Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
October 30, 2019
What was the Amazon Synod and
where will it lead us? The response to this question cannot certainly be
limited to an analysis of the final document, voted on October 26, 2019. The
Pan-Amazonian Synod is part of a process that should be considered in its
progressive phases and context, even in the media, so as to understand its ultimate
objective: the redefinition of the sacraments and hierarchical priesthood; the
possibility of ordaining married men to the priesthood and women to the
diaconate; but most of all the promotion of a new eco-indigenous cosmology and
idolatrous cults inside the Catholic Church.
On the level
of the documents produced over the last few months, the phases linked to each
other in this process, in which each stage explains the preceding one and
announces a new one, are: the preparatory document of June 8th 20181.; the Instrumentum laboris of
June 17th 20192.;
the Synodal document of October 26th 20193. and lastly, the Post-Synod Exhortation, which Pope
Francis announced the publication of before the end of the year, much earlier
than expected.
But equally
important, is the context in which the Synod took place. The Final Document
itself, in its first point, emphasized the importance of this aspect, pointing
out that: “outside the Synod Hall there was a notable presence of people coming
from the Amazonian world, who organized supportive acts in different activities
and processions like the one at the opening, which accompanied the Holy Father
with dancing and singing, from the tomb of Peter to the Synod Hall. The Via
Crucis for the Amazonian martyrs had an impact, along with the significant
presence of the international mass-media.”
One can speak
then of a “spirit of the Synod”, hovering over the event, like the “spirit” of
the Second Vatican Council, which accompanied its documents and constitutes the
key to understanding it. A symbol of this Amazonian spirit was the image of
Pachamama, the Pagan Goddess of the Earth and Fertility, which Pope Francis himself
chose to defend against “offences”. According to the Synod document “the wisdom
of the ancestral peoples assert that Mother Earth has a feminine face” (n.101)
and the Church with an Amazonian face is built through interreligious dialogue
with the indigenous religions and the cults of its Afro-descendants, “who deserve to be recognized and understood in
their expressions and relationship with the forest and Mother Earth.” (n.25).
The Pachamama, the Mother Earth image of the indigenous peoples in the
Americas, made its appearance in the
Vatican Gardens on October 4, the eve of the Synod’s opening, during a ceremony
carried out in the presence of Pope Francis, some cardinals and bishops. You
can see the entire video recording here4.
On October 7,
the idol was carried in procession into St. Peter’s Basilica, where it received
more homage from the Pope and the Synod Fathers. The German-Brazilian
theologian, Paolo Suess, one of the main architects of the Synod, stated that:
“even if it was a pagan rite, what took place was a service of adoration. A rite always has something to do
with adoration and paganism cannot be disregarded as if it didn’t exist.”5.
The Pachamama statues were also
placed in the Church of Santa Maria in Traspontina, where every day a magic
rite called Moments of Amazonian
Spirituality was held. On October 19, Pachamama reappeared in the
blasphemous Amazonian Via Crucis, which took place in the presence, among
others, of Cardinal Pedro Barreto, Vice-President of the Pan-Amazonian
Ecclesial Network, organizer of all these evil events.
Finally, on October 21st some courageous Catholics entered the profaned
Church, picked up the pagan statues of Pachamama, and dumped them into the
Tiber. “The great mistake was to bring the
idols into the Church”, said Cardinal Gerard Müeller and “not [the act] of putting them out, because according to the Law of God –
the First Commandment – idolatry is a
grave sin and is not to be mixed with the Christian liturgy.” “ Throwing them out, can be against human law, but bringing
the idols into the Church was a grave sin, a crime against the Divine Law.”6.
But on October 25th, almost as if in
response to Cardinal Mueller, Pope Francis, intervening in the Synod Hall, said
that he was offended not by the profanation, but by those who decided to stop
this profanation: “Good afternoon, I’d like to say a few words about the
Pachamama statues removed from the Church in Traspontina, which were there without idolatrous intentions and were
thrown into the Tiber. First of all, this happened in Rome and as Bishop of the
diocese, I ask forgiveness to the people who were offended by this act.”
One of the
few bishops today who has the courage to say the truth, Monsignor Athanasius
Schneider, declared instead that “the honest, Christian reaction to the
dance around the Pachamama - the new Golden Calf - in the Vatican. should consist in a dignified
protest, a correction of this error, and above all in acts of reparation.
With tears and sincere sorrow in our hearts, we should offer prayers of
intercession and reparation to God for the eternal salvation of the soul of
Pope Francis, the Vicar of Christ on earth, and the salvation of those Catholic
priests and faithful who perpetrated such acts of worship, which are forbidden
by Divine Revelation.”7.
The cult of
Pachamama obscures or rather illuminates, in a sinister light, the requests
that came out of the Synod: the proposal
to “ordain priests, men suitable and recognized by the community, who have a fruitful
permanent diaconate and received a proper formation for the presbyterate, [while]
having a legally constituted family” (n.111); the request to institute a new
ministry of “women community leaders” (n.102) and to review Paul VI’s Motu Proprio, Ministria Quaedam, about the access of women
to female ministries, especially, given that, “in a considerable number”
of synod consultations “the permanent diaconate for women was requested ”(n.103).
On this point Pope Francis, in his concluding discourse, said he intended to
take up “the challenge” launched by the Fathers, and reopen the discussion of
the female diaconate after the commission set up by him in 2006 had
accomplished nothing following two years of work.
Among some of the Bishops’ proposals that Pope Francis asked for the translation
of in official provisions, we have “the development of an Amazonian rite”
(n.119) and the definition of a new sin” the “ecological one”, which would
include the creation of a pastoral, socio-environmental Observatory and an
Amazonian office connected to it.
The Amazonian
Synod was held in Rome, not in the Amazon so as to give a universal dimension
to its proposals, requests and decisions. Pope Francis will leave the concrete
application of the innovations to the Episcopal Conferences, and the German
bishops will serve as pace-setters in the creation of the new Church with the
Amazonian face, which will be nothing other than the church of Pachamama, or
rather the idolatrous religion of Pachamama, set up in the One Church of
Christ.
Everything
has now been revealed. The time has come for the Church to oppose the spirit of
Pachamama with the spirit of the holy
prophet Elijah.
Translation:
Contributor Francesca Romana
