Fr. Thomas Euteneuer fall only reminds me that I should be spending more time praying for priests.
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.
In a new video by Rose’s group, Live Action, a Planned Parenthood manager in New Jersey coaches a man and a woman posing as sex traffickers how to to secure secret abortions, STD testing, and contraception for their female underage sex slaves. The counselor even tells them to make their whole operation “look as legit as possible.” [Source and Video]
Reminds me of an older news story.
Two employees at the Baltimore, Maryland, branch of the liberal community organizing group ACORN were caught on tape allegedly offering advice to a pair posing as a pimp and prostitute on setting up a prostitution ring and evading the IRS.
The video shows the pair approaching two women working at the ACORN Baltimore office and asking them for advice on how to set up a prostitution ring involving more than a dozen underage girls from El Salvador.
One of the ACORN workers suggests that Giles refer to herself as a “performing artist” on tax forms and declare some of the girls as dependents to receive child tax credits.
“Stop saying prostitution,” the woman, identified by the filmmaker as an ACORN tax expert, tells Giles. The other woman tells them, “You want to keep them clean … make sure they go to school.”
So if you want to dupe some liberal group simply dress as a pimp and ask advice concerning underaged prostitutes. Sex trafficking does not seem to be much of a concern for liberal groups. What the manager of a Planned Parenthood clinic was willing to offer advice on will not cause any liberal groups at all to condemn Planned Parenthood even as a string of videos showing their illegal operations continue to be made. No Democrat Senator will be outraged by this video and call for the defunding of Planned Parenthood. In fact more than likely they will pressure for legal action against Live Action. Shoot the messenger since it is to late to abort them.
When I was teenager I had wished to have been a fly on the wall or a participant in the famed Algonquin Round Table that was composed of writers, critics, actors and other wits between 1919 and 1929. Obviously I was a weird kid, but hearing the wit of these people along with sharpening my own wit appealed to me when I first read of this celebrated group from various books on the Marx Brothers I absorbed.
After my conversion I switched this dream to the Inklings, the regular members including J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, Hugo Dyson, etc. How cool would it be to sit around the table of such men and hear their back and forth conversations. This time though I would be glad to just be a fly on the wall in either of their various haunts.
I thought of this dream when I first saw the book “Looking for the King: An Inkling’s Novel” by David C. Downing. I was obviously intrigued by a novel that included the Inklings in it.
In this novel which takes place in 1940, American Tom McCord goes to England to do research for a book he is doing on King Arthur and he hopes to prove the historicity of King Arthur. The novel starts with him preparing for a meeting with C.S. Lewis where he first runs into another American Laura Hartman. The plot quickly takes on a more ominous tone and heads into almost Indiana Jones territory.
The meeting of these two young Americans as part of the plot is a bit coincidental in how both of their quests are intertwined. But as someone who loves Dickens and P.G. Wodehouse I can handle coincidence in a plot even when it hits you over the head. They are aided in this intertwined quest by the knowledge and advice from various members of the Inklings who they mostly meet individually and once as a group.
I mostly enjoyed this novel and while the plot was a bit Indiana Jones’ish – that was fine with me. The interaction with the Inklings was quite interesting, but I felt it was the conversations with C.S. Lewis that had the most authenticity to them. Not surprising since the writer has written on Lewis. The plot has a spiritual dimension to it along with questions of belief and the interactions between Tom McCord and C.S. Lewis felt very real. The scenes with Tolkien and Williams gave you some idea of the personalities of these men, just not at the same level as C.S. Lewis in my opinion.
The novel being based in the 1940 also seemed to me to have a 1940’s flavor to it. The romantic elements fit this period, or at least the writing about relationships in this period and a kind of relationship innocence as in a P.G. Wodehouse novel.
So my verdict would be that this is an fun novel that at times is quite striking on a spiritual level with some interesting conversations while at other times the dialog is less fulfilling. Having the Inklings in a novel sets up a sort of threshold that even the finest writers could hardly pull off.
