Amazon Synod Working Document Released Today, and It Confirms There’s Trouble on the Horizon

Historic roundtable: Voris, Marshall, de Mattei and more to discuss Amazon Synod threat to Church
https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/u...to-address-questions-confronting-amazon-synod
ROME, Italy, July 25, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) — Lay Catholic leaders from across the world will gather in Rome in October for a roundtable discussion on the questions facing the upcoming Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazon region.

The event, hosted by the international pro-life association Voice of the Family, is titled “Our Church – reformed or deformed?” It will be held Friday, October 4 from 3 to 6 p.m. at Hotel Massimo D’Azeglio.

SIGN-UP for all-access live stream pass of event here

Over the past several months, faithful Catholics have grown increasingly concerned with the Amazonian Synod. Secret meetings as well as public statements by liberal clergy indicate women’s ordination and married priestsare two issues they will likely seek to introduce.

 

Joan, I just posted some messages from the book God Speaks Will You Listen on refuges, in the thread Prophecy - GSWYL . There are many other credible prophecies on refuges as well.

 

I know that Saint Bridget of Sweden's prophecy about the sad and eternal fate of any pope who 'conceded to priests a licence to contract marriage' has been mentioned on the forum before and that prophecy's relevance to the upcoming synod. The Synod will be considering the idea (apparently at the express instruction of the Pope) that married men could be ordained in such areas as the Amazon where there are few priests. I have a couple of thoughts in this matter.

1. It was Saint JPII who named St. Bridget as one of the co-patron saints of Europe as recently as 1999. He would have known of her writings and, presumably, this warning to future popes. I wonder if he consciously had the intention of alerting future popes to her prophecy when he did so?
2. The prophecy relates to priests who marry, not to married men being permitted to become priests. The latter has been permitted for decades (at least) and under several popes but only in the case of convert, married clergy and never to cradle Catholics. Does the distinction between men who are married being ordained and permitting already ordained priests to marry, absolve a Pope from the punishment prophesied?
3. If someone decided that the Pope was, indeed, grossly offending God and hazarding his own eternal fate by considering permitting the ordination of married Catholics and so decided on drastic action to prevent the Pope damning himself, would such action be justified? (Not that I am considering or recommending such action).

 

Good question!

 

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/r...verthrow-of-catholic-doctrine-at-amazon-synod

Radical liberation theologians push for overthrow of Catholic doctrine at Amazon synod

September 3, 2019 (LifeSiteNews.com) – A group of aging priests and theologians associated with Latin American “liberation theology” who are involved in the preparation for Pope Francis’ upcoming “Pan-Amazon Synod” have produced a document arguing for the overthrow of Catholic doctrine in a variety of areas, LifeSite has learned.

The document, called “Towards the Pan-Amazonian Synod: Challenges and Contributions from Latin America and the Caribbean,” was produced in April of this year as a result of a meeting in Bogota, Colombia, by theologians from two organizations promoting liberation theology: “Amerindia,” and “REPAM.” The synod’s working document refers explicitly to the Bogota meeting as part of the preparatory process for the synod. It can be found here in its original Spanish.

The Bogota document seeks to undermine or overthrow fundamental elements of Catholic doctrine, claiming that there is no one true religion and that non-Christian religions are capable of bringing “salvation” to people, while glorifying the pagan religious traditions of the indigenous people in the Amazon.

In addition, it redefines the Eucharist as a symbolic act of the community, attacks the hierarchical priesthood of the New Testament while asking the Church’s authorities to leave open the possibility of the ordination of women as priests, and calls for “the overcoming of a patriarchal perspective.” It advocates a “feminist and ecological theology” to replace current ones. It also urges the ordination of married men to the priesthood.

The document closes with a prayer to God as “Father and Mother of life,” after having referred to God as the “Creator-Creatora.”

LifeSite has learned that of the 28 contributors to the text of the Bogota document, four have exercised key roles at the Pan-Amazon Synod’s pre-synodal council, and two of them are key authors of the synod’s working document. Their authorship of the document is offering an indication of their intentions for the synod, the full name of which is the “Special Assembly of the Synod of Bishops for the Pan-Amazonian Region.” It will be held in Rome from October 6-27 of this year.

The synod’s official working document has been condemned by numerous Catholic prelates, including Cardinal Walter Brandmüller, who has called it, “heretical.”

The full text of the Bogota document can be found here.

'It’s not fair'
According to the Bogota document, the Catholic Church shouldn’t declare that only one religion is true, because “it’s not fair” to do so, just as “it’s not fair” to say that one species should prevail over all the others – an apparent rejection of the Catholic doctrine of man’s superiority over the animals taught in the Bible and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

The document approvingly quotes Leonardo Boff, a wayward priest (now laicized) and “liberation” theologian who abandoned the Franciscan order and entered into a union with a woman after being censured by the Vatican for attacks on Catholic doctrine. Boff is a strong supporter of Pope Francis and has known him since the 1970s.

