"Just This". Richard Rohr

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adgloriam said:
I haven’t been able to find any reading on this. Any recommendation?
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On Trudeau? This article covers it pretty well. It’s a little dated, but as far as I’ve been told – I’m not Canadian and don’t follow the news there actively – the situation is still the same, with Trudeau continuing on a fierce pro-choice course and claiming to be a Catholic at the same time.
 
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Roguish said:
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adgloriam:
I haven’t been able to find any reading on this. Any recommendation?
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On Trudeau? This article covers it pretty well. It’s a little dated, but as far as I’ve been told – I’m not Canadian and don’t follow the news there actively – the situation is still the same, with Trudeau continuing on a fierce pro-choice course and claiming to be a Catholic at the same time.
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The article is reasonable up to a point. But has any bishop ever denied communion to someone (be it a politician or else) and it was latter confirmed independently that the person had stopped receiving communion at mass? Like in the last few decades? And is excommunication by one bishop enforced in other dioceses? Because it seems the only cases of excommunication you hear of are those of religious that somehow stray into heresy. And what prompts that state of affairs?
 
adgloriam said:
The article is reasonable up to a point.
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Is it? But you didn’t click the link to it! 😉 That, or CAF’s click-count feature is miraculously broken today, because as yet it remains at zero.

Anyway, regardless of your interest (or lack thereof) in Trudeau as an example, and disregarding that we’re going way off topic, no, I don’t know of any high-profile individuals being refused Communion. Maybe this means it hasn’t happened for a long time. But of course the Church wouldn’t be the party to announce it publicly if She did refuse someone Communion. So it would be up to the one being refused. Probably he or she wouldn’t be particularly eager to announce it to the world that his/her own Church found him or her severely wanting in the ethics department. As for excommunication being enforced, in general it couldn’t be, since noone’s identity is ever checked during Mass. On the other hand, high-profile cases should be pretty easy to enforce. And such a double standard wouldn’t necessarily be without justification, since by their choices and behavior high-profile people deliver a “message” to the wider public whether intend to or not.
 
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Roguish said:
Really, as a lay Catholic you can say the most outrageously uncatholic things these days, even if you’re high-profile, and the Church still won’t reprimand you.
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Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM is not a lay person. He is a male religious under authority. The church may be reluctant to discipline lay persons, but she been less reluctant to disciplined her priests.
 
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You argue skewed semantics.
“Unless the grain of wheat fall to the ground and dies…” John 12:24
“He who loses hs life for my sake…” MT 10:39

We are all talking about the same death. What do you think Rohr is talking about?

And what does being “saved” mean to you?
 
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Roguish said:
Unfortunately the Church has lowered Her bar for remaining in good standing to something close to zero.
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Ok so even the Church isn’t Catholic enough for you and fails in keeping its members in line. I think I see where you are coming from now.
 
Apparently apokatastasis came originally from Origen, was opposed by St. Augustine, and ended up being condemned as anathema at the Council of Constantinople in 543.

http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01599a.htm

As I am not an expert either on apokatastasis or Fr. Rohr’s writings, I’ll just put that out there and leave it at that.
 
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Shakuhachi said:
Why has the Church condemned its use?why such concern? In itself it is benign. Anything can be open to abuse.
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The enneagram has been condemned by some as rooted in occult teachings, falsely promoted as being ancient when it was actually invented in the 1960s, and teaching ideas about God and humans that are contrary to Catholic faith.
There’s a controversy about this because a lot of Catholic religious, spiritual directors etc have promoted its use.
Here is an article discussing in more detail:

www.ncregister.com

My Spiritual Director Uses the Enneagram. What's Wrong with That?

Can you trust a spiritual director who uses an enneagram? Here's my answer to a reader's question. Dear Dan, I recently began a new relationship with a spi...
www.ncregister.com www.ncregister.com

I myself do not find enneagrams, or any other “personality test”, to be a big deal, but I also take them all with a big grain of salt and do not allow them to run my life. Other people might be misled or put too much faith in them. The Church is often looking out for the lowest common denominator when it expresses concern.
 
Shakuhachi said:
I just started reading it. He states, “The spiritual journey is a constant interplay between moments of awe followed by a general process of surrender to the moment.” He then goes on to relate this surrender to dispassion or equanimity.

I find that surrender, dispassion, equanimity to be the most challenging aspect of my life when it comes to things I do not like or want and cannot change. Even their possibilities are the source of my anxieties and fears. For the past few years I have started to make special effort to consciously surrender to the inevitable, to see it as the unfolding of God’s will in my life.

It is where the rubber meets the road, where all this spiritual stuff has practical application and value.
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Would you say that very often that “surrender” takes the form of acceptance?
Tis_Bearself said:
Apparently apokatastasis came originally from Origen, was opposed by St. Augustine, and ended up being condemned as anathema at the Council of Constantinople in 543.
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There is a difference between an anathema and a heresy, so perhaps this is the line that Fr. Rohr is walking.

To me, what is at the core of the discussion on apocatastasis is one’s image of God and humanity. Is there something about it that seems contrary to the images you hold?

BTW: “anathemas” are very much downplayed in the CCC. The word “excommunication” is now used instead, and it does not appear that those Church fathers were excommunicated.

