Sr. Gaia, Fr. Moonbat (Now With Comments!)

This article is a book review, but it is also an excellent insight into why some of our religious women's congregations are dying. The bottomline: they are either no longer Catholic or no longer Christian. I will have interlinear comments later. . .gotta finish my Italian homework!

Our Pantheistic Sisters

February 2008By Anne Barbeau Gardiner

Anne Barbeau Gardiner, a Contributing Editor of the NOR, is Professor Emerita of English at John Jay College of the City University of New York. She has published on Dryden, Milton, and Swift, as well as on Catholics of the 17th century.

Green Sisters: A Spiritual Ecology. By Sarah McFarland Taylor. Harvard University Press. 363 pages. $29.95.

Sarah McFarland Taylor, an Episcopalian and historian of women's religious history, started her research on the Catholic green sisters in 1994. She spent two summers at Genesis Farm in New Jersey, then visited more than a dozen similar centers, attended four conferences of the Sisters of Earth, conducted over a hundred interviews, and examined their newsletters, poetry, artwork, cookbooks, correspondence, prayers, and rituals. She sent a draft of her book to some leading green sisters for their approval and documented her findings in 60 pages of endnotes. [My fellow novices and I attended a conference on the vows sponsored by a large Texas-based women's religious congregation. Expecting to hear about chastity, poverty, and obedience, imagine our surprise when we discovered that the whole day was devoted to one sister ponitifcating on her adobe hut in the New Mexico desert and her struggles to learn how to recycle and use her urine. The high point came when we were told by a frightening angry sister in a tie-dye moo-moo to "dance our vows." She proceeded to twirl about ponderously. Shudder.]

Throughout the book, Taylor is in total sympathy with the green sisters, whom she regards as "some of the best-educated women in Amer­ica." [Not educated iin the Catholic faith, apparently.] She says their network includes sisters from these religious orders: Sisters of St. Joseph, of Loretto, of Charity, of Notre Dame, and of the Humility of Mary, as well as some Franciscan and Dominican Sisters [blushing with embarrassment], Servants of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, and Medical Mission Sisters. In 1995 there were a dozen earth ministries; in 2006 there were at least 50, which Taylor lists in an appendix.

Green sisters complain that "right-wing Catholic critics" -- among them Michael S. Rose of the NEW OXFORD REVIEW-- have unjustly charged them with pantheism, but on the basis of this book, the charge seems justified. Pope Pius IX defined the "error" of "pantheism" thus: "No supreme, all wise, and all provident divine Godhead exists, distinct from this world of things," and "all things are God and they have the same substance of God" (Syllabus of Errors, Denzinger, #1701). As Taylor reveals, this is the green sisters' core principle, that God and the cosmos are fused [For the most part religious women were not required in the late 60's and 70's to complete a regimen of philosophy studies before taking on higher degrees in theology. Most opted for study in psychology and sociology. It shows].

At the Sisters of Earth conference in 2002, the 150 participants chanted, with regard to the earth, "All is holy, so holy. All is sacred, so sacred. All is one" [and then they passed the Spirit of Vatican Two Peace Bong]. Then, at the 2003 assembly of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR), with 76,000 members in the U.S., 900 sisters chanted, with regard to the earth, "Sacred is the call, awesome indeed the entrustment [entrustment?!]. Tending the Holy, Tending the Holy." The LCWR invitation featured an image of the planet with the caption: "Tending the Holy." In her presidential address, Sr. Mary Ann Zollmann declared, "we women religious are living out of and growing more deeply into an eco­feminism that is a communion of companionship, responsibility, and accountability to the whole web of life" [except that part that includes reproducing yourselves in novices].

Thomas Berry, Spiritual Guide

Thomas Berry, a 90-year-old Passionist priest and disciple of Teilhard de Chardin, is "indispensable" for understanding the green sisters, writes Taylor. He is the "prophet" who played a "pivotal role" in creating this movement. Taylor notes that Fr. Berry, unlike Matthew Fox [a former Dominican friar whose WHOLE story--not just the parts he has chosen to tell--should be told as a warning to the young], has not been disciplined by the Church and can administer the Sacraments. He proposes as the "Great Work" for our age to "midwife humanity into an Ecozoic era" [sounds sticky], where our species and the earth will be "mutually beneficial." Green sisters have taken up this "sacred mission," which they see as larger than the Church or Christianity itself. The natural world, Fr. Berry teaches, is God's "primary revelation [apparently Jesus had it all wrong], from which every other revelation derives. This was also the teaching of the pantheist philosopher Spinoza. Fr. Berry wants the Bible put "on the shelf for at least twenty years" so people can read "the primary scripture of the world about us [like most heresies this one has some truth to it. Creation is one means of God's Self -revelation. However, creation is not the final and unique revelation. That prize goes to Christ.] Following this guide, green sisters work to create a shift of consciousness from human-centeredness to a "biocentric norm." That is to say, they have exchanged a "primary preoccupation with humans" for "a primary concern" with the "total Earth" [thus ignoring Christ's Great Commission for one of their own chooseing, "Go out to all the world and recycle, teaching all humans to clip coupons and buy locally"]. For green sisters, as for Fr. Berry, the world is a community of "subjects" all divinely related to one another.

