“Amazon rite” proposed at Amazon Synod: more condescension to follow

From Ed Pentin at the National Catholic Register about topics raised at the Amazon Synod:

According to a Vatican-provided synthesis of interventions, subjects so far discussed have included a reflection on “indigenous rites” of the Sacrifice of the Mass that, it was said, should be looked upon “benevolently” if they are “not linked to superstitions,” and provided they “harmonize with a true liturgical spirit,” a synod father said.

Related to this, and as part of inculturation, it was proposed that “according to the right theological, liturgical and pastoral discernment,” a “Catholic Amazonian rite” should be considered ad experimentum. After all, it was stressed, “just as there is an environmental ecosystem, so there is an ecclesial ecosystem.”

Yes, pick up your jaw.   “Ecosystem”.  It’s crazy town in the Synod Hall.

One wants to pound one’s head on the table.  Nay rather, one want to pound someone else’s head on the table, namely, anyone who would bring up such a dopey notion as an “Amazon rite”.

We’ve been over this ground before in the matter of an African rite.  I remember one bishop from Cameroon at a conference I attended nearly groaning with frustration as a blinkered European brought up an African rite.  The bishop pointed out that in his country alone there were dozens of languages and cultures: which were they going to exclude to have a rite?  Instead, he underscored that there was a rite which they could all use: the Latin Rite.

Amazing thought.

If only there were a rite and one language we could use to bring us all together, one that cut across borders and generations.

Mind you, this dopey Amazon rite thing sheds light on the mind-set of those who are pushing pushing pushing their agendas.

When, for example, will we have someone like Card. Kasper amaze us with another scintillating remark, such as he left us (recorded by the above-mentioned Ed Pentin) during the Family Synod about how Africans oughtn’t tell the Synod members what to do.   A spectacular gaff, on par with those uttered by the gaffmeister himself, running for office in the United States, former VP Joe Biden.

I can hear Card. Kasper, having another bout with the microphones, talking about how the South Americans are so “clean and articulate”.

This Amazon rite notion is condescending.

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19 Comments

  1. DavidJ says:

    I have no problems with making concessions to people and culture, especially in missionary situations, in the areas wherein there is flexibility. There is a lot of more areas where there is flexibility than a lot of people think. The problem is when we try and concede on the important points of doctrine and liturgy. One of the points of liturgy is intended to draw us out of the us and now and unite us to the eternal and universal. Where there is flexibility, be flexible. Where there is not, be firm. It’s not that hard a concept.

    Are there legitimate issues that the Amazonian Synod needs to address? Sure! Is there enough in the existing treasury of the Church to handle it? Absolutely!

    [Inculturation must be properly understood in order to be good and authentic. What the Church has to give to the world must have logical priority over what the world can give, and does give, to the Church. A good example of successful inculturation are the different strains of the Baroque.]

  2. Sonshine135 says:

    It seems to me that this idea of a rite based on culture is an oft repeated, faulty notion of cultural equivalence. Thank the Marxists for this. Historically, a more barbarous culture was to be supplanted by Western, Christianized, civilization. This is the result of cultural relativism. Now, a Pagan culture is as valid as a culture with an eye toward God. To do otherwise would be committing the ultimate secular sin of judging. We cannot judge…Who are we to judge…in action.

  3. Kathleen10 says:

    We’re at cross purposes with the men running the Synod and the church. We want Catholicism to continue, they don’t. They want Gaia worship, which they have now brought inside a Catholic Church in this shocking debacle.
    The Amazon Indians shall stay right where they are, thank you very much. We now know they were encouraged by the many NGO’s supporting the tribal people some time now that they are to keep their rituals and practices, they should not change. This included child abandonment and cannibalism. It is convenient for progressives to have a permanent underclass. The natives are being used shamelessly by our own church. They have clearly not been evangelized, they still worship idols and now we do. Now we know why over 50 years not one baptism was held in that area. Who needs it?
    The same people who hold no value for European cultures and so import Muslims by the hundreds of thousands are determined to maintain the pagan culture of the Amazon Indians. They must not change, even practices that are death dealing or demonic.
    The Amazonians were exposed to classical music by the early Jesuits who did not yet hate their European heritage. The natives loved it and remembered the compositions long after the missionaries were gone, but they were then deprived of the classical music and guitars were shoved at them. Of course they need their own rite, complete with female deacons, Grandpa priests, and the good news is they get to keep their pagan idols! No one will tell them about the saving power of Jesus Christ, how He suffered and died for them so they could have eternal life. No, they must keep Pachamama, and not only them, WE as well need to incorporate Pachamama into OUR worship, and learrrrrnnnnn from the Amazon.
    HELL. NO.

