Amazon Synod idols cast in River Tiber today

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aroosi said:
Dr Marshall announced in his youtube channel ‘with great joy’ that the ‘idols’ were thrown in the Tiber. Maybe he is involved in the physical action, maybe he is not but he certainly doesn’t describe it as a theft and compared what happened to the actions of Saint Benedict, Saint Boniface and Elijah. In other words he considers what happened as heroic and saintly.
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I seriously doubt he did it. Perhaps someone gave him a heads up or called him right after it happened, but I seriously doubt he played a roll in a conspiracy.

And I know I didn’t do it, but I too saw that with great joy and consider it heroic.
 
If he did do it - he’d be accused of damaging image of traditionalists among Synod critics

If he calls for it to be done and didn’t do it - he’d be accused of hypocrisy

If he doesn’t call for it to be done at all, he’s ignoring Scripture.

What exactly should he have done?
 
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Protestants view Catholics bowing to statues and call it idol worship as well
 
Same could be said about fundamentalist Catholics who are condemning the Pope and Clergy who were at the Amazon Synoid, for endorsing pagan worship.
 
It’s weird that you have to explain to Catholics why we don’t bow before the gods/deities or images of other religions.
 
Rubee said:
It’s weird that you have to explain to Catholics why we don’t bow before the gods/deities or images of other religions.
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I am aware that we don’t do that. Therefore I am giving the benefit of the doubt to the Catholics involved in the synod’s opening ceremonies that they weren’t doing that. “Worshipping Pachamama” doesn’t seem to be how anyone who was actually participating describes their intent.
 
I wasn’t talking about you, actually. The person being responded to clearly doesn’t get it: he’s confused abt why we don’t want to bow down to images of pagan deities when we bow before images of Jesus and Mary. Apparently, some Catholics have no idea that there might be a difference.
 
Were they? Who says? The identification as Pachamama doesn’t seem to come from the participants in the ceremony, and indeed it seems that Pachamama is a deity from an entirely different region.

We are always telling our Protestant sibs that you can’t tell from someone’s posture that they are idolatrously offering latria to something other than God. Yet you are quite sure that these people — who were fellow Catholics, not pagans who happened to be there — were offering worship to a false deity rather than veneration to a local form of Our Lady?

Yes, the statues look creepy and probably shouldn’t have been used. But a lot of our stuff looks creepy to outsiders. That does not automatically make their use idolatrous.
 
Usagi said:
But a lot of our stuff looks creepy to outsiders.
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Don’t you think “to outsiders” is a crucial distinction? Why would it look weird to us, on the inside? In any case, the Vatican itself says it represents life/fertility etc. So, no: It’s not a Catholic symbol.
 
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From my understanding he didn’t know of their existence until either the day he left or after he returned. I think in his interview with George Neumayr he mentioned that he didn’t see them while he was there.
 
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Can someone please explain to me what the point is? Why? Just . . .why? What’s the point/aim/goal here? Stimes it just seems like scandal is being created for no good reason and I just don’t get the ‘why’ of it.
 
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Rubee said:
Don’t you think “to outsiders” is a crucial distinction? Why would it look weird to us, on the inside?
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Because we are not insiders to every particular cultural manifestation of Catholicism.

Now, yes, if some . . . person who doesn’t know any more than we do set this ceremony up and ended up using a pagan goddess image for Our Lady, while the actual Catholics of the Amazon are like, “Uh, we don’t do that. Ugh, why would you do that?” then that’s stupid and should not be repeated. But if there actually is a local tradition of portraying the BVM that way — perhaps one descended from pagan practices but no longer pagan in context — then the fact that Catholics up north find it weird and off-putting is not relevant.
 
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Usagi said:
Because we are not insiders to every particular cultural manifestation of Catholicism.

Now, yes, if some dumbass white person who doesn’t know any more than we do set this ceremony up and ended up using a pagan goddess image for Our Lady, while the actual Catholics of the Amazon are like, “Uh, we don’t do that. Ugh, why would you do that?” then that’s stupid and should not be repeated. But if there actually is a local tradition of portraying the BVM that way — perhaps one descended from pagan practices but no longer pagan in context — then the fact that Catholics up north find it weird and off-putting is not relevant.
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The Vatican has already said the statues are Life/fertility statues. We don’t need to push this explanation that it was intended to represent our lady.
 
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Adamek said:
People usually don’t commit an act of “theft” only to throw the objects away. Theft it was not!
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Just for the record, this is not an accurate representation of Catholic moral theology concerning what is or is not an act of theft.

The intention to throw away stolen items after they are taken from their rightful owners without permission does not change the theft of someone else’s property into some other kind of an act. It is still a theft.

This was a theft from a church. Assigning some motive or other to it does not make it into something else. It is still a theft.

If the people who did this asked me what I thought, I would tell them they ought to confess it and if they really have the moral courage they say they do they ought to go to the rector of the church and tell him outside of sacramental confession that they did it. They ought to turn themselves in, if the motive was so praiseworthy, because the act itself was wrong.

The fact that they didn’t want to get caught speaks volumes. Even if their goal was good, this was not a defensible act and I think the perpetrators knew it. Of course, maybe they will turn themselves in and show that they’re really willing to take whatever consequences go with what they did. They could surprise me, who knows? I really do not doubt they thought they were being some kind of hero when they decided they were above the law. (I still think they were also showing off and being grandiose instead of stopping and thinking about whether there was a less defiant way to deal with a distressing situation.)
 
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Usagi said:
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Rubee:
Don’t you think “to outsiders” is a crucial distinction? Why would it look weird to us, on the inside?
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Because we are not insiders to every particular cultural manifestation of Catholicism.

Now, yes, if some dumbass white person who doesn’t know any more than we do set this ceremony up and ended up using a pagan goddess image for Our Lady, while the actual Catholics of the Amazon are like, “Uh, we don’t do that. Ugh, why would you do that?” then that’s stupid and should not be repeated. But if there actually is a local tradition of portraying the BVM that way — perhaps one descended from pagan practices but no longer pagan in context — then the fact that Catholics up north find it weird and off-putting is not relevant.
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There are number of Catholics from the Amazon speaking out that what is going on there is not authentic Catholicism practiced in the amazon and these same Amazonians are saying this is heresy and pagan worship.

When you have Catholics in the Amazon cheering the those idols being thrown in the Tiber, I think it carries significant weight.
 
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