Vatican City, Jul 13, 2017 / 11:56 am (CNA/EWTN News).- An analysis piece published Thursday in La Civilta Cattolica, discusses what it calls a “surprising” and unfortunate alliance between conservative Catholics and evangelicals in the U.S. on issues such as immigration – suggesting the two are in direct opposition to Pope Francis’ message of mercy.
The article, published online July 13, is co-authored by Fr. Antonio Spadaro, editor in chief of the Jesuit publication, and Marcelo Figueroa, a Presbyterian pastor who is editor in chief of the Argentine edition of L’Osservatore Romano, the Vatican’s newspaper.
Both men are regarded as confidantes of Pope Francis. La Civilta Cattolica is also seen as a mouthpiece of sorts for the Holy See, as its text is revised and approved by the Vatican Secretariat of State before it is published.
Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa start from the US motto, In God We Trust, saying that for some this “is a simple declaration of faith,” but for others it is “the synthesis of a problematic fusion between religion and state, faith and politics, religious values and economy.”
The authors hold that in recent decades American politics have been shaped by “religion, political Manichaeism and a cult of the apocalypse.”
They cite President George W. Bush’s speaking of the “axis of evil” and the US’ duty to “free the world from evil” as an example of what they call “a Manichaean language that divides reality between absolute Good and absolute Evil.”
Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa trace these to the evangelical-fundamentalist movement which becan in the early 20th century, and tie them to the consideration of the US as “a nation blessed by God.”
“They do not hesitate to base the economic growth of the country on a literal adherence to the Bible,” they write. “Over more recent years this current of thought has been fed by the stigmatization of enemies who are often ‘demonized.’”
Fundamentalism has developed an exegesis which decontextualizes the Old Testament without being “guided by the incisive look, full of love, of Jesus in the Gospels,” they write, adding that “within this narrative, whatever pushes toward conflict is not off limits.”
“Another interesting aspect is the relationship with creation of these religious groups that are composed mainly of whites from the deep American South,” Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa state. “There is a sort of ‘anesthetic’ with regard to ecological disasters and problems generated by climate change. They profess ‘dominionism’ and consider ecologists as people who are against the Christian faith.”
Ecological problems are regarded by fundamentalists as signs of the apocalypse, they write, which “confirm their non-allegorical understanding of the final figures of the Book of Revelation and their apocalyptic hope in a ‘new heaven and a new earth.’”
The authors find a prophetic formula to this worldview, characterizing it as charged to “fight the threats to American Christian values and prepare for the imminent justice of an Armageddon, a final showdown between Good and Evil, between God and Satan.”
They also cite Rousas Rushdoony, a 20th century Protestant pastor, in this regard, and note his influence on Steve Bannon, who is chief strategist in the Trump administration.
Rushdoony supports, they say, the subjection of public norms to religious morals and a “theocratic necessity” which “submit(s) the state to the Bible with a logic that is no different from the one that inspires Islamic fundamentalism.”
Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa then treat of the prosperity gospel and the rhetoric of religious liberty, first citing Norman Vincent Peale, another 20th century Protestant pastor. Peale authored The Power of Positive Thinking and was close to President Donald Trump, as well as Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan.
In the section treating of the prosperity gospel, they also speak about “a particular form of proclamation of the defense of ‘religious liberty.’”
“The erosion of religious liberty is clearly a grave threat within a spreading secularism,” they write. “But we must avoid its defense coming in the fundamentalist terms of a ‘religion in total freedom,’ perceived as a direct virtual challenge to the secularity of the state.”
Next, the authors describe what they call a “fundamentalist ecumenism” developing between evangelical fundamentalists and “Catholic Integralists”, who they say are “brought together by the same desire for religious influence in the political sphere.”
They note that some Catholics “express themselves in ways that until recently were unknown in their tradition and using tones much closer to Evangelicals … Both Evangelical and Catholic Integralists condemn traditional ecumenism and yet promote an ecumenism of conflict that unites them in the nostalgic dream of a theocratic type of state.”
For Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa “the most dangerous prospect for this strange ecumenism is attributable to its xenophobic and Islamophobic vision that wants walls and purifying deportations.”
They describe this as a paradoxical “ecumenism of hate” which contrasts with Pope Francis’ “ecumenism that moves under the urge of inclusion, peace, encounter and bridges. This presence of opposing ecumenisms – and their contrasting perceptions of the faith and visions of the world where religions have irreconcilable roles – is perhaps the least known and most dramatic aspect of the spread of Integralist fundamentalism.”
“Here we can understand why the pontiff is so committed to working against ‘walls’ and any kind of ‘war of religion.’”
In the article, Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa argue that “(t)he religious element should never be confused with the political one.”
“Confusing spiritual power with temporal power means subjecting one to the other…There is a need to flee the temptation to project divinity on political power that then uses it for its own ends,” they say.
As an example, they point to the “shocking rhetoric” of Church Militant, a website formerly known as Real Catholic TV, which changed its name to in 2012 after being told by the Archdiocese of Detroit that it did not have permission to describe itself as “Catholic.”
Church Militant and its founder Michael Vorris are known for their controversial positions. Vorris has claimed on one of his programs that only faithful Catholics should be allowed to vote. In 2011, Vorris was banned from speaking at any facility owned by the Diocese of Scranton, Penn.
Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa noted that the group portrayed the U.S. elections as a “spiritual war,” creating “a close analogy between Donald Trump and Emperor Constantine, and between Hilary Clinton and Diocletian.” By suggesting that Trump’s victory could be attributed to the prayers of Americans, Church Militant portrayed “a divine election,” they said.
“This warlike and militant approach seems most attractive and evocative to a certain public, especially given that the victory of Constantine – it was presumed impossible for him to beat Maxentius and the Roman establishment.”
A truly Christian theopolitical plan would be eschatological, they said.
“And this is why the diplomacy of the Holy See wants to establish direct and fluid relations with the superpowers, without entering into pre-constituted networks of alliances and influence.”
In contrast, Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa say, Pope Francis “radically rejects the idea of activating a Kingdom of God on earth as was at the basis of the Holy Roman Empire and similar political and institutional forms, including at the level of a ‘party’.”
They also warn that fear of chaos and a breakdown of order is what “underlies the persuasive temptation for a spurious alliance between politics and religious fundamentalism.”
Political success becomes assured by “exaggerating disorder” and “agitating the souls of the people by painting worrying scenarios beyond any realism,” they say. At this point, religion becomes “a guarantor of order.”
Pope Francis, however, is fighting against “the manipulation of this season of anxiety and insecurity,” they say. The Pope “gives no theological-political legitimacy to terrorists, avoiding any reduction of Islam to Islamic terrorism. Nor does he give it to those who postulate and want a ‘holy war’ or to build barrier-fences crowned with barbed wire.”
“(T)he Christian roots of a people are never to be understood in an ethnic way,” Fr. Spadaro and Figueroa say. “Triumphalist, arrogant and vindictive ethnicism is actually the opposite of Christianity.”
[…]
I remember hearing about stuff like this back in the 1970’s & ’80’s. It should have died a quiet death. It’s too bad we have to resurrect it again.
Mrscracker there are wild ceremonies – the Vatican Garden Amazonia Synod ceremony among the milder, and there are wilder [meaning unconventional Liturgy]. If you remember, seaside marriages were the thing post Vat II. Fr Malachi Brendan Martin [Irish born controversial Jesuit priest confidant to Paul VI unhappy with the dissolution of faith post Vat II permitted to leave his order accepted by the Archbishop of New York] gives one such wild account in his book Hostage to the Devil. A priest performing the ceremony unknown to all except for the suspicion of another priest friend, onlooker from a short distance – was diabolically possessed. The celebrant priest suddenly leaped at the hopeful bride dragged her into the pounding surf both grappling she for her life he attempting to drown her. His priest friend plunged into the surf with others and saved her then dragged his possessed friend away. The priest was consequently exorcised with permission of the Bishop. Fr Martin who attended several exorcisms gave the background of this priest’s possession. He was a young priest, nature lover who began finding intense, what he presumed mystical experience contemplating beautiful pastoral scenery. It got to the point that he began unconsciously substituting Eucharistic Prayer wording with aspects of nature including the consecration similar to This is my sunshine rather than Body. Bizarre yes but apparently true. His friend picked up on this and suspected something deeply wrong, his fears confirmed at the seashore wedding ceremony. Added to this I can’t withhold a sense of alarm over the Vatican Amazonia ceremony. Aside from Fr Martin’s book my experience in Africa, and with some of our Southwest Native Americans was that virtually all if not all the pagan ceremonials, rituals had an underlying evil dimension, some immoral finality.
