Resisting the Grave Errors in Pope Francis’s Apostolic Exhortation Querida Amazonia
On February 2, Pope Francis finally made public the Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Querida Amazonia.
It was eagerly awaited: With joy by those seeking a new and
desacralized Church, and with concern by those who love the Church.
The Errors in the Synod’s Prior Documents Were Not Condemned
Querida Amazonia neither corrected nor condemned the grave errors in the Synod’s previous documents, both the
Instrumentum Laboris, and the Final Document, titled
The Amazon: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology.
Instead, the Apostolic Exhortation retained those documents’
inspiration, namely the pantheistic evolutionism of the modernist heresy
and Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J.
Consequently, the serious criticism from cardinals and bishops that the
Instrumentum Laboris contains heresies and is implicitly pantheistic remains valid.
Querida Amazonia Quotes Poets, but not Fathers of the Church
Querida Amazonia does not quote Church Fathers and Doctors,
as would be expected in a pontifical document. Instead, it highlights
communist writers and poets. This makes the papal document almost
surreal.
On the other hand,
Querida Amazonia
attributes to the Amazonian indigenous peoples beliefs and customs that
do not exist there. They belong to natives from other regions. Such is
the case, for example, with the Pachamama “goddess”—which became the
symbol of the Amazon Synod. Pachamama is
not worshiped by the Amazonian indigenous people, but by those of the Andes mountain system.
A Fictional Amazon
Like the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region itself, Pope Francis’s Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation
Querida Amazonia does not discuss the Amazon region as it is. Rather, the exhortation dreams of a
Utopia, “an imaginary place or state in which everything is perfect,” calling it Amazonia.
Like the “noble savage” (or good savage) dreamed up by eighteenth century Enlightenment philosophy, the denizens of
Querida Amazonia
are also fictional: Perfect, pure, and wise indigenous living in direct
contact with a pristine Nature, a world where both jungle and tribesmen
are as yet “uncorrupted” by progress and civilization.
Since the “
noble savage” myth pervades all of the Pan-Amazon Synod’s documents, the Synod itself, and is one of the keys to understanding
Querida Amazonia, it is worthwhile to explore it a bit more.
Querida Amazonia and Rousseau’s “Noble Savage”
Writing in 2004 on the myth of the good savage, Canadian professor Jany Boulanger offers interesting insights on the topic:
“Free, sensual, polygamous, communist, and good:
these are the common features, highly caricatured, of the inhabitants
of this ‘best of all worlds.’ … Without a doubt, Jean-Jacques Rousseau
(1712–1778) is recognized as the one who most shared this myth by
defending this idea, which runs through most of his work: ‘Nature has
made man happy and good, but society makes him depraved and miserable.’”
For Rousseau, civilization and
private property are evil. Prof. Boulanger continues:
“In his philosophical essays, Discours sur les sciences et les arts (1750), and Discours sur l’origine et les fondements de l’inégalité parmi les hommes (1755), Rousseau claims that man’s primitive state leads him toward virtue and happiness because his very ignorance of evil prevents it from spreading. The development of his intellect and his search for luxury, property, and power, encouraged by social institutions, are what cast man out of a paradise possibly closer to Nature.”
Querida Amazonia and Aboriginal “Wisdom”
And so it is for
Querida Amazonia
as well. For Pope Francis, the Amazon’s so-called original peoples have
not been “corrupted” by social institutions. They have preserved an
“ancestral wisdom,” which they should transmit to the civilized world.
Moreover, their “wisdom” must inform “Gospel inculturation” in the
Amazon region.
A grouping of phrases from the exhortation
Querida Amazonia illustrates the decisive role it ascribes to the natives’ so-called ancestral wisdom:
“The wisdom of the way of life of the original peoples” (no. 22).
Integration into urban life “disrupts the cultural transmission of a wisdom that had been passed down for centuries from generation to generation” (no. 30).
“Even
now, we see in the Amazon region thousands of indigenous communities….
