Apostolic Exhortation “Querida Amazonia” — full text Full Text of the papal document following the Amazon Synod

Notes: Regarding the priesthood and the Eucharist, we call your attention in particular to Paragraphs 82-98.

No opening whatsoever was made for the ordination of married men/viri probati to the Priesthood. On the contrary, in the spirit of making clear clericalism is not central, there is an emphasis on the lay ministry as "distinctively lay" (cf. paragraph 94).

The paragraphs on women (99-103) also do not have any revolutionary content.

Paragraphs 104-105 make clear that the path forward should not be an either/or, but solutions beyond conflicts of the past.

One particular good point is the one of Paragraph 18, with extensive historical references in footnote 17,  making clear the permanent solicitude of the Church, through various pontificates, and since the earliest days of Christian presence in the New World, for the welfare of the indigenous peoples. Specific reference is made even to the Laws of the Indies (Leyes de las Indias), promulgated by the Spanish Crown with specific protections for the indigenous populations. The 1909 text of one of the first bishops of Amazonas (Manaus), Brazil, Frederico Benicio, named by Saint Pius X to that extensive territory, is expressly quoted.

Despite all problems (the downsides are numerous), we can rightly say that this is the best possible document we could have hoped for in the current pontificate and in the current age. It is not the best document (that would be impossible in the current moment in time), but it is, in a Leibnizian way, the best possible text...

Full text below:

Coincidence or the real Francis effect? The collapse of vocations in Buenos Aires and all Argentina from the 1990's to the present.

A scene from the annual "Mass for Education" celebrated by then-Cardinal Bergoglio in his cathedral in 2010. (Source)

Update: The website of the Organizacion de los Seminarios de la Argentina has comprehensive statistics for major and minor seminarians in the country from 1997 to the present (ESTADÍSTICAS COMPARADAS). The rapid and unrelenting collapse of vocations is unmistakable: from 1,501 major seminarians in 1999 to 916 in 2012, 875 in 2013 and 827 in 2014; and from 624 minor seminarians in 1997 to only 59 in 2012 (the last year for which there are statistics for minor seminarians).

*

The following statistics come from the article SACERDOCIO: LA CRISIS DE VOCACIONES IMPACTA EN LA IGLESIA published by the Argentinian news website Tres Lineas on Sunday:

Seminarians studying in Argentina:

1999: 1,501

2014: 827

Seminarians in the Metropolitan Seminary of the Archdiocese of Buenos Aires:

1980's (no precise year given): 200

2016: 80

The seminary received 15 new entrants this year. 

In 2016, Buenos Aires -- which has more than 3 million inhabitants -- will see only three of its seminarians ordained to the priesthood. 

The article reports that in Greater Buenos Aires. many parishes now either have no resident priest, or are served by priests from countries such as Poland and South Korea. The religious congregations are faring no better. 

**

Argentina's population stood at 43.1 million in 2015; the Pew Research Center reported in 2014 that 71% of Argentinians identify as Catholics. In short there were only 827 major seminarians for around 30 million Argentinian Catholics in 2014.

***

Before his ascension to the papacy as Pope Francis, Jorge Mario Bergoglio, S.J. was Auxiliary Bishop of Buenos Aires from 1992 until 1997, when he became Coadjutor Archbishop of the same Archdiocese. He became the Archbishop of Buenos Aires and Primate of Argentina in February 1998 and remained in that post until his election. As his successor he picked one of his former Auxiliary Bishops, Mario Aurelio Poli. 

Saint Francis Xavier Mission Trips 2016

For the last few years we've helped promote the Priestly Fraternity of St. Peter's (FSSP) mission trips. Please see below for next year's schedule.

Help this Traditional Catholic Book Scanning Campaign

An appeal from Rorate reader Mr. Paulo Frade:

Dear Rorate Friends,

I'm the webmaster of http://www.obrascatolicas.com. The objective of our initiative is to scan and make available rare Catholic books that are no longer being published or are hard to find either in Brazil or abroad.

