LCWR president says forum 'like no other we've had' [CNAU]

[iloveangels]

So, now, the “money quote.”
Taking the stage to a standing ovation, Farrell said that “some larger movement in the church … has landed on LCWR.”

This speaker is saying that she has some experience (some larger movement in the Church), and she is saying that that in itself is the totality of the account. Her assertion is that that account is the account that trumps everything else. That she has something to tell the whole church that they don’t already know, somehow. That she is being, to use the buzzword “prophetic.”

But…that’s an OR account. It’s only her experience, no matter how deeply she feels it. It’s only her interpretation of her experience, shared with others maybe, but still. That’s all it is.

It’s presumptuous really, very presumptuous. And wrong.

The Church is BOTH, not EITHER and not OR. God speaks to people but at HIS initiative, and THROUGH media of HIS choosing, which has always been Scripture and Tradition (the Church) and Salvation History. That’s the way it still is. This is what is missing in Sister’s account.

You know, she can’t possibly supplant, replace or refashion the Catholic Christian faith by virtue of her own experiential account. The very idea of it is ludicrous. But she apparently hasn’t realized that.

[NB: Playing around with some psychological methods and games like transactional analysis, Rogerian “therapy for normals”, consensus theory, and such things can do this to you. It can create an echo chamber effect that’s very powerful. You want to be careful of that stuff.]

 

[iloveangels]

So, now, the “money quote.”
Taking the stage to a standing ovation, Farrell said that “some larger movement in the church … has landed on LCWR.”

This speaker is saying that she has some experience (some larger movement in the Church), and she is saying that that in itself is the totality of the account. Her assertion is that that account is the account that trumps everything else. That she has something to tell the whole church that they don’t already know, somehow. That she is being, to use the buzzword “prophetic.”

But…that’s an OR account. It’s only her experience, no matter how deeply she feels it. It’s only her interpretation of her experience, shared with others maybe, but still. That’s all it is.

It’s presumptuous really, very presumptuous. And wrong.

The Church is BOTH, not EITHER and not OR. God speaks to people but at HIS initiative, and THROUGH media of HIS choosing, which has always been Scripture and Tradition (the Church) and Salvation History. That’s the way it still is. This is what is missing in Sister’s account.

You know, she can’t possibly supplant, replace or refashion the Catholic Christian faith by virtue of her own experiential account. The very idea of it is ludicrous. But she apparently hasn’t realized that.

[NB: Playing around with some psychological methods and games like transactional analysis, Rogerian “therapy for normals”, consensus theory, and such things can do this to you. It can create an echo chamber effect around your own perceptions that’s very powerful and blocks out thought and reason. You want to be careful of that stuff.]

 

[iloveangels]

From my experiences in the 60s and 70s with this kind of stuff, the best thing they can do for these sisters is get rid of cultic influences. They should not put them back in habits yet, or sequestered together, not at all. Such things will only make things much worse at this point because it will concentrate and solidify the effect.

Split them up, forbid-and prevent-their consensus practices. Get rid of some of their more psychological methods and practices, and require them to read scripture and talk about it. It doesn’t matter what they wear in the short term as long as it’s morally decent. Put them on in normal settings and forbid them to speak of these things except with an experienced listener who understands what’s going on, air them out and deprogram them. Isolate them and take the pressure they are exerting on themselves internally off. Seriously.

 

[Jason_Firestone]

Just asking, did they take vows of obedience to God or to the Catholic Church.

Neither. It is assumed they accept legitimate authority, in the church, and obviously God. The vow of obedience is to one’s religious superiors.

 

[nordskoven]

The struggle within convents post-Vatican II was virtually unseen. One sister reported having had to resort to Canon law protections to preserve her freedom to be an orthodox Catholic and avoid psychological reprogramming right out of Communist Russia. Draconian measures were used to silence sisters who wanted to preserve their conservative sensus fidei/sense of the faith LCWR prez Sr. Pat Farrell says is being denied her and her cohorts. The already marginalized faithful nuns were given a one-two punch by their own orders and diocesan bureaucrats in chanceries riddled with modernism.

