Pachamama Throws the Friends of Francis Into Confusion - by Father Reto Nay
He presents these “images” as “wooden statuettes of the Amazonian tradition depicting a young pregnant woman,” and even as “an effigy of motherhood and the sacredness of life” which he relates to Francis of Assisi’s mentioning of “mother earth" in his Canticle of the Sun. Tornielli carefully avoids any reference to paganism.
But then, suddenly, he turns to the Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine (1878) where John Hendry Newman speaks – Tornielli’s words – about “the Church’s acceptance of pagan elements,”
“The use of temples, and these dedicated to particular saints, and ornamented on occasions with branches of trees; incense, lamps, and candles; votive offerings on recovery from illness; holy water; asylums; holydays and seasons, use of calendars, processions, blessings on the fields; sacerdotal vestments, the tonsure, the ring in marriage, turning to the East, images at a later date, perhaps the ecclesiastical chant, and the Kyrie Eleison, are all of pagan origin, and sanctified by their adoption into the Church.”
Luis Badilla, another spin doctor of Francis, did not like Tornielli’s explanation.
He calls his arguments on IlSismografo.Blogspot.com (October 22) “misleading and insidious,” insisting that in the case of the statues “there is no ‘adoption by the Church of pagan elements.’"
Badilla insists that “nobody!!”, including Francis, the Synod or the Vatican spokesman, ever said that Pachamama was “a pagan element to be adopted by the Church.” He calls it “an object like so many others” brought to the Synod as a gift.
But then, unfortunately, Badilla throws himself under the bus by saying, “In this case there has never been any adoption of pagan elements in the liturgy of the Church.”
Pardon me! Did he so quickly forget the Pachamama adoration in the Vatican Gardens at which Francis so eagerly participated?
