Punditry

I was listening to Catholic Answers with guest Sharon Lee Giganti and her monthly slot for discussing the New Age. She was an actress with an active professional career who got involved in the New Age and left acting to promote the New Age.

In this episode she was discussing the group “Contemplative Outreach” which is the main organization promoting centering prayer and the works of Fr. Thomas Keating and others. Fr. Keating was the first president of Contemplative Outreach.

One of the book they recommend throughout the site is “Psalms for Praying: An Invitation for Wholeness” by Nan C. Merrill who died last year. This book is a translation of the Psalms meant to be less Patriarchal (authors statement) that flattens them and removes references to sin, judgment, laws, precepts, commandments, etc. As a result the translated Psalms read like more like a reference to an inner-light than they do of any Christian understanding of God. Half of the profits for the book go to her site “Friends of Silence” a website that publishes a New Age Newsletter full or references to the Divine Light within filled with quotes referencing this “light” which falls into line with the pantheism of New Agers.

The author was involved with the infamous “A Course in Miracles” by Helen Schucman that denies suffering and quotes from a channeled spirit. Fr. Benedict Groeshel who went to school with Helen Schucman and gave her eulogy had said that this channeled spirit was possibly a true diabolic manifestation. Nan C. Merrill also had Luciferian views. This group venerates an unfallen Lucifer as a light bringer. She also quotes other Luciferians and Theosophists on this site.

The passages of the book Sharon Lee Giganti read from show a translation of the Psalms that anybody with a working BS detector informed by the faith would cause to sound alarm bells. Often when you bring up the topic of Centering Prayer you set off a tempest from people who support it and considering how prevalent this is in retreat centers that is no surprise. A lot of good people certainly want to get closer to God and so are attracted to this form of prayer which promises to help them achieve that. Yet when you read what the leaders of this movement teach and the fact that they recommend a book dripping with New Age tendencies, you get an idea how close Centering Prayer is bringing them to God.

When you read some of the quotes of Fr. Keating you find something beyond Theosis or Deification such as St. Athanasius’ statement “The Son of God became man, that we might become god” into something more pantheistic where union with God means that we are God and there is no separation between us and God. Becoming “partakers of God’s nature” as St. Peter wrote is not the same as being part of God’s nature. Sharon provides references to many of Fr. Keating’s quotes that are hard to square with orthodox teaching. Add to that he is involved with an institute that promotes religious plurality and syncretism.

It rather sad how infected so many parishes are with Centering Prayer. Instead of forms of contemplative prayer advocated by the saints or proven practices like Lecto Divina people are taught a technique more akin to Transcendental Mediation than looking at God and contemplating and adoring his attributes. A form of prayer not advocated by any Blessed or Saint and which is promoted by people with less than an orthodox view of the faith is hardly a prayer at all. Centering Prayer can easily become self-centered prayer that confuses yourself with God. I remember another episode on Catholic Answers where they were discussing Centering Prayer and a large group of people called in explaining how after they got involved with Centering Prayer had quite negative effects. This article on This Rock Magazine “The Danger of Centering Prayer” explains why this is so.

You can find Sharon Lee Giganti’s site here.

Kyle Heimann who is half of the music group Popple has released a new micro book called Choosing the Right Urinal – A Man’s guide to life.

This is simply the best best book on the spiritual life that uses the urinal for parallelism. Okay, maybe the only book that compares the urinal and aspects related to urinal to make points on the spiritual life. Actually, it is a enjoyable and worthwhile read that is very funny while making some serious points.

Kyle has it available for free on his site in PDF format along with a study guide for a group. You can also order copies of this book.

For those not familiar with Popple, they are rather hard to describe – maybe John Michael Talbot meets Wierd Al Yancovic. Here is one of my favorite songs of theirs.

“And I want to suggest that there has been an evolution in China over the last 30 years since the first normalization of relations between the United States and China,” Obama said. “And my expectation is that 30 years from now we will have seen further evolution and further change.”

