Why Pope Francis Is Keeping His
Hammer-and-Sickle Crucifix (1)
by
Dennis Prager
July 15, 2015
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Last week the Marxist quasi-dictator of Bolivia, Evo Morales,
presented Pope Francis with a gift - a carved wooden
hammer-and-sickle cross on which the figure of Christ is crucified. The
Vatican announced that the pope had not been informed in advance about
the gift. And some commentators said that photos of the pope and
Morales show that the pope was actually offended. That was a
false - probably wishful - interpretation. The
pope himself later announced that he was keeping the hammer-and-sickle
crucifix and taking it home, saying, “I understand this work. For me it
wasn't an offense.”
And "Vatican spokesman Federico Lombardi . . . said he personally
wasn't offended by Morales' gift” (the Guardian). The pope's acceptance
of Morales's gift - along with his attacks on capitalism
during his Latin American tour - further confirms one of
the most troubling moral developments of our time: The Roman Catholic
Church is currently led by a man whose social, political, and economic
views have been shaped by leftism more than by any other religious or
moral system. It also reconfirms what is probably the single most
important development one needs to understand in order to make sense of
the contemporary world: The most dynamic religion of the past hundred
years has been leftism, not Christianity, not Islam, not any other
traditional religion.
Indeed, regarding traditional religions, leftism has influenced
them - particularly Christianity and Judaism -
far more than they have influenced the Left. Mainstream Protestant
Christianity, much of Catholicism (especially in Latin America, where
Pope Francis lived his whole life before becoming pope), and most of
non-Orthodox Judaism have become essentially liberal/Left movements
with religious (and in the case of Judaism, ethnic) identity.
In terms of evil committed, what is the difference between the hammer
and sickle and the swastika? Would the pope receive, let alone keep, a
Fascist, racist, or Nazi sculpture with a crucified Christ on it? Of
course not. Yet the hammer and sickle represents more human suffering
than all of them combined. The number of people enslaved and murdered
under the hammer and sickle dwarfs the number of people enslaved and
murdered by any other doctrine in history. To make things worse, Pope
Francis received this gift from a man (Morales) wearing a picture of
Che Guevara on his jacket. Is that, too, not worthy of condemnation by
the Vatican? Che Guevara devoted his life to undermining human liberty,
and to killing innocents in the name of Communism.
What if, in a visit to an American museum, American artist Andres
Serrano had presented Pope Francis with a gift - his work
of art, Piss Christ - that features a crucifix in a jar of
Serrano's urine? Would the pope have accepted it? Would he have brought
it home? There could not have been a gift that more accurately
represents this pope's value system than Christ crucified on a hammer
and sickle. First, in a literal sense, that is exactly what Communists
have done wherever they have assumed power - crucified
Christ by working to violently destroy Christianity and murder
Christians. Second, in a figurative sense, the gift represents the
mélange of Christianity and Marxism, precisely what much of the
Church - again, especially in Latin America, and especially
in the person of this pope - stands for.
My heart breaks for the millions of Catholics who feel that their
beloved Church is being led over a moral and religious cliff by a
leftist pope and innumerable other leftists among cardinals, bishops,
and parish priests. Though I am not a Catholic, my heart breaks too.
The only institutions that can resist the left-wing takeover of
contemporary life are religious ones. When they fail, upon which
institutions can we depend?
Tragically, we cannot turn to the contemporary Catholic Church. When
the pope keeps a hammer-and-sickle crucifix; when the pope declares
free-market capitalism, the one economic system that has lifted masses
of people out of poverty, to be largely evil ("the dung of the devil");
when Cuba's Cardinal Jaime Ortega declares that there are no political
prisoners in Cuba; and when the pope issues an encyclical on global
warming while the oldest Christian communities in the world are
exterminated, it is clear that while one can still turn to individual
Catholic priests and lay leaders for moral guidance, one cannot turn to
the Church and its pope for moral guidance. On the contrary. One must
fight back.