Support from the laity was undermined by parish women having their own female-oriented groups dissolved, like various sodality ministries. Lay women interested in “ministry” were instead given slick, pre-packaged diocesan workshops on how “Jesus was compassionate like a woman and described Himself as a mother hen longing to gather the scattered chicks so women should be priests, too.”

The same heterodox sisters who prayed the “Our, Mother” and approvingly hissed the word “priestess” found themselves up against an increasingly female-resistant power base that would, for example, hire a young man for a parish liturgical director where a competent nun was in line for the job. The nun would be shipped to Timbuktu to do something outside her training for reasons she couldn’t fathom. This paralleled the earlier post-Vatican II diaspora of orthodox priests getting posted to the outbacks.

This was the sorting out by the Bella Dodd types. Even heterodox nuns were being shut out of opportunities to serve and became increasingly restive, frustrated, baffled. This is the substrate of discontent fueling anti-Church emotions. Unknown to certain heterodox sisters, the final sort was to subtly select nuns who would act as sexual enablers, whether as psychological professionals supportively holding the hands of sexual deviants, or teachers and professors softening the Church’s pro-life stance on abortion, sterilization, in vitro fertilization, homosexuality and birth control. These sexual enabler nuns were moved into that network of privilege, and got the traction denied other heterodox nuns, receiving high status, high paying positions and getting a firm hold over budgets, just like those heterodox chancery bureaucrats.

Sisters who became sexual enablers, linking of sex and death by supporting abortion, created the ultimate perversion. Enter Barbara Marx Hubbard. So twisted and arcane has the heterodox death-dealing sexual enabler-type thinking grown that the genocidal Luciferian, Barbara Marx Hubbard, was welcomed as the keynote speaker at the 2012 LCWR conference. Satan is the “Father of Lies and Murder.” Gotta give the devil his due. The Bella Dodd types created a straw man of a female-hating, women-and-children-last “patriarchal” power structure and got their planned rebellion enjoyed from the confines of their decorator digs.

As for the laity, three billion dollars to underwrite gag orders in the name of reparation to victims of clerical sexual abuse without any substantial movement to demand scrupulous accountability and correction is but a measure of deadly passivity, watching life like watching a movie, people neither hot nor cold and vomited out of Christ’s mouth. One wonders if the LCWR’s 80% representation of Catholic nuns parallels the proportion of heterodoxy in the laity, a laity awash in birth control hormones.

Most High God, Abba, we humbly beg Your forgiveness. As Your children, children of the Woman, with Christ as our Brother, inflame our hearts with love for the divine Way, Truth and Life. If we merit Your chastisement, make it at Your hand and not that of the Father of Lies and Murder and his minions. Make us faithful and true. Rescue us all, the women and children You empowered and authorized to conquer Lucifer and his minions, and bring swift victory under the banner of the Immaculate Heart united with the Sacred Heart, Woman & Seed. Fill us with the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the Virgin’s divine Spouse, and receive our eternal thanks and praise in Heaven. AMEN

 

[iloveangels]

What has happened inside the convents has gone on largely un-noticed by the laity. There are two very good well-documented accounts in book form:

a) Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities, by Ann Carey, published by Our Sunday Visitor. [This is the same Ann Carey that has written extensive articles on this year’s LCWR conference and been quoted many times on CAF and elsewhere. She’s very knowledgeable on this subject. She’s careful and fair but she knows and tells the truth about this.]

b) Ungodly Rage, by Donna Steichen, published by Ignatius Press. This one is also very well-documented, the product of extensive interviews and documented sources, and it’s a standard work on this topic.

These should be standard reading for Catholic laypeople to understand what’s going on. Cheap used copies of both of these are readily available on the net.

We have to stop pretending nothing has happened. We have to look at the situation as it is, not as we remember it as little children, or as we wish it were.

 

[iloveangels]

Neither. It is assumed they accept legitimate authority, in the church, and obviously God. The vow of obedience is to one’s religious superiors.