  4. Unwilling says:

    Jesuits (Ricci) tried it before in 17thC China.
    Rebuffed by missionary Orders and by Rome.
    Those rites were, of course, extremely civilized.
    Dominicans and Franciscans later relented in favour of Confucian rites (but never happened).
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy

  5. Benedict Joseph says:

    Moving at warp speed beyond the pathological. Why am I experiencing shock when I expect nothing other than the worst.
    We are subsumed in madness.

  6. Unwilling says:

    That Jesus, God and Creator of the universe, came to us in Roman occupied Palestine, in a stable, in a hut, and grew up as a carpenter, before spending a few years as a homeless person, [carefullll…] until his ignominious death, death, resurrection, and ascension to the high throne of Heaven for our worship — that’s something no cultural accommodation can ever comprehend. The Jerusalemites killed St Stephen for it. The Romans killed St Peter and St Paul for it. My German ancestors killed St Columbanus for it. You cannot make such a story inoffensive by buddying up.

    Faith is a supernatural grace, is God intervening with His help.
    Psycho-social manipulation for membership is a kind of Simony.

  7. aquinas138 says:

    Why an “Amazon rite”? In the past, Catholic (and Orthodox) missionaries established churches with the same rite as the mother church; the language might at times differ, but the rite was the same. The liturgical services of the Church should manifest unity in Faith, both with our living coreligionists and those that have reposed; they should not manifest the condescending, virtue-signaling self-congratulation of European ecclesiastical academics.

    A more appropriate place for cultural differences is in paraltiurgical and extraliturgical devotions; local bishops having competence to govern such things makes a lot of sense. Customs surrounding things like name days and anniversaries of all kinds and mourning traditions vary considerably around the world, and things like this can reasonably become part of local Catholic praxis; after all, they have done so for 2000 years, to the enrichment of Christian culture. I’m sure there are many cultural practices among the peoples of the Amazon admitting of Christian interpretation; these should be welcomed by the Church. Things don’t need to be part of Mass to matter.

  8. Amazon rite! Maybe they can do something with blowpipes and piranhas.

    My question is: Why is Cardinal Kasper involved in an “Amazon” synod? Doesn’t he have enough problems trying to get Catholics in his own country to go to church every once in a while?

  9. William says:

    What about the “indigenous rite” of the Latin church?

  10. iamlucky13 says:

    Father, Bishop Krautler, who you recently mentioned for his argument that the inability to ordain women is not dogmatic, is also involved in this.

    In the same interview, he said something about the Roman Rite not being relevant to South Americans (admittedly, I was relying on Google Translate for this).

    Of course, there was no expansion on this – what specific aspects of the Rite he felt were irrelevant and why. Regardless, it’s not really a surprise to see the same people behind these ideas.

    The interview (in German) is in the middle of this magazine:
    https://adveniat-shop.marketingplanung.org/adveniat-shop/downloads/products/170.pdf

  11. Suburbanbanshee says:

    There is no headhunting to enslave your enemies in the afterlife so they have to fight spirits for you, in the Roman Rite.

    There is no jaguar god coming after your soul.

    There is no attempted shamanistic shapeshifting.

    There is no use of hallucinogenic drugs.

    Missionaries like St. Francis Solanus provided the Amazonian peoples with a way out of this stuff.

  12. Mariana2 says:

    iamlucky13,

    “There should basically not be any ‘Roman’ Mass, but a Eucharistic celebration, which takes into account the culture and language of a people. What unites us is not a rite that grew in the European cultural sphere, but a celebration of the passion, death and resurrection of our Lord. We read the same holy Scriptures in different languages….”

