Church Authority and the Amazon Controversy

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Anrakyr said:
To be fair saint Francis of Assisi praised the elements often.
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Yes, I remember his poem, “Canticle of the Creatures” (otherwise known as “Canticle of the Sun”), where he called the sun, “Brother Sun,” and the moon, “Sister Moon.” But Saint Francis didn’t bow to them nor worship them. I, too, have no objection to calling the earth Mother Earth. But I will not bow or worship Mother Earth. When I recite the Liturgy of the Hours, I command all the creatures – the sun, the moon and the stars – to praise and worship our creator. They are one with me in giving worship to the true God.
 
Most pagan’s don’t worship in the traditional sense you know of anyway. Many gods are seen as patreons, less like objects of veneration. You pay tribute to win favour or thank them for assumed deeds but you don’t worship on hands and knees.
 
That is completely different.
  1. The tree didn’t belong to the Church, so cutting it down didn’t undermine the Church’s authority. Also, if this was just a tree in a forest, it didn’t belong to anyone unlike a hand crafted statue.
  2. It was expressed that people believed the tree to be worthy of praise, that the tree itself had power. Cutting it down merely exposed the truth that it did not. As far as I know, nobody involved with these statues expressed that they believed them worthy of praise and that they had power. The statues seemed to have been used while venerating Mary in a ceremony, whether the statue actually depicts Mary or not.
Even if anyone believed that statues were in fact depictions of pachamama, would that make the statues idols? I don’t think the Amazons believe the statues themselves are powerful gods worthy of praise.

The fact that we are even having this debate shows why a person of the laity shouldn’t have made the call to remove the statues. If every member of the laity started taking action to remove items from the Church that they think shouldn’t be there after seeing how it is applauded that would be chaotic. Concerns should be voiced to the leadership.

Trust the hierarchy God gave us. Our Church isn’t just like any other government where all of the leadership is susceptible to complete corruption and becoming an irredeemable tyranny that needs to be overthrown by its people. Whatever corruption there is in the clergy, God will still make sure they ultimately do right by the Church as a whole.
 
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He gave Aaron instructions, but I don’t remember him telling Aaron, “whatever you bind on earth shall be bound in Heaven and whatever you loose on earth shall be loosed in Heaven”.

But out of curiosity, remind me who undermined Aaron’s instructions from God in a nonsinful way?
 
Do you really think a naked pregnant woman with a red belly is a depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Does it protect her dignity as the theotokos? Does the image of a woman breastfeeding an animal give dignity to God? A Catholic job is to protect and proclaim the faith. Not just automatically allow undignified objects into the church.
 
I know popes are only human. They sin. They can do all the wicked things you’ve claimed. The statues probably shouldn’t have been in a church. The only thing I don’t understand is why you think it is acceptable for the laity to start destroying things before the Church leadership has confirmed that what you think happened based on a video you saw and an article you read. We have leaders for a reason, so everybody doesn’t throw a riot over their own opinions and interpretations of every little object and event.

We hate abortion, and yet we don’t raid clinics of all the tools they use to perform abortions. I respect the Church a whole lot more than I respect the government. If they have some weird ugly statues that were gifted to them sitting in a church, I’d either give them the benefit of the doubt or ask why.
 
Lysander said:
Do you really think a naked pregnant woman with a red belly is a depiction of the Blessed Virgin Mary? Does it protect her dignity as the theotokos? Does the image of a woman breastfeeding an animal give dignity to God? A Catholic job is to protect and proclaim the faith. Not just automatically allow undignified objects into the church.
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Hahaha. I agree. Inculturation also does not mean blindly lowering Christianity to a more primitive culture. It means raising the level of awareness of primitive culture to the higher standards of Christianity, just as our pioneer missionaries did. It also does not mean changing our disciplines (such as celibacy of the clergy) for the Amazonians on the lame excuse that the indigenous people “do not understand celibacy.” Really? How did they know that? St. Paul explained celibacy to a Gentile culture where the concept was unheard of. Nope. The truth is, some of the Synod Fathers – the modernist, liberal cardinals and bishops – want to push their own agenda sneakily, to the Amazonians at first, but so that in the end they can push it for the entire Church at large. We already know their tactic.
 
St. Vincent de Lerins Commonitorium is a good read on this topic, especially chapters 2 through 10 (paragraphs 4-28).

Additionally, he notes that God permits our authorized teachers to err, “to make trial of us, whether or not we love God with all our heart and with all our mind.” (par. 47).

St. Vincent:
The Notes of a true Catholic.

[48.] This being the case, he is the true and genuine Catholic who loves the truth of God, who loves the Church, who loves the Body of Christ, who esteems divine religion and the Catholic Faith above every thing, above the authority, above the regard, above the genius, above the eloquence, above the philosophy, of every man whatsoever; who sets light by all of these, and continuing steadfast and established in the faith, resolves that he will believe that, and that only, which he is sure the Catholic Church has held universally and from ancient time; but that whatsoever new and unheard-of doctrine he shall find to have been furtively introduced by some one or another, besides that of all, or contrary to that of all the saints, this, he will understand, does not pertain to religion, but is permitted as a trial, being instructed especially by the words of the blessed Apostle Paul, who writes thus in his first Epistle to the Corinthians, There must needs be heresies, that they who are approved may be made manifest among you: 1 Corinthians 2:9 as though he should say, This is the reason why the authors of Heresies are not immediately rooted up by God, namely, that they who are approved may be made manifest; that is, that it may be apparent of each individual, how tenacious and faithful and steadfast he is in his love of the Catholic faith.
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And what if error seems to be spreading?

