I was taken aback by the Pope Francis's full throated attack on capitalism a couple of weeks ago and wrote a spirited response to His Holiness. His views were not simply an appeal for people to do more to help the poor, but an assault on capitalism itself. This assault came within weeks after I attended a panel discussion of three Nobel Laureates who showed that capitalist reforms were responsible for lifting hundreds of millions out of abject poverty in China, India and elsewhere and that it is starting to do the same in Africa.
The Pontiff ratcheted up the rhetoric on his trip to South America, deriding the pursuit of money as "the dung of the devil." His words harkened to Hugo Chavez's attack on George Bush at the U.N. in '06,"The devil came here yesterday. And it smells of sulphur still today." Chavez further skewered Bush, "As the spokesman for imperialism, he came to....preserve the current pattern of domination, exploitation, and pillage of peoples of the world." The Pontiff echoed these thoughts almost precisely, "Once capital becomes an idol and and guides people's decisions, once greed for money presides over the entire socioeconomic system, it ruins society, it condemns and enslaves men and women, it destroys human fraternity, it sets people against one another and, as we clearly see, it even puts at risk our common home." The Pope went on to call for "overthrowing an empire of money," and denounced "the new colonialism." His themes and even his choice words were virtually indistinguishable from those of Chavez; the former Venezuelan president has evidently been reincarnated with a miter.
But it gets even worse. Over the last few weeks we were caught up in the symbolism of the Confederate flag because many found that it symbolized slavery and bigotry. I understand the power of symbols. When Evo Morales, president of Brazil offered a gift of a crucifix shaped like a hammer and sickle to the Pope, while initially surprised, accepted it and later affirmed that he was not offended by it.
By heritage, I am part Lithuanian and Polish and grew up in a neighborhood with others from the former Eastern bloc. I heard the stories of the murder, torture and starvation perpetrated by the Stalin regime under the symbol of the hammer and sickle. My best friend's father witnessed his buddy shot in the head on a road in the Ukraine by the KGB. The parents of another childhood friend of mine escaped one of Stalin's concentration camps in Siberia, and were chased by dogs through the woods before it to America. Because they were schoolteachers, they were deemed part of the intelligentsia and would certainly have been killed. There were millions like them that suffered under the boot of Communism (for an excellent novelization of the Lithuanian deportations, read Between Shades of Grey by Ruta Sepetys).
The hammer and sickle represent death, torture, and tyranny to me and nearly everyone I grew up with. It is no less offensive to me than the swastika is to a Jew. That the Pope chooses words that are nearly identical to those of Hugo Chavez and chooses to accept a symbol of death to my people tells me that I may not have a place in this Church while he is its leader. His recent exhortations are antithetical to all the values I hold dear. Indeed, freedom, democracy and capitalism have provided a decent, dignified life and have liberated more people across the globe than any other system. It is the brutal, corrupt regimes that fly under the banner of the hammer and sickle that crush the human spirit, brutalize and impoverish. As a result, I am taking a sabbatical, a trial separation from the Catholic Church and I do not know if I will be back. I cannot be part of an organization that would so willingly embrace the symbols of totalitarianism and reject the things I hold most dear.
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