Francis' Amazon Synod

I have not written posts for a long time and cannot say when I will do another, not only because my health status depletes my energy levels but because in today’s Church there seems to be nothing but to comment on but damaging change, especially noticeable in the Synod on the Amazon where paganism is being applauded and accommodated. While our battle is “not against flesh and blood, but against the principalities, powers and rulers of this dark age” (Eph.6v12), yet in temporal terms we are doing battle with the Church’s highest-ranking shepherds. Sadly, this has to include Pope Francis, whom the secular world has embraced because they see in him what many Catholics see, that is, an accommodation to the ways of the world: re-marriage after divorce (here), the anti-life practices of contraception (here) and homosexual acts (here) and even of paganism by seeking to the give the Church an Amazonian face (sinodoamazonico #7, here). 

This accommodation of secular ideologies and paganism is supremely regretful since the eternal welfare of souls is at stake. I cannot help but call to mind two texts from Holy Scripture that our shepherds seem in need of re-hearing and taking to heart. One is an instruction: “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. Do not let yourselves be carried be carried away by all kinds of strange teachings” (Heb.9v13). The other is a warning: “Woe to you when the world speaks well of you, for that is how they treated the false prophets” (Lk.6v26). Those who were elevated by Francis to the Episcopacy, the Cardinalate or to high rank in Rome might well be troubled in heart these days; they may be concerned that they were elevated because they are seen as men who will not rock the Francis boat; men who do not fully adhere to the faith of the Centuries but are willing to adapt it (or even dispose of it) in order to gain the favour of the world -or perhaps just to feel themselves enlightened beyond the men of the past whose office they inherited; ‘Gnostic’ men with special insight and knowledge.

The buzz words of today’s episcopacy and the Synod -dialogue, listening and accompanying- are falsely applied to the Church’s mission. “Dialogue” has no place in Catholicism because we were not commanded to “Go, dialogue with all nations” but to “Go, teach all nations” (Matt.28v19).if they accept it, alleluia! If they do not, we don’t then syncretise The Truth with error; darkness with The Light; poison with The Food that leads to eternal life. Amazon Synod Fathers please take note: we are not meant to modify the Church according to pagan cultures but to replace paganism with Catholicism by authentic evangelisation: the faithful, unadulterated preaching of the Gospel. Paganism has nothing to add to the Divine Revelation given us by God Himself. If there are elements of the Faith that God has seeded in the ways of pagan religions they are there so that we can bring those seeds to fruition by showing how they prepare them for the Gospel, not so that we can adopt them. We have to be like St Paul and say “you are ignorant of the very thing you worship--and this is what I am going to proclaim to you” (Acts 17c23). Paul did not say let us add the unknown god to The Way.

As for “listening”, what see in Rome today is not genuine ‘listening’ but selective hearing; those of us who defend the True and Traditional Faith handed on through the centuries are not ‘listened to’ but dismissed; regarded as rigid and perhaps mentally ill and (here). Those who are listened to by Rome are those willing to modify (and thereby destroy) the Church in her structures, disciplines, teachings and liturgies by accommodating paganism and modern ideologies –a natural consequence of believing that Christ is not God-made-man -for if Christ was not God when He walked the earth, why listen even to Him?

Then there is the idea of “accompanying”; of walking with those who live a life Traditionally seen as a life of sin. How do we accompany someone who lives in sinful ways? To accompany rather than challenge them is to affirm them in their sins and put their salvation at risk by making their sins appear acceptable or even good: more holy than even a sacramental state. We are not called to accompany but to correct; with gentleness and respect sure, but also with clarity and conviction.

I am praying the prayer to St Michael and my Rosaries for the Synod, that the hearts and minds of our shepherds may love Truth, seek Truth, live Truth and advance The Truth. This world is filled with false lights where truth is distorted as it was in the Garden of Eden when the devil took the truth that man is made in the image and likeness of God and distorted it by presenting the tree of good and evil as a way of becoming more like God. It was this distortion and manipulation of the truth which caused man to fall into hell. Please God our shepherds do not do the work of the devil all over again by syncretising the Truth with the errors –the ideologies- of the modern world and of paganism.