St. Vincent:
[7]…What, if some novel contagion seek to infect not merely an insignificant portion of the Church, but the whole? Then it will be his care to cleave to antiquity, which at this day cannot possibly be seduced by any fraud of novelty.
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As God said to Jeremiah
Jer. 6:16 Thus says the Lord:
“Stand by the roads, and look,
and ask for the ancient paths,
where the good way is; and walk in it,
and find rest for your souls.
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Nonsense. You don’t get to enter someone else’s worship space to rearrange and decorate. If a non-Catholic enters a Catholic church and starts destroying statues, he’s way out of line. If he enters the gathering space of his own religion and destroys statues of saints, his own congregation will deal with him – either approving, or sanctioning his actions.

As for the relativistic question, “Who decides? Who gives you the right to say ‘this is a pagan idol’?” – it’s first of all a relativistic question, and all relativism boils down to “because I say so.” That being the case, all relativistic questions are red herrings. Relativism denies authority outside of oneself, so the only answer that fits a relativistic framework is, “Me,” and then the conclusion has to be, “Therefore anyone can destroy any statue one sees fit to destroy.” You might even add, “Anywhere and any time.” And since the point is that there are no rules outside of the individual’s rules, there’s no sense in asking the question.

Your question denies any authority to decide objective criteria for recognizing what is pagan and what is Christian. But the objective criteria are established, beginning with the Biblical instructions and continued through Tradition and tradition – neither of which is based on novelties.

The Magisterium does not act alone in determining and upholding the criteria, either. The Sensus Fidelium is real. So even when 97% of the hierarchy follow Arius, the Faithful are not bound to believe the Arian heresy. Even if 97% of Catholic bishops bring statues of Shiva into the Sanctuary, the Faithful are obedient to our Lord when we remove those statues.

And of course people who are familiar with Pachamama can point to those statues and say, “That’s not the Virgin Mary – that’s the false idol of the pagans that they named Pachamama.” Which has been done repeatedly by indigenous South Americans who resent being used as mascots for the political purposes of the hierarchy. It’s patronizing and offensive.
 
Praise be to God that you are faithful. I see evidence that God has called many faithful and fervent Christians at this time. It consoles me to see that God is protecting His Church this way.
 
Willing_Spirit said:
I am not aware of any percentage of bishops that condemned the statues and told the faithful to remove them.
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It doesn’t matter if none of the bishops guide the Faithful aright – the Faithful are not obligated to embrace heresy or heretical practices even if the pope himself were to call for it upon threat of excommunication. We are only obligated to obey God.
 
Kyneburghe said:
You don’t get to enter someone else’s worship space to rearrange and decorate.
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This is the principle I am defending, not sure why you are hurling it at me as if I rejected it. At the French Revolution, French people entered their churches and destroyed statues of saints be ause they judged them idolatrous (and more). I fail to see hwo that differs from someone entering a church in Rome to which they do not beling and destroys images placed there with the approval of the bishop.

When I ask “who decides?” I have in mind that someone does decide, ie priest or bishop in charge of the building. You are the one wih the relativist “each person decides and does what he wants” position. I cannot make it any clearer: no one has the right to decide “this is pagan” besides the one whom the Church has placed in charge of deciding it.
Kyneburghe said:
Even if 97% of Catholic bishops bring statues of Shiva into the Sanctuary, the Faithful are obedient to our Lord when we remove those statues
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This is pure relativism. You have appointed yourself as the inerrant interpreter of the tradition instead of acknowledging the role of the magisterium in interpreting objective criteria.
 
rom said:
The truth is, some of the Synod Fathers – the modernist, liberal cardinals and bishops – want to push their own agenda sneakily, to the Amazonians at first, but so that in the end they can push it for the entire Church at large. We already know their tactic.
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I would venture a guess (almost certain) that the “Amazonians”, whoever they may be, have no clue that this is going on and that it is supposed to be helping them. They are being used by the organizers of this campaign to promote an agenda that has nothing to do with the Amazon.
The “Amazonians” that are currently at the synod are financed by an American foundation that is not in the business of supporting Christianity or anything related to Catholicism. Quite the opposite in fact.

There is an old saying that if you don’t know what something is about, it is about money. I am beginning to suspect that the Vatican is in a financial crisis (a book about this came out this week) and they are looking for money. The pontiff is courting some unsavory characters (Saudi Arabia for one) to prop up Vatican finances.
I have no proof of this, so go ahead and call me names. But, think about it.
 
It is truly disappointing to me when poor indigenous people are used to push an agenda by liberal European bishops because they can’t fully succeed on the Western front. It’s rude and assumes that Amazonians are too stupid to understand our theology and tradition of faith.
 
CapitalistCatholic said:
It is truly disappointing to me when poor indigenous people are used to push an agenda by liberal European bishops because they can’t fully succeed on the Western front. It’s rude and assumes that Amazonians are too stupid to understand our theology and tradition of faith.
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So would it be right to assume that you’ve disagreed with all the previous synods that have specifically dealt with cultural assimilation of the Gospel? Middle East 2012
Africa 2011
Africa and Madagasca 2004
Europe 1999
Oceania 1998
Asia 1998
America 1997
Ukrain 1980
Netherlands 1980
 
Not at all. None of these synods proposed an ordained ministry for women and married priests.
 
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