The 100% free of cost e-books that we make available on our website, deal with various topics related to philosophy, theology, apologetics, cathechesis as well as Church history. The books are mostly in Portuguese, English, French, Spanish, and Latin. We are very careful in making sure that the books being scanned are not contrary to the Sacred Magisterium of the Catholic Church. After scanning almost 1000 books since 2009, we're now into our 4th campaign where we plan to scan another 150 books. We would really appreciate if Rorate could help us get the word out about our site.

Here is the direct link to our PayPal donate now page.

Thank you for your help! God bless you!

Cardinal Takes Part in Pagan Worship in Argentina

"Pachamama" is the animist/pagan "goddess" of the earth for a number of Andean tribes. It remained mostly dormant or mythical for centuries with the successful evangelization of the Altiplano and the Andes by Spanish and native missionaries, but the efforts of different groups in the past few decades (including radical liberal "Catholic" religious) have strongly revived this pagan worship.

In a trip to the pope's native land of Argentina for the "Ecumenical Social Forum" in November 2014, (in San Marcos Sierras, Province of Córdoba, western Argentina), Cardinal Gianfranco Ravasi, President of the Pontifical Council for Culture and who was created a cardinal by Benedict XVI, spent a few minutes worshiping and presenting his homage to the goddess Pachamama, as the video below recorded. The video was released only very recently:

Socci: COCA AND “HAMMER AND SICKLE”: FRANCIS' TRIP

COCA, “HAMMER AND SICKLE”: BERGOGLIO’S TRIP

Antonio Socci

Libero Quotidiano

July 10, 2015

Pope Bergoglio seems to be quite at his ease immersed in the carnival babel of the plazas and regimes of South America. His character is more understandable in that atmosphere.

There are those who sustain that Morales was out of place and placed the Pope in difficulty, but it seems actually, that this is not how things were at all. In the first place, it seems obvious to suppose that the ceremonies were arranged beforehand, so I doubt that that “gift” took the Vatican by surprise (and if there hadn’t been the precautionary agreement, there would be something more to worry about as it would mean that the Pope is exposed to the affront of any demagogue at hand).

In the second place, it is significant that a Head of State, even of surreal socialism, like Morales, considered giving such a horror to Pope Bergoglio and nobody, on the other hand, ever thought of giving it to John Paul II or Benedict XVI (for example during the trips to Cuba). Evidently, they must have thought that the object – (which might perfectly well symbolize Liberation Theology and every latitude of “Catholic-communism” with Christ crucified as “a metaphor” for the poor”) – would have been welcomed and appreciated by the Argentinian Pope.

SHAME

Morales, in fact, didn’t have the attitude of a “provoker”, but as an admirer of Bergoglio, whom he praised continuously as the “Pope of the poor”.

Helder Câmara: a lifetime of working against the Church from the inside. - And they want to beatify him?...

Who was Dom Helder Câmara?

Corrispondenza Romana

April 7, 2015

There has been a lot of talk recently about Dom Helder Camara, whose process for beatification has been recently approved by the Vatican.  For the average Italian, the figure of Monsignor Helder Pessoa Camara (1909 – 1999) , auxiliary Bishop of Rio de Janiero and subsequently Metropolitan Archbishop of Olinda and Recife is practically unknown.

Who was Dom Helder?

Propaganda bordering on the  ridiculous

The "punishment" of Fr. Costadoat: a slap on the wrist?An important clarification from Chile

At the beginning of Holy Week, Rorate posted about the action of Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati SDB in refusing to renew the mandatum of the liberal Jesuit theologian Jorge Costadoat SJ: For the record: Cardinal Ezzati's letter announcing the removal of a dissident Jesuit theologian from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.

Shortly afterwards, Rorate received the following clarification from an academic in the Pontifical University of Chile. For prudential reasons we can neither reveal his name nor his teaching position in the University. The clarification has also been slightly edited for this posting.

