Yesterday morning, I checked out the headlines on Google news on my phone. One of the headlines appeared under the header “In case you missed it” with the footer “Vatican.va — 1 year ago.” It was a link to a …
Category: Amazon Synod
Bishops, Missionaries Who Know the Amazon Sour on Amazon Synod
In what seems to be growing concern about the true mission, vision, and motivation of the upcoming Pan-Amazon Synod, two Catholic bishops from the missions in the Amazon have made public statements questioning a foundation of the Vatican’s October event: …
Amazonians: The Vatican’s Beloved Specimens, Preserved in Amber
It is considered insensitive, even Hobbesian, to use the word “primitive” in speaking of primordial cultures. Encyclopedia Britannica identifies the phrase primitive culture as belonging to “the lexicon of early anthropologists.” Sir Edward Burnett Tylor, father of cultural anthropology, wrote …
Note to Vatican Enviro-Boosters: The Amazon Is Pretty Awful
“Gatherers and hunters par excellence.” That phrase from the Amazon Synod’s solemn-sounding Instrumentum Laboris is hard to let go. Its glittering fatuity is the keynote of a Vatican syllabus for a theologized pre-industrial age in communion with “the identity of …
St. Jean Vianney versus the Counterfeit Priests
PREFACE: I shall not endeavor to explain how these two letters fell into my hands. I shall only note how curious their contents are in light of the debates surrounding the upcoming Amazon Synod. 1. My dear Wormwood: I am …
Irreal Church: As Bad as You Think, but Also Worse
Imagine you are arriving early for a Friday-night youth event at a nearby Catholic parish. The youth minister is busy strumming the three chords of his newly created worship song, so you strike up a conversation with the longtime parish …
The Spirit of Paganism Looms over the Amazon Synod
Something ancient — paganism — is “struggling to be born” again. It’s slouching toward birth, like Yeats’s “rough beast,” laboring to arrive for its hour. It’s emerging amid the rise of what exorcist Fr. Chad Ripperger ominously describes as the …