Chaos and cosmos; cosmos and chaos? What about creation ex nihilo?
Assisi tree planting symbol of the Little Poor Man who through the years became more identified with butterflies and Nature than the Crucified Savior whose wounds he bore. Parallel to the earthly humanization of the saintly mystic is Christianity’s demythologizing less mystical more mundane guitars banjos Gregorian chant a memory. Anomaly is global minded brethren are rigidly intolerant toward brethren with discriminating mores. Stridently so. Britain passed law that certain words are forbidden everywhere anytime the home no longer sanctuary arrest possible. Portend? Semi pagan marvelous display of European man stolid in appearance with painted face semi religious the woman shaman who indeed made the sign of the Cross after she exorcised the Pontiff with secret powder magic words at the Vatican lawn ceremony. Woman shaman woman priests. A passing thought. It appeared early on we’re at a crossroads Christ’s Revelation one pathway Paradigm Shift the other. Question for us all is which pathway the Bishop of Rome will take and which will we? Faith in Christ dispels that question.
“Which pathway will the bishop of Rome take” this bishop of Rome just had shamans performe a ceremony steps away from where Peter was curcified upside down. The path he has been on from the start to change the dogmatic teachings of Christ and His church. How much more does he need to do or not do? The not do is getting rid of those who promote that which Jesus said “NO” and are trying to instigate well “yes” those aren’t really sins and there is no punishment except for the “ridgid” who actually do believe in “death, judgment, heaven and hell” along with evanelizing the world to come to Christ and His Church. Geeze this pontif has said not to evangelize and essentially all doctrines of differing beliefs are wished by God which goes directly (do not pass go) against “I am the way, the truth, the light no one comes to the Father except through Me”. Love all with the charity to get them into heaven.
Katedee this Pontiff is by far the greatest challenge in its long history to the Church’s faith in Christ. Know we’re being tested.
Guess we should accept Wicca…um no! Lord please give us a new Pope!
While the surface of the earth is some 130 Billion acres, why does it now become necessary to smear Amazonia/Wiccan graffiti on the 109 acres of Vatican grounds? Even as Amazonia bishops–some of the curiously German–continue to wallow in a working-paper swamp. Pope Pius IX, the Prisoner of the Vatican, weeps.
To his credit, the manipulated Pope Francis remained outside the circle, and even departed from “prepared remarks” (no doubt prepared by some puppet-master ghost writer) and instead appealed to Our Father who [still] art in heaven.
And Michalangelo’s overhead Sistine Ceiling still recalls the real Creation, if only in barely a quarter of an acre of surface area, but at least it’s above our eyes rather than below our feet–as if the metaphysical terms “above” and “below” still mean anything.
As with history’s disfigured “Amazons” of old, a New Paradigm that amputates the present from Tradition simply is not the way to keep abreast of significant truths.
“People carried bowls of dirt from different places around the world, each symbolizing a different issue from ecological devastation to migration. The dirt was placed around a tree from Assisi, which was planted as a ‘symbol of integral ecology.’ ”
Yes, nothing says “integral” (or a concern for Nature as “natural”) like placing samples of dirt from various diverse sources that realistically and organically do not occur around a particular tree in a particular place in time. An apt gesture which also embodies the forced sense of “natural” in same sex marriage, transgender ideology, “death with dignity” and a female priesthood, which invariably, shortly after the sobbing “newly ordained” ex-nun (who always just “knew” she had a vocation) hugs all her priestess friends becomes likewise in short order first pantheistic but then Chthonic and Christless, pretty much lesbian, “women love better” witchcraft.
