Veritas41:
I don’t know about “theophostic” prayer, but centering prayer has its origins in Eastern religion (Hinduism). Catholic Answers website has an article, *The Danger of Centering Prayer *by Father John Dreher that explains the history, the method and the spiritual danger of centering prayer
As much as I love CA, I was disappointed in this article. It repeats many of the things some authors have said about centering prayer which are simply not the case – as those who have actually practiced the prayer would understand.
Contemplation itself is a simple gift from God. Theories about contemplation are complicated and scholarly, and frankly one cannot grasp the concept of mysticism when one views it from a truly scholarly and not an experiential point of view.
In other threads, I have gone through Fr. Dreher’s article in detail and pointed out the problems with it. I wish not to do so again, because these items are at times distinctions apparently too subtle dor non-practitioners to discuss effectively at an apologetic level. Other people have a problem with the idea that anything could be added post-Vatican, and although CP is new, it draws on ancient practices of the mystics and for crying out loud, a lot of people essentially “do it” anyway if they sit quietly before the Eucharist. Centering prayer isn’t so much something you do, as a method to dispose ourselves to invite God into our lives.
Let me assure you, there is nothing hocus-pocus black magic about the process, it is not a “shortcut to divinity,” it is not as some have called it a way to circumvent God when in fact, contrary to petition prayer it simply invites God rather than presume to tell Him what to do. After many articles I’ve read on CP, one is left with a spooky feeling that there are clandestine Catholics who, along with their spiritual directors, are going into a room with a ouija board or something. It’s pretty surprising how much one can feel an attack against one’s own devotion in the Catholic Church by other Catholics, and it feels exactly like Protestants who talk about the Church using partial information but no experience at being Catholic.
Instead of reading what people who don’t practice the prayer say about it, why not go to the horse’s mouth, so to speak, and read about centering prayer from its authors, (author, since the death of Basil Pennington) at
contemplativeoutreach.org?
If you read an article and think it casts CP in a “spooky” or “scary” light, then I can demonstrate how any Catholic devotion can be described in such a way that it sounds new age, scary and spooky. I did a mediocre job of it on another thread this month, and stand ready to do it again if people can’t understand the concept that there are apparently factions within the Church, of people who think their devotions are greater than the ones others use and find strange surface interpretations of what they do not understand to back them up.
If you’re not called to centering prayer, that’s fine. Not everybody is, just like not everybody is called to Eucharistic adoration, or to do a daily Rosary. Please do not make the mistake of propagating misinformation about it, for that serves nobody – including CP detractors. If something were actually dangerous about it, one would have to find it through all the false claims about it.
I was talking to a non-CP practicing diocesan priest about Fr. Keating. The priest knew little about Fr. Keating but he’s heard of him, and even slightly winced. Apparently Keating sends a lot of solicitations for contributions, some to the religious. It occurred to me this might the first reaction some get of Keating is, “oh well is he asking for money again,” and their perceptions were forever colored? This is pure speculation but at least it gives me some idea what it might be that causes such a widespread concern among non-cloistered priests.
Alan