The situation regarding Jorge Costadoat is far more complicated than it appears. The academic authorities have declared that Costadoat is and will continue to be a member of the PUC of Chile, as researcher and in other academic capacities (including the so-called "extension", which are the activities in which we give lectures, seminars, etc., to the general public), but simply will not teach theology; and that his name can be proposed for the mandatum "in the future" (according to the Dean of Theology) or "within a year" (according to the Rector). So he has not been removed or dismissed. And this has been confirmed by the Cardinal.

For the record: Cardinal Ezzati's letter announcing the removal of a dissident Jesuit theologian from the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

{UPDATE 04/11/15: The "punishment" of Fr. Costadoat: a slap on the wrist? An important clarification from Chile}


The Salesian Archbishop of Santiago de Chile, Cardinal Ricardo Ezzati, made waves last week in the Hispanic Catholic world when he refused to renew the mandatum of one of South America's most high-profile and liberal theological dissidents, Fr. Jorge Costadoat SJ - yes, a Jesuit, like the Pope. The decision effectively bars the Jesuit from continuing to teach theology in the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, of which Cardinal Ezzati is also the Grand Chancellor. The Cardinal communicated his reasons for taking action against Costodoat in a letter to the University's Superior Council:

Pontifical Catholic University of Chile

Office of the Grand Chancellor

Santiago, March 24, 2015

VGC-61-2015

Esteemed members of the Honorable Superior Council,

The Faculty of Theology has a central role within the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile (cf. ECE [Statutes] 19), placed under the foremost and direct guardianship of the Grand Chancellor -- as is the case in the other schools of Catholic theology in the world --, among other reasons because the future consecrated persons are formed in it and because it carries out a fundamental task at the service of the entire academic community. The right to confer the canonical mandatum belongs exclusively to the Grand Chancellor and is an indispensable requirement for the teaching of theology in our Faculty.

"I must confess I was wrong about Pope Francis"

Alfredo Rostgaard
Christ guerrilla
1969

I confess my mistakes about Pope Francis

Breno Altman
Opera Mundi /Carta Maior [Brazil]

Dec. 24, 2014

I come from a Jewish family hardwired to Socialist ideas and to atheism for four generations.

The last one in my lineage to believe in God must have died in the beginning of the last century.

Christmas is to me a date with no special significance, even though I have learned to respect those who celebrate the birth of Jesus.

But I wish to take the opportunity of this Christmas Eve to make a confession.

A year and a half ago, I wrote for Opera Mundi one of the most flawed articles of my journalistic career. The title says it all ... : "Pope Francis is the modern counter-revolution."

The Ecclesial Age of False Dichotomies - Point and Counterpoint: Jesus Christ and Cardinal Maradiaga

The Great Division - Polish Bishops' Conference President: communion for "remarried" divorcees attacks indissolubility of marriage.

Curiously enough, Archbishop Stanisław Gądecki , of Poznań, President of the Polish Episcopal Conference, whose presence and firmness were so important in the October Synod, repeats the same line mentioned by Cardinal George in his interview to John Allen: the differences are becoming so wide within the Church, the division so stark, we are not talking anymore about "liberals" and "conservatives", or left and right, but about what is true and what is false, about those who are faithful or unfaithful to the Magisterium.

In the Church, this is the line being drawn: the Great Division is one between Fidelity to Our Lord Jesus Christ and His unchangeable doctrine; or Unfaithfulness to Christ, that is, adulteration of the Faith. 

The Archbishop (himself considered a "liberal" until not long ago), speaking to journalists, also explained how the Holy See Press Office tried to manipulate the press conferences during the Synod.

Abp. Gądecki: Episcopate will take a number of initiatives in the spirit of the Synod on the Family

November 14, 2014

The issue of giving Holy Communion to people who are divorced and living in new relationships cannot be resolved on theological grounds – explained Abp. Stanisław Gądecki during today's meeting with journalists at the secretariat of the [Polish] Episcopate. The president of the Polish Episcopal Conference (PEC) informed journalists that Polish bishops, who will gather for a reateat at Jasna Góra at the end of November, will take a number of initiatives following the message of the III Extraordinary Assembly of the Synod of Bishops devoted to the family, which took place in Rome in October.