This is true. The assumption is that the religious superior is always going to be in union with the Church in Rome. Many times this is really only implied, and it varies somewhat in wording from congregation/order to congregation/order. However, what it consists of is delegated authority that the superior has and that the sister makes her vow of obedience to.

The other factor in this is that many women’s religious congregations no longer have superiors over their houses. They have “leadership teams” because many of them have moved away from the exercise of any central authority in their houses. The LCWR also has this same arrangement. They’re using more of a consensus approach as you’ve seen extensively coming out of the LCWR meeting. You can see what this might do to the idea of delegated authority in the first paragraph.

Quoting from one of Ann Carey’s articles on this recent LCWR conference:

*"When asked if a democratic vote of the membership would determine which of the three options is taken, she said members would be given generous time for their (name removed by moderator)ut and “a sense of the membership” would be determined.

“Our process of discernment is typically not taking a vote,” she explained. *

Read more: ncregister.com/daily-news/lcwr-prepares-to-discuss-response-to-vatican-mandate-to-reform/#ixzz23XJZBAiV

 

[jwinch2]

Anyone looking to learn more about the genesis of this situation between the LCWR and the Vatican, the background about how sisters were formed which may have led to this situation, and ongoing discussion following the announcement from the CDF, may wish to check out this thread. I left a link there because it was approaching the 1000 post mark and thus, was getting close to being closed. However, there is a ton of good information in the thread so I would hate to forget about it.

I will likely put this link in again down the road in case any new contributors or readers come along who are not aware of it.

forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=666901

Peace of Christ,

 

[jwinch2]

What has happened inside the convents has gone on largely un-noticed by the laity. There are two very good well-documented accounts in book form:

a) Sisters in Crisis: The Tragic Unraveling of Women’s Religious Communities, by Ann Carey, published by Our Sunday Visitor. [This is the same Ann Carey that has written extensive articles on this year’s LCWR conference and been quoted many times on CAF and elsewhere. She’s very knowledgeable on this subject. She’s careful and fair but she knows and tells the truth about this.]

b) Ungodly Rage, by Donna Steichen, published by Ignatius Press. This one is also very well-documented, the product of extensive interviews and documented sources, and it’s a standard work on this topic.

These should be standard reading for Catholic laypeople to understand what’s going on. Cheap used copies of both of these are readily available on the net.

We have to stop pretending nothing has happened. We have to look at the situation as it is, not as we remember it as little children, or as we wish it were.

Good stuff. I am going to borrow this for a thread which I have going on facebook on this topic.

Just thought I would ask forgiveness since I didn’t ask permission!

Peace,

 

[iloveangels]

There’s something people have to understand that’s going on here.

Quoting from an article in the NCR, who has a close relationship with the LCWR, about the 2011 LCWR conference:

*"Collective contemplation

The contemplative process developed by the conference appears simple at first — reflect silently on global events of the past two years and how these events shape the mission of U.S. women religious, consider what new realities might be emerging and what responses to these realities are being called forth, then share those insights in a word or phrase with one another.

The depth of the experience, however, belies the apparent simplicity. It’s a suspension of rational Western thinking as the participants drop into what Zinn calls “a contemplative way of seeing what God sees.”

McCarthy added that the process allows “whatever wishes to emerge from within to do so.” *

ncronline.org/news/women-religious/lcwr-begins-next-step-reexamination-religious-life

This is not contemplation as you know it as laypeople. It’s not prayer. It’s Rogerian encounter grouping. It’s a psychological technique. Prayer is the Liturgy of the Hours, Mass, the Rosary, meditations on Christ and so on. Prayer is praying for yourself or others to God. Prayer is having a conversation with God on his terms. This is something else.

This has emerged in a particular style and very strongly in just the past few years, on top of everything else covered in Ann Carey and Donna Steichen’s books, although it’s a concentrated distillation of things that have been going on for a long time. See the article linked above where this is discussed explicitly.

NOT coincidentally, if you look around the LCWR site, you will find templates for this process, which is NOT a prayer process. This is encounter grouping other wise known as “sensitivity training,” and it’s very dangerous.