I listened to the audiobook version of this Ignatius Press release with Kevin O’Brien of Theater of the Word as the reader. Once again Kevin O’Brien impressed me with the range of voices he provided for the characters. His voices also gave the book a nice quality of taking you back to this era and I especially loved his C.S. Lewis. Once again Ignatius Press is selling their audiobooks at a very reasonable price (that is compared to other audiobooks).
Having just read Jimmy Akin’s “The Fathers Know Best” and Michael O’Briens “Theophilos” I found Rod Bennett’s book “Four Witnesses: The Early Church in Her own Words” to fit right in a reading theme of the early church and the Church Fathers. I had previously heard plenty of good things about this book and I found my high expectations to be exceeded.
This book runs along two basic themes. The first being related to conversion and apologetics as Rod Bennett tells the story in the introduction how as an Evangelical and the eternal quest for going back to the original church how the Early Church Fathers are a blindspot in the Protestant mind. Rod Bennett relates his running across a set of books on the Fathers of the Church in a Protestant bookstore and how he became hooked on these readings which were in stark contrast to his own beliefs and his view of Catholicism which was informed only by distractors of the Church. This introduction sets up the main part of the book. The final chapter returns to this theme and takes a more apologetics bent as he tells of his conversion story and the influence these four witnesses of the early Church changed his worldview and allowed him to investigate the Church with his prejudices diminished. He is not the first and won’t be the last to discover these writings and end up on a path crossing the Tiber. He dedicated the book toe now Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman whose experience with these writing led him to start the Oxford movement and also set him on his later journey to investigate the development of doctrine. “To be deep in history is to cease to be Protestant” is Blessed Cardinal John Henry Newman famous phrase which continues to prove itself true and this history certainly includes discovery of the Ante-Nicene and later writings.
The second and main theme of the book is to investigate the lives of four witnesses of the early Church. — Clement of Rome, Ignatius of Antioch, Justin Martyr, and Irenaeus of Lyons. Each of these men get an in-depth chapter that gives their biography, the history of the times they lived in, their writings, and the writings of other where applicable. Now I have done a modest amount of reading in Patristics and other books about the men concentrated on here and so I was no stranger to these men. The writings of Ignatius of Antioch show up yearly in the Office of Readings for the Liturgy of Hours. Yet I have never come to know these great saints better than with Rod Bennett’s writing. He has a great talent in putting various pieces together and describing them in a way that makes it very real to you. The academic part of his research gets presented in description of scenes that reminds you of the fiction of a Louis De Wohl in that brings the writings of these men alive, but he sets them up in context of history and other writers from this time or later. It is hard to give justice to how well he pulls this off and brings you into the life of these four witnesses to the early Church. Though two of the men were probably not witnesses in the sense that the word martyr means witness, they were certainly witnesses to the theology and practice of the early Church.
One of the initiatives Ingatius Press started last year was to make their catalog available as ebooks and downloadable audiobooks. I received the audiobook version of this book. Rod Bennett reads the main parts of his book and Kevin O’Brien of Theater of the Word reads the writings of the various Church Fathers and others. Rod’s narration of this book is very enjoyable and Kevin O’Brien is more like a cast of players as he gives unique voices to each of the writers he narrates. This really added a nice dimension since often books that contains lots of extended quotations can be rather dry. They have produced a very high quality audiobook and I was pleasantly surprised at the rather low price Ignatius Press is selling the audiobook version for since audiobooks really tend to be pricey. I would highly recommend this book and especially the audio version.
Feast of links related to posts for this years march along with pictures.
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.
Jimmy Akin’s new book The Fathers Know Best
is more than just a collection of quotes from the Church Fathers. The first major section contains a lot of information on the Church Fathers and related subjects. Ably and fully answered is the definition of what the definition is of a Church Father in the first place compared to who would come under the column of an ecclesial writer. A list of the Church Fathers along with short biographies and the time frame is provided along with other useful lists concerning the various councils and heresies from this period. Some of the stories included in the biographies are quite interesting and it is obvious care was taken to provide just information that could be historically verified.
