Mama Mary or pachimama? Who really rules?

When I visited rural Colombia with my Colombian born sons, we had to travel up the highway to catch a plane (the local airport was closed due to heavy fog). While taking a detour, I spotted a homemade shrine with flowers and candles on a hill, and asked my sons what it was (in the USA, often such monuments are at the sites of accidents, to remember their loved ones).

My son answered that a local woman had had a vision of the virgin Mary, and the locals had made a shrine there where they prayed.

Such shrines are all over the place: not just where someone saw the Virgin, (such things are rare and usually squashed by the local church officials as soon as they get wind of it) but more often locals put up shrines placed to show their love for the Virgin, to thank her (and her son) for a blessing, or as a petition to keep family members safe.

This is a world wide phenomenon.

Here in the Philippines, often middle class people have "Lourdes grottoes" in their garden. and the practice until recently was to pray the rosary after supper, something still done in our rural area.

but even in the more sophisticated USA, they even have a name: bathtub Madonnas. see Wikipedia page.

lest you think these shrines are the result of overly pious church ladies, maybe look deeper into why people put them up.

my next door neighbor in Pennsylvania, a tough retired coal miner with five sons who had worked in the mines before they shut down, had one, in thanksgiving for keeping them safe. 

And then there is the story of Our Lady of the Rockies, built by out of work miners to the annoyance of both the local bishop and the "freedom from religion" types.

how we worship does involve who we are as a person (see James' Varieties of Religious experience), but also echoes our culture.

So American individualism sees being "born again" the big thing, because the stress is our personal relationship to God. But less modern and more ethnic cultures sees God as part of the whole, or as Pinoys would say: God is Father, Jesus is Kuya (older brother) and Mama Mary is our mother in heaven.

In America, if you ask me who I am, I am a physician.

Here, if you ask me who I am, I am Dr Reyes' wife, and the aunt of Dr. Angi and the stepmother of Kuya who runs one of the local rice businesses. Oh yes: I am also a doctor (in case you want me to check your blood pressure) but I am not seen merely as an individual, but as a person who is part of a family.

The concept is deep in a person's way of thinking: we have "utang ng loob" relationships with each other, which means we are part of each other with a debt of gratitude, so entire families will collect money for a sick loved one, and why so many Filipinos become overseas workers: to support their extended family. 

So for a Filipino, God is part of this extended family, and worship is not just going to church or reading the bible, but taught in the stories of his birth and death which are celebrated in music and fiestas. Indeed, that is why the short, pithy parables of that working class carpenter make more sense to rural farmers than to sophisticated yuppies in the USA.

Weddding feast of Cana? Yup. God loves parties. Black Nazarene? Yes, he suffered and died, just like we suffer so he understands. El Nino? Yup. Children are loved here, so forget the God of wrath: Jesus was a cute kid for you to cuddle, and when you care for your kid, you are serving Jesus.

 A longer explanation of how culture and religion are connected HERE.



and a sociological explanation of how the family oriented culture affects how  Filipino Catholicism is practiced can be found here.

a similar strong family values is found in the Hispanic community, and indeed in many ethnic communities in America (see My Big Fat Greek Wedding I and especially II, which could easily be remade here, with Ruby being dropped off at her college in Minnesota by her mom and some local friends who helped them get her settled).

the problem? the modern world is breaking down the family structure, replacing it with American individualism.

In the third world, when families move from the village to the city to find work, you are left in a cultural vacuum that leaves you open to drugs and worse. 

One alternative is to replace the extended family with fellow church members, either in the local Evangelical or pentecostal church, or in the community outreaches of the local Catholic churches in the city.


But Vatican II types decided to push liberation theology  on South America, so they decided to replace the idea of God who became a man in a family,(and discouraged the rituals and fiestas that strengthen social adhesiveness, and reinforce your relationship with family, neighbors, the deity and the saints) with arid politically correct Marxist ideas (that pit one group against one another) masquerading as social action.

The problem? Coming from mostly elite families, they missed the fact that family oriented ordinary folk who weren't big on theology saw this as rejecting God. So some became Marxists but many more found their lost Jesus in pentecostal churches.

This is part of the background on the crisis of Catholicism in South America: modernism, urban migration, family breakdown, and lurking in the background, the lure of drugs and drug money.