States the document: “It is not fair that we think and say that only one species should prevail, but on the contrary; all species have value and together they reveal the virtues of the mystery of life. Similarly, it is not fair to say that only one religion is true and the others are decadent, for they all reveal the mystery of God and reveal the many ways in which we walk in fidelity and love for God” (p. 86).

The document also claims that the Catholic Church must move “from intolerant exclusivism to an attitude of respect that accepts that Christianity does not have a historical monopoly on salvation” (p. 84), and that “pluralism and diversity of religions are expressions of a wise divine will” (p. 53).

The Catechism of the Catholic Church teaches that the Catholic Church is the “one and only Church of God” and “the Father willed to call the whole of humanity together into his Son's Church.” It also reiterates the dogma of the faith that “outside the Church there is no salvation,” meaning that those who knowingly reject unity with the Church and die outside of it suffer eternal damnation. The same doctrine is contained in numerous verses of in the Christian New Testament.

The Bogota document contains various other statements promoting heresy or dissent against Catholic doctrine, including the following:

1. The Eucharist and other sacraments are reduced to community “symbols” that express the “experience of people” and “the path of the community”

States the document: “In the liturgy, the Church expresses her faith in a symbolic and communal way. The constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium explains that the liturgy is the 'summit' and 'source' of Christian life. The liturgy is the ‘summit,’ because at the foot of the table is presented the experience of people, the path of the community and the socio-cultural context in which it operates. ‘Source,’ because from the living memory of the love of Christ and from the encounter with sisters and brothers the desire and the capacity for more coherent discipleship and more effective witness are born” (p. 94).

The Catholic Church teaches, however, that the Eucharist is not a mere symbol of human experience, but is the sacramental presence of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Jesus Christ, and a re-presentation and participation in his sacrifice on the cross. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, “At the Last Supper, on the night he was betrayed, our Savior instituted the Eucharistic sacrifice of his Body and Blood. This he did in order to perpetuate the sacrifice of the cross throughout the ages until he should come again.”

The reduction of Catholic doctrine to personal “experience” is expressly condemned by Pope Pius X in his condemnation of modernism, Pascendi Dominici Gregis (1907), where he notes that such doctrines lead to atheism: “With such theories . . . the way is opened wide for atheism. Here it is well to note at once that, given this doctrine of experience united with the other doctrine of symbolism, every religion, even that of paganism, must be held to be true. What is to prevent such experiences from being met within every religion?”

Continued..

 

2. The Church broke with its own tradition when it recognized elders as hierarchical priests and as members of the Order of Melchizedek

States the document: “Within the post-council framework, theology questioned the model of the Old Testament priesthood that was introduced into ecclesial praxis and theology when Judaism's cultural institutions were transposed into the ecclesial community to show the continuity between the Old and New Testaments that Gnosticism challenged. As a consequence of the establishment of the institution of the priesthood, the leaders became officials of the cult and their office – a priestly office of cultural mediation - was interpreted as a rank, which designated them as priests, Levites, sons of Aaron, and even relating them to Melchizedek, which does not correspond to the experience of the first communities that had broken with the Old Testament forms of religious mediation” (p. 112).

The Catholic Church teaches, however, that Christ himself instituted the ministerial priesthood as a participation in his own priesthood: “‘The divinely instituted ecclesiastical ministry is exercised in different degrees by those who even from ancient times have been called bishops, priests, and deacons.’ Catholic doctrine, expressed in the liturgy, the Magisterium, and the constant practice of the Church, recognizes that there are two degrees of ministerial participation in the priesthood of Christ: the episcopacy and the presbyterate. The diaconate is intended to help and serve them.”

3. This deviation from original doctrine was the basis for excluding women from the priesthood

States the document: “What served as an argument to respond to a particular circumstance became doctrine with the elaboration of the theology of the sacrament of order as the sacrament of the priesthood, closely and intimately related to the Eucharistic sacrifice. Thus, the cultural perspective on the priesthood was consecrated in the liturgy and in priestly spirituality, as well as in the symbols that confer a character of dignity and honor on men of the Church. In this process women were excluded . . .” (p. 113).

4. Catholic dogma on the exclusively male priesthood is a modifiable “position” that theologians should be able to “reflect on” to discern the “signs of the times”

States the document: “We are fully aware of the Catholic Church's position on this issue. We recommend, however, that theologians, respecting in a reverent way the data of faith and in profound communion with the Magisterium, may continue with complete freedom the reflection on the priestly ordination of women, enriching their analysis with resources coming from psychology, sociology, anthropology, history, philosophy and hermeneutics, in order to be able to discern the presence of the Spirit in that sign of the times which is, according to John XXIII, the presence of women in public life” (p. 105).

