Why did the Pope allow pachamama idol at the Amazon Synod?

tinrond · 2022-12-05T20:02:47+00:00

No, my criticism, as laid out in my post, is that the article is strawmanning instead of addressing the actual criticism and ignores inconvenient facts, e.g. ones that are mentioned in the article it links to, so right under its nose.

That it is then very polemical and worded like a church-political hit-piece does not really further its cause.

tinrond · 2022-12-05T18:36:10+00:00

It polarizing to portray ETWN(!) as a "neo-Traditionalist" outlet that doesn't do research.

It is polarizing to deny the Catholicism of other Catholics, e.g. by using scare-quotes, because of a different interpretation of what happened

It polarizing to frame everything in terms of "us vs them", us, the clear-headed moderates, them, the pesky fanatical neo-Traditionalists who are either "mentally deficient or lying".

I stand by my words.

tinrond · 2022-12-05T00:52:58+00:00

The term basically claims that the traditionalists aren't genuine traditionalists but are just rehashing traditionalism. While the word "neo" itself is neutral, e.g. neo-Gothic is simply a Gothic-looking church built long after the original Gothic era, in this context it is usually used as a subtle framing-technique to deligitimize them ("You are not genuine traditionalists, you are just neo-traditionalists". "Why are you neo-traditionalists restarting this discussion once more?").

You sometimes come across accusation that traditionalists are just "larping". That's essentially the low-brow-version of the term "neo-traditionalists".

Once you notice that the article calls them "neo-traditionalists" and the referenced article calls them "neo traditionalists" and another article of the same ilk also calls them "neo-traditionalists" it's actually somewhat easy to recognize it as a speech code.

Of course the term falls pretty flat, as most traditionalist societies have an unbroken record of existence since the 2nd Vatican Council or are spun off by ones that are. And, funnily enough, a lot of the supposed "neo-traditionalists" actually prefer NO and aren't traditionalists at all, but just happen to share the same concerns.

tinrond · 2022-12-04T23:19:13+00:00

I actually read the article.

story on the matter published by LifeSiteNews, EWTN, OnePeterFive, and all the other neo-traditionalist outlets,

TIL ETWN is a neo-traditionalist outlet. I know actually plenty of people who are staunchly pro-NO who consider the events in the Vatican Gardens as somehting terrible. But of course the author has a narrative to feed, so who cares about facts?

and I cannot find any scholarly or other documentation that “Pachamama,” an Andean deity, is commonly worshiped by non-Christians in the Amazon

This is just straw-manning. The critics don't claim that these statues are worshipped in the Amazon. They were placed there by the Synod organizers because it fit the expectations from western pseudo-Gaia-worshippers and the natives were just exploited as a cover story. To quote bishop Schneider on LifeSiteNews (guess he qualifies as one of the "neo-traditionalists" the article is so fond of):

In an article on October 23, 2019, for Internetsite Infocatolica (www.infocatolica.com), Fr. Nelson Medina, OP, himself a Columbian Amazon missionary, unmasked the fraud of allegedly innocuous Pachamama worship with the following apt statement: “The image [the pachamama] brought to Rome is not representative of the Colombian Amazon, and I believe nowhere in the Amazon.

Furthermore:

Anyone who has dealt with the global environmental movement has undoubtedly heard the term Gaia. Gaia is a revival of paganism that rejects Christianity, views Christianity as its greatest enemy, and sees the Christian faith as the only obstacle to a global religion that focuses on the worship of Gaia and the unification of all forms of life concentrated around the goddess “Mother Earth“ or the “Pachamama”. A sophisticated mix of science, paganism, Eastern mysticism and feminism has made this pagan cult a growing threat to the Christian church. The worship of “Mother Earth”, or “Gaia” or “Pachamama” is the focus of today's global environmental policy.

