Ripping the Church's Fabric

Mgr. Bux is not some wackdoodle standing on the corner screeching that "the end is near."  He's a heavyweight theologian with CDF experience.

So when he talks, listen.

...“Jesus Christ came to bring God to earth, so that man might find the way to heaven: that is why he founded the Church,” the Italian Monsignor said. “Instead, today’s clerics take care of the earth as if it were man’s permanent and lasting home. What is the symptom? They do not speak of the soul and therefore of its salvation.”

Msgr. Bux further noted that ideas once “denounced” by Joseph Ratzinger (as prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith) are now “coming to maturity” with the Amazon Synod.

“The Church is no longer considered the Mystical Body of Christ and the People of God oriented toward salvation, but a sociological phenomenon; thus it must deal with economics, ecology and politics, where at most it could intervene only for a moral judgment,” Msgr. Bux said.

He added that, under the influence of modernism, proponents of these ideas claim that “times have changed” and with them, “a new dogma” is needed. Yet he pointed out “this doesn’t answer the questions: who decided that times have changed? And is change always good?”...

That was the general case.  More specifically, it's the Jungle Synod...

....Speaking to the working document’s use of “inculturation,” Msgr. Bux said “it is presented in an inverted way: the intention is to return the Church in the Amazon to animism and spiritualism, making it withdraw from the Word that was announced to it through evangelization. ‘A natural religion with a Christian mask,’ as Cardinal Brandmüller said in his recent statement.”

Asked about the working document’s praise for the “cosmovision” of indigenous peoples, Msgr. Bux said it represents a “blurring of reason” and a return to “natural religion” and “spiritualism.”...

What we are seeing, before our very eyes, is the creation of a schism, largely engineered by the Rhine, with the opening salvo fired at the Second Vatican Council.  The Tiber has now become polluted with that flow.

The Church will survive, of course, but Ratzinger's "smaller, purer" may be the description that applies.