Father Bede Griffiths and the Madonna

[Ahimsa]

A few months later Father again wrote:

The figure of the Black Madonna stood for the feminine in all its forms. I felt the need to surrender to the Mother, and this gave me the experience of being overwhelmed by love. I realized that surrendering to death, and dying to oneself is surrendering to Total Love. .
Regarding the image of the Crucified Christ, Father made the statement that his understanding of the crucifixion had deepened profoundly. He wrote:

On the Cross Jesus surrendered himself to this Dark Power. He lost everything: friends, disciples, his own people, their law and religion. And at last he had to surrender his God: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Even his heavenly Father, every image of a personal God, had to go. He had to enter the Dark Night, to be exposed to the abyss. Only then could he become everything and nothing, opened beyond everything that can be named or spoken; only then could he be one with the darkness, the Void, the Dark Mother who is Love itself…

 

[jimmy]

Ahimsa:

A few months later Father again wrote:

The figure of the Black Madonna stood for the feminine in all its forms. I felt the need to surrender to the Mother, and this gave me the experience of being overwhelmed by love. I realized that surrendering to death, and dying to oneself is surrendering to Total Love. . Regarding the image of the Crucified Christ, Father made the statement that his understanding of the crucifixion had deepened profoundly. He wrote:

On the Cross Jesus surrendered himself to this Dark Power. He lost everything: friends, disciples, his own people, their law and religion. And at last he had to surrender his God: “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me.” Even his heavenly Father, every image of a personal God, had to go. He had to enter the Dark Night, to be exposed to the abyss. Only then could he become everything and nothing, opened beyond everything that can be named or spoken; only then could he be one with the darkness, the Void, the Dark Mother who is Love itself…

I don’t know what religion this guy sounds like, it certainly isn’t Catholicism. Christ never let go of His God. The ‘dark mother’, is he refering to Mary? Be one with the darkness? So our goal is self anihalation? He tries to use St. John of the Cross’ terminology to refer to this. Dying to ones self does not mean you surrender to death, it means you reject your sins and you reject your own will. It is a complete self abandonment to the will of God. It is not self anihilation. That is just the begining of his problems.

 

[LukeQ]

Fr Bede (based purely on the website provided), seems to have mixed Hindu teachings with Catholicism. He states that in 1991 he mystically understood that God is in the trees and the earth etc.

This idea is a particular Herasy in Catholicism, (the name escapes me). Maybe Fr Bede’s thoughts came from the Hindu idea that once we reach perfection through progressive reincarnation, we become one with the universe - we exist in the trees, the earth etc and we cease to exist as an individual. It seems Fr Bede has blended Hinduism with Catholicism and is neither one nor the other.

From the quotes given by Jimmy, the surrender Fr Bede talks about seems strongly like self anihilation which is the herasy of Quietism.
newadvent.org/cathen/12608c.htm

In its essential features Quietism is a characteristic of the religions of India. Both Pantheistic Brahmanism and Buddhism aim at a sort of self-annihilation, a state of indifference in which the soul enjoys an imperturbable tranquillity.

Luke