  13. Lurker 59 says:

    @Mariana2

    Thanks for that. Let me offer a rejoinder to the quote that you offered as it is important for people to see the flaws in the quote.

    It is the other way around. The “European cultural sphere” grew up around the Latin Rite. It is the same way with the Eastern Rites — they are not so much formed out of the culture rather the culture is formed out of them.

    This is why an Amazonian Rite makes not a lick of sense. The culture, at least that part of the present culture that exists there that is being discussed, is pagan. It is a Missionary Territory which means pagan. Injecting Pagan Occult practices and elements into the Mass, which is what is being desired, is syncretism.

    When a culture becomes Christian, it develops a Christian cult organically. These elements can be brought into the Mass and is what is inculturation. This is how the Latin Rite developed. It wasn’t developed out of Greco-Roman Pagan culture but rather the early Apostolic liturgies modified Roman culture, baptizing it, and allowing the development of a Roman Catholic cultus. This then produced the early forms of the Roman Rite which goes on to change Pagan Rome into Christendom and medieval “European cultural sphere”.

    “We read the same holy Scriptures in different languages….” —- What makes us Catholic is not that we read the same Scriptures but rather that these same scriptures are interpreted according to the same spirit by which they were written. This is why syncretism is so poisonous — it causes the Mass/the scriptures to be interpreted according to a different spirit.

    To be very clear, when we look at the Roman Rite and the Byzantine Rite (for example), the cult of each Rite is not superfluous with that which is important being an “inner spiritual core”. The cult of each Rite is fully, totally, and independent of each other, legitimate as a whole. The Rite is not clothing for the “Eucharistic celebration” but is the physical manifestation of the Eucharistic Sacrifice via the means of a particular cult. You cannot simply strip away the cult of a Rite and replace it with another cult or patchwork another cult (or occult) onto a Rite.

  14. ChesterFrank says:

    Yes, there can be “indigenous rites” or a “Catholic Amazonian rite”: but it would occur both before (what used to be) the prayers at the foot of the altar and after the concluding prayer. The whole purpose of the (once) rigid Latin Rite was that it is universal (or catholic). Why do Catholics that don’t want to be catholic get all of the attention?

  15. mo7 says:

    I think I’m getting this. The indigenous people late of the rainforest have no priests and thus wait a long time for communion. The Amazon rite will have same day delivery of the Holy Eucharist. Bezos!

  16. pascal788 says:

    I don’t agree. We have the one rite and the one language, Latin. The use of this Latin Mass is the sign of the unity of the Church. It should be used everywhere in the whole world. Exception being the very ancient eastern rites.

  17. Chaswjd says:

    There is actually a church approved Rite of Zaire. While one can question the wisdom of creating a special rite for the Amazon, it is possible to do.

    [Just because it’s possible, doesn’t mean that it should be done. It’s possible to do a lot of stupid, too.]

  18. jaykay says:

    Charlotte Allen: “Doesn’t he have enough problems trying to get Catholics in his own country to go to church every once in a while?”

    Indeed he does, but why should he care? After all, he’s got Big Daddy State to give him his Church-tax 30 (million + ) pieces of silver to keep the circus on the road.

    As for indigenous spirituality and tree-worshipping and all that BS: around about the 5th century AD my own ancestors were pretty big on that sort of thing, but a certain Romano-British missionary showed us a better way and… well, res ipsa loquitur. For about 1500 years, that is. Things have been a little difficult recently. But God is not mocked, and all this apostate fad will pass.

  19. philosophicallyfrank says:

    There are no “indigenous” people anywhere in the world and hasn’t been since the Biblical “Great Flood”. It is a term used now-a-day to refute the fact that God created Adam & Eve and no others. .”Indigenous” people would have, by definition, previously not been from some other place; they would have to have “originated” in the place that they are in. Everybody is an immigrant or a descendant of immigrants. Words have meanings and they can have specific cultural meanings and we live in an age where cultures are being mis-labeled to confuse various issues and imply facts that are not true.

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