Marx and Nietzsche

We've been reading Marx and Nietzsche in CIE lately, and the contrast is humorous in some ways. One way that jumped out at me is their attacks on the Church. Marx claims that the church is an instrument that the rich use to oppress the poor. Nietzsche says that it is a means for the lower classes to subversively oppress the upper classes. The Church, as always, is attacked on all sides, for contradictory reasons.

G.K. Chesterton once said something i find very penetrating: Suppose you were to hear about a man you had never seen. Some people told you that he was too tall, others that he was too short, some that he was too wide, others that he was too thin, and so on. What would this man look like? One explanation is that he is a very strange shape. But the more likely explanation is that he is the right shape, the definition of mankind.

The fact is that there is nothing wrong with the Church (capitalized). There are many things wrong with the church down the street, most likely. But it is a case of mankind failing the Church, not the Church failing mankind (T.S. Eliot, Eighth Chorus from The Rock).