I understand your concern here because the optics of the incident, the way they were portrayed, especially in certain parts of Catholic media, including by various internet Catholics who ought to know better, but have some hostility towards the current pontificate and who are not following the catechisms and frankly the moral law as a requirement to give things a favorable interpretation and seeking to understand them from the perspective of the people who are involved in an action, and what they were doing and trying to do and what they were not trying to do. They just hauled off and said, “This is an idol and these people are worshiping it’ and they misled a bunch of people into thinking that was the case. But that was not the case.
The statue, because that was what it was because it was not an idol, even though you can hear people say it was although that really was not well-grounded. People, what it was was a symbol of Mother Earth. In the local languages down there, Pachamama means Mother Earth, and Mother Earth is a personification of the planet we live on. We use Mother Earth even in English, um. If you watch Charlotte’s Web, they even have a song in there about Mother Earth and Father Time. And so Mother Earth is a common way of personifying the world we live in. And there’s nothing wrong with personifying the earth. In fact, um…
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