The perennial practice and doctrine of the Catholic Church, however, are that women cannot be validly ordained to the priesthood. Pope John Paul II in his apostolic letter Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, issued in 1994, wrote, “Wherefore, in order that all doubt may be removed regarding a matter of great importance, a matter which pertains to the Church's divine constitution itself, in virtue of my ministry of confirming the brethren (cf. Lk 22:32) I declare that the Church has no authority whatsoever to confer priestly ordination on women and that this judgment is to be definitively held by all the Church's faithful.”

5. Women in the early Church were “deacons” who exercised “leadership functions,” but there was no hierarchy or priesthood

States the document: “The New Testament texts do not record cultural activities, but communities of believers met in houses, which shows that women could carry the word and exercise leadership functions. On the other hand, in these communities there was no hierarchical organization or priestly figures: their leaders did not receive the title of priests and the diversity of ministries, whose denomination comes from secular language, was polarized into the triad episcopos, presbyters, male deacons and female deacons” (p. 116).

6. “A Church incarnated in the Amazon” means openness to ordaining women to the “diaconate” as well as ordaining married men, and embracing “feminist and ecological theology”

Such a church includes “Ensuring the celebration of the Sunday Eucharist in ecclesial communities by the ordination of married priests. . . . Welcoming and supporting . . . feminist and ecological theology as a support for the configuration of a Church with its own face. . . . Discerning the opportunity for the ordination of women to the diaconate, as well as the creation of other ministries of one's own, according to the needs of the local Church” (p. 81).

7. Pagan indigenous religions are affirmed, never criticized

In a way similar to the synod’s working document, the Bogota document affirms the pagan religious traditions of the indigenous while never mentioning erroneous beliefs or destructive practices among them. The whole document contains only two brief, passing mentions of “sin,” one in an ancient prayer the document quotes. The document calls for “understanding and recognizing once again the virtues, knowledge and cosmovisions existing among the ancestral ethnic groups, which still retain the ability to read and conceive nature as the true mother” (p. 34).

8. God is referred to as the masculine-feminine “Creator-Creatora”

States the document: “They have their sacred histories, languages, knowledge, traditions, spiritualities and theologies. All of them seek to build a 'good life' and the communion of people among themselves, with the world, with living beings and with the Creator-Creatora. They feel that they are living well in the 'house' that the Creator-Creatora gave them on Earth,” the document states (p. 54).

The document closes with a prayer to “Father and Mother of life” (p. 129).

Bogota document's importance
In April of 2019, 28 theologians met in Bogota, Colombia, in order to discuss the upcoming October 6-27 Amazon Synod. Organizers of this event were two organizations: Amerindia and Repam (the Pan-Amazon Ecclesial Network). The result of this conference is to be found in the booklet, “Towards the Pan-Amazonian Synod.”

Continued..

 

Importantly, it is the Vatican's own working document for the upcoming synod that refers back to this event in Bogota as one of the preparatory meetings for the synod. The working document states first that “this Working Document is the fruit of a long process that includes the drafting of the Preparatory Document for the Synod in June 2018; and an extensive survey of Amazon communities” and then adds in footnote 1: “In addition to this official process, numerous seminars have been held in Washington D.C., Rome and Bogota, with experts in different areas and representatives of Amazon peoples, to reflect on the issues analyzed here.”

Four people who are involved in the work of the pre-synodal council (either as members or as advisors) convoked by Pope Francis in March of 2018 were present at the Bogota gathering: Father Paolo Suess (a close collaborator of Bishop Erwin Kräutler who is a member of the pre-synodal council) – Suess participates as an advisor (peritus) at the pre-synodal council – Mauricio López (the executive secretary of REPAM and a member of the council), the indigenous priest and advisor, Father Justino Sarmento Rezende, and finally Fr. Peter Hughes (also an advisor). These four people have been, according to a Spanish source, the main authors of the Amazon Synod's 2018 preparatory document. Paolo Suess is generally believed to have had the leading hand in the synod's 2019 working document.

Organizations devoted to promoting 'liberation theology'
Amerindia is an organization of ideologically progressivist theologians who since 1978 have counseled Southern American prelates, especially in light of their various episcopal meetings (to include Medellin and Aparedica). This group features most prominently Leonardo Boff as one of their bloggers. Boff is one of the most prominent defenders of Liberation Theology, for which he was censured by the Vatican in the mid-eighties. He subsequently left the priesthood and married. He posted, in July of 2019, an article on his Amerindia blog, in which he argues for female priests.

On its website, Amerindia says its mission is to “reaffirm the option for new models of a communitarian and participative church, and for liberation theology as an aid to the universal church.” It claims to represent “a new way of being and acting, which passes through self-comprehension and transformation based on solidarity with the cry of the excluded and of Mother Earth.” The organization claims that it “had a significant participation in the Aparecida Conference” in 2007, a conference in which the drafting of the final document was led by Archbishop Jorge Bergoglio, who is now Pope Francis.

