Two Left Feet

The Catholic Church, in function, but not in spirit, mirrors the modern Left.
The Church in many ways was for Medieval France what the Democratic Party is to the present day United States:
1) Both the Church and the Left have been universal in their pretensions.
2) Both the Church and the Left (at least rhetorically) have championed the downtrodden. They both seek to exhibit compassion by founding hospitals and schools and by providing assistance to the poor, the elderly, and the handicapped.
3) Both the Church and the Left have been neither wholly democratic nor wholly elitist. The Church has not been as aristocratic as some have contended. The Church has been (more or less) meritocratic. Lord Acton called Thomas Aquinas "the first Whig". The Left has not consistently sided with democrats. In the United States the Left appeals to unelected judges, academics, bureaucrats. Even the most egalitarian Leftists (levelers like Mao and Pol Pot) have only been egalitarian theoretically, in practice they have elevated themselves to the rank of god-kings.
4) Both the Church and the Left have neither been wholly rational and scientific nor wholly mystical. The Church is reputed to be anti-scientific yet she has fostered scientists like Copernicus (church canon) and Mendel (Augustinian). The Left has lapsed from the church of scientism. Only the most perverse and depressed have remained members. Many on the Left have embraced kooky New Age faiths or deconstructionism.
5) The Church has the Jesuits and the Left has the Comintern.
6) The Church and the Left have eschewed reproduction for their respective clergies. They clearly have more important things to do.
7) The Church was once almost as anti-family as the Left. Remember the numerous Catholic saints who warred with their families (St. Francis of Assisi, St. Clare, St. Thomas Aquinas, St. Catherine of Siena).
8) The Church and the Left have tolerated/accepted homosexuals in their midst.
9) The Church and the Left venerate a woman. Catholics venerate Mary and Liberals venerate Hilary.
10) Both have constructed and maintained a vaste intellectual ediface in order to justify their preeminence.
11) Both have created a rich and detailed iconography.
12) Both have an affinity for universities. The Church founded them and the Left infests them.
13) Both have conducted crusades in the Holy Land. The Democrats have compelled the United States to give Israel every kind of aid.
14) Both can not do without an opposition made up of militarists, Protestants, capitalists, and the upper class generally. The Church at once confronted and cooperated with the kings and lords and knights and merchants and Lutherans. The Left in the United States at once confronts and cooperates with the Republicans.
15) Both have conducted Inquisitions. Torquemada was sometimes harsh too.
16) Both really like angels (see Angels in America).
But now for the differences - St. Francis was not precisely speaking a hippy and Communism was not (as Toynbee called it) a Christian heresy:
1) The Church has never been as fond of overt displays of sexual hedonism as has the Left.
2) The Church has never appreciated the sacrament of abortion as has the Left.
3) The Church has never delighted in plummeting birth rates as has the Left.
4) The Church has never enjoyed persecuting as much as the commissars of the Left have, look how much entertainment they derived from the gulag, famines, executions, fear. The "Black Legend" of the Spanish Inquisition is an anti-Hispanic myth.
http://www.catholiceducation.org/articles/history/world/wh0008.html
http://www.geocities.com/militantis/inquisition2.html
http://www.nationalreview.com/comment/madden200406181026.asp
To its credit, however, the Left has been reluctant to Fully degrade the human personality, at least at times.
The problem is simple: The Left has in sinister fashion slipped into our shoes. They have netted millions and hold the keys to power.
The solution: Catholics can not flee and join the right they must recapture the left!