Not too long ago, I took authority here in Nairaland over the grip "the demon of light" dressed in the image of "Holy Mary" had over the Catholic church, and demanded that it be broken, and I expected to begin to see the results of that decree shortly after that.
And it suffices to say that there has significant developments ever since, with arguably the most significant being the dumping of some of the idols kept inside a Catholic church by some Catholics into a river.
Therefore so far, so good. I expect this trend to continue until the strong hold of that demon over the Catholic church is completely broken.
For with God nothing shall be impossible!
Below is a report of the story:
THIEVES STEAL AMAZON FERTILITY STATUES AS SYNOD NEARS END
By Nicole Winfield | AP Oct. 21, 2019 at 3:34 p.m. GMT+1
VATICAN CITY — Pope Francis’ controversial meeting on the Amazon took a criminal twist Monday after thieves stole indigenous fertility statues from a Vatican-area church and tossed them into the Tiber River.
Video of the pre-dawn theft from the Santa Maria in Traspontina church was shared and celebrated on conservative social media. The Vatican’s communications czar, Paolo Ruffini, termed it a “stunt” that violated the idea of dialogue.
Even before the three-week Amazon synod opened on Oct. 6, conservative and traditionalist Catholics had blasted its agenda as a heretical celebration of paganism, given its deference to indigenous cultures and spirituality.
Their criticism reached a fever pitch at the synod opening, when Francis presided over a prayer service in the Vatican gardens featuring the statues of naked pregnant women that were presented to the pope. Conservatives said the “Pachamama” statutes were pagan idols; the Vatican said they were symbols of life and fertility.
The statues were then placed in a side chapel of the Traspontina church, which is located just steps from St. Peter’s Square and has been the headquarters of the indigenous celebrations organized alongside the synod.
There was no official claim of responsibility for the thefts, but a conservative U.S. author, Taylor Marshall, issued a statement and tweeted the video of it.
“I announce to you with great joy: the Pachamama idols that polluted the Church of St Maria Traspontina have been cast away into the Tiber River as an act of obedience to Our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ & in reparation to His Sacred Heart wounded by sin,” Marshall tweeted.
Francis called the meeting of Amazonian bishops to propose ways to better care for the Amazon and minister to its indigenous peoples, who face poverty, exploitation and the destruction of their homes by unregulated logging and mining.
One of the most debated proposals under study by the bishops is whether married men could be ordained priests, and whether women could be ordained deacons, to cope with a priest shortage that is so dire some isolated communities can go months without having Mass.
Those proposals have sparked outrage among conservatives, who see the synod as an effort by progressives to change centuries of Catholic tradition of a celibate priesthood. They fear Francis is using the synod as a smoke screen and that any flexibility on celibacy could spread beyond the Amazon to places like Germany, where there are also calls for married priests.
The synod ends this weekend with bishops voting on a final document listing proposals for Francis to consider. History’s first Latin American pope can then decide whether to make some of those proposals his own in a future document.
WHY CATHOLIC MEN WHO THREW AMAZON SYNOD’S ‘PACHAMAMA’ IDOLS INTO TIBER DESERVE PRAISE
Stephen Kokx
Wed Oct 23, 2019 - 1:49 pm EST
October 23, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Modernists have predictably gone berserk over news that the Pachamama idol has been tossed into the Tiber. Some have decried the act as “racist” and “xenophobic.” Such accusations are wholly off base, for a number of reasons.
Firstly, no one at the Vatican seems to know what this carving even is. At best it's a symbol of “Mother Earth.” But isn’t Mary our real mother? The 5th glorious mystery is the Coronation of the Blessed Virgin as Queen of Heaven and Earth, not the coronation of nature itself. The only “mother” honored inside a Catholic Church should be the mother of God. This sort of eco-theology is dangerous. It needs to stop. It’s liable to be co-opted by population control experts and other nefarious actors at the United Nations.