Each distinct group … in a vital synthesis with its surroundings,
develops its own form of wisdom” (no. 32).
“For centuries, the Amazonian peoples passed down their cultural wisdom orally, with myths, legends, and tales” (no. 34).
“The wisdom of the original peoples of the Amazon region ‘inspires care and respect for creation, with a clear consciousness of its limits, and prohibits its abuse’” (no. 42).
“To protect the Amazon region, it is good to combine ancestral wisdom
with contemporary technical knowledge, always working for a sustainable
management of the land while also preserving the lifestyle and value
systems of those who live there” (no. 51).
“For the Church to achieve a renewed inculturation of the Gospel in the Amazon region, she needs to listen to its ancestral wisdom” (no. 70).
“[W]e are called ‘to be their friends, to listen to them, to speak for them and to embrace the mysterious wisdom which God wishes to share with us through them.’ [103] Those who live in cities need to appreciate this wisdom and to allow themselves to be ‘re-educated’” (no. 72).
Does Grace “Suppose Culture”?
The concept of indigenous “ancestral wisdom” is one of
Querida Amazonia’s
central points. Where would this so-called wisdom come from? What is
its nature? The papal exhortation claims that it was supposedly
transmitted “orally, with myths, legends, and tales.” However, the
exhortation says nothing about its origin and nature. Is this
“mysterious wisdom” of natural or supernatural origin? Is it the result
of grace or primitive revelation? Since Pope Francis claims that this
“ancestral wisdom” should “inculturate” the Church, then it would seem
likely that he considers it to be of divine origin, immanent in man.
That is also what the modernist heresy sustains.
The word “inculturation” is used twenty times in
Querida Amazonia.
It partners, as it were, in tandem, with the “ancestral wisdom” myth.
But if the natives already possess wisdom and goodness (“the goodness
that already exists in Amazonian cultures” – no. 66), then the role of
the Church is not to convert them. Instead, the Church “brings it [the
supposed goodness] to fulfillment in the light of the Gospel” (no. 66).
The
Apostolic Exhortation exaggerates the role of culture, using the term
forty-five times. It urges a dialogue with, an understanding of
“Amazonian sensibilities and cultures from within” (no. 86). But Pope
Francis goes far beyond this when he changes the classic theological
axiom that
“grace presupposes nature” to affirm that
“grace supposes culture” (no. 68).
Now, according to the classic definition, grace is “a supernatural gift of God to
intellectual creatures (men, angels) for their eternal salvation, whether the latter be furthered and attained through salutary acts or a state of holiness.”
Hence “[o]nly a rational or intellectual nature is susceptible to grace
since it is by means of grace that the rational creature is lead to its
ultimate perfection, which consists in the vision of God’s essence (
visio beatifica).”
In
asserting that grace “supposes culture,” the human and angelic natures
seem to be confused or identified with culture, which has a pantheistic
flavor.
Inculturate the Church in “Ancestral Wisdom”
If grace supposes culture, then it follows that
Querida Amazonia wants to inculturate the Gospel in the “ancestral wisdom” of the natives.
Indeed, one reads in the exhortation:
For the Church to achieve a renewed inculturation of the Gospel in the Amazon region, she needs to listen to its ancestral wisdom,
listen once more to the voice of its elders, recognize the values
present in the way of life of the original communities, and recover the
rich stories of its peoples. In the Amazon region, we have inherited great riches from the pre-Columbian cultures. These include “openness to the action of God, a sense of gratitude for the fruits of the earth, the sacred character of human life
and esteem for the family, a sense of solidarity and shared
responsibility in common work, the importance of worship, belief in a
life beyond this earth, and many other values (no. 70).
This
“ancestral wisdom” of the Amazonian aborigines with which Pope Francis
wants to inculturate the Gospel included the practice of
cannibalism and polygamy.
Thirteen ethnic groups in the Amazon region still practice infanticide,
with some support from Brazil’s Indigenous Missionary Council. It is impossible to reconcile these practices with the Gospel of Our Lord Jesus Christ.
