[Grem] Bencés teológus az Amazóniai Szinódus munkadokumentumát "biológiailag lebomló kereszténységnek" nevezi

[Emoke Greschik]

 Benedictine theologian calls Amazon Synod working doc ‘biodegradable
Christianity’ in searing new critique

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/benedictine-monk-calls-amazon-synod-working-doc-biodegradable-christianity-in-searing-new-critique
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/tags/tag/instrumentum+laboris>

ROME, July 10, 2019 (LifeSiteNews <https://www.lifesitenews.com/catholic>) —*
A Benedictine theologian has joined the chorus of voices criticizing the
working document of the upcoming Synod of Bishops on the Amazon, calling it
“biodegradable Christianity.”*

In an analysis
<https://www.aldomariavalli.it/2019/07/02/sinodo-amazzonico-ed-ecco-a-voi-il-cristianesimo-biodegradabile/>
published
by Italian journalist Aldo Maria Valli on July 2, Dom Giulio Meiattini, a
monk of the abbey of *Madonna della Scala *in the southern Italian province
of Bari, *said the Instrumentum laboris proposes and contains nothing less
than a “reversal” of the “very idea of Church and Christian faith.”*

*“The Person of Christ and His Gospel* *disappear; they are literally
swallowed up by the lush tropical forest” of repetitious reflection on
ecology and sociology,* Dom Meiattini writes.

“In reading this hymn to the Amazonian paradise on earth,” the Italian
monk adds, “it is difficult to understand how and why this portion of
humanity needs faith in the Incarnation.”

Commenting on the document’s focus on the Amazon as an “epiphanic” source
of revelation, Dom Meiattini says* the apostolic, scriptural, and
liturgical tradition of the Church* *“are covered by vines and tropical
molds or sunk in marshy quicksand.*” Yet he notes that the authors of the
document do not seem “concerned at all about giving theological and
scriptural plausibility to what they say.”

Praising German Cardinal Walter Brandmüller’s recent critique
<https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/cardinal-critiques-amazon-synod-working-doc-as-heretical...apostasy-urges-bishops-to-reject-it>
of the working document, Dom Meiattini said “it’s hard to blame him” for
calling it “heretical.” But, he adds, *“more than heresy, we should speak
of apostasy.”   *

*The Instrumentum laboris **“is not **a Christian document,” *the
Benedictine theologian insists. “Let this be clearly stated: a few biblical
quotations inserted as the title to several paragraphs, or the use of words
like ‘Church’, ‘conversion’ and ‘pastoral,’ are not enough to guarantee the
evangelical character of a text.”

*The working document for the synod on the Amazon,* he says, *represents an
“abandonment o*f *the biblical faith* for something different, with only a
counterfeit label of Christianity. A bit like products bearing the EU
[European Union] mark that are manufactured in China.”

In his analysis, Dom Meiattini also claims that the working document’s
fascination with the “world of the primitive,” i.e. the “childhood of
mankind,” betrays an infantile regression.

“After the attempts of the flower children, *what is now being proposed is
a cultural model which is ecologically more sustainable and as minimally
neurotic as possible: life brought back to its beginnings, to bows and
arrows, to shamanic healing rituals,”* he writes.

He further argues that we should not underestimate the connection between
such infantile regression and “homo and trans ideology” which is founded on
the idea of spontaneous self-determination coupled with a rejection of
reason.

However, according to the Benedictine theologian, the most interesting
aspect of the document is that “things become clearer, compared to the
previous ambiguous formulations that were supported by erroneous quotations
of St. Thomas in order to be able to claim that everything was ‘completely
Thomistic.’”

