Introducing: green apostasy!
Nature Worship, Spiritism, Indigenous Liturgy:
Get ready for the Amazon Synod!
He’s ready — are you?!
If the preparatory document just released for the upcoming Amazon Synod is any indication, then the last few synods that caused chaos in the Vatican II Church were small potatoes. Communion for adulterers? Situation ethics? Sin as an imperfect participation in virtue? The youth as a privileged place of God’s revelation? You will wish to return to those topics if what’s on the Amazon Synod agenda will actually be implemented.
Officially called the Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, the Vatican has put up a special web site dedicated to the event:
This past Monday, June 17, the Roman Modernists released the full text of the synod’s Instrumentum Laboris, as the working document is formally called, accompanied by a press conference to introduce it. Interestingly enough, the text has been released only in Spanish and Italian so far:
- Full text: Instrumentum Laboris (Working Document) for Amazon Synod (Spanish, Italian)
- Video: Vatican Press conference introducing Amazon Synod’s Instrumentum Laboris
[Just as we were going to publish this post, an English translation was provided by Rorate Caeli:]
- Full text: Instrumentum Laboris (Working Document) for Amazon Synod (English)
That the working document is 64 pages in length and exceeds 21,000 words in the original Spanish, should hardly need mention. Modernists are well known for their wordiness, which they use to disguise, distract from, and hide their nefarious thoughts. As Pope Pius VI observed concerning the fifth-century heretic Nestorius, “he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed” (Bull Auctorem Fidei, preamble). Sound familiar?
Although the Instrumentum Laboris has not been released in English, some English-speaking web sites have provided reports and commentary, some of which we will look at now.
Francis’ theological buddy “Cardinal” Walter Kasper, always a powerful mover and shaker in the background with his own synod experience, is quite confident that, should there be sufficient support from the “bishops” for ordaining married men, “the pope would accept it”. While a discussion of ordaining married men to the Novus Ordo priesthood is definitely on the agenda, it actually seems to be the least of the controversial topics. At Life Site, columnist Diane Montagna points out that the synod will mull “letting bishops ‘adapt’ Mass” according to local culture. Her colleague Steve Mosher observes that the Vatican’s agenda for the synod “borders on nature-worship” and is missing the Gospel. Similarly, the Chilean conservative Novus Ordo author José Antonio Ureta warns that the synod is “at the service of the neo-pagan agenda”, something which Vaticanist Edward Pentin reports on using his own blog rather than his usual column at the EWTN-owned National Catholic Register. The semi-traditionalist blog Rorate Caeli concludes that the working document “does not rise to the level of toilet paper”, with no offense intended to toilet paper.
Resignationist Louie Verrecchio says that the good news about the Amazon Synod is that it must surely now “open the eyes of at least some who were previously blind”. Vaticanist Sandro Magister detects the “Cardinal Martini agenda” in the Amazon Synod and warns of the “after” that will come once it is concluded, much like it came in Francis’ exhortation Amoris Laetitia after the 2014/15 double synod. In what sounds like a near-desperate plea, the ubiquitous Novus Ordo historian Roberto de Mattei asks: “Dear Cardinals and Bishops, do you really want a Church like this?” He didn’t pose that question to his “Pope”, though, presumably because he knows what answer he would get. An anonymous Novus Ordo site sees the Gnostic evolutionary theory of the Jesuit Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881-1955) as the basis for the Amazon Synod’s solicitude for an “integral ecology.”
Given all this, it is not surprising that the conservative Novus Ordo Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira Institute (IPCO) has put up a “synod watch” web site to monitor the Amazon Synod and inform and warn the public about its nefarious agenda:
Just how bad the Instrumentum Laboris is can be seen also by taking a look at the English quotes and excerpts that are floating around on the internet [again, Rorate Caeli has since provided a full English translation, available here]. José Ureta exposes the shocking contents of the document in the article referenced earlier, which is worth quoting at length:
The Instrumentum laboris of the coming Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops, made public this morning, represents a total opening of the gates of the Magisterium to Indian Theology and Ecotheology, two Latin American derivatives of Liberation Theology. After the collapse of the USSR and the failure of “real socialism”, the advocates of Liberation Theology (LT), on the Marxist style, attributed the historic role of revolutionary force to indigenous peoples and to nature.