The Latin American Exodus: Catholics become Protestants in Droves

- It's a Trifecta: The Fraternity of Saint Peter arrives in Mexico City- Fraternidad Sacerdotal San Pedro en México, D.F.

Ciudad del Este Opus Dei Bishop dismissed

Cardinal Santos Abril y Castelló, Apostolic Visitator, and Bp. Livieres Plano

Socci - "DARKNESS IN ROME: Liberation Theology Triumphant as Work of John Paul II & Benedict XVI is Completely Wiped Out."

The Last Supper, with Marx, Lenin, Mao, Castro, and others outside a Caracas school (2007)

THE “D’ESCOTO CASE” AND THOSE WHO WANT TO WIPE OUT THE WORK DONE BY JOHN PAUL II AND BENEDICT XVI

Antonio Socci

Libero

 September 7, 2014

In the era of Bergoglio, the Vatican has practically rehabilitated Liberation Theology, which came into existence in the 1960s and has caused untold disasters, mainly in Latin America, by fostering the Church’s subordination to Marxist thought.

In New Declarations, Priest Pardoned by Pope Francis Says, "The Holy Spirit Sends Us Jesus' Message through Fidel Castro."

The Light-Bearing Star !

No, the Maryknoll Sandinista priest Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, 81, who had his suspension a divinis -- first decreed by Pope John Paul II -- removed by Pope Francis in the past few weeks did not leave his absurd statements and government positions behind, as one might gather from various news reports of the past couple of days that repeated his statements from many years ago. 

He repeated such statements yesterday on Nicaraguan television, and now on a whole new unheard-of level.

For those who are unaware of its real meaning in practice and behind the theological fog, this is Liberation Theology. This is it:

MANAGUA - EFE - The priest and former Nicaraguan foreign secretary Miguel d´Escoto Brockmann said today [Tuesday] that Cuban leader Fidel Castro is a chosen man of God to convey the message of the Holy Spirit in Latin America.

"The Vatican may silence everyone, then God will make the stones speak, and may the stones spread his message, but He didn't do this, He chose the greatest Latin-American of all time: Fidel Castro," the religious, 81 years old, declared today to Channel 4 in the local [Nicaraguan] television.

Pope Apologizes for "Catholics who Obstructed Pentecostal Growth": - A Single Image Reveals Grave Mistake in Apology

Sandro Magister reports ("The Strange Silences of a Very Talkative Pope"):

ROME, August 1, 2014 – On the feast of Saint Anne, patron of Caserta, Pope Francis made a visit to this city. Everything normal? No. Because just two days later Jorge Mario Bergoglio returned to Caserta on a private visit, to meet with an Italian friend he got to know in Buenos Aires, Giovanni Traettino, pastor of a local Evangelical church.

Initially Francis's intention was to go only to visit his friend, with the bishop of Caserta left completely in the dark, and it took some doing to convince the pope to expand his schedule in order not to overlook the sheep of his fold.

In Francis the collegiality of governance is more evoked than practiced. The style is that of a superior general of the Jesuits who in the end decides everything on his own. This can be grasped from his actions, his words, his silences.

For example, Bergoglio has spent weeks behind the scenes cultivating relationships with the heads of the powerful “Evangelical” communities of the United States. He has spent hour after hour in their company at his residence in Santa Marta. He has invited them for lunch. He immortalized one of these convivial moments by giving a high five, amid raucous laughter, to Pastor James Robinson, one of the most successful American televangelists.

When no one knew anything about it yet, it was Francis who alerted them about his intention to go visit their Italian colleague in Caserta, and explained the reason: "To extend the apologies of the Catholic Church for the damage that has been done to them by obstructing the growth of their communities.”

As the Argentine he is, Bergoglio has experienced first-hand the overwhelming expansion of the Evangelical and Pentecostal communities in Latin America, which continue to take enormous masses of faithful away from the Catholic Church. And yet he has made this decision: not to fight their leaders, but to make them his friends. ...

We interrupt this Sandro Magister column for an important announcement: "The Temple of Solomon has reopened!"

The Ethnographer-Theologian visits a Mysterious and Exotic Continent: - Tradition is the name of the true Catholic "mindset" -

"I've visited Peru. Now I understand the pope!"

