Roberto de Mattei
Corrispondenza Romana
February 13, 2020
A temporary halt on “viri probati”; the flop
of the Amazon Synod; open conflict
with the Amazonian-Germanic bishops. These three points are contained in the
dynamic initiated by Pope Francis’ Post-Synod Exhortation Querida Amazonua, presented on February 12th 2020.* There
has been a great deal of suspenseful buildup around this Papal Exhortation, which
put the final seal on the Amazon Synod, held in Rome from October 6th
to 27th , 2019.** Both the Instrumentum
Laboris (June 17th 2019) *** and the final document of October
26th proposed a new pantheistic cosmology expressed in the statue of
the Pachamama, venerated in the Vatican Gardens and carried in procession into
St. Peter’s, before being thrown into the Tiber by Alexander Tschugguel.
This cosmological vision is the most scandalous aspect of the Pan-Amazon
Synod, which, though, proposed other ambitious objectives, such as the
introduction of viri probati: namely
the admittance of married men to the priesthood, after John Paul II and
Benedict XVI had categorically excluded this hypothesis, but had been pushed by
the most progressive sectors in the Church since the time of the Second Vatican
Council. Paragraph
111 of the Final Document approved by the Synod had taken on a strong symbolic
value over the last few months. This paragraph proposed “ to ordain
as priests suitable and respected men of the community with a legitimately
constituted and stable family, who have had a fruitful permanent diaconate and
receive an adequate formation for the priesthood.”
While Pope Francis was working on the definitive text for his Exhortation,
on January 13th and 29th Cardinal Cláudio Hummes, rapporteur general of the Amazon Synod and President of Repam,
sent two letters sub secreto to all
the bishops, to increase their awareness of the forthcoming release of Pope
Francis’ text. In the second of these letters, the Brazilian Cardinal attached a link to paragraph 111 of the Amazon
Synod’s final document, implying that it would have been part of the Post-Synod
Exhortation. The introduction of viri
probati was supposed to begin in some regions of the Amazon and then later be
extended to the universal Church. Not only a mutable “ecclesiastical
discipline would have been liquidated [by this], but the law of the Church
founded on a Divine-Apostolic precept as well. However, in the Post-Synod
Exhortation Querida Amazonia, not
only is paragraph 111 absent, but also no paragraph whatsoever of the Synod’s Final
Document is mentioned; the opposite of what happened with Amoris laetitia, which cited the Relatio finalis of the 2015 Synod about eighty times in its notes.
It is true that in paragraph 3 of his Exhortation, Pope Francis suggests
reading the Synod Document, in the hope that the Church may be “ ‘enriched’ by
the work of the Assembly”, but the absence of any specific mention of passages
or paragraphs of the Amazon Synod is the acknowledgement of its failure. The
Pan-Amazon Synod is reduced to a fleeting dream, “a text – as Andrea Tornielli
writes –written like a love-letter”.
Cardinal Hummes’ letter to the bishops, which the Pope
was certainly not unaware of, confirms how Pope Francis himself had deferred his
choice until the very last, at the impetus of two opposing pressures: on one
part, the Germanic-Amazonian Bishops, on the other, orthodox Catholics, who
hailed the co-authored book by Cardinal Sarah and Benedict XVI, From the Depth of Our Hearts, published
in the month of January, as a “manifesto”. This second impetus prevailed and
the absence of Cardinal Hummes at the press conference for the presentation,
proves to be significant. The Cardinal is in San Paolo, Brazil, where the
protest against the Post-Synod Exhortation is bound to occur.
Nonetheless, in his meeting with journalists on
January 28th 2019, during the flight back from Panama, Pope Francis
had made a distinction between two personal convictions in favour of celibacy
and what – he said – might be necessary for the Church, from a pastoral point
of view.
On that occasion the Pope had cited a book by the Emeritus Bishop of Aliwal
(South Africa), Fritz Lobinger, (Teams of
Elders. Moving Beyond Viri Probati) which suggested the introduction of two
types of priests in the Church: the first celibate, full time; the second
married, with a family. The Osservatore
Romano of February 6th, 2019 re-launched the “proposal for the
priests of tomorrow” devised by Bishop Lobinger, implying that the Amazon Synod
would have endorsed it.
This did not happen and the displeasure in the progressive milieu is bound
to explode. The Querida Amazonia,
unlike Amoris laetitia, does not mark
the disruptive “turning point” announced
by Monsignor Franz-Josef Overbeck, Bishop of Essen, whereby, after the Bishops’
Synod on the Amazon “nothing would be the same again”. But what especially should not be forgotten is
that Pope Francis’ Exhortation is virtually coincident to the start of the
German Bishops’ synodal path. At their gathering in Frankfurt, they insisted on the call for the two forms of
the priesthood - for the celibate and
the married. The Querida Amazonia, appears,
in this context, like a slap-in-the -face to the German Episcopal Conference.
Some will remember at this point Pope Francis’ strategy
of “two steps forward and one backwards” but when a train travels at high speed, an
abrupt braking can cause it to derail, putting an end to the journey in a
dramatic way. The revolutionary process is a social machine that often becomes uncontrollable
and sweeps its drivers away. “The Revolution
devours its children” This famous sentence which the Girondist, Pierre
Victurnien Vergniaud (1753-1793) uttered before the Jacobin Court condemning him to death, is the key to understanding
the heterogenesis ends of every action which strays from truth and order.
Also the demonstration of the Acies ordinata
Catholics in Munich of Bavaria, reveals its great importance after the
Post-Synod Exhortation of February 12th. Coinciding with the Querida Amazonia, Cardinal Reinhold
Marx, announced that he will depart his office as President of the German
Episcopal Conference. Observers connect this act to the strong pressures against
the synodal process the Archbishop of Munich received over the last few
months. Among the opposition cited is
that by the Cardinal Archbishop of Cologne, Rainer Maria Woelki, the “fraternal
correction” endured from the Ukrainian
Bishops of the Latin Rite and the accusations of Acies ordinata, at their press conference on January 18th,
in his very own diocese.
In opposition to the German Bishops’ synodal path which would lead them
towards a new church, separated from the Catholic Apostolic and Roman Church,
Acies ordinate made a public profession of faith in Munich with the recitation of
the Credo. Today, Acies ordinata is
the symbol of all those who are fighting in an orderly manner the forces of
chaos in the Church, by standing with the rosary in hand, their eyes fixed on
the enemy, as St. Ambrose exhorts: “The soldier stands in battle alert, not
seated; the armed soldier does not sit reclined, but stands very erect. For
this it is said to the soldiers of Christ: ‘Behold now, bless the Lord, all ye
servants of the Lord, who stand in the house of the Lord’” (Comment on 12
Psalms, Città Nuova, Rome 1980, Psalm
I, n. 27, p. 69).
***http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/synod/documents/rc_synod_doc_20191026_sinodo-amazzonia_it.html)
Translation:
Contributor Francesca Romana