 

[iloveangels]

Good stuff. I am going to borrow this for a thread which I have going on facebook on this topic.

Just thought I would ask forgiveness since I didn’t ask permission!

Peace,

No problem, Jason. It’s very important that laypeople start to understand what’s been happening. It’s very important and good that the CDF has stepped in. The sisters need some help from them which they’re starting to get now, even though they may not realize it yet.

As well as being dangerous, encounter grouping can be self-fulfilling like a self-fulfilling prophecy and people who engage in it can get caught n “loops.” They may well be stuck until somebody gets them out of it. It’s cultic behavior. Probably only part of the sisters in the US are engaging in it with their full consent. Unfortunately, it’s the younger part and the part that can do the most damage to the Church as a whole. And they are trying to infect laypeople and other structures in the Church with this stuff. It’s why all the talk about associates and all that. They haven’t been able to get young sisters interested in genuine religious life. Now you know why. Even if many younger female vocations can’t put their finger on what they see in an academic fashion, they know it’s TILT when they see it. That’s why they turn and find the more conventional congregations and the pattern you see there is what it is.

You sometimes read these funky accounts about people who think that a spaceship is going to swoop down and pick them up, but only if they eat certain things and wear black tennis shoes and weird stuff like that. Well, this is not so terribly far from that sort of thing. I recently read a fairly good book about this sort of thing, called “Cartwheels in a Sari.” It was written by a girl who spent her life in the USA in a 60s-originated cult on the Eastern Seaboard. Went to a prestigious private school and the whole works, all dressed in a sari, while living a private life completely divorced from her public personna. Now she’s out of the cult but of course, she writes from a particularly interesting perspective because she can’t change the past–she spent her entire childhood doing these activities. For most of her young life, they were normal.

 

[nordskoven]

Why has the LCWR been pointedly ignoring S.N.A.P., a group seemingly just as much at odds with the Church as they are? S.N.A.P. has, for eight year, requested a confab with LCWR, and their rebuffing of S.N.A.P. is supportive of the “sexual enabler” assertion. This parallels MS Magazine’s phony pheminism from Russian-trained Gloria Steinem. MS Magazine has been underwritten by the Playboy Foundation, S.I.E.C.U.S. and the Planned Parenthood Foundation of America, and MS Magazine’s “sexual enabler” stance explains their decades-long neglect of the topic of Sexually Transmitted Diseases/STD’s. Here’s S.N.A.P.'s request:

Letter to Sister Pat Farrell from SNAP

Aug. 7, 2012

Dear Sister Pat Farrell, OSF
For eight years in a row now, we have written to the LCWR and actively sought your help in combating childhood sexual abuse by clergy. For eight years in a row, you have rebuffed us.
We know that this year has been a hectic and upsetting year for the LCWR. We understand that the investigation into your organization launched by the Vatican in April must be distressing. We sympathize, because we have been subject to similar attacks.
We hope that you will take it upon yourselves to look into your own practices regarding sex abuse crimes. Despite a widely-professed concern for victims of trauma and oppression, your group has done little for victims of sexual and physical abuse or to prevent future victims.
We’re here today desperately hoping the LCWR will reconsider this insensitive and destructive pattern.
Specifically, we are asking that you:

• allow members of our group to speak to your members, at this assembly, at future annual assemblies, at regional conferences, anywhere that groups of nuns gather
• take immediate, aggressive steps to reach out (via websites, newsletters, and personal visits and appeals) to anyone who may have been hurt by abusive nuns,
• urge victims to report the crimes directly to law enforcement officials, not church officials,
• urge your members to likewise stress the importance of disclosing child sex crimes to police and prosecutors,
• provide links to our support groups and our website on the websites of each member order of the LCWR, and
• stop requiring gag orders for settlements in cases brought about for abuse perpetrated by nuns