“Here *it is clear* *that **St. Thomas **has nothing to do with** it,*” he
writes, adding it is equally clear “that* the Bible* *has nothing to do
with* *it* either. If there is still something Christian in this *Instrumentum
laboris*, i.e., a few words and expressions here and there, there is no
need to worry:* it **is undoubtedly biodegradable!”*

*Here below is an English translation of Dom Giulio Meiattini*’s *commentary
on the Instrumentum laboris. The original Italian may be read here.
<https://www.aldomariavalli.it/2019/07/02/sinodo-amazzonico-ed-ecco-a-voi-il-cristianesimo-biodegradabile/>*

***

*Promoting a biodegradable Christianity*

For some time now, we have known or imagined that the Synod on the Amazon
would hold some surprises and create further reason for division. At first,
it seemed that perhaps the thorniest issue to arise at the synod would
concern married clergy. It must be said that the publication of the
*Instrumentum
laboris *has far exceeded these expectations and the liveliest imagination.
The document, in fact, points towards a much more ambitious and radical
goal. It is the most daring move that could be conceived and attempted by
the secretariat of a synod of the Catholic Church. The document proposes
and contains nothing less than a reversal *ab imis fundamentis *[in its
deepest foundations] of the very idea of Church and Christian faith.

*Diluting Christianity: wine turned into water *

I say “Christian” and not “Catholic” with good reason, because in fact the
method and contents of this text, which is full of repetition and quite
cumbersome, have actually liquidated the fundamental elements of
Christianity. Naturally, the operation is carried out with the usual
system, which I have pointed out on other occasions: not by denying but by
keeping silent, not by contradicting but by diluting. In this way, the
reader can also be favorably impressed by all the interesting reflections
on ecology, ethnology, health and sanitation and sociology that it
contains, and many of which are in themselves also right. But in the midst
of these lush and redundant empirical analyses, which say nothing new and
which a specialist could say in a better and more substantiated manner, the
Person of Christ and His Gospel disappear; they are literally swallowed up
by the lush tropical forest.

The relationship between faith and culture should be illustrated using the
classical Christology expressed by the first ecumenical councils, which
affirm the transcendence of the divine Person of the Word with respect to
the human nature that it sustains, assumes and transforms, not vice versa.
The *Instrumentum laboris *expresses, in fact, in its general logic, a
completely inverted conception that no longer conforms to Christological
orthodoxy. In reading this hymn to the Amazonian paradise on earth (which
is presented as a new Eden of innocence and communal and cosmic harmony
without stain, except those brought by Western civilization; cf. n. 103),
it is difficult to understand how and why this portion of humanity needs
faith in the Incarnation. The myth of the great Amazonian river as the
source of life replaces the great Christological and Paschal image of the
river that flows from the Temple (according to the prophet Ezekiel) and
that “brings life and heals wherever it flows.” Instead of asking how the
proclamation of the Gospel can be brought to these peoples, and how the
living water of Christ can heal and bring life to the lives of these
peoples, it is taken for granted that they already live, thanks to their
ancestral traditions, in an Edenic condition by which, if anything, the
Church must allow herself to be converted. It is said several times that
the Church must take on “an Amazonian face,”but the document does not
understand whether, and how, the Amazon can or should assume a Christian
face, and whether this is desirable or not.

The *Instrumentum laboris *expresses opinions which some may like, but it
is not a Christian document. Let this be clearly stated. A few biblical
quotations inserted as the title of several paragraphs, or the use of words
like “Church”, “conversion” and “pastoral,” are not enough to guarantee the
evangelical character of a text. They look like protective screens, but the
Word of the living God does not constitute the foundation and inspiration
on which the document is built. By way of example, consider Part I, Chapter
1, which is dedicated to the theme of life. The title is inspired by John
10:10: “I have come that they may have life and have it in abundance.” It
would seem to be an excellent starting point. But what follows never says
what this life that Jesus came to bring consists in, nor that John speaks
of “eternal life” and that this life is the same Trinitarian life given by
the Holy Spirit. In commenting on this verse from the Gospel of John, the
text is content to illustrate Amazonian biodiversity and the rich
hydrography of the Amazon basin, and to praise the “good life” of the
indigenous people, which — an astonishing discovery — “means understanding
the centrality of the relational-transcendent character of human beings and
creation and includes ‘doing good’” (n. 13). Of course, it is not clear
whether the Cross of Christ and his Resurrection are still necessary for
the sort of “good living” that is here being presented as a model. The
Cross is mentioned only twice, and it is understood that it never refers to
the redemptive Cross of Christ, but to the “history of the Cross and
Resurrection” which consists in the Church’s solidarity with the struggles
of indigenous peoples in the defense of the territory (n. 33-34; 145).

