October 18, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – In an October 16 column, Christian Geyer, a columnist for the prominent German newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung is raising worried questions about Rome and the Amazon Synod. “What is going on in the Vatican?” he asks. He is referring here to the public display of a “Gaia liturgy” which seems to undermine the distinction between “liturgy and idolatry.”
The fact that a national newspaper would raise such questions shows that the indignation about the events surrounding the Amazon Synod in Rome expressed by many Catholics on social media are not merely the eccentric opinions of a few people with “fundamentalist religiosity,” in the recent words of Father Antonio Spadaro, S.J.
Geyer speaks in his column about the “cult of Mother Earth” and its adaptability to all sorts of spiritualities and fertility cults “up to a climate religion of a planet that somehow is sacred.” He sees that now “the Vatican gives Mother Earth a dignified platform when, within the framework of the current Amazon Synod in Rome, there are rituals being celebrated which connect the reading of Old Testament passages with characteristic signs of fertility cults.”
“This is being done,” Geyer continues, “in such a way that the liturgical forms are being dissolved for the sake of a Gaia liturgy, in which – traditionally speaking – the borders between worship of God and idolatry seem to dissolve, losing at least their differentiating meaning.”
In the context of this grave charge against the events and enactments at the Vatican these days, Geyer even directly points to the pagan ceremony in the Vatican Gardens on October 4, conducted in the presence of Pope Francis. Says Geyer: “Already immediately before the synod, which is about mobilizing indigenous narratives for the sake of the reform of the Church, there took place in the Vatican Gardens, in the presence of the Pope, a praise of creation and of the soil, referencing indigenous mythologies, which was in any event managed without Christ as 'God of God' (Creed).”
“What is going on in the Vatican?” is the piercing question of Christian Geyer. “Is Christianity under the Jesuit Pope turning into a collective movement of a one world religion, which translates Universalism from ‘Catholic’ (all-encompassing) into ‘planetarian’ (biosphere)? Does a monotheistic religion here lose its face?”
Geyer also points out that, ever since the Church started to dwell on gradualism and “elements that are everywhere to be found,” she has had problems with notions – such as “the syncretistic, heretical, or pagan” – that would be clearly in opposition to the “religio vera” (St. Augustine) – i.e., the true religion. The Church is no longer able “to determine the boundaries to the lie and to sin,” as Geyer explains. He then adds: “Because, of course, where should one not also be able always to detect a kernel of truth?”
While discussing the matter of inculturation, the journalist agrees that there always has been some form of inculturation in the missionary activities of the Church. But where the debate starts, he says, is “whether the Christian contents as such are still being transmitted, or whether they are not anymore recognizable in the process of the cultural adaptation.”
He concludes: “Here lies the crucial point for the incredulous astonishment with which those faithful who are loyal to their Christ-Creed newly now turn their eyes to the Vatican cult of Mother Earth.”
Geyer is not the only prominent German journalist who shows himself concerned about the recent developments in Rome. Paul Badde – the Rome-based journalist of EWTN who worked for more than thirty years for German national newspapers, first the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, then Die Welt – commented already on October 11 on the presence of pagan symbols in Rome. He says that there is much “fraud” in what is going on these days, “enraging many people in Rome.”
With regard to this “fraud” Badde mentions the “adoration of ‘Pachamama,’ Mother earth, whose wrath, according to the now much-invoked ‘indigenous wisdom,’ once in a while also wants to be appeased with the help of an infanticide.” For Badde, “it is the old fear of the pagans [‘Heidenangst’ – mortal fright], which reappears in this fraud, whose high priests have crossed the ocean [to Rome] in first-class-flights.”
Here, Badde points out some of the internal contradictions within this newly revived cult of the indigenous wisdom in the Vatican.
He also reveals that the “soil of the Amazon” with which last Saturday the little tree was planted for different intentions – and in the presence of the Pope – “did not stem from the threatened rainforest, but was beforehand dug out of the Vatican Gardens.” Something similar, he adds, is to be expected concerning the “Amazonian soil used in that masquerade which was displayed on 8 October at the Church of Our Lady of Carmel in Traspontina, with the statue of a naked, pregnant woman, with pictures of birds, a woven basket and all kinds of other pagan knick-knacks. This was displayed at a ceremony, in which in the end a young woman in a canoe was carried through the Church.”
With these commentaries – as similarly expressed by many of the simple faithful on social media – both Paul Badde and Christian Geyer have elevated the critique of Pope Francis' encouragement and permission of pagan idols in the Vatican onto the level of internationally reputable newspapers.
Over 9,500 people have signed a LifeSiteNews petition demanding all pagan symbols be removed from St. Peter's and the synod hall.