Now, did you notice that none of this seemed to be part of the "Amazon synod"? 

Yes, from a purely secular viewpoint, the Pope and his synod seems to be clueless.

They act as if including benign cultural expressions into the explanation of God and Jesus is something new, as if they never read that idea started with St Paul. But they seems to see this as a way to control people, in it's Marxist interpretation of "caring for the poor", meaning hating the rich and middle class and having a revolution where the people i.e. the elites who self selected themselves to rule the people, rule, and hiding the idea under the guise of religion.

In contrast, the Evangelicals etc. preach hard work and honesty as the way to help your family.

And then there is the paganism. 

"baptizing" pagan symbols as Christian is not new: (Christmas tree, anyone?) but reintroducing unchanged paganism into the church as if it were co equal with God? WTF?

That, and the fact they are mixing up all sorts of "indigenous" stuff from different tribes that don't believe the same thing, (uh, they don't) and then pushing their faux "indigenous" deity as if it had nothing to do with modern day paganism which is being revived among rich yuppies, especially feminist types, including nuns in pants suits.

I mean, pushing a modern art deco  style pachimama, representing not an Amazonian Goddess but the goddess of the Andean volcanoes who was worshiped by killing kids?  link2

So why did they use an art deco interpretation? Because google the actual image, and you will see she looks angry and demonic.

 Come on now. if you want to preach Jesus to a family oriented culture, why not use one of the popular icons of South America, that explain God's love for you in story and pictures, in a way that relates to your daily life? 

The best known "indigenous" icon is Our Lady of Guadalupe, who is dressed as an Aztec princess and appeared to a local Aztec to the annoyance of the Spanish bishop back in the days of conquest. Her message: Am I not your mother? (i.e. the mother of the Indians, not just of the rich Spaniards).

But if that "indigenous" Aztec Madonna isn't South American enough, or if you are one of those modern skeptics who say it was a put up job by the wily bishop to seduce Indians to convert, there are other indigenous Madonnas that might fit the bill.

For example,why not use the Virgin of Las Lajas, a famous shrine along the Ecuadorian/Colombian border, near the home town of my adopted sons, which has been named one of the most beautiful churches in the world.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/arts-and-culture/The-worlds-most-beautiful-churches/

According to local beliefs, the Virgin Mary appeared to a woman and her deaf-mute daughter in 1754 at the same place where the Las Lajas church is now standing. The Amerindian woman, Maria Meneses de Quiñones, and her daughter a deaf-mute, Rosa, were passing the Guaitara river when they found themselves hiding from a brutal storm. The story says that while the two women were looking for shelter, they felt like a force was guiding them towards a cave, where they were able to see the image of Our Virgin Mary on one of the walls. The little girl then shouted to her mother, pointing to the image. It is believed that the apparition of the Virgin Mary cured Rosa. The news of the miracle reportedly spread across the area,

the locals built a wooden chapel there, and later a church was built, and then rebuilt.

in other words, it was not an astroturf shrine, but one spontaneously built by locals, who recognized Mary as one willing to help the poor.

fast forward to minute 9 and you can see the shrine. Yes, it's in Spanish, but it shows the beauty of the area, has a local hymn to the Virgin in Spanish as background, and it doesn't have the slimy put downs of the usual American tourist videos or the overly pious narration of official videos.

Sigh.

if you thought the Amazon meeting was about married priests, you are ill informed. It is more about the apostasy of some in the Vatican, and what annoys me most is that they are actually clueless to the culture they are trying to use to destroy the church.


hello: There is an alternative.


as Msgr Pope wrote:

Pray for an apostolic exhortation that glorifies and lifts up Jesus as the only way to salvation. An exhortation that focuses not merely on a clean environment but purified souls. An exhortation that doesn’t speak of listening to the spirits of the rainforest, but of listening to Jesus, the Eternal Word of the Father. An exhortation that summons us to prayer, to the sacraments, to the Word of God and to the ancient and perennial teachings of the Church. Pray for an exhortation that casts aside Pachamama and points to Mary, who leads us to her Son!.

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update: Bishop Gracida's blog has posted an essay by George Weigel about what is going on.

A line has been crossed.

Lord have mercy.