Second, Italian journalist Andrea Tornielli has claimed that the statue is “a traditional symbol for indigenous peoples representing the bond” they have with the environment. Okay. What does that have to do with the Catholic faith? In the United States, a football is a traditional symbol of one of the most popular ways American families come together on Sundays after attending mass. Should St. Peter’s house a pigskin that was thrown by Tom Brady in the Super Bowl? Of course not. Just because some people somewhere in the world believe something is sacred, doesn’t mean Catholics should act like it is.
Third, some have said this object is a fertility goddess and represents “life.” If true, what does that even mean? Why is it sharing a space with icons, statues, and paintings of Saints who died as martyrs for the Catholic faith? If this statue is going to be allowed in a church, then why not start putting up murals of “the Tree of Life” as well? I don't understand how its “racist” or an “act of theft” to remove from a Catholic Church a piece of timber that’s not a Catholic symbol and holds no spiritual value. It simply doesn’t belong there. Justice demands it be removed.
No doubt the admittance of this topless carving into Santa Maria in Traspontina was done out of a desire to encourage warm feelings and mutual esteem with the Amazonians. But what about the rights of God to not have his house defiled? Since when did having good relations with indigenous tribesmen trump the duties we owe Christ to honor him in the religion he has established? It seems the real reason leftists are upset is that they’ve been reminded that there are Catholics who still believe, and are willing to defend, the belief that Catholicism is the true religion and others are false.
What those who are furious over this courageous act seem to forget is that indigenous persons and their cultures are objectively deficient, and are in desperate need of being brought out of their darkness. Ponder for a moment the following remarks of Pope Leo XIII in 1892 about the now universally hated Christopher Columbus:
By his toil…hundreds of thousands of mortals have, from a state of blindness, been raised to the common level of the human race, reclaimed from savagery to gentleness and humanity; and, greatest of all, by the acquisition of those blessings of which Jesus Christ is the author, they have been recalled from destruction to eternal life.
The Church has always rejected the ideology of multiculturalism now supported by those occuyping the halls of power in the Vatican. It always held that when Christ said “go forth and teach all nations,” he was basically telling his apostles to replace the various pagan traditions of the unbelieving world with Catholic culture. That wasn’t a mandate to demand all nations abide by the customs of 1st century Judea. But it did mean that certain ways of life were to be elevated while others were to be diminished.
For instance, after wiping out all but 8 people with the great flood, God promised He would “enlarge” (Genesis 9:27) the descendants of Japeth, one of Noah’s three sons — the other two being Sem and Ham. Are we to think God was a “xenophobe” on account of his promise and favoring, at least indirectly, of the offspring of Japeth?
Moreover, when Mary appeared to Juan Diego in the 1500s, she was, in effect, “tossing out” the barbaric practices and pagan symbols of the indigenous people living there. She was lovingly welcoming them into the Catholic way of life and eternal salvation. Yet if we follow the logic of those opposed to this praiseworthy act of protest, we’d have to view Our Lady of Guadalupe as a sort of theological terrorist guilty of violating the first principles of interreligious dialogue.
To behave as if this wooden statuette was some sort of priceless artifact or blessed relic deserving of admiration and a place of honor inside a Catholic Church is to forget some of the most basic elements of the Catholic religion and its history. Based on the way liberals have acted the last several days, it seems this statue has become a sort of false god to human respect not unlike the golden calf the Israelites fashioned for themelseves.
Far from being a hate crime worthy of contempt, those who threw this object out have performed a most admirable spiritual work of mercy. In an age where blending false religions with the true one is an all too common occurrence, I tip my cap to them. Bravo gentlemen.
WATCH: POPE FRANCIS BLESSES CONTROVERSIAL ‘PACHAMAMA’ STATUE BEFORE OPENING AMAZON SYNOD
Maike Hickson
Thu Oct 24, 2019 - 5:29 pm EST
Video footage of the indigenous ritual that took place in the Vatican Gardens on Oct. 4 as a prelude to the opening of the Amazon Synod shows Pope Francis being presented with the controversial wooden “Pachamama” statue and then blessing it.
