The Amazon Synod is a Sign of the Times, by Douglas Farrow

By Douglas Farrow, First Things, Oct. 17, 2019

The Synod of the Amazon is a sign of the times. So its Instrumentum laboris says. Who could disagree? And what times these are! Some are saying hopefully that the Synod of the Amazon will change the Church forever, that the Church will never be the same again. Others are saying that the Synod is an instrument of apostasy. In the grim humor of Dom Giulio Meiattini, “if there is still something Christian in this Instrumentum laboris, that is, a few words and expressions here and there, there is no need to worry: it is undoubtedly biodegradable!”

Biodegradable Christianity—now there is a sign of the times, a sign of our times. For our times are times in which even the faith of the Catholic Church threatens to disappear into the wetlands of our own confused and decaying cultures. Our times are times when eco-theology in the Amazon basin and sexual theologies in the bowels of Europe can, with a “liberationist” flourish, flush the gospel of Jesus Christ down Leonardo Boff’s drain.

The real problem here is not, as some suggest, the expensive German plumbers who, after all, are doing the flushing for free. The real problem is the Great Apostasy, now several centuries in the making, which has at last produced a global union of such plumbers—a union now so powerful that it can elect popes and conduct its dirty business in the name of the Church itself. ….

Read more here:  https://www.firstthings.com/web-exclusives/2019/10/the-amazon-synod-is-a-sign-of-the-times