Now I can understand diplomatic language and all, but this idea totally fails the reality test. If anything the human rights record of China is worsening. Religious freedom is not progressing for the better. The recent act by China to ordain a bishop without Vatican approval and then force him as head of the conference there as basically their man wholly paid for was a turn for the worse. As for actual reproductive freedom a favorite word of the progressives, China still forcibly restricts family size – no evolution there. No evolution in the Great Firewall of China other than more restrictions. Nobel peace prize winner still in prison – check. Torture and imprisonment of political prisoners – no positive change there either. Freedom of the Press – well the Press is still free to print whatever the government allows them to.

The president said he mentioned some of these human rights abuses to Chinese President Hu Jintao and also said.

“History shows that societies are more harmonious, nations are more successful, and the world is more just, when the rights and responsibilities of all nations and all people are upheld, including the universal rights of every human being.”

Nice rhetoric, but giving a State Dinner to a leader of a country that imprisons and torture human rights advocates and tramples basic human freedom is not the way to go. Obama’s China policy of the carrot and the carrot provides no reason at all for the Chinese government to change their policies. Dialog is certainly important, it just doesn’t need official State Dinners and it certainly doesn’t need lies like saying things are improving.

I had reviewed the new book by Abby Johnson yesterday and at the end I had a couple questions about her spiritual journey and how she now regarded contraception since they were unanswered in the book.

Turns out the Ignatius Press edition has extra material the edition of the book I bought did and includes a forward by Fr. Frank Pavone.   I was very glad to learn the following:

Johnson and her husband have grown in their faith during the past year, and are now preparing to enter the Catholic Church in the near future. She said that one of the final obstacles, in the course of her Catholic conversion, had been the Church’s teaching on the immorality of all artificial methods of birth control.

Planned Parenthood’s mentality toward contraception, as she explained, stuck with her for a period of time even after she rejected abortion. Even as she became interested in the Catholic Church, she clung to the notion that artificial birth control was an advance for women and society. But she kept an open mind, studying Pope John Paul II’s “Theology of the Body” and other sources of Church teaching.

Abby Johnson’s final decision to reject contraception, like her change of mind on abortion, occurred suddenly, and because of something she saw.

This time, however, the sight that changed her mind was not a child’s death within the clinic walls, but quite the opposite. An experience in a Catholic church, she said, finally made her understand the fullness of the Church’s teaching on sexuality.

This time, the vision of a child was not shocking, but profoundly life-affirming.

“One day, we were sitting in Mass … I was sitting behind this woman, who I don’t know, and this little infant.” Gazing at that child, she finally understood the Church’s insistence on marriages remaining open to new life.

“It was just clear to me, like a switch had gone off, that we had to stop contracepting.” [Source]

Welcome home Doug and Abby Johnson!

The version of the book I downloaded from Amazon was from SaltRiver a which is part of Tynedale House Publishers a Protestant publishing firm. Too bad they did not include her change of heart about contraception since the book left the topic hanging. Again too bad Ignatius Press did not have an eBook version on day one.

As with pretty much all people I was saddened to hear of the reports of the mass murder in Arizona, just as I am when I hear of any such occurrence. It is quite natural for people to wonder at motives when an apparent political assassination is also involved, but experience has shown me this to be common but misplaced.

Too bad we often look for motives instead of praying for the victims and their family and loved ones. John Kroll, Gabe ZImmerman, Christina Taylor,
Dorwin Stoddard, Phyllis Scheck, and Dorthy Murray were all murdered by this one individual along with others seriously injured including Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords. To no credit to myself, I at least had the grace to remember to pray when I first saw this story, but still wondered about motive afterwards. Though I also realized motives in these cases are difficult to analyze. Though it does not take a prophet to realize that such acts are of seriously disturbed persons, as was true in this case.

