January 16, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) — “Let’s hope that Pope Francis will destroy the final document, but hopes are truly slim. Lord, have mercy.” With these words, the Dutch bishop Robert Mutsaerts voiced his concern over the Amazon Synod. Its final document (analyzed here by LifeSite) is steeped with cultural relativism, calls for revolutionizing priesthood and suggestions to introduce “Amazonian” elements into the Catholic liturgy.
In an interview published on Wednesday by the Italian daily Il Giornale, Mutsaerts, auxiliary bishop of Den Bosch in the Netherlands (see here the interview he gave to LifeSiteNews on the theme of priestly celibacy), spoke about his own vision of the Amazon Synod that took place in Rome last October.
According to Bishop Mutsaerts, the real objective of this “already written synod” was to introduce the ordination of married men, female deacons, and a new “Amazonian” rite into the Catholic Church. He went even farther in his reflections: “It seems … that the synod brought Amazonian idolatry to Rome,” Mutsaerts told Serena Sartini of Il Giornale.
He also said the Amazon Synod had opened “Pandora’s box” of innovations for the whole Church, starting with Germany, whose official “Synodal Path” will open in less than two weeks. A majority of German bishops are openly lobbying for the revolutionizing of a woman’s role in the Church, the scrapping of the rule of celibacy for priests in the Latin Church, and the liberalization of sexual morality.
Among the strong words used by Bishop Mutsaerts are “deception” and “mockery”: he sees the Amazon Synod as marking a clear “break” with tradition.
Below is LifeSite’s full translation of Mutsaerts’s interview with Il Giornale.
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Il Giornale (IG): Is the problem really the drop in vocations?
Bishop Robert Mutsaerts (BRM): Eighty percent of the Amazonian population lives in large cities, and the problem of the lack of priests is not at all different there from that of many other areas of the world. The problem is rather a lack of faith. This is not solved by accepting married priests. It is enough to see what is happening in the Anglican church, where married priests are already a common practice. The crisis in other churches is even greater than in the Catholic Church: the collapse of faith is dramatic.
IG: Why then such an orientation for the Synod?
BRM: The key words in the final document of the synod were not “Mother Earth” and “the ecosystem,” but “viri probati,” “deaconesses,” and “the Amazonian rite.” It was Cardinal Hummes who pushed the outcome in that direction. Of course, now the results will not be limited to the Amazon region. Pandora’s box is open, and there will be implications for the whole Church. The local bishops, starting with Germany, will ask the same thing. It was a synod that deceived the faithful. That is the sad conclusion: it was a mockery of our glorious faith, a break with tradition.
IG: What will happen now?
BRM: Let’s hope Pope Francis will destroy the final document, but hopes are truly slim. Lord, have mercy.
IG: What do you think of the conclusions of the synod on married priests?
BRM: It is a synod already written, with a predetermined outcome. The 180 synod fathers were carefully selected by Pope Francis, and those who opposed the proposals were never invited. All the speeches on the environment, climate change, ecology, and Mother Earth were a cover for the final proposals, on married priests and deaconesses.
IG: What would you have expected from the synod?
BRM: The Amazon Synod did not offer clear solutions, which are the purpose of synods. It was rather a mix of confusion and controversy. It has nothing to do with Revelation, redemption, or anything remotely related to what is essential in Catholic teaching. Even Jesus is hardly mentioned. It all began with the instrumentum laboris, which mentions religious peoples and their vision of the cosmos. Shouldn’t we bring Christ to the Amazon? It seems on the contrary that the synod brought Amazonian idolatry to Rome.
IG: Why are you so concerned about the conclusion of the synod?
BRM: Because nothing was as it should have been. During a press conference, the prefect of the Department of Communication, Paolo Ruffini, denied that the faithful had prostrated themselves before a wooden statue in the presence of the pope. But there is a video, on the web, that shows exactly the opposite: a dozen people, including a Franciscan friar, bowing to the ground in front of a wooden statue, with the pope watching. Is the wooden statue a representation of the fertility goddess Pachamama, or does the statue represent the Amazonian version of Our Lady? The pope himself called it a statue of Pachamama, while the Vatican denied that it represented an idol. In short, it was a synod-mockery of our faith, a rupture with the Christian tradition.