REPAM, a coalition of organizations committed to Pope Francis' “ecological” agenda, was founded in 2014, apparently at the behest of Pope Francis himself. One of its members, the coalition of Catholic international aid agencies Caritas Internationalis, says of the organization that “It is a project of the nine Churches of the Amazon region, inspired by Pope Francis and backed by the Latin American Bishops’ Conference, CELAM. Caritas Internationalis is a founding member of REPAM, and national Caritas offices in the Amazon countries, Europe and North America also participate.”

Notably, Caritas’ description of REPAM does not include the conversion of the largely pagan and Protestant Amazon peoples to the Catholic faith but instead, lists such goals as “Enabling indigenous leaders to be heard on the world stage,” “Creation of a School for the Promotion of Rights,” “Support for human rights defense cases,” “Dialogue between the Church and indigenous peoples’ communities,” and “Protection for the 137 ‘contactless tribes’ of the Amazon.”

In addition to Amerindia and REPAM, the document is sponsored by five Catholic international development organizations, CAFOD (BRITAIN), CCFD (France), DKA (Austria), and MISEREOR (Germany). It is also sponsored by the German Protestant organization EMW (“Evangelisches Missionswerk in Deutschland” – Evangelical Mission Work in Germany). LifeSite first reported on the involvement of the German aid agencies with the synod in July.

Amerindia won’t say who contributed what to Bogota document
LifeSiteNews reached out to Amerindia, asking for a program of the April 2019 meeting in Bogota. Dr. Óscar Elizalde Prada, its communications director (and also a participant of that event), answered, saying that “the meeting itself did not take place through conferences or panels, but through intense work sessions, aimed at building a joint reflection from a Latin American and Caribbean theological-pastoral perspective, always in the light of the Magisterium of the Church and, more specifically, the pontificate of Pope Francis. For this reason we have not limited ourselves to a program or agenda as such.”

Prada further declined to give LifeSite information as to who wrote which of the chapters of the Bogota document, explaining that “likewise, as is proper to the communitarian and collaborative spirit of our work in Latin America, it is not possible to attribute the authorship of the content of each chapter of the subsidy that we have published to a specific author or authors. In this we have followed the inspiration of the indigenous peoples, more concerned with the care of the common house than with their own protagonisms, opting also to make a synodal journey, in dialogue and listening to the cries that spring from the Church in the Amazon and the 'groan of sister Earth', as the Holy Father refers in Laudato Si (LS 53).”

 

Again, could this Synod possibly be THE one mentioned here?:



Edit: Sorry.....see that Fatima already posted this video.

 

It will be full blown schism after this Synod...

 

I see another great schism coming! It may come down to, what they or we call them/ourselves.

While messages and warnings from our Mother sound so similar, this sounds like this will bring those changes we've long been warned of.

 

A pre-warning?
As much as we are greatly concerned about what we have heard will be discussed in this coming Synod, seems we ought not be afraid of it but pray to be strong and true to the true Church as Christ gave us and our Mother has constantly encouraged.

I had a very strange dream last night...that I'll post elsewhere.

 

http://magister.blogautore.espresso...saying-mass-and-the-pope-knows-it/?refresh_ce

In the Amazon Married Deacons Are Already Saying Mass. And the Pope Knows It

For a few days a video has been circulating on the web in which an Italian priest of the highest rank, among those closest to Jorge Mario Bergoglio, says that in the Amazon the celebration of the Mass by married deacons is already a de facto reality, authorized by the local bishops. And Pope Francis, informed of the matter, is alleged to have said:”Go ahead!”

The author of this revelation is not just anybody. He is Giovanni Nicolini, 79, an esteemed priest of the archdiocese of Bologna, which has as its archbishop that Matteo Zuppi whom a few days ago Francis promoted as cardinal.

Fr. Nicolini is currently a national ecclesiastical assistant of the Catholic Associations of Italian Workers, ACLI, and was previously director of Caritas of Bologna, in addition to being a parish priest in the neighborhood next to the prison. A priest of the poor, of the imprisoned, of the immigrants: this is his best-known profile.

But even before this he was a spiritual son of Giuseppe Dossetti (1913-1996), a leading politician in postwar Italy and then, as monk and priest, a protagonist of Vatican Council II along with Cardinal Giacomo Lercaro.

In the footsteps of Dossetti, Fr. Nicolini founded in the 1970’s the Family of the Visitation, a community now made up of around thirty monks and nuns and as many married couples, divided between the countryside of Bologna and the archdiocesan missions in Tanzania and Jerusalem.

Moreover, Fr. Nicolini is connected to that influential progressive Catholic think tank known as the “school of Bologna,” which had its founder in the same Dossetti and has in Church historian Alberto Melloni and in Bose monastery founder Enzo Bianchi its current mainstays and gurus, both of them ultra-Bergoglians.