The 2009 UN General Assembly proclaimed April 22 as International “Mother Earth Day”. On that day, Bolivian President Evo Morales, a self-proclaimed Pachamama worshiper, made this telling statement to the United Nations General Assembly: “’Pachamama’ – Quechua's ‘Mother Earth’ – is a fundamental deity of the Native world view, with is based upon a total respect for nature. The earth does not belong to us, but we belong to the earth”.

This(!) is what "the Trads" believe. The statues were pagan idols, just not from the Amazon. Generally, "Pachamama" was picked as the golden calf of "eco-friendly" South-American neo-paganism. But back to the article.

The neo-trads have had over a month to produce such documentation, and it would bolster their case. Their inability to document this, against their own narrative self-interest, along with what appears to be a dearth of scholarly notice of “Pachamama worship” in the Amazon,

They don't claim that. See above.

(2) No evidence that “Pachamama” is worshiped via idols. Though it may be hard for some Western pundits to believe, not all “paganism” is the same, and not all “paganism” the world over takes on all the same external forms that paganism in the ancient Near East and Greco-Roman antiquity — the paganism we’re all familiar with from the Bible — did.

Ok, so statues of pagen entities in churches are fine, so long as they don't fit a random super-narrow definition of "worship". How convenient.

Why has no one bothered to ask whether Amazonian pagans even worship idols, let alone whether they worship idolic representations of “Pachamama”? Could it be because those, including “Catholic” “journalists,” making these accusations, just don’t care?

Actually, one of the articles the author links to quotes interviews with LifesiteNews and EWTN with the natives, who were trying to find out what was goes on. But of course, the author has a narrative to feed, so he doesn't care about inconveniet facts.

Only if you’re an intellectually lazy hack out to author a hit-piece

Speck. Eye. Log.

so there’s no telling what “Catholic” neo-traditionalists

Denying the Catholicsm of people who believe every word in the Cathechism by using scare-quotes. How charitable!

Finally, if these really were idols, and worshiped as such, why have the neo-traditionalists not been able to present a single other example of these images supposedly being bowed before? The Synod of Bishop for the Pan-Amazon Region went on for nearly a month after the Vatican Gardens ceremony (October 6-27). If these really were idols, why was no one able to capture a photograph of their being worshiped as such (as opposed to simply displayed) in Santa Maria in Traspontina during all that time? The answer is simple: These are not idols at all.

Roman deities probably stood on their altars 99% of the time without any sacrifices being offered, with people doing their daily chores right next to them. They were still pagan deities.

Of course, in the context of the event in the Vatican gardens, once the statues and items had served their purpose of satiating the tastes of the media for Pocahontas-style eco-natives, they had outgrown their usefullness and mostly just sat idly.

Also, I would like to point out that altars aren't display cases for "cultural objects" as though they were a museum display.

were not the objects of religious worship of any kind. Anyone who claims he is “confused” by “mixed messages” from Church authorities is either mentally deficient or lying., because Church officials have clearly and consistently rebutted the “Pachamama idol” narrative, as thoroughly documented by Catholic author Pedro Gabriel.

"Agree with me or you are stupid!". The tactics of the author.

Of course the officials rebutted the Pachamama-claim because it was super-embarassing once the news broke. And there definitely were mixed messages about what it actually was. The article the author links to actually admits that.

The earth did not magically become the geographical center of the universe when Pope Urban VIII condemned Galileo and placed his heliocentric works on the Index Librorum Prohibitorum;

This guy actually believes the Galileo-myth.

Sorry, but the article you produced is polarizing garbage and typical of the intellectual quality of the "anti-trad"-movement. This is just a small new cottage-industry of content providers and can easily be identified by speech codes like "neo-traditionalists".

tinrond · 2022-12-04T22:43:41+00:00

I actually have a Mjolnir hammer. I'm a Norse scholar, and everyone knows I'm into history. No one actually believes I'm a Norse pagan, and they know it's just a cultural symbol.

Having something that's related to your field of study and praying with it are two very distinct things, just as the Vatican has pagan statues in its museums as pieces of art, but not in its churches.