We can already hear the excuses: “This isn’t the proper forum,” “We aren’t structured that way,” “We need more lead time,” “We can’t control what our member religious orders do.”
As we’ve pointed out in the past, we believe “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” We believe that the LCWR can prod its members – if not insist that its members – take inexpensive, proven, common sense safety precautions. And we remind you again that these same excuses were repeatedly used by bishops to excuse inaction until, in 2002, enough victims had been devastated and enough scandal had been caused that bishops were finally forced to act.
Please don’t let this awful pattern repeat itself.
Even now, at this late date, we are willing to make ourselves available to talk with the LCWR over the next few days. We’ve provided our cell phone numbers for your convenience. While we have repeatedly been shunned by the LCWR’s leadership in the past, for the sake of those still at risk, we remain hopeful that your group will act now to prevent future sex crimes by nuns and ameliorate the pain already suffered by victims of earlier sex crimes by nuns.
Barbara Dorris, SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, 314 503 0003, SNAPdorris@gmail.com
Steve Theisen, Iowa SNAP Leader 319-231-1663, ltreggiefan@cs.com
David Clohessy, Director, SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, (7234 Arsenal Street, St. Louis MO 63143), 314 566 9790 cell (SNAPclohessy@aol.com)

 

[iloveangels]

Nordskoven,

Quoting from Ann Carey’s article on the 2nd day of the recent LCWR conference:

*" The most dramatic incident occurred in a question-answer period after a panel discussion on the future of religious life. A sister asked the three panelists: “If you were in our shoes, what would you do?”

When panelist Tom Fox responded bluntly, “Just say, ‘No,’” audible groans could be heard from some of the 900 sisters. Fox, who is the publisher of National Catholic Reporter, seemed to be taken aback by this reaction, and he scrambled to recover."*

Read more: ncregister.com/blog/ann-carey/day-2-of-the-lcwr-assembly-contemplating-a-response-to-the-vatican#ixzz23Xa4BkYs

Tom Fox, as you can see, was completely confused and may still be so, about what he saw. He may not comprehend the difference between his view, which is a stock-&-trade ultra-progressive layperson’s view and the zeitgeist going on within the LCWR.

When you have a process that you engage in that allows “whatever wishes to emerge from within to do so*,” that’s qualitatively different from simply having a ultra-progressive viewpoint as a matter of opinion. It’s not a matter of degree; it’s a matter of difference. Not the same thing.

*ncronline.org/news/women-religious/lcwr-begins-next-step-reexamination-religious-life (reference to “whatever wishes to emerge from within to do so.”)

Have you read this: ewtn.com/library/PRIESTS/COULSON.TXT
There are a number of accounts of it online and in the books on the topic. This is simply EWTN’s transcript of a well-documented interview.

 

[Alan55]

There’s something people have to understand that’s going on here.

Quoting from an article in the NCR, who has a close relationship with the LCWR, about the 2011 LCWR conference:

*"Collective contemplation

The contemplative process developed by the conference appears simple at first — reflect silently on global events of the past two years and how these events shape the mission of U.S. women religious, consider what new realities might be emerging and what responses to these realities are being called forth, then share those insights in a word or phrase with one another.

The depth of the experience, however, belies the apparent simplicity. It’s a suspension of rational Western thinking as the participants drop into what Zinn calls “a contemplative way of seeing what God sees.”

McCarthy added that the process allows “whatever wishes to emerge from within to do so*.”

ncronline.org/news/women-religious/lcwr-begins-next-step-reexamination-religious-life

This is not contemplation as you know it as laypeople. It’s not prayer. It’s Rogerian encounter grouping. It’s a psychological technique. Prayer is the Liturgy of the Hours, Mass, the Rosary, meditations on Christ and so on. Prayer is praying for yourself or others to God. Prayer is having a conversation with God on his terms. This is something else.

This has emerged in a particular style and very strongly in just the past few years, on top of everything else covered in Ann Carey and Donna Steichen’s books, although it’s a concentrated distillation of things that have been going on for a long time. See the article linked above where this is discussed explicitly.

NOT coincidentally, if you look around the LCWR site, you will find templates for this process, which is NOT a prayer process. This is encounter grouping other wise known as “sensitivity training,” and it’s very dangerous.