I was also saddened to see the Wellstonian treatment of this story soon after it was reported. I refer to the funeral of the tragic death of Paul Wellstone that was hijacked and turned into a political event attacking Republicans. Using tragedies to promote political agendas is about as classless as you can get. I guess I was not surprised to find the the supposed causation was Sarah Palin. Naively I thought this stupidity would go away once more was known about the killer. Now I am no Palin fanboy in that there are some things I admire about her and some things I don’t, but the irony of blaming a political climate of hate on Sarah Palin using hateful rhetoric seems to be lost on the accusers.

The accusations say more about the accusers than anything. I think it was in Orthodoxy when G.K. Chesterton wrote, and I paraphrase, that an insane person is not somebody who had lost there reason, but someone who only had there reason left. As with most of Chesterton’s paradoxes this is another one that makes more sense as you think about it and reading about Jared Loughner’s rants on literacy and grammar among other things – further shows Chesterton’s insight.

Now if you want to show causation in what you call a political climate of hate it seems to me that using a disturbed individual as proof does nothing of the kind. To show such evidence you would want to point to common people committing acts of violence in response to political rhetoric. History is full of such acts. I would add another definition to Einstein’s’ definition of insanity in that using a seriously disturbed individual for proof of causation is also insanity.

For example Unibomber Theodore Kazinski and Discovery Channel gunman James Lee were both heavily influenced by Vice President Al Gore’s books in response to the “act now” rhetoric he used. But the real causation was that both of these men were disturbed and that while Gore should be accurate in his environmental consequences, he is in no real way responsible for the actions of these two men. The mystery of evil is indeed a mystery and thinking you can analyze the psyche of the deranged and draw a connection of points between cause and action is the daydream of the materialist.

I also don’t care about lists of hateful words and actions Democrats have said or done or that they had also used bull-eyes and targets to represent congressional districts to defeat. There words and actions also have a lack of causation when it comes violence in the political sphere. While there is some related violence, the case can’t really be made for direct political rhetoric causation.

There is some question as to how the Culture of Death affects violence and the cheapening of life. Certainly the abortion attitude has depersonalized the child in the womb as a thing that can be destroyed at will. Abortion, euthanizes, ESCR, ect; further cheapens human life and nihilistic killers in a Culture of Death is an expected outcome. Though again direct causation between this attitude and individual acts is not easily proven.

One of the things that annoys me the most about the charges is that once more information was know and the murderer turned out to be a left-wing disturbed individual unhappy with his Congresswoman not being Democrat enough for him – the charges remained the same. As more information comes in it is the part of our human reason to revise our projections – if we fail to do so we are not using reason. Instead we are wearing political lenses that cause myopia.

One of the interesting things about Pope Benedict XVI’s pontificate is that he is not afraid to act in cases that ruffle the feathers of some bishops.

As both a theologian and Pope he has spoken about the role of the bishop in his diocese as spiritual father and shepherd and the supreme importance of this role.  He has contrasted this with organizations of bishops and how the singular role of the diocesan bishop is not secondary to this in any way.

The Pope though also has a thorough understanding of his own role and the good of the Church.  Two of the major things he has done were done in part because of the hesitancy of  diocesan bishops as a whole to respond.

Pope John Paul II created the Indult for the Extraordinary form of the Mass to allow Bishops to give permission for this within their diocese.  This was not exactly something responded to with much generosity  and a result Pope Benedict XVI issued his Papal Bull Summorum Pontificum.

The Bishops of England have for years been involved in a form of Ecumenism with the Anglican Church that was more about the Status Quo than it was about actual dialog.  They seemed to have no interest as swim coaches in helping Anglicans to swim the Tiber.  There seemed to be more worried about perception of fishing in somebody else’s pond than in actually helping those Anglicans who had come to realized the truth of the Catholic church and were seeking unity.  Pope Benedict responded with the Apostolic Constitution Anglicanorum Coetibus.