Like LT, the Instrumentum laboris does not take the Revelation of God contained in the Bible and in Tradition as the basis for its ruminations, but rather the supposed “oppression” to which the Amazon is said to be subject. Thus, from a simple geographical and cultural area, the Amazon becomes a “privileged interlocutor,” a “theological place,” “an epiphanic place,” and a “source of God’s revelation” (n° 2, 18 and 19).
From a theological point of view, the Instrumentum laboris not only recommends the teaching of Indian Theology “in all educational institutions” for “a better and greater understanding of indigenous spirituality” and to “take into consideration myths, traditions, symbols, knowledge, rites and original celebrations” (n ° 98). It also repeats all its postulates throughout the document. That is to say, the “seeds of the Word” are present not only in the aboriginal people’s ancestral beliefs, but they have “grown and given fruit” (n° 120) so that the Church, instead of her traditional evangelization that seeks conversion, must limit herself to “dialoguing” with Indians as “the active subject of inculturation are the indigenous peoples themselves” (No. 122).
In this intercultural dialogue, the Church must also enrich herself with clearly pagan and / or pantheistic elements of beliefs such as “faith in God the Father-Mother Creator,” “relations with ancestors,” “communion and harmony with the earth” (n ° 121) and connection with “the various spiritual forces” (n ° 13). Not even witchcraft is sidelined by this “enrichment”. According to the document, “The richness of the flora and fauna of the forest contains real ‘living pharmacopoeias’ and unexplored genetic principles” (No. 86). In this context, “Indigenous rituals and ceremonies are essential for integral health because they integrate the different cycles of human life and nature. They create harmony and balance between human beings and the cosmos. They protect life from the evils that can be caused by both humans and other living beings. They help to cure diseases that damage the environment, human life and other living beings” (No. 87).
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From an ecological point of view, the Instrumentum laboris represents the Church’s acceptance of the deification of nature promoted by the UN conferences on the environment.
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Citing a document from Bolivia, the Instrumentum laboris states that, “the forest is not a resource to be exploited, it is a being or more beings with which to relate” (n ° 23); it continues by stating that “The life of the Amazon communities still unaffected by the influence of Western civilization [sic], is reflected in the beliefs and rituals regarding the action of spirits, of the divinity – called in so many names – with and in the territory, with and in relation to nature. This cosmovision is summarized in the “mantra” of Francis: ‘everything is connected’” (n ° 25).
From the socio-economic point of view, the Instrumentum laboris is an apology of communism, disguised as “communitarianism”. Moreover, it is the worst form of communism: the collectivism of small communities. In fact, according to the document the aborigines’ project of “good living” (sumak kawsay) assumes that “there is an intercommunication between the whole cosmos, in which no one excludes or is excluded.” The explanatory note on the indigenous word refers to a declaration by various indigenous entities, titled “The Cry of the Sumak Kawsay in Amazonia,” which states that the word “is an oldest and newest Word” (with a capital W in the text; that is, a Divine Revelation) which proposes “a communitarian lifestyle with one and the same FEELING, THINKING AND ACTING” (capital letters also from the original).
This phrase reminds us of Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira’s denunciation, in 1976, that indigenous tribalism was a new and even more radical stage of the Anarchist Revolution: “Structuralists see tribal life as an illusory synthesis between the apex of individual freedom and consensual collectivism, in which the latter ends up devouring freedom. According to structuralism, in this collectivism the various ‘I’s and individual persons, with their thought, will, sensibility and ways of being, characteristic and discrepant, are merged and dissolved in the collective personality of the tribe, which generates an intensely common thinking, will, and way of being.”
The Instrumentum laboris is nothing short of an invitation for humanity to take a fatal step towards the final abyss of the anti-Christian Revolution.
(José Antonio Ureta, “The Synod at the Service of the Neo-Pagan Agenda”, Pan-Amazon Synod Watch, trans. by James Bascom; bold and italics given; underlining added.)