The footage shows an indigenous woman approaching Pope Francis with the wooden statue. They bow to each other. She then blesses herself. The Pope then imitates her and blesses himself. She reaches for his hand and shakes it. The Pope then appears to reach out and touch the statue before proceeding to bless it. As the woman turns to go away, another indigenous person motions to her that she is to give the statue to the Pope. She then turns back to Pope Francis and hands him the statue. The Pope receives it with a bow.
The Vatican has refused to say what the statue is. An official interpreter at the Santa Maria in Traspontina Carmelite Church, where the statues were on display in a side altar, confirmed that the statue was ‘Pachamama,’ saying that she was the “mother, who cares for life, who gives nourishment to life.”
Earlier this week, the statues were taken from the Church by Catholic men and thrown into the nearby Tiber River.
When reports of the pagan ceremony at the Vatican Gardens first came out, many observers were distracted by the question as to whether the Pope actually approved of the ceremony since he did not deliver his prepared speech, but, instead, just prayed an “Our Father.” The fact that he blessed the statue was overlooked by many.
POPE CALLS STATUES ‘PACHAMAMAS’ AND APOLOGIZES FOR THEIR REMOVAL FROM CHURCH
John-Henry Westen
Fri Oct 25, 2019 - 12:45 pm EST
ROME, October 25, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – Pope Francis has called the carved wooden statues at the center of an idolatry scandal in the Vatican “Pachamama statues,” confirming suspicions that the statues were idols of the Incan fertility goddess.
Speaking to attendees at the Amazon Synod, he apologized as “the bishop of Rome” to those who were offended at the statues being removed from the church and thrown into the Tiber.
He also said the statues have been displayed without intending to be idolatrous.
Read the full transcript of the Pope's remarks here.
The story was first broken by I.MEDIA in France, whose reporter was present in the meeting hall of the synod this afternoon and overheard the pope’s remarks. National Catholic Reporter’s Josh McElwee confirmed the report with a tweeted video where the pope’s voice can be heard but not clearly. He cites NCR's Brian Roewe for recording it.
McElwee tweeted: “It's very hard to make out fully what Pope Francis said about the throwing of indigenous statues in the Tiber, but the pope clearly said to the #AmazonSynod bishops: 'As bishop of the diocese [of Rome], I ask forgiveness.'”
José Sierra, the head of the Pontifical Mission Works in Canada, added: “The Pope seems to have said that the statues were found in the river and this (situation) has caused him so much turmoil in his soul ("ci hanno creato tanto clamore nella mia alma".”
The statues first caused scandal when they were seen in the controversial Vatican garden ceremony on October 4 just prior to the official launch of the Amazonian Synod. The statues were the center of a display of Amazon artifacts around which a group including a Franciscan friar prostrated themselves – kneeling and with faces to the ground – in an obvious act of worship.
Today the Vatican media chief falsely claimed there was no prostration.
Moreover, at another event, the statues were processed into St. Peter’s Basilica where the Pope and curial cardinals offered prayers in a circle around the strange objects. They were also processed on a boat in the Synod Hall, and one of the statues remains there directly in front of the Pope’s place on the dias such that all the Synod Fathers look at it during the Synod proceedings.
An additional number of the statues were brought to the church of Santa Maria in Transpontina just steps from the Vatican. That church has been transformed into an exhibit hall of sorts for Amazon-themed displays.
It was from that Church that at least three of the Pachamama statues were taken early Monday morning and dumped into the Tiber river under the Castel Sant Angelo. The act has been hailed as heroic by some comparing it to Christ’s ousting the money changers out of the temple, while it has been decried as theft, vandalism and even racism by others.
Cardinal Gerhard Müller commented on the incident Thursday night on EWTN's The World Over with Raymond Arroyo. He said: “The great mistake was to bring the idols into the Church, not to put them out, because according to the Law of God Himself – the First Commandment – idolism [idolatry] is a grave sin and not to mix them with the Christian liturgy.”
“To put it out,” Müller added, “to throw it out, can be against human law, but to bring the idols into the Church was a grave sin, a crime against the Divine Law.”
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