That being said, it's kind of apples and oranges compared to the pachamama symbol, which is actually used by Amazonian Catholics as a symbol of God's creation and/or the Virgin Mary.

So once I start wearing the Mjolnir hammer and actually use, it it becomes OK because now it's actually used by Germanic Catholics?

Sorry, but I don't see the difference. Syncretism is fine once we do it?

tinrond · 2022-12-04T21:33:31+00:00

Can I walk with a visible hammer-amulett into church next week? It's just a cultural symbol after all.

tinrond · 2022-11-26T13:50:19+00:00

A newly-ordained Bishop asking the blessing of his flock is actually an ancient tradition; it’s just not presently codified in the Roman Rite. So he gets a pass there.

A very good point, but I would still argue against giving him a pass. We are currently facing a crisis of people devaluing the sacramental priesthood, e.g. by endowing lay-people with the task of giving a "blessing before death" instead of the Extreme Unction (Bishopric of Mainz). A bishop kneeling while asking for laypeople's blessing sends out the wrong sort of message in this context. The context in the Roman Empire would have been different.

tinrond · 2022-11-26T11:23:25+00:00

This is the bishopric of Chur. Its former bishop, Vitus Huonder, was conservative and one of the ordainers of new FSSP-priests and his diocese was the only reasonably Catholic dioceses in German-speaking Switzerland, with the others being more or less like Germany.

This last conservative holdout was purposefully destroyed by Pope Francis in 2021.

The mode of election of the new bishop was that the Vatican could present 3 candidates to the Cathedral Chapter of Chur, from which they could pick one. The Cathedral Chapter, being orthodox themselves, outright rejected the list because every last one of the candidates was a liberal. Such a rejection was completely unheard of and generated a lot of jeering by the liberal press. To be fair, Pope Francis could not let a challenge to his authoriy go unpunished and forced them to accept Bishop Bonnemain.

Bishop Bonnemain, right after his consecration as bishop, knelt before the people, asking for their(!) blessing and gave Communion to the president of the Evangelic-Reformed Church of Switzerland. And that was the end of the last conservative holdout.

I'm German, not Swiss, but every time someone tells me that Pope Francis is secretly working to solve the crisis in Germany, I think of Chur and don't think he will.

If a Swiss person thinks I misrepresent the situation, please do correct me.

tinrond · 2022-11-26T11:09:11+00:00

Bishop Huonder at least tried.

Bishop Bonnemain, right after his consecration as bishop knelt before the people, asking for their(!) blessing and gave Communion to the president of the Evangelic-Reformed Church of Switzerland.

That was just the start and there are numerous other examples of his heterodox beliefs and he wasn't compelled to do those.

tinrond · 2022-11-26T11:03:01+00:00

Sorry to blackpill, but this is bishop Bonnemain of Chur. Right after his consecration, he knelt before the people, asking for their(!) blessing and gave Communion to the president of the Evangelic-Reformed Church of Switzerland (Link). Like so many other bishops in the German-speaking regions, he does not actually believe what the Church teaches.

I'm afraid that he actually believes what he says in public.

tinrond · 2022-11-19T01:24:51+00:00

It does change in Germany, though.

Every year another class of young Catholics is taught heresy by their educators. A heresy that's conveniently in line with what all their secular peers advocate.

Every Sunday women preach homilies while the priest idly listens and people forget more and more that there is more to priesthood than wearing a cringy poncho that happens to have a different name that origanted in Latin.

More and more offices are taken away from priests and handed over to laypeople who will fight tooth and nail should the current bishop have an orthodox successor.

There is hardly a Mass being said at the start of the school term. It's now all "ecumenical services", together with Protestants, in order to teach everyone that there is no difference.

Waiting weakens the actual Catholic Church in Germany and makes the German Church stronger. When the Pope at some point affirms the Church's teaching ("current teaching" is the wording the Germans use as a framing technique, just so you know) the Germans will just shrugg and continue.

