FOCUS: Th e ‘Amazon mission’ in the Catholic Church

Th e ‘Amazon mission’ FOCUS in the Catholic Church

ASpecial Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon Region, entitled Amazonia: New Paths for the Church and for an Integral Ecology, will be held in Rome from 6 to 27 October 2019.

What does it mean for us, defenders of life and the family, Catholic men and women living in other parts of the world, not necessarily in Amazonia?

Voice of the Family has followed several synods in recent years. In fact, we were established to assist bishops to uphold the Church’s perennial teaching at the synods on the family (2014-2015). During the course of the two family synods, the youth synod (2018), and during the preparations for the upcoming Pan-Amazon synod, ideas and concepts have consistently been proposed that presuppose that there can be a “new church” and a new concept of society.

At this stage of the so-called synodal process, the vision of this “new church” is that of a decentralised structure that ceases to be universal. Such an “umbrella-church” could enfold a variety of beliefs and pastoral practices which may either confrom to, obscure or contradict the perennial truths the Church has taught universally for two thousand years.

The vision of civil society in these synods seems to refl ect a Marxist-inspired, egalitarian and ecologically minded world order. It draws its spiritual foundation from Pope Francis’s encyclical Laudato si by placing care for “our common home” at the centre of our religious and moral life.

At our recent Rome Life Forum, Prof. Roberto de Mattei encapsulated the clear problems with these visions with remarkable precision:

“The New World Order is in reality worldwide chaos, which today has the colours of the Amazonia, the happy paradise in which indigenous peoples pass on the wisdom of the cult of nature, and the Earth Charter replaces the Declaration of Human Rights, now superseded by the tribal phase of the fourth and fi fth Revolutions. The Amazonia has been elevated from a physical territory to a theological place, the object par excellence of geolatry, the cult off ered to Mother Earth which embraces all creatures, animate or inanimate, where everything coexists and nothing is, because, once every inequality is eliminated, nothingness is revealed as the ultimate secret of the universe. The metaphysics of the nothing is the heart of the new religion.”

This “new religion” needs priests and the upcoming synod also seems to be paving the way for a radical change in holy orders by opening a discussion on the possible end of priestly celibacy as well as the ordination of women to the diaconate.

Revolutionary forces have always sought to attack the Catholic priesthood. Priests, who as alter Christus administer the sacraments and preach the salvifi c plan of God for humanity, are the enemies of the revolution against God and His order.

An attack on the Catholic priesthood is also an attack on the family and vice versa. It is diffi cult, if not impossible, for a family to teach faith and morals to its children if the Church does not also teach them. It is diffi cult, if not impossible, to raise holy priests for the service of the teaching Church, if families are unable to pass on the faith to their children.

These and similar issues are at the heart of the concerns regarding the upcoming pan-Amazon synod.

This Focus looks at the ideas that underlie the current stage of the synodal process. It examines what they will mean for Catholic family life as well as their implications for our Mother the Church as she shapes the spiritual life of her children striving for heaven.