The divine Ortega

The Divine Ortega

THE SACRED HOPE passes from place to place, but the hope itself never seems to die. For if the salt have lost its savor, where then is the meaning of life?

An early book about the intellectuals' disillusionment with Communism was called The God That Failed. Its title was wildly optimistic. The god did not fail. He dies, of course, but he rises again. The sacred hope re-establishes itself in a new location.

The god once resided in the Soviet Union, resided for some time, and his pilgrims came in droves. "We have seen the future, and it works." But finally the dark truth of Gulag proved too much. Hardly anyone worships the god in that temple any more.

But he rose from the dead, for Western believers, in Peking. "Who is the third who walks always beside you?" And, lo, he was worshipped, not least by Mr. James Reston and the Holy Cross Quarterly, until Deng's counter-revolution overtook the ghastly truth of Mao's rule. The god moved on. He grew a beard. "Cuba si, yanqui no." He lived comfortably for a while in Havana. Intellectuals and preachers were regular worshippers in that temple until an extensive tropical Gulag came to light, along with the murder of poets, labor leaders, assorted dissenters, and homosexuals. The god had to take a powder. But he had also risen in Hanoi, his new incarnation being Ho Chi Minh, the "George Washington of his country," George McGovern called him. "Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh,/The NLF is gonna win." Only the NLF actually lost, and what survived of it went into the Gulag, as several hundred thousand ordinary citizens took to boats and rafts. Even Jane Fonda is not stressing the Hanoi connection any more.

Anthony Lewis claimed to discern the god in Cambodia, where they were "building a new society." That idea did not catch on. Pol Pot did not appear on T-shirts or even get a good word from McGovern.

And so it came to pass that the god now resides in Managua. His worshippers have lost none of their zeal in transferring their gaze. Even Catholic Maryknollers have changed religions, and worship the new one in Managua. They are building a "new society" there.

And thus it was that the latest avatar of the god, Mr. Daniel Ortega, came to the United States in his dark suit and designer glasses. And when he came, he paid visits to his temples: the United Nations, the Park Slope Methodist Church in Brooklyn, the Phil Donahue show, the headquarters of Jesse Jackson, and the Vatican of this god, Riverside Church in New York. Ortega was correct and precise when he called the Park Slope church a "sister church." At Riverside it came to pass that there was a heretic in the congregation, someone who actually may have been, residually, a Christian, and who asked, "Why have you been oppressing the same forces that allowed you to succeed?"--i.e., closing newspapers, expelling priests, liquidating the opposition. Hisssss, boooo, went the worshippers, as if the miscreant had been Jeane Kirkpatrick or Caspar Weinberger. No doubt they would have crucified the wretched heretic, had they not realized in time that this would awaken unwelcome theological memories.

It certainly was a bravura performance by Mr. Daniel Ortega, visiting his flock inside a country that is at war with him, sort of. Those who greeted him so warmly no doubt desire in their heart of hearts that the god take up residence right here, and the sooner the better. For obvious reasons, political and theological, Cardinal O'Connor refused to meet with the most recent avatar of old 666.

If Ortega is still in power when President Reagan leaves office, history will judge that Reagan's foreign policy has failed.

COPYRIGHT 1986 National Review, Inc.
COPYRIGHT 2008 Gale, Cengage Learning