*The removal of the scriptural principle: apostasy, rather than heresy*

Cardinal Brandmüller, in his widely circulated commentary on the *Instrumentum
laboris*, states in no uncertain terms that the document is heretical. It’s
hard to blame him. But one thing must be noted to better understand the
type of “heresy” we are dealing with. Church history teaches us that
heresies normally develop out of a controversial interpretation of
scriptural texts. The heretic always believes that he is giving a more
correct interpretation of Scripture, whose authority he does not question.
Therefore, it was to the sound of biblical quotations that controversies
were generally fed. In other words, from Arius to Luther and beyond, the
assumption that united orthodoxy and heresy, Catholics and non-Catholics,
beyond all division, has always been the undisputed authority of Sacred
Scripture, recognized as the inspired word, and to whose scrutiny every
teaching and every theology had to submit.

But there is no longer any detectable trace of this scriptural premise in
the *Instrumentum laboris *for the Pan-Amazon synod. The authors of the
document are not worried at all about giving theological and scriptural
plausibility to what they say; it seems that, to them, the only
“theological locus” (venerable terminology dating back to the illustrious
Melchior Cano) is the “territory” or the “cry of the poor.” We read:
“Territory is a theological place where faith is lived, and also a
particular source of God’s revelation: epiphanic places where the reserve
of life and wisdom for the planet is manifested, a life and wisdom that
speak of God” (n. 19; cf. 144; 126e). Of course, it is not said anywhere
that Scripture and the Liturgy, within the great apostolic and ecclesial
tradition, by order of importance, are the first theological places from
which all other possible minor *loci theologici*must be verified, nor are
they used as primary sources. *Dei Verbum*and *Sacrosanctum concilium *are
covered by vines and tropical molds or sunk in marshy quicksand.

This is a phenomenon that must not escape us, because it is the most
important indicator that allows us to grasp the true nature of the
deviation or “paradigm shift” that the *Instrumentum laboris *introduces.
In modern times there have already been illustrious precedents of a removal
of the scriptural principle in favor of the primacy of other entities. The
so-called liberal theology from the 19th century onwards, in the Protestant
sphere, was basically an attempt to justify Christianity (or its cultural
relics), in the face of the multiple criticisms of modern culture, reducing
it “within the limits of reason alone” or to a particularly high form of
unsurpassed ethics or leading it back to universal religious sentiment.
Faith and the Church were reduced to their universal comprehensibility
through a process of rational homologation. The key words and concepts of
Christianity remained, but their meaning was completely secularized. This
removal of the scriptural principle was the consequence of the new
confrontation that Christianity had to sustain: no longer through internal
divisions, but with a rationality emancipated from revelation, which could
only accept what was within its parameters.

This anthropological dilution of Christianity into ethics or reason or
religious sentiment (which was felt in Catholic circles with the modernist
crisis) no longer considers Scripture as a theological *locus. *It is the
great Christian “symbols” (the Church, worship, the cross and the
resurrection, moral norms, etc.), now extrapolated from their original
ground, but still living by inertia in European civilization, that must
find some justification and reinterpretation. A great thinker like Ernst
Troeltsch could thus argue, on rational bases, that the Christian religion
represented the highest form of universal morality and religiosity. But
nothing more than this! Central dogmas thereby became “myths” to be
overcome in a universally acceptable “logos.” Bultman’s demythologization
was one of the most famous variants of this homologation of faith in an
existential dimension that is easily digestible.

It is in the light of this history (which has not yet ended) that a
phenomenon such as the *Instrumentum laboris *on the Amazon should be
considered. It is the dilution of Christianity to anthropology, or rather
to ecology to be precise, in order to give it again a semblance of
acceptability in the United Nations assembly and in environmentalist,
post-modern, anti-Western and biodegradable naturalist thinking. That is
why Cardinal Brandmüller’s diagnosis is correct, but immediately adding, as
he himself does, that more than heresy we should speak of *apostasy*. The
removal of the scriptural principle (which is like saying the renunciation
of theology and mission), the abdication of a reading of the phenomena and
mission of the Church in the light of the Word of God, replacing it with
the uncontaminated and mythical “theological locus” of the environment, of
territory and of the poor (as if all this were immune to original sin, and
therefore a “pure word” of God that can do without the two Testaments), is
equivalent to the abandonment of the ground of faith, which for Paul and
the Apostolic Church comes from listening to the *kerygma *and not from the
“ecological conversion” to the territory (an expression that is repeated
nine times in the text). The Apostolic Church, and the one that followed,
transmitted the proclamation of Christ the Son of God who died and rose for
sins. That is why it was missionary. But there is no trace of this
proclamation in our document. Here, therefore, we are not faced with a
variant, albeit heterodox or heretical, of Christianity, but with a
phenomenon of abandonment of the biblical faith for something different,
with only a counterfeit label of Christianity. A bit like products bearing
the EU [European Union] mark that are manufactured in China.