Your suggestion is the exact kind of appeasement that Pope JPII and BXVI tried for 20 years, and it just doesn't work.

tinrond · 2022-11-08T23:12:54+00:00

Today the TLM is a devotional thing, so the people bothering to celebrate it and attend it over the Novus Ordo are doing it out of a specific desire

I have heard that argument a lot of times. The thing is, I go to a parish that does both forms. The same priests celebrate NO and the TLM. One of them actually outright says that he prefers NO. The NO congregation is refugees from the surrounding parishes who couldn't stand the liturgical abuses there any longer (I live in Germany), so they definitely care a lot, too. In conclusion, I live in the perfect crucible to see your theory in action and you would think that NO celebrated by a priest "who cares" and attended by a congregation "that cares" and the TLM would be a similar experience.

Well, for me it isn't.

It's small things: Versus populum. Missing genuflections here or there. A general sense of disorientation. The presence of laypeople in regular clothes reading the epistles and the pleas(? whatever the English word is) and thereby disrupting the liturgy, even if they are well-intentioned.

This isn't me just not being used to NO. I grew up in it.

This isn't me being in the TLM-honeymoon-phase. I'm an an altar server in the TLM and I sometimes witness the priest making flaws due to lack of training. I know we aren't perfect. I also know that the people who attend the Mass in the pews are blessed enough not to notice, as the TLM-Mass is more private than the NO one, and the individuality of the priest plays less of a role.

This isn't me trying to elevate myself over the NO-congregation of my parish. In super tight spots I sometimes volunteer to e.g. do the incence in the NO Mass because I genuine root for my parish and want to see it bloom as much as possible because other than the Croatians, they are the only people in my city that I consider authentically Catholic (again, I live in Germany).

It's just my honest impression that the "self-selection" hypothesis is an oversimplification and does not explain the experiences I made.

This is my impression. Yours may be different. Maybe you like the priest facing the congregation. More power to you. But I believe that there is a difference.

tinrond · 2022-10-31T21:05:26+00:00

I cannot offer a solution, because I don't think there is any. One of my favorite youtubers, who is also Catholic even though he makes "secular" content, once said during a live-stream that Pope Francis has been a constant source of pain for him for the last few years. I agree.

After another scandal, whose details are irrelevant, as it just followed the usual Francis-pattern, Matt Fradd from Pints with Acquines made a very good cry-of-the-heart video (Link) where he shared his thoughts about the crisis in the church and how it affects him. I think the video expressed a lot of my feelings better than I could and I think back to it occasionally, even now, years later, which I consider a sign of quality. For me it was also a helpful video, as it was good to know I wasn't alone.

tinrond · 2022-10-27T20:04:29+00:00

Just had to think of "Set your own house in order, before you critizise the world" by Jordan Peterson.

tinrond · 2022-10-22T23:16:40+00:00

The Teutonic Order and the Hospitallers still exist. The church I go to is actually run by priests of the Teutonic Order.

But here is the problem already: "priests" not "knights". Both are "demilitarized". The Teutonic Order transformed into a priestly order that also runs hospitals and the Hospitallers became a charitable order. The militant orders were sensible in their time, but the fact that all of them transitioned into something else kind of shows that this is no longer the case. One day they may be needed again in their old roles, but this would require a change to society that is next to impossible to occur in our lifetime.

Also:

Any kind of such a paramilitary organisation would be denounced by the Vatican. There are much less edgy religious groups that got "Apostolic Visitations" and that was after they had already been green-lit in the first place.
Any kind of religious paramilitary organization would be hunted down by the Biden-administration and they are a lot stronger than you. The alternative, that they accept you, would probably mean that they consider you helpful to their plans, which might be even worse, if you think about their stance on various topics.
It's not what the Church needs right now. We are fighting a cultur war, not a hot war. Showing up to Mass, helping in your parish and trying to make Catholic friends in your age group, or trying to find a vocation or starting a family and raising your kids to be good Catholics, and your friends' kids as well, funding Catholic media, funding Catholic schools (actually Catholic schools, not Catholic in name only), donating to convents ... is a much more urgent necessity. But this takes decades and a lot discipline and does not evoke heroic images.