"The main aim of Pope Francis's pontificate is to help lead the greatest possible number of souls to eternal life with Christ." No, no, that is not what was said. No, here it is:

The main aim of Pope Francis’s pontificate is to draw the world’s attention to the poor and to change the global structures that lead to poverty,// the Prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said in a long interview last week. Speaking to the Austrian Pontifical Missions magazine Alle Welt, Cardinal Gerhard Müller insisted that it was not possible to truly understand Pope Francis unless one could understand the Latin American “mindset”. Cardinal Muller has long experience of Peru over several decades and is a close friend of the Peruvian liberation theologian, Gustavo Gutierrez.

The Western world would have to learn to see problems from the Pope’s point of view, which was very different from the European one, Cardinal Müller said. On account of his many visits to Latin America, he was very familiar with the way Pope Francis thought. It was very good for the world Church not always to see things through European eyes, the cardinal said, and to discover how other people saw Europe. [The Tablet]

When Catholicism worked and prospered in Latin America, it did not have a specific, particular, regional "mindset" that was any different from the "mind" of the Catholic Church. It was the same Christ-like mindset of all her great saints, men and women who, born there or coming from elsewhere in the Catholic world, gave all their blood for the work of Christ in those lands: Saint Rose of Lima and her sacrificial love for the Church, Saints Martin de Porres and Peter Claver and their true concern for the poor (that is, for the souls of the poor above all), Saint Philip of Jesus and his testimony for Christ unto crucifixion itself, Saint Toribio Romo and his renunciation of all earthly comforts for the most destitute while proclaiming loud and clear the exclusive Kingship of Our Lord Jesus Christ -- and of some of the holiest bishops ever to have lived on this earth, such as Saint Toribio Alfonso de Mogrovejo and Saint Ezequiel Moreno, who never wavered one second from the strictest doctrine of the Church, applied widely to all aspects of social life. In sum, if there was once a "Latin American mindset," it was the Catholic mindset, molded by Tradition.

It was for his universal, traditional, Catholic "mindset" that Father Toribio Romo was martyred, not for a "Latin American mindset."

It was easy to 'understand' Saint Toribio Romo's 'mindset':
he was simply a Priest

THE COLLAPSE OF CATHOLICISM IN LATIN AMERICA: New Poll, Statistics, Tables and Graphs - Extensive Analysis

When confronted with the undeniable evidence of the decline of Catholicism on so many levels, especially in Europe and North America, one favorite tactic of many "conservatives" and some "liberals" is to point to the state of Catholicism in Latin America, Africa and Asia, where the faith is assumed to be vibrant, unaffected by secularism and modernist compromises, and increasing in followers by leaps and bounds. 

If one counts the number of those baptized in the Catholic faith, then undoubtedly the numbers continue to be excellent; never before have there been so many baptized Catholics including in North America and Europe. The problem is that the number of baptized Catholics has little relation to the actual state of Catholicism anywhere: otherwise secularism would be an unknown phenomenon in countries where most citizens have been, at one point in their life (usually at infancy) baptized in the Catholic Church. The question of how many of those who have been baptized in the Church retain their self-identification as "Catholics" is a more important indicator when measuring the true vigor of the Church in any given country. 

It is the ultimate hypocrisy to lament and criticize, as do so many Catholic pundits and "apologists", the lack of catechesis and poor formation of the vast majority of nominal Catholics, and then turn around and point to the sheer numbers of the same nominal Catholics as proof that all is well and the Church remains in excellent shape. 

When it comes to Latin America, Catholicism has been under serious and sustained siege from Evangelical Protestantism and the secular unbelief since the 1980s. Just how serious the losses have become are revealed in Corporación Latinobarómetro's latest survey of religion in Latin America, released on April 16, 2014: "Las religiones en tiempos del Papa Francisco". Understandably for a document released to honor the first year of the pontificate of the first Latin American pope, the study has an upbeat tone in the introductory remarks about the strength of religion and of Catholicism in Latin America. Nevertheless the graphs and statistics present a wholly different story, at least as far as Catholicism is concerned. 