So here is a link to Fr. Nicolini’s shocking video:

> “Sento l’opportunità di ricordare…”

The video is part of a broader “lesson” by Fr. Nicolini, it too recorded, at the summer school of the political-cultural Catholic association La Rosa Bianca, held in Terzolas, Trentino from August 21 to 25.

And the following is an exact transcription of his words concerning the celibacy of the clergy and the “Masses” that already are said to be celebrated by married deacons in the Amazon, with the authorization of the local bishops and the support of Pope Francis.

*

AND THE POPE SAID: “GO AHEAD!”

I feel it is fitting to recall, together with you, that the Church of priests is coming to an end. Is this a prophecy? No, it is the reality. This has to be taken into account, because it changes completely. We are now reaching the height of folly, every priest is taking care of six parishes, but this is how it ends. This crisis of the priesthood in any case will increase relentlessly, until serious consideration is finally given to the suitability of abolishing the celibacy of priests.

As long as this celibacy of priests remains, the decline is unstoppable, in part because very often there is no reflection on the fact that I, for example, am a priest, but before being a priest I am a monk. Francesco, who is here, is a monk, and since [we] are a very small monastic community of prayer we have given to the Church of Bologna the gift of five priests, but we have been able to do so because we belong to a different breed. But as long as there continues a situation according to which - you get it, right? - the fact of remaining celibate is purely an arrangement of the disciplinary order, juridical, not a vow, not a gift of God, not supported by the life of the community… That’s all it is, he doesn’t get married, the rule is that he cannot marry. But it is clear that when I find out that a thirty-year-old priest who comes to me for confession, now they are putting him in a big rural area by himself, in six months he has a mistress. And so now this decline will be very rapid. They other day someone told me that if one does the math, in 2030 Bologna will have 30 priests. Right now there are 450, and that’s already a big decline. And so this structure of the Church will no longer be there.

The synod of bishops for the Amazon is taking place. We found out that in the Amazon one evening, from an isolated mission parish in the Amazon they made a pone call, it was an old deacon, in his sixties, married, who said to his bishop: “I have to tell you that tomorrow there won’t be any Mass, because there is no priest.” And the bishop told him: “You go there and say Mass.” A married deacon, children already raised, the “elders” are called, and the bishops there have given him authorization to preside over the liturgy. They told the pope about this and the pope said: “For now we cannot write anything, you go ahead!” I wondered, when I found out that he was convening the worldwide meeting of bishops for the Amazon, who knows if perhaps he can or wants to say something. But the Church, in its concrete juridical structure, as it exists now, is at an end.

*

That does it for the words of Fr. Giovanni Nicolini, which lead to questions that demand answers, even before the synod for the Amazon begins.

Is it true or false, what he says about the “Masses” already being celebrated in the Amazon by married deacons?

And is it true or false that Francis gave the go-ahead?

 

Also 1P5 and others;

https://onepeterfive.com/magister-m...mass-in-the-amazon-and-the-pope-permitted-it/

 

https://www.lifesitenews.com/blogs/...heologian-is-an-architect-of-the-amazon-synod

Mon Sep 9, 2019 - 9:04 pm EST

81-year-old liberation theologian is an architect of the Amazon Synod

September 9, 2019 (LifeSiteNews) – In recent weeks, there has been much discussion among solicitous Catholics about one of the inspirers of the upcoming October 6-27 Pan-Amazon Synod, Leonardo Boff. He is one of the founders of Liberation Theology and a co-author of Laudato Si, Pope Francis’ encyclical on environmental problems.

However, on a practical level – that is to say, in the concrete preparation of the Amazon Synod's preparatory and working documents – there needs to be another man named as a key inspirer of the Amazon Synod: the 81-year-old Father Paulo Suess.

Suess is a professor of Mission Studies in São Paulo, Brazil and a member of the group Amerindia, which is a group of defenders of Liberation Theology. Boff belongs to this group, as well. Over many years, they have been trying to influence the conferences of the Latin American bishops, and in 2007, Cardinal Oscar Rodríguez Maradiaga even officially invited them to make direct contributions to the final document of the 2007 Aparecida meeting of Latin American Bishops. Since Suess was among those counselors, it is highly probable that Suess had already met the later Pope Francis, since then-Cardinal Jorge Bergoglio was the head of the commission responsible for the final document.

In any event, authors of Amerindia are now writing essays in which they show how much influence they had already at Aparecida, and how then-Cardinal Bergoglio had sympathy for many of their causes, but that some of them were later deleted from Aparecida's proposed final document – by order of Rome.

One of these Amerindia authors is Agenor Brighenti. In a 40-page long study written in 2016, entitled “The Aparecida Document: the Original Text, the Official Text, and Pope Francis,” Brighenti shows how the final 2007 document of Aparecida was censored by Rome. This was after the Latin American bishops had approved of it under Bergoglio’s guidance. The study says that the parts that were taken out or weakened (such as the enforcement of the Liberation Theologian's Basic Ecclesial Communities (BEC), their “option for the poor,” as well as some comments weakening the authority of the local bishops) were actually close to Bergoglio's heart.

