The pope’s comments on Father Hamel’s slaughter make clear that leftism is our dominant religion.

Pope Francis made comments last week that reveal the most important single thing you need to know about the modern world: The most dynamic religion of the last hundred years has been leftism. Not Christianity and not Islam. Leftism.

Leftism has taken over the world’s leading educational institutions, the world’s news media, the world’s popular entertainment, and it has influenced Christianity (and Judaism) far more than Christianity (or Judaism) has influenced anything.


On July 26, two Muslims slit the throat of a French Roman Catholic priest, Father Jacques Hamel, 86, while he was saying Mass in his church.

Five days later, on his plane returning to Rome from World Youth Day in Krakow, Poland, Pope Francis was asked about the French priest and Islam by Antoine Marie Izoarde, a journalist with i.Media, a French Catholic news service:

Izoarde:

Catholics are a bit in shock, and not only in France, after the barbarous assassination of Fr. Jacques Hamel — as you know well — in his church while celebrating the Holy Mass. Four days ago you here told us that all religions want peace. But this holy, 86-year-old priest was clearly killed in the name of Islam. So, Holy Father, I have two brief questions: Why do you, when you speak of these violent events, always speak of terrorists, but never of Islam, never use the word Islam? . . . What concrete initiatives can you advise or suggest in order to counteract Islamic violence? Thank you, Holiness.

As reported by the Catholic News Service, this is what Pope Francis responded:

I don’t like to speak of Islamic violence, because every day, when I browse the newspapers, I see violence, here in Italy . . . this one who has murdered his girlfriend, another who has murdered the mother-in-law . . . and these are baptized Catholics! There are violent Catholics! If I speak of Islamic violence, I must speak of Catholic violence.




The pope of the Roman Catholic Church, asked about Islamic terror and the slitting of the throat of a Roman Catholic priest by Islamic terrorists, responds that there is also Catholic terror — that a man who was baptized Catholic who “murdered his girlfriend” is the moral and religious equivalent of Muslims engaged in mass murder in the name of Islam.

How can anyone compare:

1) A person who happened to have been baptized a Catholic as a child — and who may have no Catholic identity as an adult — with an adult who affirms a religious identity?

2) The murder of a girlfriend — most likely a crime of passion — with the ritual murder of a Catholic priest because he was a priest?

3) Individual murders unrelated to any ideology with mass murders committed in the name of an ideology?

Pope Francis then added:

Terrorism is everywhere. . . . Terrorism grows when there are no other options, and when the center of the global economy is the god of money and not the person — men and women — this is already the first terrorism! You have cast out the wonder of creation — man and woman — and you have put money in its place. This is a basic terrorism against all of humanity! Think about it!


“Terrorism grows when there are no other options”?

The idea that Islamic terrorism is a desperate act arising from poverty is widely held among the Left. But it is utterly false. Most Islamic terrorists come from the middle class or above. In the recent case of the Bangladeshi terrorists, for example, nearly all the attackers came from some of the wealthiest families in Bangladesh. And, as should be well known by now, most of the 9/11 hijackers came from middle- and upper-middle class families.

Islamic terrorism doesn’t come from economics; it comes from its theology.

“Terrorism grows . . . when the center of the global economy is the god of money”?

Yazidi women weren’t gang raped and burned alive because of the ‘global economy’ and its ‘god of money.’

Pursuit of money and terror have nothing to do with each other. Terrorism grows only when some ideology preaches it. All this statement does is provide an excuse for Islamist terror by blaming the “global economy” and the “god of money” instead of the terrorists and their god of death.

“The first terrorism [is] when the center of the global economy is the god of money”?


It is a bad thing when money becomes a god, but there is no comparison between the “god of money” and the horrors of Islamic terror. Yazidi women weren’t gang raped and burned alive because of the “global economy” and its “god of money.”

The only explanation for these statements is that Pope Francis has inherited his theology from Catholicism but, unlike his immediate predecessor, Pope Benedict, he takes much of his moral outlook from leftism.

The Western combination of Judeo-Christian morality and political liberalism — with its doctrines of moral accountability, moral absolutes, confronting evil, and political and social freedom — has produced the most moral societies in world history.

The pope of the Roman Catholic Church should be its greatest advocate.

But because of leftism, he isn’t.

— Dennis Prager is a nationally syndicated radio talk-show host and columnist. His latest 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. © 2016 Creators.com