Church Authority and the Amazon Controversy

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No, criticizing is fine and probably would have led to an appropriate removal of those items, but someone stole those items and threw them into the river.
 
This discussion seems to be getting a little heated, and we’re really all on the same side here. I’m just going to take the earlier advice and wait to see what the Church says about the whole ordeal.
 
Derived from pagan symbols.
Saturnia used evergreen as well as the pagan holiday Sol Invictus which was the Sun worship at the winter solstice.Dec. 25th.
Jews in the first century didn’t keep track of birthdays precisely because it was a Roman pagan practice. So we don’t know Jesus birthday. But making it on the popular holiday already celebrated increased our numbers.
The YULE tree was an Odin Holiday.
Saint Augustine actually wrote about the problem of continued celrbration of Sol Invictus.
In America, there were laws passed by Puritans outlawing Christmas Trees as pagan.
 
Thanks – I missed that somehow. You can tell when it’s a workday. 😆
 
What is debunked?
First Century Jews didn’t celebrate or keep track of birthdays. That is not refuted or addressed.
This means I didn’t say it wasn’t the 25th, I said we don’t know for certain. It has a 1 in 365 chance.
Mr Marshall has the birth at midnight on the 25th. If he said December, I might bite.
PS. Pretty certain I learned that first century Jews did not keep track of birthdays from Brad Pitre. I am going to guess that the Apostles grew up first Century Jews like Jesus. Making the assertion about the Apostles Marshall makes dubious.
 
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You need to look at Christology a little more deeply. Sophia? Logos?
 
There’s a huge difference between vandalizing the statues and icons of Saints that are in Catholic churches and removing idols of pagan gods from Catholic churches. The men who removed the idols didn’t go to the Amazon to destroy them.
 
A week?
Am I the only one who realizes that sometimes our Church moves on a geologic time scale? Patience, people. Patience.

The Church is not endorsing idol worship.
 
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Dovekin said:
who is to judge this?
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Test the spirits. Be as wise as serpents and as innocent as doves. Don’t be stupid (to paraphrase Paul’s letter to the Galatians). The gods of the pagans are really demons.

Those one-liners are all biblical, showing a clear mandate for all Christians to discern truth.

Another mandate is the account of what Jesus did in the Temple that day He chased the money-changers out for defiling the House of the Lord.

The statues weren’t taken from the Amazon and thrown into the Tiber – they were taken from a Catholic church … a church, by the way, which pious tradition has it is built on the tomb of Romulus, founder of Rome, suckled by a she-wolf, and located between the Basilica of St. Peter and the Santangelo church dedicated to St. Michael the Archangel. Many churches in Rome are built over the ruins of pagan temples. Christ is our triumphant King.
 
Kyneburghe said:
Those one-liners are all biblical, showing a clear mandate for all Christians to discern truth.
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And all used to justify destroying statues of saints.

The question I am raising is who decides. Who gives you the right to say “this is a pagan idol”?

Test the spirits. The vandals are found to be lacking justification when entering churches to destroy the artwork within.
 
There is an element that is missing from this discussion. Pakemama did not arrive on her own. Neither was she whisked into the church by a groups of Amazonians. She was 'invited" by the German bishops in charge of this affair, with tacit approval of the pope.

The man who removed the pagan statues from the church committed an act of disobedience. It was an act of protest. He made a statement by removing pagan idols from the Catholic church. Calling it a petty crime (theft) by the vatican is a crime in itself. All the babbling here about who will arrest and prosecute him is just babbling. No one will arrest him, because he would then testify and further embarrass the good bishops who created this mess.

Since his action went against the will of the pope, it is the pope who needs to deal with the situation. We already know that he will do nothing.
 
Genesis315 said:
It also bears pointing out, some clergy are opposing these things as well. Which ones do we trust?
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It’s actually quite simple. If any clergy states/does anything which contradicts Church teaching (and Church teachings can be found in the CCC) then don’t trust them.
 
What scripture or saint overrides “Thou shalt not steal” or makes it not evil? I am sure you can come up with some cherrypicked prooftext somewhere that appears to support the position, but I go with the clear plain meaning of the Commandments. And the people in the church did not make the image, and there is absolutely no way that you can possibly know whether the actions on the video were intended by the participants as worship (unless you claim the omniscience of God), so don’t even bring up graven images.
 
When did God order someone to steal? Honest question - I am not aware of it happening but am quite wiling to be corrected with accurate and valid citations. And “thou shalt not kill” is, as I understand it, a loose translation; a more correct word would be “murder”, which is a whole different kettle of fish.
 
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Nice try. But, similarly to the way killing opponents in war is not murder, despoiling a conquered foe is not stealing, at least under the standards of that time and place.
 
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