This is not to say the Pope will run roughshod over the bishops. There are many changes the Pope would like to see, but he is very slow and deliberate in his actions. Liturgically he is willing to lead by example rather than to introduce scores of changes in liturgical law. The mistakes in the aftermath of Vatican II were rapid implementations of changes not only not mandated by the Council, but often at odds with what the documents of the Council actually said. These rapid changes caused much confusion in the Church and even rapid changes that are liturgically sound can also lead to confusion. In the many years I have been blogging I have followed the new English translation of the Liturgy and of course have been impatient in seeing it’s implementation – but really slow and steady is much more sound even for those of us who want action now. The Pope to my mind seems to be conscious of this and while quite willing to take decisive action in some areas is more prudentially patient in others – a good balance.

Fallen priests are certainly nothing new and when I hear of such a case it usually reminds me to pray for priests.  The tempting of priests surely is a high priority of fallen Angels as much as the destruction of families.  Generally this is an issue that makes me sad not mad.

Originally the story of Fr. Cutie from the Archdiocese of Miami was in the sad category for me and while I still continue to pray for him – his actions are becoming even more reprehensible.  He has recently come out with a new book attacking the Church and it’s hypocrisy and of course the media is scooping this up as frosting on their Anti-Catholicism.

A priest who found himself attracted to a women and as a result applied for laicization because he felt called to the married life is at least someone I could understand and to some degree respect.  A priest who gets caught with a divorcee, subsequently defends his actions on one of the popular Morning show, leaves the Church, becomes Episcopalian, marries the women involved and has a child, and then writes a book attacking the Church is somebody who will get my prayers, but not my sympathy.  The media is glad to use such a character since any stick to hit the Church with will do.

Progressives who called for  a married priesthood and remain celibate I can appreciate even if I prudently disagree with them on this issue of discipline.  A priest that sneaks around apparently  committing adultery and then when caught strikes out against the Church is not exactly a reformer that should be listened to.  Reformer reform thyself.  Fr. Cutie’s outside actions are not only scandalous, but show him digging deeper into sin instead of repentance. Worse is the fact that he is being encouraged in his sin as he becomes a celebrity for his actions.

Contrary to Andy Warhol, it seems the future brought everybody “15 minutes of shame” where what people should be ashamed of they become famous for.  Considering original sin this is not very surprising.  We all struggle and fall short, but when you call falling short “advancement” you have gone beyond concupiscence to denial and sin. Shame on the media and others for using Fr. Cutie’s case to advance their agenda.

Oh goody more lists I can ignore.

Time’s person of the year – ignored for long time

Nobel Peace Prize – peripherally ignored for a while and especially when they gave it to a terrorist

National Catholic Reporters  1st Person of the year – automatically ignorable and oh so predictable.  Now that they have instituted this what do you think the odds for them to pick a pope as person of the year before the Second Coming?  If I started a Person of the year it would be some man or women who has demonstrated holiness.  Pope Benedict XVI would always be on my shortlist as not only someone who demonstrates holiness, but is making every effort to guide the Church in holiness.  So I am not going to get riled up about the NCReporter, but thank God for the examples of holiness of people God has placed into our lives.

On a less serious note, I sometimes could almost wish that Progressives would get a Pope they wanted.  That a Fr. Hans Kung or a Fr. Richard McBrien or some such would be elected.  It would almost be worth it to see their frustration when it comes to Papal Infallibility.  They would try and try to write that encyclical to formerly teach to the whole Church  on something regarding faith or morals and find themselves unable to do so.  The Women’s Ordination encyclical next to the ones on Homosexuality, and Contraception would languish in draft state never to be formally presented.  Papal Infallibility is of course a negative charism in that it only prevents a Pope from teaching error formally to the whole Church in a matter of faith or morals.  But even as a negative charism it would be one a Progressive – read heretical – Pope would run into as evidenced by the history of the Church where popes with some heretical idea never taught it ex cathedra.

The operative term is “almost wish” since they could do all kinds of menace to the Church even if they are prevented from formally teaching error. Plus I would not wish on them what happened to Pope Sixtus V who died just before he was going to promulgate an extremely botched revision of the Latin Vulgate Bible filled with errors which he was presented to the whole Church and had even written up the Papal Bull to do so.