Forgive me. I give little credit to Bergoglio for staying out of the circle or no comments. This may even be his “respect” for the whole thing and his silence just part of his politics.
“After what appeared to be the offering of prayers by participants, who prostrated themselves on the grass around a blanket upon which fruit, candles, and several carved items were set, an indigenous woman approached the pope and presented him with a black ring, which appeared identical to the one she was wearing.”
Ah, the commitment to the poor (and “making a mess”) in the tucum ring! No worries, folks! No need to say to Bergoglio, “You know the first year of marriage can be quite an adjustment.”
So much of this makes even Plotinus seem like Fulton Sheen. It’s not “matter” here that’s “evil”…but “matter as deity?” I do think that such a religion (this emerging religion) is indeed ultimately “evil” (and allows for infanticide, sexual abuse/poly-perversity and euthanasia as “natural”) and is ultimately non-transcendent…non-salvific…and for all the talk of being “cosmic” it is primarily tribal…and yes, it also appeals to the Germans.
With regards to St. Francis of Assisi, much of this “mess” started already with a post Vatican II counterfeit “Franciscan joy” popularized by Franciscans in the mid-80s through the 90s but still in progress? their convenient take on St. Francis’s reverence for the Eucharist and churches in almost mandatory loud, yes campy guffawing in the sanctuary and boisterous laughter and chatting after Liturgies.
The loss of reverence for the Eucharist opened the door for this “new church.”
I’ll say it again: this is just apostasy.
Apostasy, or something worse and even more interesting?
Perhaps the lawn artistry and symbolism (following the collage/chaos instrumentum laboris) is just a passing symptom of syncretic, confused and fused evangelization, devoid of clear Christian affirmation. First the Tree of Life, then the Tree of “the knowledge of good and evil,” then the Burning Bush on holy ground, BUT NOW and once again a flat-universe and a merely cosmic tree rooted in only the dampened ground of Mother Earth.
A piece of lawn art serving as a territorial marking for a new-paradigm/hybrid religion? And, as dampened ground, a natural marking of territorial dominance as if by any typical quadruped in the wild during rutting season?
The historic elevation of some pre-Christian elements into the new creation of Christian symbolism/channels for grace was one thing (e.g., fertility and the family); but the surrender today of Christian verities to pre- post- and anti-Christian paganism and hybrid lawn markings is quite another (“images of two semi-naked pregnant women”).
The Amazon anaconda kills by incremental strangulation and then swallows its prey whole, head first. One could wonder, after this desecration (yes?) of the Vatican ground whether it should be reconsecrated…
“By Courtney Grogan
Vatican City, Oct 4, 2019 / 10:30 am (CNA).- Pope Francis witnessed an indigenous performance at a tree planting ceremony in the Vatican gardens Friday, during which people held hands and bowed before carved images of pregnant women, one of which reportedly represented the Blessed Virgin Mary. ”
An additional detail from CNA presented above.
That and other aspects of this “ecological ritual” may very well require a reconsecration…to follow up on the “ecological ritual.”
Perhaps Bergoglio being outside the circle was actually a part of the ritual, to symbolize/embody that a new church was being established with the Petrine office and Faith being…”developed.”
And all of this is happening during the Month of the Rosary.
I hope and pray that Francis’s successor as Pope will imitate St Boniface and take a chainsaw to that tree.
The “Sin of Manasseh” (2 Kings 21: 7-15) leads to the exile of Judah and the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Just what was the “sin”? Exactly what just occurred in the Vatican Gardens. Manasseh, the King of Judah brought an Asherah into the courtyard and then into the Temple to “worship” (bow before). Just what is an Asherah? A carved graven image of the fertility goddess and/or a tree. Does the Pope not read the Bible?
I am sure he does read the Bible, but I am less sure that he applies it to himself.