You really can’t make this stuff up, can you?! If they go through with all this, the Vatican II Sect we have known up until this point will look like the Holy Office under Pope St. Pius X by comparison.
Roberto de Mattei’s article on the synod’s working document gives a really great overview, too. Here is a substantial portion of it:
In the document, published by the Holy See on June 17, the Amazon “bursts” into the life of the Church like a “new entity” (n.2). But what is the Amazon? It is not only a physical place and a “complex biosphere” (n.10) but also “a reality full of life and wisdom” (n.5), which ascends to a conceptual paradigm and calls us to a “pastoral, ecological and synodal” conversion (n.5). In order to carry out its prophetic role, the Church must heed “the Amazon peoples” (n.7). These people are able to live in “intercommunication” with the entire cosmos (n.12), but their rights are threatened by the economic interests of the multinationals, which, as the natives of Guaviare (Colombia) say “have slashed the veins of our Mother Earth” (n.17).
The Church listens to the “cry, of both the people and the earth (n.18), because in the Amazon “the land is a theological place by which the faith is lived. It is also a unique source of God’s revelation” (n.19). So then, a third source of Revelation has been added to Holy Scripture and Tradition: the Amazon, the land where “everything is connected” (n.20), everything is “constitutively related, forming a vital whole” (n.21). In the Amazon, the ideal of Communism is fulfilled, given that, in tribal collectivism, “everything is shared and private spaces – typical of modernity – are minimal.”
The native peoples have been liberated from monotheism and have restored animism and polytheism. Indeed, as is written in no. 25: “the life of the Amazonian community has not yet been influenced by Western civilization. This is reflected in the beliefs and rites regarding the action of spirits and the divinity – named in many different ways – with and in the territory, with and in relation to nature. This cosmo-vision is picked up in Francis’s ‘mantra’: “everything is connected” (LS 16, 91, 117, 138, 240).
The document insists on asserting that the Amazonian “cosmo-vision” encompasses an “ancestral wisdom, a living reservoir of spirituality and native culture (n. 26). So, “the native people of the Amazon have much to teach us(…). The new paths of evangelization must be constructed in dialogue with these ancestral wisdoms in which the seeds of the Word are manifested” (n.29).
The wealth of the Amazon [then] is in not being monoculture, but of being “a multiethnic, multicultural and multi-religious world” (n.36) with which we need to dialogue. The peoples of the Amazon, “remind us of the past and the wounds inflicted during long periods of colonization. For this Pope Francis has asked ‘humbly for forgiveness, not only for the offences of his own Church, but for the crimes against the native populations during the so-called conquest of America’. In the past the Church has at times been an accomplice of the colonizers and this has suffocated the prophetic voice of the Gospel” (n.38).
“Integral ecology” includes “the transmission of the ancestral experience of cosmologies, of spiritualities and theologies of the indigenous peoples, in the care of our Common Home” (n.50). “In their ancestral wisdom – these peoples– have cultivated the conviction that all creation is connected, that it deserves our respect and our responsibility. The Amazonian culture, which integrates human beings with nature, becomes a point of reference for the construction of a new paradigm of integral ecology” (n.56).
The Church must divest itself of its Roman identity and adopt “an Amazonian face”. “The Amazonian face of the Church finds its expression in the plurality of its peoples, cultures and ecosystems. This diversity requires an option for an outward-bound and missionary Church, incarnated in all its activities, expressions and languages” (n.107). “A Church with an Amazonian face in its multiple nuances, seeks to be an “outward-bound” Church (cf. EG 20-23), which leaves behind a colonial mono-cultural, clerical and domineering tradition and knows how to discern and adopt without fear, the diverse cultural expressions of the peoples” (n.110).
The pantheist spirit animating Amazonian nature is a leitmotif of the document. “The Creator Spirit which fills the universe (cf. Wisdom 1,7) is the Spirit that for centuries has nurtured the spirituality of these peoples even before the proclaiming of the Gospel and spurs them onto accepting it, from the base of their [own] cultures and traditions”(n.120). Hence, “we need to grasp what the Spirit of the Lord has taught these peoples over the course of the centuries: faith in God, Father-Mother-Creator; the sense of communion and harmony with the earth; the sense of solidarity with their fellow-man; the project of “living well”; the wisdom of a thousand-year old civilization the elders possess and which has effects on the health, cohabitation, education and cultivation of the land; the relationship with nature and Mother Earth; the capacity of resistance and resilience of the women in particular; the religious rites expressed; the relations with their forbearers; their contemplative stance and sense of gratuity; the celebration and festivity and the sacred sense of the land” (121).