Brighenti writes: “On the other hand, no one could have imagined, much less the censors themselves, that, a few years later [after 2007], the then-President of the Drafting Commission of the ‘original [uncensored] text’ of the [Aparecida] document would come to be Pope. And more than that, that the then-Cardinal Bergoglio – now Pope Francis – would bring up again practically all those changes or suppressions that the censors had made in the ‘original text’, and that he would propose them to the Church as a whole.”

Brighenti just co-authored a book on Pope Francis with Fr. Carlos M. Galli – the Pope’s theological advisor when he was Cardinal Bergoglio in Buenos Aires – Leonardo Boff, and Paulo Suess.

Pope Francis met with Suess in 2014
As to the Amazon synod itself, Suess was already involved in its preparations when Bishop Erwin Kräutler, in April 2014, had a private audience with Pope Francis: Kräutler took Suess with him, due to the fact that these two German-speaking clergymen had been working together for the indigenous cause for decades. Part of the conversation with the Pope in 2014 was that the Pope's guests should make “bold proposals” with regard to the lack of priests in Brazil. Pope Francis also asked Kräutler to provide him with further material for his encyclical Laudato Si. This Austrian bishop is therefore held to be among the co-authors of that encyclical.

Kräutler and Suess worked together for decades in Brazil, also in the Brazilian bishops' Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI). Suess was for many years CIMI's general secretary and then its theological advisor, while Kräutler was CIMI's president for over two decades. CIMI is also a member of the Pan-Amazonian Ecclesial Network REPAM, which has been tasked by the Pope with the preparation of the Amazon Synod. (Kräutler is Vice-President of REPAM Brazil.) Professor Suess also edited a collection of texts written by Kräutler to which he added a foreword. For another of Kräutler's books, Leonardo Boff wrote a foreword.

Kräutler is famous for his expression that “I have never in my life baptized an indigenous [person], and I also do not have the intention of ever doing so.”

Not long after that private audience with Pope Francis, Paulo Suess, still in 2014, quoted the Pope as saying that “accompaniment” of indigenous peoples is important, “to walk with them. Conversion? That is not what you should do, no. Conversion? Jesus does that.”

“It is so liberating,” Suess then continued, “that this has now been received on the highest levels [of the Church], because, for a long time, that was suspicious, that we do not really evangelize, not properly catechize, and that we do not truly bring the indigenous to the Church.”

“But for us,” added the theologian, “the principle of life was the most important: that they [the indigenous people] have life, and for that they need land and have to be strengthened in their identity.”

Is Suess one of the authors of the synod working document?
In this 2014 interview, Fr. Suess proposes to use a new understanding of Revelation: “It is also important to historicize the notion of Revelation and that we can discover God's Revelation among these indigenous peoples.”

Here, one may clearly see Suess' influence upon the Pan-Amazon Synod's working document, inasmuch as it presents the Amazon region as “a particular source of God’s revelation.” This is one of the key statements of this Vatican document that provoked much criticism from faithful prelates such as Cardinal Walter Brandmüller.

Different progressivist sources say that Bishop Erwin Kräutler is the author of the synod's working document. Knowing well how closely this bishop has been working for decades with Paulo Suess, we may better see the influence of the latter, especially since Suess is the professor and expert, whereas Kräutler himself is more prone to activism than scholarship.

In numerous additional, mostly Spanish-speaking documents, Paulo Suess is being named and interviewed as an expert for the Amazon Synod and as one of five key authors of the Amazon Synod's preparatory and working documents.

Continued..

 

The Secretariat never replied to multiple e-mails from LifeSiteNews, while the the Vatican press office gave LifeSiteNews a link to the Amazon Synod's own website showing the 18 official members of the pre-synodal council as Pope Francis established it in March 2018.

But Suess' name does not show up here, whereas his close collaborator, Kräutler, is named as an official member of the council.

The probable reason for this omission is that Suess has been called by the Vatican to be one of the experts and counselors of the pre-synodal council, but not as a member of the council which consists mostly of cardinals and bishops. Suess was, however, already present at the first meeting of the pre-synodal council in April 2018. Yet he still seldom officially appears as a person involved with the synod.

LifeSiteNews contacted Suess about this matter. He said that he prefers not to respond to such questions before the synod itself. (However, LifeSiteNews did send him one of our reports on his involvement with the synod, so that he could possibly deny the named facts, but he did not respond to that.)


Suess criticized Pope Benedict’s comments on evangelization in South America
One of the likely reasons that he is being kept in the background by the Vatican, in spite of his crucial influence on the synod, could be that he, in 2007, publicly rebuked then-Pope Benedict XVI after his speech before the assembly of Latin American bishops in Aparecida. In that speech, Pope Benedict had insisted upon the many blessings of the evangelization of the continent since its discovery by Christopher Columbus, rather than merely seeing it as an act of violence and abuse. He spoke of a “purification” of the indigenous culture that was then “longing” for God.

