong first to me and you, guided by virtue, within our families and communities. The state is a last resort, not the first responder.
Catholic social teaching also defends private property as a natural right and a cornerstone of freedom. The Church has never wavered on this: Thou shalt not steal isn’t just a suggestion, and it applies whether you’re a lone thief or a majority of Parliament. The Catechism states plainly that the right to private property is valid and necessary to secure human freedom and dignity[9]. St. Thomas Aquinas himself argued that “private ownership is necessary for human life”, because people take better care of what is their own and property rights enable a peaceful and orderly society[10]. Aristotle (no slouch on political wisdom) noted that property held in common tends to be neglected – whereas private property, accompanied by virtuous stewardship, creates conditions of liberty and initiative[11]. Cicero, in the era of the Roman Republic, called the right to private property the foundation of justice in a society[12]. The Enlightenment radicals (and modern Marxists) who shout that “property is theft” have it exactly backwards: theft is theft, whether done by a street mugger or by socialist legislation. And taking away the fruits of a man’s labor by force – even force of law – is a grave sin that cries out to Heaven.
When Catholics advocate for free markets (the real free market, under the rule of law and moral norms), we are not bowing to Mammon. We are embracing a social system that respects the God-given freedom of the human person and unleashes creativity and generosity. True Catholic virtue, in fact, blossoms in a free economy tempered by moral law. The great economist Adam Smith – oft-maligned by socialists who’ve never read him – wrote an entire book (The Theory of Moral Sentiments) on the moral foundations of society before he ever wrote The Wealth of Nations. Far from promoting greed, Smith taught that humans are born with an innate sympathy for others: “How selfish soever man may be supposed, there are evidently some principles in his nature which interest him in the fortune of others, and render their happiness necessary to him, though he derives nothing from it except the pleasure of seeing it.”
In other words, people are wired by God to care for their neighbors – a point the Church heartily endorses. Free enterprise harnesses this reality by allowing individuals to pursue their own betterment while serving others’ needs. Smith famously observed that it’s not the baker’s charitable feelings that put dinner on our table, but his self-interest – yet in a well-ordered market, that self-interest is channeled into benevolence toward others, whether he intends it or not. As he put it, “the natural effort of every individual to better his own condition, when suffered to exert itself with freedom and security, is so powerful a principle, that it is alone… capable of carrying on the society to wealth and prosperity, surmounting a hundred impertinent obstructions with which the folly of human laws too often encumbers its operations.” In plain English: when people are free to innovate, work, and trade in a framework of justice, they end up enriching everyone and overcoming the foolish obstacles politicians throw in their path. (This, by the way, is exactly what socialist planners can’t replicate – which is why every command economy ends in scarcity and queues for toilet paper.)
Even Catholic teaching on social justice acknowledges that a just economy must reward work and creativity, not punish it. Pope Leo XIII taught in Rerum Novarum that it is a duty of fathers to provide for their families, and from this duty flows their right to earn and hold private property for the benefit of their household. He pointed out that the family is a society older than any State, with its own God-given rights that government must respect.
Among those is the father’s right (and mother’s, in her sphere) to improve their condition through honest labor – and to enjoy the fruits thereof, and pass them to their children. When free markets operate under the guidance of virtuous citizens, who respect the moral law and practice generosity, the result has been nothing short of miraculous: the lifting of billions from poverty, the growth of civil society institutions (churches, charities, mutual aid groups), and the general betterment of the “greater part of society,” to borrow Adam Smith’s phrase. Contrast that with socialism, which has only ever managed to make everyone equally poor (except the Commissars, who somehow live like kings – funny how that works).
Only in freedom can virtue truly flourish. Coerced “virtue” isn’t virtue at all – it’s tyranny. And only virtue can ensure that freedom doesn’t decay into license. That balance of freedom and moral responsibility is at the heart of Catholic social teaching, and it cannot be reconciled with the coercive paternalism of socialism.
Conclusion: Repent, Ye Progressives, and Be Converted
If you’re still trying to synthesize Marx with the Magisterium – if you think you can swig the fair-trade soy Kool-Aid of democratic socialism while genuflecting at the altar – you don’t need a theology class. You need an exorcist. The illusion that you can “baptize” socialism into something compatible with Christianity is a demonic temptation, one that has led countless well-meaning souls astray. You cannot baptize a corpse, and socialism is the rotting corpse of a failed ideology, propped up by the false compassion of its devotees. The collectivist promise of Heaven on Earth is a lie from the father of lies. The Christian is called to choose—not waffle, not compromise, not saunter down the middle of the road (which, incidentally, is paved with bureaucratic buzzwords and ends in a precipice).
So pick a side: Heaven or Marx. Christ or coercion. Charity or communism. Our Lord said you cannot serve two masters. If you try, you will end up loving one and despising the other (Matt. 6:24). Right now, a disturbing number of Catholics are attempting this impossible double-life – paying lip service to Christ while effectively worshiping the nanny state. It will not end well. Dante’s vestibule is getting crowded with such souls, and as the Good Book warns, the lukewarm will be spat out of the Lord’s mouth.