I will say more. The great representatives of theological liberalism to
whom I have referred at least kept Christianity in a privileged position:
it remained for them the highest expression of the human *ethos *or
religion of humanity. In their own way, “they could not but call themselves
Christians.” In the new mythical reduction presented by the pre-synodal
document, something more radical happens: this privileged position is lost.
It seems that the Church now has the sole task of protecting what good the
Amazonian people already possess. Therefore, that high vision of
Christianity as the most evolved religion or, if you like, as man fully
realized, also disappears. Here the problem *of true religion *no longer
has any reason to exist. Nor does the question of the true God whom
religions venerate. In fact, we read: “Insincere openness to the other,
just like a corporatist attitude, that reserve salvation exclusively for
one’s own creed, are destructive of that very creed.” (n. 39). As if to
say: believe what you want, you are saved all the same. We had already read
something like this in the Abu Dhabi document. Evidently it was not a slip
of the tongue!

*The cultural phenomenon: an infantile regression*

Having ascertained this, there is another fact to be noted, equally
important and of considerable proportions, concerning the cultural
operation underway here (given that we can now only deal with culture and
no longer with Christian theology). The interesting thing is that what is
privileged in the *Instrumentum laboris *is no longer the adult *logos *that
illuminated and dissolved the *mythos *of the infantile and primitive eras
of humanity, including the Judeo-Christian “myth,” as happened in the
interpretation of liberal theology and in all the enlightened or
positivistic reductions of Christianity, such as that of Kant, Lessing,
Hegel, Bultman and so on. Now the fascination with the emancipated adult
age, as the “age of reason” which has guided much of modernity has
dissolved for the westernized world; it has lost its appeal.

Taking its place once again is much-despised *mythos*, the world of the
primitive; in short, the childhood of mankind, the good savage with his
ancestral animistic wisdom (which the sad *homo technologicus *envies, but
without really knowing what it is). After criticizing and eliminating the
“myth,” even the biblical one, as a remnant of the infantile age of
humanity, and consequently desacralizing the ritual practices of the Church
(which is accused of a magical and superstitious mentality), now an attempt
is being made to replace the void produced (more than deforestation!) by
resorting to the shamanic myths and rituals of the indigenous Amazon, to a
pre-Christian repertoire, so that they become the new paradigm in which to
water down the true wine of the uniqueness of Christ.

One cannot but notice that, from the psycho-cultural point of view, this is
a classic phenomenon of post-modern infantile regression typical of the
Western world, which no longer aspires to the adult age of enlightenment or
positivistic memory. It’s too demanding or too boring to be an adult.
Enough with pure and absolute reason, enough with the fatigue of the
concept. Better to be carefree and instinctive like children, simple and
spontaneous like them. Not the age of reason, but of dream and play. Too
bad that this childish aspiration camouflages, behind the enchanting
innocence of the *puer*, the deepest nihilism. Recall that the Nietzschean
Superman, who decrees the end of the *logos*, has the appearance of a
child; he is innocent in his playing (beyond good and evil) with the wheel
of eternal return. The child mentioned in Friedrich Nietzsche’s novel, *Thus
Spoke Zarathustra, *for those who do not know it, is Dionysus, “Dionysus
against the Crucified”! The pagan myth replaces the Christian God. Today,
what is childish fascinates, because it impersonates an innocent and
irresponsible instinct that the adult cannot allow himself.