What is described is not Rogerian encounter grouping. It is group meditation and discernment. You are setting up a straw man by mischaracterizing what these religious women are doing so that you can knock it down. There is more to prayer than you suggest, particularly as practiced by groups.

 

[iloveangels]

What is described is not Rogerian encounter grouping. It is group meditation and discernment. You are setting up a straw man by mischaracterizing what these religious women are doing so that you can knock it down. There is more to prayer than you suggest, particularly as practiced by groups.

1. Describe Rogerian encounter grouping to me please.
2. And then tell me how it is different from this:

*"Collective contemplation

The contemplative process developed by the conference appears simple at first — reflect silently on global events of the past two years and how these events shape the mission of U.S. women religious, consider what new realities might be emerging and what responses to these realities are being called forth, then share those insights in a word or phrase with one another.

The depth of the experience, however, belies the apparent simplicity. It’s a suspension of rational Western thinking as the participants drop into what Zinn calls “a contemplative way of seeing what God sees.”

McCarthy added that the process allows “whatever wishes to emerge from within to do so.”*

ncronline.org/news/women-reli…religious-life

And then, while you’re at it, please read the article at ewtn.com/library/PRIESTS/COULSON.TXT

1. After reading that article, do you still want to deny that this has gone on??

It still goes on, trust me. This is what’s being reported out of the LCWR meeting. Even the major news media is dancing around it a little cautiously. They’re not naive.

 

[iloveangels]

Many people have been exposed, from time to time, to some of this sort of thing in American culture on the soft level in school, business, maybe their religious practice depending on what those are, and so forth. But of course, most Americans go home at night, and don’t get trapped in the thrall of such things unless they are in controlled or secluded living environments, like convents and institutions. These things just seem annoying or controlling or repetitive or weird to most people. Sort of like motivational speakers, that sort of thing.

And some people are a lot more resistant to this sort of thing than other people. Nobody really knows why that’s so, either. I mean a lot of things about strength of personality and all that can be said. I don’t know that there’s any kind of quantitative measure for that. [After-the-fact damage can be measured, of course, using a rubric and the DSMIV etc, but I’m talking about measuring potential damage.]

I do know that there are some people in the religious orders who seem to have resisted it. Even some of the original IHMs of Los Angeles got through it, relatively unscathed personally, although I’m sure it gave them some very bad memories! There are older sisters to this day who resist.

This is not fictional at all. In the 60s, 70s, about the time that religious orders were being tasked with re-discovering their charisms, this sort of stuff was freely available in the culture and brand new. People who were adults during this period, like me, remember it very clearly. It simply got incorporated into the mix of stuff that was sucked into a vacuum, along with permanent waves and polyester, when the habits and all that went. Nature hates a vacuum. The thing is that living in an institutional environment concentrates these things and distills them into more potent versions than what you will see on the street. Any psychology major will tell you that. And it’s one of the stock prescriptions for constructing or maintaining cultic behavior.

One other interesting thing: Some people seem to have a psychological need for this stuff unique to their personality, either as the head of a group, or as the member of a group (the roles are rarely interchangeable). Communes were not an accident and it’s not an accident they appeared in the culture when they did. They still exist in American culture although they are quieter now than they used to be.

 

[iloveangels]

NB: This is not to be confused with religious fidelity or persistence in prayer or taking the hard road so that someone else can be helped etc. etc. This is different. This is another “need” entirely that’s being fulfilled when you see this cultic stuff.

This is also not unique to the 60s or to America, although it looked new then because of the way we were processing the mechanics of psychology, a burgeoning field in those years for a lot of unrelated reasons (pharmaceutical advances etc etc). It has happened, though, under other guises and in other situations–in other places and in different eras. It’s an interesting human phenomenon. The Catholic Church has dealt with it before.

 

[Alan55]

1. Describe Rogerian encounter grouping to me please.
2. And then tell me how it is different from this:

*"Collective contemplation

The contemplative process developed by the conference appears simple at first — reflect silently on global events of the past two years and how these events shape the mission of U.S. women religious, consider what new realities might be emerging and what responses to these realities are being called forth, then share those insights in a word or phrase with one another.