Suess, who was already a theological advisor of the Indigenous Missionary Council (CIMI) of the Brazilian Bishops' Conference, commented on this papal speech and used strong words.

“The Pope doesn’t understand the reality of the Indians here, his statement was wrong and indefensible,” Suess told the news agency Reuters. “I too was upset.”

In an analysis of some of Pope Benedict's earlier February 2007 remarks with regard to the evangelization of the Southern American continent, Suess wrote that “The [papal] statement that indigenous cultures [accepted] the Catholic Church and its message of faith is historically without documentary evidence, approaches, theologically, a certain fundamentalist providentialism and is anthropologically unacceptable.”

Suess – who is an important representative of Liberation Theology, as well as a developer of the concepts of inculturation, Indigenous Theology, and of the Theology of the Other – is opposed to the coming of the West into South America. He said in a 2000 interview that “the landing of the Portuguese 500 years ago is of course for the indigenous not a reason for celebration.” This event meant for the indigenous cultures, says Suess, “years of exploitation, of the destruction of their cultures and nationalities.”

‘We do not have the right to proselytize’
Suess, who was born in Cologne, Germany, but has now spent more than 40 years working in the indigenous mission in Brazil, claims that only in the 1970s and 1980s have “we in the Latin American Church started to stress the specific aspects [of the indigenous people].” This development included a new pastoral care for the indigenous people.

Continued..

 

“Before that, the work with the indigenous always had the perspective of integration,” which means to integrate the indigenous people into the Brazilian culture. Suess calls this “pseudo-integration,” against which he has helped to develop a pastoral care which “recognizes the other, the specific aspects of the indigenous cultures, and [defends] them.”

“If we do not believe that the indigenous have their own future, then we do not have any faith,” he then bluntly explained. These people, he believes, have a perspective, “if not in this Brazil, then in another Brazil.”

In other interviews, Suess makes it clear that for him, indigenous missionary work is not about “conversions,” as he puts it.

“We do not have the right to proselytize, to belittle the religion of the other or to entice [others] to conversions,” he stated this year. “The people themselves must resolve which one is the best religion for this historical moment.” The Constitution Nostrae Aetate of the Second Vatican Council, Suess assertively states, insisted upon “religious self-determination.”

A Marxist perspective
It is also Suess who insists that, up until now, the Church imposed upon the Amazonians a “European face,” and that now they need to discover an “Amazonian face.”

In 2014, speaking in German, Suess explained that, for him, the indigenous are the “revolutionary agents in South America,” thus showing that he never left the ideological mentality of the Marxist perspective of the Liberation Theology movement, out of which Indigenous Theology has flowed. The revolutionary agent as a tool for implementing changes in society now is simply not anymore the worker, but the indigenous.

Still in May 2019, in an interview posted on the official Amazon Synod website, Suess claims: “In the end, we want to build a new society, because this capitalist society, this killing system, does not work, as Pope Francis says. How can we be announcers of life? We must change society. Who are we going to do it with? With Amazonian peoples, with indigenous people, with young people. Are we willing to build a less unequal society? That is why we have to strengthen the new paths.”

Suess’ work in São Paulo has been suspect to the Church hierarchy in Rome and in Brazil, so much so that, in 2001, he was sidelined and excluded from his own post-graduate program for Mission Studies at the Pontifical Theological Department of the Nossa Senhora da Assunção University in São Paulo (Brazil), where he was a founding professor. Here, too, some similarities to Leonardo Boff's personal history may be seen.

Fr. Suess favors female ‘priests,’ ‘deacons,’ says Pope Francis is ‘practitioner of Liberation Theology’
But now, under Pope Francis, many things have changed. Suess has now participated in all the key preparatory gatherings for the Amazon Synod in Rome, Quito, Bogotà, and elsewhere, so that he was able work the findings of these gatherings into the synod's working document.

Suess and Kräutler have also helped build a direct bridge to the German Bishops' Conference, which has given over the years, by way of one of its relief agencies, around 22 million euros to CIMI (this is according to Ralph Allgaier, the spokesman of Misereor), as well as supported Amerindia with 100,000 euros. They are also generous supporters of REPAM. Suess was “project partner” with the other episcopal relief agency, Adveniat. The German bishops also invited Suess to be involved in the fundraising campaigns of these relief agencies. Markus Büker, an employee of Misereor, wrote his doctoral dissertation on the work of Suess and worked with Suess in the Amerindia group preparing proposals for the discussions at the 2007 episcopal gathering in Aparecida.