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira
Ecclesiastical Tribalism and Pentecostalism
The dream presented in the
Querida Amazonia of a Church “inculturated” in the tribal molds was foreseen by the great Catholic thinker
Plinio Corrêa de Oliveira in 1976 in his essay
Revolution and Counter-Revolution:
“Obviously,
it is not only the temporal realm that the Fourth Revolution wants to
reduce to tribalism. It wants to do the same with the spiritual realm.
How this is to be done can already be clearly seen in the currents of
theologians and canonists who intend to transform the noble, bone-like
rigidity of the ecclesiastical structure – as Our Lord Jesus Christ
instituted it and twenty centuries of religious life molded it – into a
cartilaginous, soft, and amorphous texture of dioceses and parishes
without territories and of religious groups in which the firm canonical
authority is gradually replaced by the ascendancy of Pentecostalist
“prophets,” the counterparts of the structuralist-tribalist witch
doctors. Eventually, these prophets will be indistinguishable from witch
doctors. The same goes for the progressivist-Pentecostalist parish or
diocese, which will take on the appearances of the cell-tribe of
structuralism.”
Following in the Steps of Teilhard de Chardin
As part of this inculturation of the Church with indigenous “culture,”
Querida Amazonia
has parts that evoke the Church-condemned pantheistic evolutionism of
Fr. Teilhard de Chardin, S.J., the so-called mystic of the “cosmic
Christ.”
The
Apostolic Exhortation states that “the indigenous peoples of the Amazon
Region express the authentic quality of life as ‘good living.’ This
involves … communal and cosmic harmony” (no. 71).
Querida Amazonia then goes on to this pantheistic-flavored Teilhardian tirade:
Certainly, we should esteem the indigenous mysticism that sees the interconnection and interdependence of the whole of creation,
the mysticism of gratuitousness that loves life as a gift, the
mysticism of a sacred wonder before nature, and all its forms of life.
At the same time, though, we are called to turn this relationship with God present in the cosmos
into an increasingly personal relationship with a “Thou” who sustains
our lives and wants to give them a meaning, a “Thou” who knows us and
loves us (no. 73).
Querida Amazonia continues, citing Pope Francis’s Teilhardian encyclical
Laudato Si’, “Similarly, a relationship with Jesus Christ, true God and true man, liberator and redeemer, is not inimical to the markedly
cosmic worldview that characterizes the indigenous peoples, since he is also
the
Risen Lord who permeates all things. …[T]he Son of God has incorporated
in his person part of the material world, planting in it a seed of
definitive transformation” (no. 74).
Again citing
Laudato Si’, the Apostolic Exhortation states:
The inculturation of Christian spirituality in the cultures of the original peoples can benefit in a particular way from the
sacraments since they unite the divine and the cosmic, grace, and
creation. In the Amazon region, the sacraments should not be viewed in
discontinuity with creation. They “are a privileged way in which nature is taken up by God to become a means of mediating supernatural life.” They are the fulfillment of creation, in which nature is elevated to become a locus and instrument of grace, enabling us “to embrace the world on a different plane (no. 81).
Still citing
Laudato Si’, the document suggests that matter is divinized and presents the Eucharist as a “fragment of matter”: “
In the Eucharist, God, ‘in the culmination of the mystery of the Incarnation, chose to reach our intimate depths through
a fragment of matter.’
The Eucharist ‘joins heaven and earth; it
embraces and penetrates all creation’” (no. 82).
It
is clear in these passages, perhaps more than in other places, how Pope
Francis’s new document exploits the Amazon and its indigenous peoples,
using them as a mere pretext to spread evolutionary cosmic pantheism.
Will “Pachamama” Worship Be Part of an Inculturated Liturgy?
The
exhortation explains the liturgy’s inculturation: “‘[E]ncountering God
does not mean fleeing from this world or turning our back on nature.’ It
means that we can take up into the liturgy many elements proper to
the experience of indigenous peoples in their contact with nature and
respect native forms of expression in song, dance, rituals, gestures,
and symbols. The
Second Vatican Council called for this effort to inculturate the liturgy among indigenous peoples” (no. 82).