(Roberto de Mattei, “The Amazonian Church of Pope Francis”, Rorate Caeli, June 20, 2019; formatting given.)
Resignationist Ann Barnhardt points out that n. 75 of the Instrumentum Laboris notes that “the family is where one learns to live in harmony: between peoples, between generations, with nature, in dialogue with the spirits [en diálogo con los espíritus]” (underlining added). Since Francis has experience with witchcraft, he may encourage that in his post-synodal exhortation. In Catholic moral theology, of course, such is known as the sin of spiritism or necromancy (see McHugh/Callan, Moral Theology, n. 2284b), but then Club Francis isn’t Catholic.
Lastly, Life Site‘s Diane Montagna has provided a translation of the following portions of the working document:
Chapter III
THE CELEBRATION OF THE FAITH: AN ENCULTURED LITURGY
“Evangelization with joy becomes beauty in the liturgy,
as part of our daily concern to spread goodness”
(EG, 24)124. Sacrosanctum Concilium (cf. 37-40, 65, 77, 81) proposes that the liturgy should be inculturated among the indigenous peoples. Cultural diversity assuredly does not threaten the unity of the Church but expresses its genuine catholicity and shows forth the “beauty of her varied face” (EG [Evangelii Gaudium] 116). That is why “we must be bold enough to discover new signs and new symbols, new flesh to embody and communicate the word, and different forms of beauty which are valued in different cultural settings…” (EG 167). Without this inculturation, the liturgy can be reduced to a “museum piece” or the “property of a select few” (EG 95).
125. The celebration of the faith must take place through inculturation so that it may be an expression of one’s own religious experience and of the bond of communion of the community that celebrates it. An inculturated liturgy will also be a sounding board for the struggles and aspirations of the communities and a transforming impulse towards a “land without evils.”
Suggestions:
126. The following should be kept in mind:
a) A process of discernment is needed regarding the rites, symbols and styles of celebration of indigenous cultures in contact with nature, which need to be integrated into the liturgical and sacramental ritual. It is necessary to be attentive to grasp the true meaning of symbols that transcends the merely aesthetic and folkloric, especially in Christian initiation and marriage. It is suggested that the celebrations should be festive, with their own music and dances, using indigenous languages and clothing, in communion with nature and with the community. A liturgy that responds to their own culture so that it may be the source and summit of their Christian life (cf. SC 10) and linked to their struggles, sufferings and joys.
b) The sacraments must be a source of life and a remedy accessible to all (cf. EG 47), especially the poor (cf. EG 200). We are asked [it is necessary] to overcome the rigidity of a discipline that excludes and alienates, and practice pastoral sensitivity that accompanies and integrates (cf. AL 297, 312).
c) Communities find it difficult to celebrate the Eucharist frequently because of the lack of priests. “The Church draws her life from the Eucharist” and the Eucharist builds the Church. Therefore, instead of leaving the communities without the Eucharist, change is requested in the criteria for selecting and preparing ministers authorized to celebrate the Eucharist.
d) In accordance with a “sound ‘decentralization’” of the Church (cf. EG 16) the communities request that the Episcopal Conferences adapt the Eucharistic rite to their cultures.
e) The communities ask for a greater appreciation, accompaniment and promotion of the piety with which the poor and simple people express their faith through images, symbols, traditions, rites and other sacramentals. All this happens through community associations that organize various events such as prayers, pilgrimages, visits to shrines, processions and festivals celebrating the patron saint. This is evidence of a wisdom and spirituality that forms a real theological locus with great evangelizing potential (cf. EG 122-126).
