"Just This". Richard Rohr

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Please say more about what you are talking about when you speak of “death to self”. You lost me.
 
Yeah well Catholic Answers once recommended avoiding Fr Keating works, so take their advice with a huge grain of salt.

Jim
 
JimR-OCDS said:
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.
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Precisely. But this isn’t the death of self Rohr has in mind. Rohr’s death-of-self is an undiscriminating acceptance of all and everything. As the title of the book I read says: “Everything belongs.” Rohr invites his readers to “allow everything to be”, to “not be so judgmental”. Rohr is a spiritual relativist, basically. His idea of religious insight is basically the same as most pop-spirituality: that there isn’t really any intrinsic evil. That some things only seem evil because of our inability to “accept it all”. That indeed we can all get along and be happier people by learning to accept everything. He basically invites you to deny your innate ability to discriminate and see that “in the bigger scheme of things everything has its place.” (Paraphrasing from memory again.)

It is that death-of-self (“Who am I to judge?”) that is a treacherous deception. The death-of-self that is concomitant with rebirth in Christ including His acute sense of right and wrong, is indeed correct and necessary, but I already acknowledged that in an earlier post in this thread when I wrote that one must die to one’s old tendencies, circumstances, etc.
 
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I have always been a huge Todd Rundgren fan and he went through a religious seeker period where he was apparently looking into a lot of Eastern religions and some new age stuff and incorporating aspects of it into some of his songs, such as “Eastern Intrigue” and “Seven Rays” (which I understand comes from Hinduism and theosophy). I used to look stuff up at the library just to understand what he was singing about, but I never felt drawn to practice any of it. The Seven Rays is supposed to be occult but it always struck me as just some warped version of Catholicism, and after Wikipedia was invented I was very interested to read that there was also a Catholic conception of “Seven Rays” emanating from Christ. Also at one of my Adoration chapels there is a giant stained glass window of Jesus with seven rays streaming from him and each of them beaming on a saint or Pope who promoted devotion to the Sacred Heart. So you can always see things from a Catholic perspective if you try. I feel the same way about Thomas Merton’s teachings.

Some people seem to be scared that a demon will fly into their head if they so much as read about a concept from a non-Christian tradition. I myself don’t feel like Jesus would let that happen if one keeps Him in mind, but I also can’t speak for everybody and where their heads might be and I don’t want to have too much pride/ curiosity leading to a fall, so I just try to strike a reasonable balance.
 
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There’s part of a whole generation of priests ordained several decades ago, a minority of whom all seemed to accept the prevailing trends and limits of the secular culture, but challenged Catholic doctrine. Some promoted liberation theology. Others, such as Fr Matthew Fox, the New Age Religion. Others, including Fr Rohr, blend one or more secular trends into a theological system. Many dissent on sexual issues from the Church but don’t dissent from the media.

These priests get heavy support for their books from the media, and some are contacted by the media for quotes. The only limits they challenge are the Church limits.

There are very, very few young priests who follow in their footsteps. This is not a reflection on the majority of priests of that generation.
 
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Why not the tried and true Doctors of the Church on prayer such as St. John of the Cross, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Therese of Lisieux?
 
Roguish said:
Except that Jesus never taught a “death of self”. And neither did any other authentic religious figure, ever. Insofar as self-denial is part of authentic spirituality, it pertains to ridding oneself of one’s old tendencies, attachments, and circumstances, so that one may follow Christ’s inspiration the more whole-heartedly. This does not involve a “death of self”. On the contrary: it involves the discovery (or renewed cognition and appreciation) of one’s true self.
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Before I disagree with you on this, could you please explain your understanding of “death to self”, and what, to you, separates that from the process of “ridding oneself of one’s old tendencies, attachments, and circumstances, so that one may follow Christ’s inspiration the more whole-heartedly“.

Christ taught that these concepts go hand-in-hand,. Most of the great Catholic spiritual traditions have taught this too. So i’m just making sure we’re on the same page with definitions before diving into this.
 
“Of course, the ideal world is never going to come so we can just ignore 99% of the actual teaching of Jesus, as the institutional church (and I too!) have usually done. We concentrate instead on things that Jesus never once talked about, like birth control, homosexuality, and abortion—bodily “sins” because the body can most easily carry shame. We shouldn’t disregard bodily shame or addictions, but they are not the core problem.”
(From “Love is Who You Are”, by R.R.)

Note that abortion is one of the “sins” he puts in quotation marks…as maybe not a Real sin. The first sentence is sarcasm, not necessarily his own position, but the rest is his.
 
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Roguish said:
Can you give a recent example of clergy espousing liberal ideas being publicly corrected/reprimanded and their works denounced?
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I am not in a position to be able to sit down and research anything today. I have too many errands to run.

Even if I had time, we aren’t privy to all the actions of the church with regards to her priests, so I’m not sure how we would know if a local bishop had reprimanded a priest unless we were in that diocese and at the parish where that priest was.

I do remember a couple high profile censures for priests that were advocating women priests. I also remember from earlier this year that Pope Francis rebuked the German bishops for trying to institute wide scale communion for non-Catholics. From time to time we also hear about priests who are laicized for one thing or another.
 