(Note: Latinobarómetro is a non-profit corporation which is the Latin-American version of the well-established Eurobarometer -- it is the only full regional database of opinion surveys, providing accurate information on the attitudes of Latin-Americans for several different international organizations, including the United Nations and the Inter-American Development Bank. Its surveys are highly regarded for their accuracy and transparency, and the database provides a look at the historical evolution of national opinions regarding all kinds of different issues.)

***

The first chart (from p. 5 in the study) shows the change in the percentage of Catholics in 18 Latin American countries between 1995 and 2013. (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Haiti are not included in this study, while the countries in the same geographical space that do not have a Romance language as their main language are generally not considered as part of "Latin America" for statistical purposes.)

The percentage of self-identified Catholics slightly increased in Mexico (the notable exception) and the Dominican Republic but dropped everywhere else, with the most precipitous declines recorded in Nicaragua (a drop from 77 to 47%) and Honduras (from 76% to 47%). These countries went from being overwhelmingly Catholic to being majority non-Catholic in less than a single generation, along with countries such as Guatemala (which saw a drop from 54% to 47%) and Uruguay (from 60% to 41%) where the hold of the Catholic faith was already in peril as of 1995.

As noted at the bottom of this table, South America and Mexico went from 82% Catholic to 72% Catholic in 18 years, while Central America (Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, Panama and, for the purposes of this study, the Dominican Republic) fell from 73% Catholic to 56% Catholic in the same time frame.

The following chart (from p. 7) arranges the countries of Latin America in terms of the percentage of Catholics, from the largest to smallest. As seen from the first chart, all of these countries had been majority Catholic in 1995. Today, four are majority non-Catholic while another two (Chile and El Salvador) are on the edge.

It is telling that Honduras, Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala are the countries where Liberation Theology and the alliance of Catholic religious and clerics with the Far Left were most pronounced in the 1980's and 1990's. The collapse of Catholicism in Honduras also occurred entirely during the tenure as Archbishop of Tegucigalpa (1993 to the present), of its leading prelate: Óscar Andrés Cardinal Rodríguez Maradiaga SDB, currently the coordinator of the "Council of Cardinals" and one of the most influential architects of the current Pontificate's policies.

The situation of Uruguay is of special interest in that it has always been at the vanguard of "social progress" and secularization in Latin America, and doubtless gives us a glimpse of what the future will be like for Latin America if the process of secularization is not stopped. Uruguay is also culturally very similar to Buenos Aires, with which it shares the same different Spanish accent and the same secularized society.

Taken together, according to another table in the same study (p. 4) the percentage of Catholics in the Latin American countries covered in this study fell from 80% in 1995 to 67% in 2013. The decline was steady except for a short lull from 2005 to 2009 and again from 2011 to 2013.  

While Catholicism has declined in most Latin American countries, Evangelicalism has grown by leaps and bounds (see the next graph, located in p. 6 of the study). The study claims that as of 2013 Evangelicals accounted for 40% of Guatemalans (as opposed to 47% Catholics), 41% of Hondurans (47% Catholic), 37% of Nicaraguans (47% Catholic), 31% of El Salvadorians (54% Catholic), 21% of Brazilians (63% Catholic) and 21% of Costa Ricans (62% Catholic). 

In contrast, in 1996, Evangelicals comprised only 25% of Guatemalans (54% Catholic), 12% of Hondurans (76% Catholic), 11% of Nicaraguans (77% Catholic), 5% of El Salvadorians (67% Catholic), 18% of Brazilians (78% Catholic) and 9% of Costa Ricans (81% Catholic).

The survey unfortunately bears out what many Evangelicals from North and South America have been boasting about since the 1990's: the mass conversion of tens of millions of Catholics in Latin America to Evangelicalism. This is mirrored in the United States where Hispanics are also defecting in considerable numbers to Protestantism. This is a reality that could no longer be ignored for the sake of presenting Catholicism as the victor in the "numbers game" of conversions to or from Protestantism.