CHAPTER IV
THE ORGANIZATION OF THE COMMUNITIES
“It is fair to acknowledge that there are encouraging initiatives that emerge
from your own local realities and from your organizations”
(Address of Pope Francis, January 19, 2018)The cosmovision of the natives
127. The Church must be incarnated in the cultures of the Amazon that have a pronounced sense of community, equality and solidarity — and that is why clericalism is not accepted in all its guises. The native peoples have a rich tradition of social organization where authority is rotational and has a deep sense of service. Given this experience of organization, it would be opportune to reconsider the notion that the exercise of jurisdiction (power of government) must be linked in all areas (sacramental, judicial, administrative) and in a permanent way to the Sacrament of Holy Orders.
Geographical and pastoral distances
128. In addition to the plurality of cultures in the Amazon, distances generate a serious pastoral challenge that cannot be solved by mechanical and technological means alone. Geographical distances give rise to cultural and pastoral distances which; it follows that a “pastoral ministry of visiting” needs to give way to a “pastoral ministry of presence.” This requires the local Church to reconfigure in all its dimensions: ministries, liturgy, sacraments, theology and social services.
Suggestions:
129. The following suggestions from the communities recall aspects of the early Church when it responded to needs by creating appropriate ministries (cf. Acts 6:1-7; 1 Tim 3:1-13):
a. New ministries to respond more effectively to the needs of the peoples of the Amazon:
1. Promote vocations among indigenous men and women in order to respond to the need for pastoral and sacramental care. Their critical contribution is in the movement towards an authentic evangelization from the indigenous point of view, according to their customs and traditions. It is a matter of indigenous people who preach to indigenous people with a profound knowledge of their culture and language, capable of communicating the message of the Gospel with the strength and effectiveness of those who have their own cultural background. It is necessary to move from a “Church that visits” to a “Church that remains,” accompanies and is present through ministers who emerge from its own inhabitants.
2. Affirming that celibacy is a gift for the Church, it is asked that, for the most remote areas of the region, the possibility of priestly ordination for elders, preferably indigenous ones, who are respected and accepted by their community, be studied, even though they may already have an established and stable family, in order to ensure the Sacraments that accompany and support Christian life.
3. Identify the type of official ministry that can be conferred on women, considering the central role they play today in the Amazon Church.
(Translation: Life Site; bold and italics given; underlining added.)
When one reads all this, one wonders if perhaps the ultimate plan of the synod is simply this: Frighten people to death with the specter of nature worship, pantheism, Teilhardian cosmology, dialogue with deceased ancestors, indigenous liturgies, and other neo-pagan ideas — and all of a sudden simply ordaining married men doesn’t sound so bad anymore. Who wouldn’t agree to have married clergy if that’s what it takes to keep from getting a pantheistic eco-religion?! Is that perhaps the modus operandi?
Another fan of indigenous pagan ritual: “Saint” John Paul II (1920-2005). Original caption: “A Mexican Indian brushes Pope John Paul II with herbs as they burn incense in a traditional cleansing ritual at the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City Thursday, August 1, 2002. John Paul beatified two Mexican Indian martyrs on Thursday, proclaiming them examples of ‘how one can reach God without renouncing one’s own culture.'” (AP Photo/Eduardo Verdugo)
In any case, it’s clear that this assembly of Novus Ordo bishops is going to be a wild ride. “Cardinal” Raymond Burke and “Bishop” Athanasius Schneider had better prepare a few more declarations and corrections so as to assist their “Holy Father” in keeping the gates of hell from prevailing.
The Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region is scheduled to last three weeks, beginning on Oct. 6 and concluding on Oct. 27, 2019. Considering that Francis used a Wiccan sorcerer’s staff to open last year’s youth synod, one may suspect that this year he will use a bundle of coca leaves attached to a bamboo pole or at least put up a dreamcatcher in the synod’s assembly hall.
By the way: If the logo for the Amazon Synod, displayed above, looks awfully familiar to you, it’s probably because you’ve seen it before…. Was it designed by Thomas Rosica, maybe?
Ladies and gentlemen, fasten your seatbelts because Bergoglio’s green apostasy is just getting started!
Image source: youtube.com (screenshot) / Associated Press / sinodoamazonico.va
License: fair use / rights-managed / fair use
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