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Roguish said:
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adgloriam:
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.
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I think I clicked it. Sometimes I’ll open a link by pasting…

Your next paragraph was really good. Well, you are British if I’m not mistaken?! So here comes what I think is really interesting: ever seen how the tabloids gossip about others personal lives? How the paparazzi don’t respect anyone’s privacy? Well, the noteworthy thing is the silence of the press regarding excommunication. You read those articles (even in catholic media) and it’s all conjecturing, you never really understand if someone was excommunicated, or denied communion…And I think it’s really noteworthy, you see everyone’s lives slandered and gossiped but the entire press never actually reports an excommunication, or if those leading public scandal go all happy and dandy to communion.

And here it strikes me: there isn’t a single case. Not that I know of, not in 100 years. Such absolute and complete absence requires some sort of explanation. Or else I’d say excommunication is a myth, that it doesn’t exist except on paper, that it isn’t enforced, that the unjust are left to do however they please and the laity are left without any explanation.
 
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mrsdizzyd said:
I do remember a couple high profile censures for priests that were advocating women priests. I also remember from earlier this year that Pope Francis rebuked the German bishops for trying to institute wide scale communion for non-Catholics. From time to time we also hear about priests who are lacized for one thing or another.
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Hey @mrsdizzyd I remember one noteworthy such case: ‘double membership’. To the best of my understanding you could be a member of any religion or any sect, you could even be a public sect leader going to catholic mass whenever it pleased you and receive communion.

If any catholic were to tell the priest he didn’t like that fact and that person should be denied communion. The catholic complaining would be stonewalled and the sect leader (of whatever new religious movement you’d care to imagine) would be publicly empowered for all to see.

Then you’d probably be left wondering:“How? Why?”

Well, things go exactly like I said.

-One of the things here that actually worries me the most is scandal. Because there isn’t a single provision to help whoever sees a problem with this. And those radical cases of stonewalling say tons about the dealings with laity, haven’t we seen countless tons of stonewalls being dug up by the recent scandals?

So that’s the end of charity and mercy right there - in a heartbeat.

[hey @Roseeurekacross I’ve been wanting to tell you this for a long time. God bless.]
 
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Roguish said:
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Shakuhachi:
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.
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Upsetting for sure.
On a practical level, what should the Church do? Theology is practiced, not debated for it’s own sake.
What should the Church do in regard to unworthy reception? How do you door-check the worthiness of your flock? Should the Church door-check the flock?

A priest or bishop can exhort his people on good faith practices for sure. Beyond that…?
A pries could deny communion to an explicitly apostate and unrepentant politician for instance, but what beyond that?
 
That is a very unbalanced reading of Rohr and wrong take on dying to self.

cac.org

Dying to Self

Participation: Week 1 Dying to Self Wednesday, April 6, 2016 In truth, we must change our very self-image rather than just be told some new things to see
cac.org cac.org
 
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Todd Rundgren?! You old as me? I didn’t know he went with at stuff. Now Moody Blues pretty much got me spiritually woke, “Love with all your might before it’s too late!”.
 
Have you read them? They have a lot to say but they speak another language of another time and are not the best of communicators. Contemporary authors have an advantage. They are here and now.

Even though he can be tedious and difficult St John of the Cross remains one of my favorites.
 
I don’t claim to be an expert on the Doctors of the Church on prayer, but as a Lay Carmelite we have gone to retreats given by Carmelite priests who can expound on their teachings. The teachings are timeless and very helpful.

There are also many good books teaching how to understand them.
 
Precisely. But this isn’t the death of self Rohr has in mind. Rohr’s death-of-self is an undiscriminating acceptance of all and everything.
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Actually it is what Fr Rohr has in mind.

He’s not talking about accepting everything, but not letting everything control you, which only causes those who are attached to ego’s, to react negatively and usually toward other people they see as the “others.”

When Pope Francis said, “we are all children of God,” some Catholics in this forum had a meltdown.

All the saints saw God in everyone, which is how they were able to sacrifice themselves in the most primitive parts of the world, often becoming martyrs.

Contemplation is living according to the experience of Divine Love, given to us.

Those who haven’t experienced God’s love, will have difficulty in loving others as Christ did.

Jim
 
I don’t know about contemporary authors always being better. I find St Teresa of Avila and St Therese of Lisieux to be very contemporary, very modern. Perhaps it is harder for a man to relate to them. Not saying there might not be a place for Fr. Rorh also, but as I have a limited amount of time for spiritual reading, I tend to be picky and prefer works that have stood the test of time at least a little bit, over the latest bestseller. I have found some really good forgotten books by priests written in the 20th century just by Googling on a topic like “Rosary meditations” and see what comes up for free on Google.
 
Being a Discalced Carmelite Secular,OCDS myself, I see a lot in common between St Teresa of Avila and Fr Rohr, but more so with St John of the Cross, who’s feast day is tomorrow.

Fr Rohr merely explains the two saints in contemporary language.

Jim
 
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