Can Catholics Support May Day?

On May 1st, 1889, socialists launched International Workers’ Day or commonly known as May Day. This day commonly is associated with association of workers.  Unfortunately, the diabolic works of Vladimir Lenin and Karl Marx has exploited workers through a radical ideology known as communism that would later be replaced by socialism.

“May 1st is May Day, the International Workers’ Holiday,” explains Communist Party USA. “In every nation on earth, working people demonstrate their unity and celebrate those who labor and produce all wealth.” CPUSA adds a complaint: “Ever since May Day was declared an International Workers’ Holiday, in 1889, the capitalist class has desperately tried to suppress all memory of May Day.”

May 1st goes on to be a high holy day for communism and socialism. Thankfully, the church wasted little to no time raising her prophetic voice against this dangerous going back to as early as 1846.

Three critical encyclicals reinforced why Catholics can’t in good conscience and faith support a dark and deadly ideology with a track record of destroying a country’s economy and murdering millions around the world.

Qui Pluribus

Blessed Pius IX published the encyclical Qui Pluribus (On Faith and Religion) which warned the faithful of its imminent dangers. He described communism as a “dark design” of “men in the clothing of sheep,” who are “filled with deceit and cunning” and who “spread pestilential doctrines everywhere and deprave the minds especially of the imprudent, occasioning great losses for religion.”

Quod Apostolici Muneris

Issued in 1878 by Pope Leo XIII, Quod Apostolici Munieris spoke about the “plague of socialism”. “recruits” by “stealing the very Gospel itself with a view to deceive more easily the unwary.” Pope Pius XI would allude to the fact that socialism is “an alluring poison … apt to deceive the unwary.”

May 1st 1955

Pope Pius XII, often referred to as Hitler’s Pope (a lie that exists to this very day), knew well how communists’ slander. He stated of these foes:

"For a long time, unfortunately, Christ’s enemy has been sowing discord among the Italian people, without always and everywhere encountering sufficient resistance on the part of Catholics. Especially in the working class it has done and is doing everything to spread false ideas about man and the world, about history, about the structure of society and the economy. It is not rare the case in which the Catholic worker, for lack of a solid religious formation, finds himself disarmed, when similar theories are proposed to him; he is unable to answer, and sometimes he even lets himself be contaminated by the poison of error."

When invoking his predecessor’s encyclical Quadragesimo Anno, he reminded the faithful, “Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms. No one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist.” Pius XI recommended that those Christians strangely by socialism instead “ought to profess Christian truth whole and entire, openly and sincerely, and not connive at error in any way. If they truly wish to be heralds of the Gospel, let them above all strive to show to socialists that socialist claims, so far as they are just, are far more strongly supported by the principles of Christian faith.”

Invoking the Intercession of St. Joseph

Many popes have asked for the intercession of St. Joseph. One pope saw firsthand the dangers of communism when he was a laborer himself in Poland. His name was Karol Wojtyla. Instead of looking down on Marxism and its kissing cousins socialism and communism, he encouraged everyone to look up to St. Joseph.

In his 1989 apostolic exhortation Redemptoris Custos (On the Person and Mission of St. Joseph in the Life of Christ and of the Church), John Paul II characterized Joseph as the Guardian of the Redeemer, the “custos,” the protector of the child Jesus. He also raised a carpenter son, yet his eyes were fixated on a divine vocation and mission.

From Pope Pius IX to Pope Francis, each reminded the faithful that Marxism and its dangerous ideologies that have promoted theft of work and murder are contrary to what the church teaches. We must look to St. Joseph, the model for all workers.

St. Joseph the Worker, pray for us

Encyclicals

Qui Pluribus (On Faith and Religion)

Quod Apostolici Muneris (On Socialism)

Quadragesimo Anno (On Reconstruction of the Social Order)

Divini Redemptoris (On Atheistic Communism)

Redemptoris Custos (On the Person and Mission of St. Joseph in the Life of Christ and of the Church)

Patris Corde (A Father’s Heart)