The majority of the book is broken up into major topics and then sections within those topics. These sections such as the Trinity, Primacy of Peter, Women’s Ordination contain an introduction followed by multiple quotes which are sorted by earlier to later Church Fathers. Where applicable along with these quotes are also listed any canons from Church Councils pertaining to the subject. The introductions are very good and give a good summary of the subject from scripture, tradition, and magisterial teaching.
For the most part the quotes are taken from a publicly available Protestant translation of the Church Fathers. So this is perfect for apologetics work and this makes it easy for others to see the full context of the original writings. In some cases fair use quotes of Catholic translations are used because they were left out of the aforementioned Protestant translation.
This is really one of the best references concerning the Church Fathers in that it is very easy to find information on the topic you want and their are multiple indexes in the back to make this easier. It is quite fascinating just to read through what the Church Fathers had said especially where you can see the development of doctrine or to see just how early and in-depth a doctrine had been fleshed out. Some things that I though had become more developed in the age of the Scholastics I was very surprised to see thought out in much detail very early in the Church.
As a one volume reference this is a worthy entry in the field of Patristics and I recommend it fully.
This book also has a companion blog that contains posts related to the book and video’s on related book content.
There will also be a Kindle version of this book coming up.
“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.
Irondale, AL (EWTN) – EWTN Global Catholic Network has signed a letter of intent to acquire the National Catholic Register, the nation’s leading Catholic newspaper.
“I am very pleased and excited that the Register will now be a part of the EWTN family,” said Michael P. Warsaw, the Network’s president and chief executive officer. “All of us at EWTN have great respect for the Register and the role it has played throughout its history. It’s a tremendous legacy that deserves to not only be preserved, but also to grow and to flourish.”
“I believe that EWTN will be able to provide the stability that the Register needs at this time as well as to give it a platform for its growth in the years ahead. We’re proud to be able to step in and carry on both the Register’s name and its tradition of faithful Catholic reporting on the issues of the day,” noted Warsaw.
Maybe if we send more money between the “gas and electric bill” we can get them to buy up the National Catholic Reporter also – even if to scrap it. Oh to dream. But how cool would it be if an orthodox group could buy out the NCReporter? Wow there subscribers would freak out.
If I was wealthy enough to buy it, I would certainly have fun with it. Though I would slowly work with the subscriber base. Like a nicotine patch I would slowly introduce orthodox doctrine and opinion. A small drip of radical ideas like obedience to the teaching magisterium of the Church. Small changes like showing the Pope in a positive light.
I wouldn’t have to fire John Allen, Jr – but the rest of the staff would be pretty hard to keep on. I would have to write all new columns, but until they were comfortable I would have for example a “Joan Chiittiister” – nobody would hardly notice the last name was spelled different. Over time this columnist could introduce ideas like the habit is a good thing and that there was a reason Jesus only choose men for the priesthood and we can’t change it. Again it would have to be a real slow change or the dissidents would go into convulsions at the idea. Maybe a Michael Sean Joe Bob Winters whose angry tone would mellow over time and actually exposes the idea that being pro-life and supporting pro-aborts is non-sensical. Maybe a Bishop Gumblehalfaton could bit by bit introduce such concepts that social justice includes saving the unborn. One writer could drip-by-drip introduce concepts like maybe Bishop Olmsted was absolutely right in his decision regarding St. Joseph’s hospital.
This would really be a tough job since my goal is always to bring more people to the truth, not just cast them out because of their dissident ideas. Brining that group to orthodoxy would need the help of a platoon of contemplative nuns.
One a side note I was thinking about the Bearded Spock universe and wondering if there is a universe where the National Catholic Reporter is called Ultra-Montanists by their distractors. A universe where Hans Kung supports papal infallibility and Joseph Ratzinger supports woman’s ordination. In this universe you could go to a Jesuit University and actually be taught the faith. But I guess I would be a dissident in that universe so I don’t want to dwell on this idea other than to apologize for any of my dissident-selves in the multiverse.