Let such diagnoses not seem excessive. Rather, note the strange and fatal
attraction between Westerners with their decadent bad conscience,
disappointed by the longed-for emancipated adult age (which soon turned
into unwanted old age) and lost childhood, the land of gold, which cannot
be found except in the pre-civilized tribal cultures, since we have also
robbed our techno-children of their childhood. The myth of the
uncontaminated, the neopagan naturalism of childlike innocence of the
natives is an entirely western and post-modern regression. Where can we
find salvation from hyper-technology? How can we escape an increasingly
less manageable urbanization? How can we heal the wounds of increasingly
fragmented relationships? After the attempts of the flower children, what
is now being proposed is a cultural model which is ecologically more
sustainable and as minimally neurotic as possible: life brought back to its
beginnings, to bows and arrows, to shamanic healing rituals. A new
beginning! Today everyone wants to have a new beginning, or another chance,
as they say. The other possibility for westernized man is to turn to those
who have remained at the beginning for millennia. This is the new myth
presented by *Instrumentum laboris*, an excellent example of this
post-modern infantile regression, a real complex or syndrome of European
origin, even if it is cloaked in love for the peripheries and
anti-Westernism. Like all regressions, this one too is not fully
self-aware, otherwise it would be ashamed. Instead, it is said openly with
impressive naivety, imagining it is doing prophetic work. But usually
prophecy is “outdated.” The boring pages of the *Instrumentum labori*s are
a smoothie blended with obvious things; it is suitable, in fact, for
children (or perhaps for old people without teeth who are stammering
again).

I don’t think too many explanations are needed to understand that this
aspiration to infantile neoteny, a kind of lack of distinction potentially
open to any possibility of totipotent “self-determination” (for this reason
representative of Nietzsche’s desire for power), goes magnificently well
with a homologating culture that tries to promote the delay of sexual
differentiation (a necessary phase for access to adulthood), remaining in
prepubescent indeterminacy. Homo and trans ideology are related to this
secret nostalgia for the fusional beginnings that bind one to the mother, a
need instinctively felt by the post-modern western alogical and anomical
world. The fact that it is now called “Mother Earth” (another beloved
expression in the *Instrumentum laboris*, used six times compared to only
one reference to God as father) and Mother Nature matters little.

Unfortunately, however, the Amazon described in the pre-synodal document is
not real, except marginally: it is a construction of Western make-believe
searching for substitute myths made to measure, after liquidating its own,
especially the Christian narrative. In singing the wonders of the Amazonian
territory, the document betrays an endless naivety. The writers should have
reread at least a few pages of Leopardi on Mother Nature, so as not to be
seduced in such a blatant way by the sirens of Rousseau.

*Conclusions: Biodegradable Christianity*

The objections I made to the postulates of *Evangelii gaudium *(especially
to the first: the superiority of time over space) pointed to the
theoretical weakness of that pastoral program, which already showed a
certain tendency to remove the role of *logos *(also scriptural) in favor
of reality (considered superior to the idea), renouncing in substance the
mediation of theology in the name of the immediacy of practice (initiate
processes). My criticism of *Amoris laetitia *focused on highlighting the
reduction of what is specifically Christian (summed up in sacramental life)
to universal morality, in line with the currents of theological liberalism
previously mentioned.

It seems to me that the *Instrumentum laboris *for the upcoming synod on
the Amazon represents a coherent maturation of these premises. The
reduction of the sacraments to morals is now being replaced by the
exaltation of indigenous “good living” (naturist morals, more than
natural), the choice of the people as a “mythical category” and of the
people’s myths in place of the biblical narrative. Above all, the
preference given to the environment (territory-space) over history (time),
also because indigenous peoples have no history and live in a cyclical time
or (in some cases) are devoid of the concept of time. Yet we were told the
opposite!

The most interesting aspect is that, in this document, things become
clearer, compared to the previous ambiguous formulations that were
supported by erroneous quotations of St. Thomas in order to be able to
claim that everything was “completely Thomistic.” Here it is clear that St.
Thomas has nothing to do with it, and as has been said, the Bible has
nothing to do with it either. If there is still something Christian in
this *Instrumentum
laboris*, i.e., a few words and expressions here and there, there is no
need to worry: it is undoubtedly biodegradable!

*Dom Giulio Meiattini, OSB*

*Translation from the Italian by Diane Montagna of LifeSiteNews.*

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