A
telling illustration of how to do this Amazonian inculturation in
Church ceremonies was the worshipping of the Pachamama goddess (Mother
Earth) done on October 4, 2019, in the Vatican Gardens, then in Saint
Peter’s Basilica, and in a procession with two bishops carrying the idol
on a kind of float from the Basilica to the hall in which the Synod
Fathers gathered. Pope Francis was present on all these occasions and
gave the
Pachamama idol a blessing during the first one.
In
Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis seeks to justify all these ceremonies worshipping the Pachamama goddess: “It is possible to take up an indigenous symbol in some way, without
necessarily considering it as idolatry. A myth charged with spiritual meaning can be used to advantage and not
always considered a pagan error” (no. 79).
Querida Amazonia also reiterates the moral laxity of
Amoris Laetitia: “[T]he Church must be particularly concerned to offer understanding, comfort, and acceptance, rather than
imposing straightaway a set of rules that only lead people to feel judged and abandoned by the very Mother called to show them God’s mercy” (no. 84).
Not a Victory for Conservatives
Since
Querida Amazonia does not mention the ordaining of married men (
viri probati)
as priests or women as deaconesses, some conservatives claimed victory.
It is true that many liberal Catholics were looking forward to this
step, and the Final Document called for it. Thus, in a sense, one can
say that the omission was a conservative victory. However, as we will
see below, it was not a true victory, but a pyrrhic one. Pope Francis transcended the issue, addressing it on a much higher plane and in a devastating manner. The sad truth is that
Querida Amazonia
points to a change in the priestly ministry and liturgy that achieves
the same results in practice, without appearing to do so. This
subversive change is in line with the new Church’s understanding of
grace and the sacraments.
Querida Amazonia points out the
way ahead for progressives in the form of a rhetorical question:
“Inculturation should also be increasingly reflected in an incarnate
form of ecclesial organization and ministry.
If we are to
inculturate spirituality, holiness, and the Gospel itself, how can we
not consider an inculturation of the ways we structure and carry out
ecclesial ministries?” (no. 85).
True,
the document states that only an ordained priest can consecrate and
“preside at the Eucharist” (see nos. 86–90). However, it also says that
Amazonian inculturation
“requires the stable presence of mature and lay leaders endowed with authority … requires the Church to be open to the Spirit’s boldness, to trust in, and concretely to permit,
the growth of a specific ecclesial culture that is distinctively lay” (no. 94).
These “mature and lay leaders” sound very much like the Synod’s “
viri probati.”
Since the type of authority these male or female mature and lay leaders
will receive is not made clear, bishops or episcopal conferences may
interpret it as they see fit. This is how the bishops of Malta and
Argentina interpreted
Amoris Laetitia regarding the admission of
divorced and “remarried” Catholics to Holy Communion.
And, just as those bishops received the pope’s approval and that
approval was proclaimed Church magisterium and incorporated into the
Acta Apostolicae Sedes,
so also now, one can reasonably foresee that Pope Francis will
similarly approve these new “Church with an Amazonian face”
inculturation steps implemented by bishops in Brazil, Peru, Congo, India
… or elsewhere.
Inculturating the Priestly Ministry in the New Lay Church
This methodology seems all the more likely since
Querida Amazonia, as seen, exhorts the fostering of
“a specific ecclesial culture that is distinctively lay.” If, as discussed above,
“grace supposes culture,” and culture must be clearly and distinctly lay, are we not headed to a
lay Church
in which the priest’s role is reduced to the consecration of the
Eucharist and the absolving of sins, and he is stripped of all authority
and superiority over the non-ordained laity?
Archbishop Victor
Manuel Fernandez, of La Plata, Argentina, a close friend, ghostwriter
for, and adviser to Pope Francis, made a very important remark on this
secularization of the Church in an article published by
L’Osservatore Romano on February 17, 2020.