Bishop Barron says that we must all be open to the possibility that no one is in hell. To me, there is an enormous amount of reflection to be made on that statement, i.e. what it says and what it doesn’t say, why the word “must” is so important, the centrality of the word “possibility”, etc.
 
mrsdizzyd said:
Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM is not a lay person. He is a male religious under authority. The church may be reluctant to discipline lay persons, but she been less reluctant to disciplined her priests.
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Granted, I didn’t know (or remember) that he was a priest, though I have read one of his books. But your point that the Church isn’t reluctant to discipline clergy isn’t strong. I don’t mean to drag up old discussions, but a while back I pointed out (to you) that the German bishops, in spite of an extremely liberal interpretation of A.L., have not been reprimanded or corrected in any way in the 2.5 year since the doc’s publication. Can you give a recent example of clergy espousing liberal ideas being publicly corrected/reprimanded and their works denounced? I honestly don’t remember any.

EDIT: It was the Belgian bishops! Great fries though.
 
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No big deal to me either. But i thought it went back further to the Sufi tradition and that Gurdjief guy (b.1866)…
 
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If you don’t mind my asking, what does that acceptance look like? Is it always resignation, or does acceptance also take the form of finding God in what is going on?
 
I think something as “thy will be don”. We can try to change what we can but somethings are beyond our influence and we can only surrender, accept.
 
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That link I posted claims that it didn’t really go back to Sufi and Gurdjieff. I have no idea one way or the other if that’s correct, as I’m not really all that interested in personality tests or their origins. I can take them or leave them, they are mostly just a matter of curiosity to me as to what output pops out and not anything I go around living my life by.

Edited to add, at the risk of drawing the wrath of some percentage of CAF, I also wouldn’t care if it was Sufi-based. I don’t have anything particularly against the Sufis but I don’t live my life by their schtick either.
Dervishes are cool, I remember a short story about a Dervish who had a devotion to Our Lady and would whirl before her.
 
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From what I remember, I could be wrong, one is pastoral, while the the other is intellectual

Jim
 
Shakuhachi said:
Ok so even the Church isn’t Catholic enough for you and fails in keeping its members in line. I think I see where you are coming from now.
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Uh, yes. Off-topic – I’ll get back to it in a paragraph or two – but wasn’t the abortion referendum in Ireland strong enough proof for you that the Church does nothing even if her members severely violate her ethical teachings with regard to an extremely serious matter? To the best of my knowledge, Irish yay-sayers were welcome to take Communion as usual the following Sunday. And we’re not talking about skipping Mass or watching adult movies here. We’re talking about one of the worst atrocities that the modern world has ever come up with. What does this prove? That the Church does nothing even when extremely severe transgressions against her teachings occur.

Sure, you’re happy to paint me into an extremist corner. But if a traffic cop standing beside a traffic light refused to write tickets for people obviously running the red light, would I be wrong to point out he’s not doing his job? If a football (USA: “soccer”) referee allowed players to pick up the ball with their hands, wouldn’t he be failing at his duties as a referee if he didn’t at least blow his whistle and call a fault? Ahhh… but when it comes to the Church we must “admire her latitude” (another poster’s words), right? Even when it comes to matters that are a thousand times more serious than running red lights or violating football rules. Well you’re right: I am coming from that place where my conscience demands that I make it clear I’ve had enough of “latitude”, and believe that the Church should require of her members that they comply with Her ethical teachings regarding very serious matters. Other religions don’t have a problem with a basic level of enforcement. Why does the RCC?

End rant. Back to Rohr. The point was made (by another poster) that the Church’s silence may be interpreted as an indication that Rohr is within bounds of Catholic doctrine. But as I’m arguing, the Church’s silence means nothing anymore, because even the most egregious deviation from proper Christianity does not invoke any response from Her these days. Now, Rohr may not be advocating anything as serious as what I just mentioned. But he is taking liberties with Christianity that basically falsify it. Which brings us back to the point that made me jump into this thread: the great “death of self”.

As I warned you earlier: the death-of-self idea is an insidious deception. I know how attractive it is; I believed it somewhat when I was younger. It can stick with you, “catch” you, for years. It seems so right, right? All the while you’ll be trying to be “selfless”, more and more “altruistic”, but the problem is that it’ll all lead to nothing in the end if you don’t snap out of it and realize that religion doesn’t aim at the death-of-self but at the restoration of your self as immortal.

Good luck and God bless.
 
Yes, I hear you. I never had the interest to keep them straight. I have a good friend who does the Choleric, phlegmatic yadda, yadda stuff. Some people find then helpful. I think as long as we can accept people and our selves as we are, we are on the right track.
 
"Except that Jesus never taught a “death of self”

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Actually he did.
Whoever loves his life loses it, and whoever hates his life in this world will keep it for eternal life. John 12:25
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Jesus answered and said to him, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can see the kingdom of God without being born from above.” Nicodemus said to him, “How can a person once grown old be born again? Surely he cannot reenter his mother’s womb and be born again, can he?”Jesus answered, “Amen, amen, I say to you, no one can enter the kingdom of God without being born of water and Spirit. What is born of flesh is flesh and what is born of spirit is spirit.Do not be amazed that I told you, ‘You must be born from above.’ John 3:3-7
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Jesus is speaking about dying to the false self our ego’s have created and being born again in Him. When we surrender ourselves to Jesus, we die to the old self and in return, Jesus gives us a new life, but it’s the person God had in mind when he created us.

Jim
 
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