The depth of the experience, however, belies the apparent simplicity. It’s a suspension of rational Western thinking as the participants drop into what Zinn calls “a contemplative way of seeing what God sees.”

McCarthy added that the process allows “whatever wishes to emerge from within to do so.*”

ncronline.org/news/women-reli…religious-life

And then, while you’re at it, please read the article at ewtn.com/library/PRIESTS/COULSON.TXT

1. After reading that article, do you still want to deny that this has gone on??

It still goes on, trust me. This is what’s being reported out of the LCWR meeting. Even the major news media is dancing around it a little cautiously. They’re not naive.

I trust you that encounter groups still go on. What I’m saying is that what is being reported out of the LCWR meeting is not encounter group-style activity. You’re on a witch hunt.

I’ve just read the article from EWTN, which bears no resemblance to what is described as the group prayer experience conducted by the LCWR.

Here is some information on Carl Rogers:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers

Here is some information on encounter groups:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_group

I’ve participated in encounter groups of different sorts. I’ve also participated in group prayer and discernment exercises such as those described with regard to the LCWR conference. Really, they are very different activities.

Since you claimed that the LCWR were running encounter groups, I’ll let you do your own homework. It’s your job to show that they are doing Rogerian encounter group activities, not my job to prove that they aren’t.

 

[iloveangels]

I trust you that encounter groups still go on. What I’m saying is that what is being reported out of the LCWR meeting is not encounter group-style activity. You’re on a witch hunt.

I’ve just read the article from EWTN, which bears no resemblance to what is described as the group prayer experience conducted by the LCWR.

Here is some information on Carl Rogers:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_Rogers

Here is some information on encounter groups:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encounter_group

I’ve participated in encounter groups of different sorts. I’ve also participated in group prayer and discernment exercises such as those described with regard to the LCWR conference. Really, they are very different activities.

Since you claimed that the LCWR were running encounter groups, I’ll let you do your own homework. It’s your job to show that they are doing Rogerian encounter group activities, not my job to prove that they aren’t.

Your dog doesn’t hunt, Alan.

Rogers did intensive work with religious orders, including many congregations of sisters who are specifically listed in Coulson’s interview. The work he did was incorporated into the methods the sisters used to update their congregations. That stuff lives on, and you can see it explicitly in the LCWR’s methods, albeit honed down to their “needs” and given a weird sort of nomenclatuere, on explicit display this last week.

If you are a participant in some of this stuff yourself, then I can see how you might not find any problems with it or find it odd. Most people, however, don’t participate and they do find it odd.

There are several distinct categories we’re talking about here that are different.
Aka, the difference between Tom Fox’s progressivism vs the new method the sisters are promoting vs religious life as defined by history and canon law. You don’t seem to be picking any of that up.

This appears also to be a one-on-one exchange and no longer a discussion of facts. Did you even read the Coulson interview? I’m not in any mood to bicker with you over this. I am willing to let what I’ve presented and documented stand on its own. I’m very sure of it because of years of experience and having lived through the 60s and 70s myself and seen it happen.

NB: Wikipedia. Really?

 

[iloveangels]

I also should make a note for those not used to psychological therapy. In the hands of a capable psychologist or psychiatrist, when they’re dealing with a patient, some of these methods can be useful. The reason for this is that they’re treating a patient, they have a lot of tools at their disposal and they’re trained to use them…contraindications, diagnoses and all that.

However, in the hands of relatively normal amateurs working with other relatively normal amateurs, these things are dynamite and they’re dangerous. In the hands of amateurs or ideologues, they can degrade peoples’ usually normal motivational and ideational structures and cause real difficulties in their lives.

It’s a little like undergoing surgery on your spleen. If you need it, then being cut open and dismantled a little bit by a surgeon is necessary and hopefully temporary. If there’s nothing wrong with your spleen though, of course, letting the local cub scout leader (or whoever) cut you open and dismantle you even a little bit could be fatal.