It is not surprising that Paulo Suess is also in favor of women “priests” and women “deacons.” He stated in February 2019: “ Unfortunately, because of the unity of the Church, it will be difficult at this time to discuss the priesthood [sic] of women. In the perspective of a certain graduality of solutions, what could be discussed today would be the female diaconate [sic].”

Long forgotten are the earlier restrictions under former popes. Pope Francis, it is claimed, now brings a new wind, the “wind of the south.” That expression was first used by Cardinal Walter Kasper. It became part of the title of a new book on Pope Francis written by Paulo Suess, Carlos M. Galli (then-Cardinal Bergoglio's theological adviser in Argentina), and Leonardo Boff, among others.

Speaking about Pope Francis in 2014, Suess compared the new Pope with a bird “who by his election has been freed from his prison, from his cage, and with it, he also brought to Rome the Latin American theology, and with it also the Latin American Magisterium.”

In 2013, Suess said about Pope Francis: “Bergoglio is a practitioner of Liberation Theology.”

 

I would love to hear an example of modern "proselytizing" come from any of these men who so readily use it to prove a point that nobody has brought up besides them. Last time I checked, no Catholics ever showed up at my door to challenge my beliefs (or lack of them) and try to convert me or offer to weed my planters.

Speaking the real objective and revealed Truth while "dialoguing" these days is an act of aggravated assault according to the world and it seems also to some in the church. It is God who moves the heart. Often, it is in hearing the objective and revealed Truth from one who professes it that one recognizes their own error. In some cases it is by hearing the opposite which was my experience and led me to see that what I was following was not the Truth. What we are being given by this repeated example is a straw man. It sure seems to me that some of these men are taking the Alice in wonderland approach to deliberately confound the sheep with nonsense. AKA gas lighting.

Another question I have is if this form of evangelizing the Gospel to the natives of these lands is the right path forward then why has it so badly failed in many South American nations and the people fled to the evangelicals.

It reminds me of when Jesus was being questioned by Pilate.

Pilate therefore said to him: Art thou a king then? Jesus answered: Thou sayest that I am a king. For this was I born, and for this came I into the world; that I should give testimony to the truth. Every one that is of the truth, heareth my voice. [38] Pilate saith to him: What is truth? And when he said this, he went out again to the Jews, and saith to them: I find no cause in him.

 

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/09/10/world/pope-francis-schism/index.html

Pope says he's not afraid of a schism in the Catholic Church
By Delia Gallagher, CNN



Pope Francis addressing worshipers May 8, 2019, at St. Peter's in the Vatican.
Aboard the Papal plane (CNN)Pope Francis says he is not afraid of a schism within the Catholic Church, even as he confronts criticism from conservative Catholics about his leadership.

"I pray that there will not be schisms," the Pope said Tuesday, "but I am not afraid."
The Pope's remarks came in response to a question from a journalist at a press conference aboard the papal plane. Francis was returning to Rome from Africa, where he spent six days in Mozambique, Madagascar and Mauritius.
A schism is a formal break within the church, usually due to disputes over Catholic teaching.
"There have been many schisms in the Church," Francis said, referring to the institution's long history of religious disputes.
Last Wednesday, on the outbound flight to Africa, Pope Francis said it's an "honor" when traditionalist American Catholics attack him.
But the criticism of Francis isn't only coming from the United States, the Pope said on Tuesday.
"They are a little bit everywhere, even in the Curia," he said, referring to the Vatican's bureaucracy.
"At least those who criticize have the honesty to say it. I like that. I don't like it when the criticisms are under the table and they smile and show their teeth and then there is a knife in the back. This is not loyal, this is not human."
Francis also defended himself against accusations by some conservative Catholics that he is too liberal, saying that he is in line with other Popes like John Paul II.
"The Pope is too communist," Francis said, paraphrasing some conservative sentiment against him.
"The social things that I said are the same that John Paul II said," referring to the social teachings of the church on topics like economics, politics and the environment.
Francis suggested that some of those who attack him may have psychological problems and should be treated kindly.
"When you see rigid Christians, bishops, priests, you know there are problems there," he said. "We need to be gentle with these people and accompany them."
During his 10 days in Africa, the Pope focused mainly on three themes at the heart of his papacy: combating poverty, environmental degradation and political corruption.
CNN's Daniel Burke contributed to this story.

 

Note the very, very aggressive tone:

He speaks of people, 'Showing their teeth'..'Knife in the back'..'not human'.. 'have psychological problems'.....'need to be treated kindly'..such people have..'Problems'.

Note also that this is a Universal Pastor speaking about his spiritual children.

Well speaking as a non human with problems I must head off to the head shrinker to get sorted.

If someone, anyone used such violent Ad Hominem language to attack others here they would be gone from the forum in milliseconds.

Kick the ball; not the players. Don't suggest they are mad or inhuman for starters.

That's the Universal Rule.

...and it even applies to Popes giving interviews on planes.

Proverbs 15: 1

“A gentle answer turns away wrath, but hard words stir up anger.