After stating that the Pope in
Querida Amazonia did not close the door on married priests but only refrained from dealing with the matter, the archbishop states:
“In any case, the ecclesial dream expressed by Francis gives new impetus to the renewal of the Church. His appeal to create a ‘distinctively lay’
Amazonian Church (no. 94) is particularly strong. That is why Francis
demands that the laity be ‘endowed with authority’ (no. 94). This entails reviewing a way of understanding the priesthood
that relates too much to its power in the community. Francis explicitly
talks about it in points 87 and 88. Francis specifies that, when it is
said that the priest is a sign of Christ the Head, it must be understood
as the source of grace, especially in the Eucharist, and not as a
source of power. Therefore, the leadership of communities can be entrusted to lay leaders endowed with authority who can create a more participatory Church.”
Along
the lines of a “distinctively lay” Amazonian Church, one of the reasons
Pope Francis presented for not ordaining women as deaconesses is that
to do so would be “clericalism”: “It would lead us to clericalize women,
diminish the great value of what they have already accomplished, and
subtly make their indispensable contribution less effective” (no. 100).
An Intermediary Stage Toward a New Synodal Church
In
addition, it must be pointed out that, the pope has failed to sign an
official teaching document of the Church using the classic formula:
“Given in Rome, at Saint Peter’s, etc.” In signing the Post-Synodal
Apostolic Exhortation
Querida Amazonia, Pope Francis employed a new and unconventional formula: “
Given in Rome, at the Cathedral of Saint John Lateran…”
This
is not a meaningless detail. On the contrary, it signals yet another
step toward creating a new Church that is no longer hierarchical and
monarchical—with the Pope as its Supreme Authority—but, instead, an
egalitarian
“Synodal Church” in the mold of the schismatic and heretical Orthodox
churches which are governed by synods of bishops. In this new
synodal church, the pope would become merely the
primus inter pares—the first among equals, having a primacy of honor, no longer a primacy of jurisdiction.
Indeed,
while Saint Peter’s Basilica symbolizes the pope’s universal power
(with the tomb of Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, in its crypt),
the Basilica of Saint John Lateran is the cathedral church of the
Diocese of Rome, of which, the pope is the bishop. By abandoning the
classic formula for signing a papal document “at Saint Peter’s…” Pope
Francis appears to signal that he is acting only as Bishop of Rome, not
as the pope. He does this in a “synodal” document in which he strongly
insists on the Church’s “synodality.”
Nothing Was Corrected, and New Errors Were Added
Except for its form, Pope Francis changed nothing of the Synod’s prior documents in this new exhortation.
Querida Amazonia presents the same errors contained in the Synod’s
Instrumentum Laboris
and Final Document. Appearances were altered, but the essence remained
the same. Worse, other errors were added, including doctrinal confusion
on grace and culture, the sacraments, and the priestly ministry.
Given
its depth, global scope, and, above all, its undermining of the papacy
and the priesthood, the Synod of Bishops on the Amazon region, and its
documents, including the Apostolic Exhortation
Querida Amazonia, are symptoms of a crisis the likes of which Holy Church has never known.
In
the face of this situation, we cannot fail to render special veneration
to Saint Peter and all popes who shone for their sanctity on the
pontifical throne. The errors and attitudes of Pope Francis should not
lead anyone to sedevacantism, the disparagement of the papacy, or
diminishing the authority and powers conferred by Our Lord on Saint
Peter and his successors. To resist Pope Francis’s error is not to
revolt, which is never legitimate. Rather, it is filial obedience. It is
to imitate Saint Paul, who resisted Saint Peter on the issue of the
Judaizers (Gal. 2:11).
Convinced
that Our Lord will be with His Church every day until the end of time,
and confiding in the Blessed Mother’s promise at Fatima, that finally,
her Immaculate Heart will triumph, with God’s grace, we must continue
the fight, resisting every infiltration of error and evil into the One,
Holy, Roman, Catholic, and Apostolic Church.
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