Hell, by the way, has no safe spaces and no trigger warnings. So maybe, just maybe, it’s time to drop the Che Guevara tote bag and pick up a rosary.
A Serious Word: Freedom at the Tipping Point
We drop the satire now because the stakes are truly high. Freedom itself is at a tipping point in our society. The rise of figures like Zohran Mamdani – who openly champion state control over fundamental aspects of life (housing, wages, food supply) – is a symptom of a deeper crisis of virtue and understanding. Increasingly, many people no longer value freedom, because they do not see its inherent connection to human dignity and flourishing. They prefer the siren song of security and equality promised by expanding government authority. But history and Church teaching alike testify that when a society trades away liberty for the mirage of socialist “virtue,” it ends up losing both.
Freedom is not merely an abstract ideal; it is the God-given condition for humans to pursue the good. It is what allows individuals, families, and communities to practice charity authentically, to create and innovate, to worship God, and to fulfill their duties. When freedom erodes – when more and more of life is micromanaged by the state – so too does the space for virtue, for conscience, and for faith. We are witnessing this erosion: from speech and religion curtailed by progressive ideology, to economic freedoms strangled by ever-expanding regulation. Each new socialist-style policy may come with good intentions, but collectively they inch us toward a society where the government, not God working through individual hearts, dictates the shape of “charity” and “justice.”
Catholics stand at a crossroads. One path, lit by the Church’s wisdom and the truths of natural law, calls us to reinvigorate our culture with authentic virtue – personal responsibility, voluntary charity, solidarity and subsidiarity – all within the framework of freedom. The other path, marked by slogans and resentment, is luring us into an atmosphere of soft tyranny, where an ostensibly benevolent state decides what we deserve and what we must surrender. This latter path has always eventually hardened into outright tyranny when pursued to its logical end. We must not be naive in thinking “it can’t happen here.” It can happen anywhere when people forget the fundamental truth that our rights come from God and that the state’s role is limited to protecting those rights, not replacing our families or our Creator.
Freedom is fragile. As Ronald Reagan cautioned, it’s never more than one generation away from extinction. Today we see a generation attracted by the idea that government force can do what individual virtue will not. If we do not correct this course – through education, evangelization, and our own example of living out true charity – we may awake to find that the liberties we assumed would always be there have vanished. And once lost, they are painfully difficult to regain.
In sum, the choice before us is stark: renew our commitment to freedom anchored in truth and virtue, or slide into an increasingly secular, statist society where freedom and faith are smothered. The tipping point is upon us. May we have the courage to choose the harder, better road – the road of Christ and authentic freedom – before it’s too late.
Endnotes
Pope St. Pius X, Fin Dalla Prima Nostra (apostolic letter), 1903.
Pope Leo XIII, Rerum Novarum, no. 15 (1891).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 23, a. 1.
Aristotle, Politics, Book II; Cicero, De Officiis, Book II; Frédéric Bastiat, The Law (1850).
Pope Benedict XVI, Caritas in Veritate, no. 9 (2009).
Stéphane Courtois et al., The Black Book of Communism (Harvard Univ. Press, 1997) – estimated 100 million deaths under 20th-century communist regimes.
Pope St. John Paul II, Centesimus Annus, no. 41 (1991).
Catechism of the Catholic Church, no. 1883 (principle of subsidiarity).
Catechism of the Catholic Church, nos. 2401–2406 (on the seventh commandment and private property).
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II–II, q. 66, a. 2 (“Private ownership is necessary for human life…”).
Aristotle, Politics, Book II (on property as a condition of liberty).
Cicero, De Officiis, Book II, ch. 21 (on property rights as foundational to justice).
Zohran K. Mamdani, 2025 mayoral campaign platform (NYC) – “Freeze the rent” policy and proposal for city-owned grocery storeszohranfornyc.comzohranfornyc.com.
Whitney Bauck, “As food prices rise, Mamdani wants public grocery stores in New York. Can it work?” – The Guardian, 25 July 2025theguardian.comtheguardian.com. (Mamdani’s primary victory and platform; poll showing two-thirds of New Yorkers support municipal grocery stores.)
Pope Pius XI, Divini Redemptoris (Encyclical on Atheistic Communism), 19 March 1937, nos. 10–11. (Communism’s rejection of divine authority, the family, and parental rights)vatican.vavatican.va.
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, Manifesto of the Communist Party (1848), Chapter II. (Call for abolition of the family and religion)gutenberg.orggutenberg.org.
Ryan Bourne, “Zohran Mamdani’s ‘War on Prices’,” Cato Institute Commentary, 13 June 2025. (Economic analysis of Mamdani’s proposals; predicting rent freeze will deepen housing shortagescato.orgcato.org and noting inefficiencies of city-run grocery stores requiring subsidiescato.orgcato.org.)
Adam Smith, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759), Part I, ch.1. (On human sympathy and benevolence)adamsmith.org.
Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations (1776), Book IV, ch.5 (Digression on the Corn Trade). (On the “natural effort” of each person to improve his condition driving general prosperity)adamsmith.org.