Posted on 07/14/2015 5:15:41 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
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.
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? 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.
— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His book, The Ten Commandments: Still the Best Moral Code, was published by Regnery. He is the founder of Prager University and may be contacted at dennisprager.com.
Also, why does the Catholic church allow men with that kind of sin in their lives to SERVE communion, but prohibits parishioners with that kind of sin in their lives from TAKING it?
Bible spamming eh?
You don’t read Scripture?
Your loss.
The primaries is the only Dem voting I do. Actually I consider my self independent. Republicans are democrats in drag.
Just because I don’t read your posts does not mean I don’t read the Bible. That’s pretty egotistical on your part, I think.
Worst Pope in history. Perhaps he could meet with ISIS to discuss their plans for World peace.
To remove a pope against his will they would have to kill him. Probably, it’s been done.
The ability to confect the Eucharist is not dependent upon the relative sinless state of the priest. This concept goes all the way back to the third century when there was a controversey about the baptisms of heretics, and whether or not they (the baptisms done by heretics) are valid or such people needed to be rebaptised. It was decided that they don’t.
The same concept applies here. It isn’t the man, by his own power who confects the Eucharist rather it’s the power of God. The personal state of the priest in question is irrelevant. This is the way it needs to be understood really; after all if it took a certain level of holiness to confect the Eucharist then we would have a severe shortage indeed. Same with baptisms. It’s the power of God at work in the Sacraments not men.
When I say something is wrong, I back it up. I don’t expect people to take it on my say so. THAT would be egotistical.
Since Catholics regularly excuse the abominable behavior of their clergy and excuse it regularly, it’s clear they don’t know what God has to say about it.
And yet blatant, unrepentant sin in the lives of those in authority in the church, disqualifies them from serving in that position.
That’s GOD’S decision, not ours.
Why haven’t you admitted I was correct?
Well, let’s look at the typical reaction on the part of Catholics to men like Jimmy Swaggart, Jim Bakker, and Ted Haggard.
They’re castigated and their ministries are discredited and sometimes, there’s jail involved.
Yet when a Catholic priest molests boys, he’s still allowed to perform mass, as long as his intent is pure. After all, he’s just human like the rest of us, nobody is perfect, and once a priest, always a priest.
The RCC hierarchy went out of its way to protect many or most of those molesters, shifting them from congregation to congregation.
Kind of a double standard, there, when Catholics excuse sin in their midst and damn others for it.
You think we're not going to be hearing THAT soon?
JP I
Everyone needs to read the Bible. Don’t you and others on here read it. Y’all do not know what y’all are missing. I have never heard that posting Bible verses was spam. Wow, what a concept.
And of course you have irrefutable proof of this.
Ask your fellow Catholics who proposed it first.
It wasn’t my idea that that’s how he died.
I’ll rephrase it then.
JPI?
I refer to it as "Scriptural Tourette's."
It's usually occurs when a Protestant is stuck on a particular theological point, so they default to the closest tangentially related verse they interpret to support their contention.
Link?
Women, Catholics, blacks, city dwellers, Democrats. A group somewhere has to hold the line and it isn't the Catholics.
Communism is another plague being adopted by the Catholic Church. Seems like an appropriate place to discuss her endless plagues.
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