So what will you be doing this Holy Week especially Good Friday? If you answered doing an Earth Walk in an Oratory then you must be attending this retreat house. Yes it is just one more retreat house governed by radical feminists who practice new age garbage like reiki, walk around in labyrinths and invite Jesuit Zen Masters to preach, and have heavily syncretistic leanings. My old joke is that they are called retreat houses is because they have retreated from the faith.
What I can never understand that with all the depth and beauty of spirituality within the faith that people turn to empty spiritualities more akin to empty calories than fulfilling meals. It is like going to a Lexus or other luxury car dealership and to demand to know where the Yugo’s are. There are so many spiritual Esau’s that want their spiritual pottage not realizing that they have given up a very precious birthright. This spiritual which includes such luminaries in prayer as St. Teresa of Avila, St. John of the Cross, Thomas A Kemps, St. Alphonsus Liguori, and so many others should be the starting point. Instead they are ignored or rejected in favor of silliness like reiki. Pottage would have been a better deal.
Just another case of itching ear syndrome "For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine"
Thanks to the reader who sent my the above link.
12 comments
I suspect that some of this stems from pride in bringing “new things” to the table and also some degree of intellectual laziness. There are aspects of St. John, St Theresa etc that are intellectually quite challenging. Why bother with that when you can discuss new age psychobabble?
Some of it may also be a sort of passive-agressive undermining of the church because of church’s rule against the ordination of women. I do know that I cringe when I get mailings about these sort of retreats. It’s a classic case of giving away one’s inheritance for a mess of pottage.
While I join wholeheartedly in your disdain of reiki and Jesuit Zen, I do understand the use of labyrinths, properly understood.
Labyrinths were around in the Middle Ages as a means of “going on pilgrimage” for poor people. That’s why there’s one in the cathedral at Chartres, to name one. If you didn’t have means to go to Jerusalem or fight on a Crusade, you took the winding pilgrimage of the labyrinth, sometimes on your knees, while meditating about the life of Christ, or His Passion, or a journey to the Holy Land. Understood in this context, it was another method of popularizing the piety of the nobility and monasteries, just as the Rosary originated as a substitute for memorizing and praying the 150 Psalms.
Now, the retreat house’s description of labyrinths as “a metaphor for a journey to the center of one�s deepest self and back…[to] provide both opportunity and inspiration for quiet meditation, reflection, prayer, and self-awareness” is very New Age-y, and I know exactly what they mean to be doing, but there is indeed a Christian context in which to understand the labyrinth.
I don’t remember where it is in the Catechism, but could somebody please remind me of where to find the following in the Catholic faith:
(from the “Spirituality & Labyrinths” page)
Eastside Sangha
Sitting and walking mindfulness meditations followed by tea and dharma discussion. Weekly. Tuesday evening.
About 6 years ago when i made my way back to my faith, I went on a retreat at a retreat house run by the Christian Brothers. During the first day I was inundated with the enneagram, centering prayer, and transcedental meditation. I quickly changed my package from “guided retreat” to “here’s my check, leave me alone, I’ll be out of here on Monday.”
Why the need for mantra and trancendental meditation, when the Rosary and Gregorian chant do not require a (catholic)christian to abandon the Faith as buddhism and hinduism and taoism certainly do.
But then again why the need for analysis all those years, even more modern psychotherap(ies), when Confession does so much better as one on one and has the attached grace to boot.
Funny thing about Grailville. I went there once to celebrate Easter with a friend who was working for the retreat center. It is surrounded by a really vibrant, traditional (in every good sense) community of Catholics in Loveland, OH. The actual grounds of Grailville are beautiful in the springtime. A truly accomplished Catholic artist, William Schickel, lives just up the road from there. So much more good could come out of that place if only Catholic women faithful to the Church and willing to work the earth could find a way to gently assume leadership of Grailville…
Until they do, it will, sadly, be a place where great natural beauty is used to subtly undermine Catholic orthodoxy.
peace
dannyboy
i really wish they’d look first at the wealth of spiritual tools we’ve managed to develop and collect and aquire over 2000 years, instead of deciding it’s all rubbish and going for the first flashy/cool thing to come trundling down the pike. It’s not like they exhausted everything the church has in her arsenal before turning to other faiths. They’re just lazy and looking for something that feels good and is easy to understand (or fake an understanding of). It’s intellectually dishonest.
I was gonna try to keep my posts positive this week. But since the Gospel in the Byzantine Rite today is Jesus laying it on heavy to the Pharisees etc. (white washed tombs and all that…)
It’s gotten to the point where I can hardly read a Latin Rite diocesan newspaper without going into a rage. Just about every diocese has a bunch of new-age nuns running retreats on nonsense.
I can’t understand why, since like you say, there is such a treasure in the heritage of East and West. You want a mantra? Try this: Lord Jesus Christ, Have Mercy On Me.
What’s really sad is that Grailville was founded by faithful, orthodox Catholic women- and deteriorated.
Well, this place will go the route of most of the dissenting and new-agey sisters, that is, their spiritual sterility will ensure they die out, the property will be sold and turned into a brewery or townhouses, and the Holy Spirit will grace a new order of sisters wearing traditional habits, veils and living traditional community life, and it will begin again. They will grow, in fruitfulness and zeal until they can buy a property much like this one, and they will have traditional retreats.
And the Spiritual life continues.
Pray Fast and Do Penance.
So can anyone recommend a good, holy, orthodox retreat center?
It was asked why the leaders of so-called Catholic retreat houses can’t go with St. John of the Cross, St. Theresa of Avila, etc.
In the case of holy people who do this stuff, it’s usually just really poor formation in the faith.
However, it should be noted that authentic Carmelite, Franciscan, Domnican, Jesuit, etc. spirituality requires two things: conviction about essential Christian doctrines such as the Incarnation, the Trinity, the nature of the Sacraments, etc., and a willingess to subject one’s own ego to the discipline of our Lord and his representatives on earth. Many so-called Catholics choose Eastern paths because they are too lazy, selfish, and proud for the latter.
Paul predicted this time when he said that many would pile up for themselves teachers who would tell them what their itching ears wanted to hear.
This is not to condemn dabbling in Eastern stuff per se, as I think much can be gained by learning about it while maintaining a grasp on the essentials of the Catholic faith. Alas, that grasp is lacking all too often.