Here’s a question: Is it stranger that Roman Catholics, ostensibly informed by a social tradition which has, for well more than a century, rejected the core tenets of free-market capitalism, embrace such tenets in open defiance of their magisterium or that Orthodox embrace such tenets as well? The Orthodox “defense,” which isn’t much of a defense at all, goes something like this. Because communism had such an undeniably disastrous impact on the lives of millions upon millions of Orthodox Christians, it not only makes sense, but is in fact fully justifiable, that they should see in capitalism, with its apparent nod toward “freedom,” a safe haven, nay, a glowing alternative to the communist system which, in practice, oversaw the nailing of priests to church doors and the violent oppression of those who would dare to live out their ancestral faith. The problem with that line of argument — one of many problems — is that it’s simplistic to the point of being worthless. For while it is true that communist rule over Eastern Europe brought with it unimaginable persecution against the Church of Christ, it is not necessarily true that such persecution came as a result of pure economic ideology. That is to say, whatever satanic violence dwelt at the core of 20th Century communism was not generated out of anti-capitalist animus per se. Something else was at work, and that horrific violence could very well have flowered under an apparently “free” economic system as it did under one that was largely command planned.