Tuesday 22 October 2019

The Fallen Idols

SHARE
"On our first visit, a volunteer (pictured below) said the carved image “represents the revelation of the feminine mother with mother nature, which gives us nourishment.” 

Asked if it is the Pachamama, she said: “Yes, the mother, who cares for life, who gives nourishment to life, so it’s a very strong form of symbolism.” (Article on Lifesitenews.com)

Today, October 22nd, was the feast of St. Theodoret of Antioch, who was accused of having destroyed statues of the gods and was martyred under Julian the Apostate after the most atrocious torments were heaped upon him. He bore them all with great courage.


This week at Rome, during the controversial Synod discussing the future of Catholicism in the Amazon, wooden carvings of nude pregnant women that have been on display in a church were seized by a protester and cast into the Tiber in Rome.


The statues were given to the Pope by an Amazonian lady at the Synod’s opening tree-planting ceremony. She said they depicted "Our Lady of the Amazon".

However, Fr Giacomo Costa, a communications official for the synod, later said that the nude wooden figure of the pregnant woman is not the Virgin Mary, but a female figure representing life.

The statues or icons or idols, or whatever they are, now sleep with the fishes.



The whole thing was filmed and posted on the internet. What an informative thing the internet is.



Obviously statues of a naked women are not icons of the Blessed Virgin Mary but priests and well-known and respected Catholic journalists have solemnly said that they were,
which makes me wonder if they have the least idea about the Catholic faith.


The whole thing was filmed and posted on the internet. What a marvellously  informative thing the internet is.

Obviously statues of a naked women are not icons of the Blessed Virgin Mary but priests and well-known and respected Catholic journalists have solemnly said that they were,
which makes me wonder if they have the least idea about the Catholic faith.

The ever so annoying Austen Ivereigh tweeted

"Just prayed here at Transpontina church at altar where, in an act of appalling disrespect and violence, fanatics egged on by ethics-free journalism this am broke in here and threw into the Tiber the figurine described by the Catholic people of Amazonia as Our Lady of the Amazon."
Years ago I told a bunch of conservative Catholic journalists in Rome that homosexuality would be the big battlefield in years to come and they did not believe me.  I explained that homosexuality is where Catholic teaching directly conflicts with the new anti-discrimination religion. I was right and this is the issue here too.

Throwing Amazonian idols into the river might not seem to have anything in the least to do with anti-discrimination, but it does. It is racist, you see.

25 years ago Bishop Richard Holloway, Primus (big banana) of the Scottish Episcopalian Church (the Scottish equivalent of the Church of England) described people protesting against an inter-faith service as 


'the distant cousins of the National Front'. 

You expect this stuff from very liberal Anglicans but now all the faults of the Episcopalians (and they are, alas, innumerable) are coming or have come to the Catholic Church.

Liberal journalists have completely gone off their trolleys and how. 


Only the poor Covington schoolboys, who are going to make a fortune from defamation actions, made liberals so angry. And for the same reason - completely ungrounded and absurd suspicions of racism.

When I say 'off their trolleys', I mean really off their trolleys.

Austen Ivereigh@austeni
The main difference between this video of ISIS fanatics destroying BVM statues in Baghdad and the one by rad-trad fanatics throwing the mother-nature effigy into the Tiber is this: in the former the fanatics had the guts to show themselves. 

Austen Ivereigh@austeni
I have no idea who the thugs who attacked the church are, so I can’t compare them with ISIS. Nor can I judge their intentions. But I can judge their actions, which are morally identical.


What fun and yet how shocking.


He is not intelligent enough to know that a man who loses his temper loses the argument and makes himself look ridiculous. 

The tweet below reveals how another very angry man, this one a Jesuit priest, spends his free time. I wonder if the word pagan is still permitted or is hate speech.

I bet infidel is.


Kyle J. Baker, SJ@bakerkylej
During writing breaks today I’m reporting racist, xenophobic tweets regarding theft of statues carved by indigenous artists for the #AmazonSynod, including from @ProtecttheFaith, @TaylorRMarshall, @RorateCaeli. This is more than intolerance, it is sick hate mongering.
An equally silly star of the liberal Catholic Twitterati, Massimo Faggioli, said throwing the idols into the Tiber reminded him of Trump saying he would be happy to receive more Norwegian immigrants.

The statues are widely reported, with what truth I do not know, as representing a pagan goddess called Pachamama. Lots of Catholics, including well-known priests, have suggested that the goddess might wreak her revenge. 

I liked this tweet from John Zmirak

‘Tomorrow's big Catholic news: An enormous, enraged, three-headed Pachamama rises from the Tiber and attack Rome like Godzilla smashing Tokyo. Pope Francis and Vaticanistas try to appease it by sacrificing journalists, but it eats them anyway.’
This is interesting:

I am from the Amazon (Belém, PA, Brazil) and I say with all authority: Amazonian Catholics are celebrating the destruction of the 'Pachamama' pagan idol.

.

4 comments:

  1. "Throwing Amazonian idols into the river might not seem to have anything in the least to do with anti-discrimination, but it does. It is racist."

    Nonsense. Pagan idols as these clearly are, have no place in a Catholic church.

    THE FIRST COMMANDMENT

    I am the LORD your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a graven image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth; you shall not bow down to them or serve them.3

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Of course I do not think it is racist to throw these things in the river. I meant - I used a literary technique that is very common - that some (absurdly) think it is racist.
      This will make sure the Synod is remembered and get a message across to a great many Catholics who had not heard of it.

      Delete
  2. While it has accelerated in the last few decades the process of gradual surrender to modernism on the part of all Christian sects has been going on for a century or so. Christianity has been bit by bit compromising with liberalism, modernism, capitalism, democracy, secularism and feminism and surrendering on moral issues like divorce, adultery, in fact all the moral sins.

    The Religious Right in the US is an instructive example. Back in the 80s it looked like they were resisting this trend but it was an illusion. By tying themselves to the Republican Party and to right-wing economic and foreign policies they had in fact surrendered to secularism.

    I really do believe there is an inherent weakness in Christianity which makes it impossible for it to resist the siren songs of liberal/modernist ideologies. One by one every Christian sect has eventually succumbed. I honestly do not believe Christianity can resist secularism. There's a fatal streak of emotionalism in the DNA of Christianity.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Damian Thompson was until recently the editor of the Catholic Herald in London.

    Damian Thompson
    @holysmoke
    NB: This is now the view of a significant number of cardinals, including several who were until recently Francis loyalists.


    Damian Thompson
    @holysmoke
    No pope for centuries has done more damage to the Catholic Church than Francis.

    ReplyDelete