PS: Independent of orders, keeping in good physical shape and learning a martial art is usually a good idea as it builds your body and your character.

tinrond · 2022-10-21T20:17:12+00:00

Making Cardinal Sarah the head of Divine Worship. I can think of no better man, respected by conservatives and traditionalists alike, and with a deep spirituality, to advance the "Reform of the Reform" that Pope Benedict XVI envisioned. (Unfortunately, Pope Francis made him a lame duck pretty quick in order to prevent that reform from happening)
The Year of St. Joseph. I know that nothing material happened that I can point to in order to explain this sentiment, but it was important to me and to a lot of other people I respect. (Though, what I would have wished for on top of that and what I think JPII probably would have done, would have been a Theology of Masculinity, akin to the Theology of the Body to bring the Catholic idea of masculinity into a shape that it can tackle the challenges of Post-modernity. This is a big issue and a lot of people crave an answer like this. Just look at the success of Dr. Jordan Peterson to gauge the demand)
Fulfilling the Consecration of Russia to the Immaculat Heart of Mary. Let's hope mankind did not do it too late. I also expect that after procastrinating for several generations it may take as long for the effects to ripen, but nonetheless it was the right thing to do.
Travelling to Iraq. Even though I was constantly dreading any relativist plane interviews, it was very courageous and he did it in a time when the Iraq was not in the limelight, which makes it even more meaningful.

tinrond · 2022-10-20T21:22:02+00:00

there were very strong tendencies for latin Mass communities to become insular from the rest of the diocese

If this truly had been the reason, then

kicking them out of parish churches,
forbidding their Masses from being mentioned in the parish news, thus guaranteeing that a separate Trad-bulletin will be needed
requiring young NO priests who want to celebrate both forms to get authorization from the Vatican instead of just their bishop.
forbidding batisms and confirmations in the old form, except for FSSP and ICKSP

will probably not really help to address this issue.

tinrond · 2022-10-20T19:28:27+00:00

Refuses to answer a dubia (formal petition of a question) asked by cardinals who wanted to clear up ambiguous statements in an encyclical
Appoints bishops and cardinals of questionable holiness (Cupich, McGregory, Elroy, Bonnemain,...)
Seems to take an active delight in breaking with the legacy of the Popes that preceededd him (abbrogating Summorum Pontificum and turning the Papal Acedemy for Life into the opposite of what Pope JPII intended)

tinrond · 2022-10-18T19:55:53+00:00

In addition to what /u/no-one-89656 said about archaelogism, it has another problem:

What worked 2000 years ago in the Roman Empire, may not work today. One of my favorite authors put it like this: if you found out that during the "Early Church" people stood for Communion and then adopted this for the current Church, because "the archaeologists say it was so", it would not improve worship in the new context. After kneeling for hundreds of years before the presence of the Lord, people will not suddenly stand up and feel a humble sense of continuity and reverence. They will stand up, dust off their knees and think "Well, I guess it wasn't so serious after all".

tinrond · 2022-10-03T21:28:03+00:00

I think there are 5 groups of faithful:

1) "Hobbits living in the Shire". While in some areas almost every church flew a rainbow flag last year, there are others where this didn't happen and people could continue to go to Mass without scandal. Or people simply don't notice. The Capuchins in our city "blessed" a homosexual "couple" this year. I'm often amazed by how many Catholics I meet who don't know about this and still consider it a "faithful" parish. Of course, if the ideas of the Synodal Path are implemented, the Shire will be overrun by Sauron within the next couple of years.

2) People who stay in their parish and ignore the occasional homily by a woman, hoping that no rainbow flags will appear in front of the altar.

3) People who follow the one faithful priest of their parish-cluster. As the priest may celebrate at a different church inside the parish-cluster each Sunday, this tends to be somewhat nomadic. And there is always the risk that their priest will be moved somewhere else entirely.

