The #AmazonSynod and What Happened After the Golden Calf Incident

Father Zed reflects on what happened after another famous incident of paganism amongst the People of God.

From Fr Z's Blog

Bp Athanasius Schneider recently penned a piece which likened the introduction and honoring of the demonic wooden idols, the amazonian Pachamama figures – whether they are part of a cobbled-up fake cult like Wicca or not is irrelevant – as being like the Golden Calf episode of Exodus 32.

You have to ask hard questions about this Pachamama thing.  People get that this is a turning point of some kind, just as are the proposals that came – ostensibly from the Synod (“walking together”) – in the Relatio Finalis to Francis.  I don’t think many people doubt that the document was written some time ago, so these were the desired objectives all along.   A combination of German money and influence with thoroughly unprepared South American input, as well as a glaringly weak slate of participants at the “walking together” guaranteed their predetermined outcome.

What was truly weird was this Pachamama phenomenon.   No one ever gave an adequate explanation of what it is or why it received so much attention.    So we ask the questions.   Were these figurines really important?   They got a lot of attention and insiders ran around with their hair ablaze after they were boosted from the church.   They bowed down to them in the gardens and lugged them around in processions.   If they are important what the heck are they?   And, if they are really not all that important (read: No, they are not demonic idols of a false religion.), then effectively they are grown ups playing with dolls on the edge of a Synod of Bishops.  Weird, doesn’t cover this.

The Golden Calf image has come to a lot of people’s minds lately, and rightly so.  Bp. Schneider isn’t the only one to make the connection.

What I’ve been thinking about is the aftermath of the Golden Calf Incident.

First, when Moses came down the mountain, straight from God’s expressions of wrath, he heard a “noise of war” which was the revelry of the people.   There are indications in the texts, euphemisms.  There was a wild orgy going on.

Moses destroyed the idol, ground it and made the people drink the water.

The Aaron gave the lamest excuse ever given in Scripture: “Hey, they gave me gold and I put it in the fire and, well, this calf came out!”

Moses saw that the people had “broken loose”.

Remember that, before, they had come to the mountain to form a covenant with God and all the men still exercised the Adamic priesthood.   Not any more.  This is when the priesthood was stripped by God from all men and settled on the Levites, descendants of Levi.

The first thing the new priests did was to take swords and go through the camp and slay those who had “broken loose”, who fell into idolatry.   The ordination of the Levitical priesthood was a baptism in blood of idolaters.

And then God sent a plague.

The point: Glorious and horrible things result from idol worship and the overthrowing of false religion.

I will repeat what I have written before.

God chose us from before the creation of the cosmos to live in THESE days.   It is an honor to be witnessing the crazy stuff going on.  But it is incumbent on all of us now to buckle on the spiritual armor God offers and take places in the lines of the Militant Church of which we are members.

Review your state in life.  Make corrections if you have to.

Use the sacraments well.

Increase your mortifications and acts of reparation.

Review your Faith and be ready to explain what you believe.

Be inviting and be joyful and be confident.

If something truly dreadful results in the Church from what we are seeing, know that Christ the King and Mary, Queen of Heaven, will triumph.  Be on the winning side of that, even though it costs dearly.

Let us close our ranks as never before in the face of the internal and external challenges to come.

Viva Cristo Rey!