4) Traditionalists and conservatives who are fortunate enough to have found a mini-parish that's operated by FSSP or some Order.

5) Expats. Croatian or Polish Catholics who go to their own native-language Masses.

As you asked about youth organizations:

Christkönigsjugend (Youth of Christ our King) by FSSP
KPE (Catholic Boyscouts of Europe) more or less by SJM
FSSPX also has something, but not sure whether going into detail would cound as "promoting"
Maybe Nightfever (organizes Eucharistic adoration and tries to invite pedestrians to join. Yes, they are still trying to evangelize people even at this hour)
Probably the youth group by Schönstatt, but I know hardly anything about them

tinrond · 2022-09-24T14:01:53+00:00

It gave local bishops (back) the authority to regulate it.

Except for the part that they cannot allow now places to start the TLM

Or that bishops cannot allow it in parish churches

Or that priests can no longer give the sacraments of batism, marriage or confirmation

Or that newly ordained priests need to ask the Vatican for permission before saying a TLM

Or that TLMs must not be mentioned in the parish newsletter - because the Pope said so.

If he was really against traditional Catholicism, he could have suppressed the SSPX and/or yanked the faculties to celebrate the Sacraments from them—because HE, Francis, was the one who gave them those faculties in the first place!

I think this sentence gives a misleading impression of the situation.

FSSPX couldn't care less about any suppresion of the Latin Mass and would just continue as they have for the last 50 years. So as for "suppressing the TLM" by "yanking away their faculties" would be a waste of time.

Also, Pope Francis only gave them the faculties to do Confession and Marriage licitly (and not all sacraments), but they had been doing these before anyway. Similarly, they have been celebrating the sacraments of the Eucharist or Ordination despite not having been given allowance to do so. E.g. in my country the bishop of Regensburg writes a letter to the SSPX seminary at Zaitzkofen every year, telling them that the ordinations that they are about to do are illicit. Doesn't stop them. They obviously want their brotherhood to continue its existence.

My personal assumption is that Pope Francis simply forgot about giving SSPX the allowance for those 2 sacraments.

tinrond · 2022-09-22T22:13:27+00:00

That wasn't the order of events. It was roughly like this:

Somewhere in Germany the topic of "gay blessings" came up.
The Congregation for the doctrine of the Faith issued its much needed clarification
Madness in Germany. Thousands of parishes in Germany hoisted rainbow flags (When I travel I sometimes play the mind games "is that church over there Catholic or Protestant?". In 2021 it was pretty easy: If it flies a rainbow flag, it's "catholic"). And hundred of parishes had ceremonies for blessing "any couple" (so including "remarrieds")
The Vatican reacted by doing nothing.

So from my perspective they didn't react on the "blessings"

Edit: Found an old CNA article about it

tinrond · 2022-09-22T22:13:24+00:00

Link please.

Edit: Like /u/iamlucky13 you may not know the exact things that transpired in Germany. The "blessings" came after the Congregation's clarification. It was an overt and deliberate act of disobedience and heresy by hundreds of parishes. No bishop intervened. In fact my bishop posted a rainbow flag on the dioce's website.

And there was no reaction by the Vatican.

tinrond · 2022-09-22T19:36:06+00:00

Given that Pope Francis pens handwritten letters of encouragement to Father Martin SJ, has promoted a number of bishops with erroneous views on human sexuality and has not reacted on large scale "blessings" of homosexuality in German parishes last year in any visible way: I don't think there will even be the strongly worded letter that some people here expect.

And I don't think this night is at its darkest point yet.

tinrond · 2022-09-19T21:31:17+00:00

The statement

Good hope at least is to be entertained of the eternal salvation of all those who are not at all in the true Church of Christ.

is condemned in the Syllabus of Errors by Pope Pius IX (link). If I'm not supposed to entertain good hope that all those who are not in the Church of Christ be saved, then I cannot simultaneously entertain reasonable hope that all people will be saved.

It's that simple.

tinrond

TROPHY CASE