Fr. Berry considers the biblical "creation story" meaningless because it fails to give humanity a sense of "communion" with "a universe that is alive, sacred, intelligent, and still being created." (To regard matter as alive and thinking, of course, is the foundation of pantheism.) Since Western science cannot convey the "sacredness of the cosmic evolutionary process" either, Fr. Berry proposes a "New Story" to give us a sense of the "cosmic communion" of "all things" [this "new story" nonsense is from Brian Swimme's book, The Universe Story, a hodge-podge of pseudo-science, wishful thinking, heretical theology, and New Age babble].

Greening Their Vows

Green sisters have reinterpreted their vows in light of Fr. Berry's "new evolutionary cosmological consciousness." Sr. Gail Wor­celo, who studied under Fr. Berry and took her final vows in his presence in 1991, declares that when he gave her the ring of final profession, she felt wedded "to a passionate love affair with the Divine as revealed in the universe story." This is not quite the same as becoming the bride of Christ.

As for the vow of chastity, Sr. Elaine Prevallet says it means a "moral commitment to ease ecosystem stresses caused by a burgeoning human population [um, that 's"support abortion and contraception," btw]. Other green sisters likewise speak of this vow as a "lifetime commitment" not to give birth and as a "gift that sisters have given the earth community throughout the history of religious orders." Tellingly, at the 1998 Sisters of Earth conference, Stephanie Mills was the keynote speaker: she is notorious for harping on the connection between "unchecked human population growth and ecological crisis" and, though not a sister, for having vowed herself to a "nonpro­creative life" [well, we can be glad there won't be any little Stephanies running around playing the oxygen thieves and filling Holy Mother Earth with poopy diapers].

Green sisters do not accept a dichotomy between temporal creation and eternal Creator. They see their vows in relation to a divine creation. Sr. Cathy Mueller sees them as "natural choices that enhance Earth" [watch this rhetorical clue: these moonbat sisters almost never refer to "the Earth" but to "Earth," as if the designation were a proper name for a person] and Sr. Mary Southard, as choices made in the context of "an evolutionary universe." Sr. Janet Fraser remarks that "since the earth [obviously sister has not been properly brainwashed] and the cosmos are the Body of God" [this is a religion called "hinduism," folks]. her vows make the natural world "primary"; and Sr. Barbara O'Donnell believes they make "Earth's story our story." Thus, their vows do not refer to the Kingdom, which is "not of this world."

When Taylor asks about the "spiritual dimension" of these vows, Sr. Maureen Wild replies that for them there is no dichotomy between "matter" and "spirit." (In Pius IX's definition of "pantheism," we find this very phrase: that "God is one and the same as the world, and therefore, also, spirit is one and the same with matter.") With this principle, is it any wonder that some green sisters are "certified in massage therapy and various forms of bodywork" to help "nurture" the bodies and spirits of the sisters? In one of their centers, there is a hot tub with a view of Texas hill country, in which "we all soaked our muscles and restored our bodies" after a day's work [a day's work? Doing what? Dancing a New Church into being?]. Taylor comments, "This hot tub, which clearly soothes the flesh instead of mortifying it, is a far cry from sisters' wearing hairshirts and doing daily penance."

Praying to the 'Cosmic Mother'

Green sisters protest that they have not departed from Catholic Tradition, but are "caretakers" of its deepest "essence as it has evolved over time" [Hooey. Pure unadultered hooey]. Not so. At the Green Mountain Monastery in Vermont, Sr. Gail Worcelo prays to Mary as "Holy Matrix" [does Kenau about this!? Maybe sister should lay off the little green pills] who reveals the "sacredness in all matter" and holds the universe in her womb, instead of the child Jesus. This is depicted in the image "Mary of the Cosmos," inspired by Fr. Berry. The sisters pray to Mary as "Matter impregnated with Spirit" -- a far cry from Catholic Tradition!

Just how dangerous it is to invoke a false goddess became clear at the 2002 Sisters of Earth conference, where Charlene Spretnak, a radical feminist, gave the keynote talk on "Mary as Premodern and Post­modern Cosmology." Spretnak was in the middle of her paper when a woman in the audience began to moan and shriek and fight off something invisible. Then she grew quiet and started talking in a voice much "larger" than her size, declaring, "I am Mary. I am pleased. I am very pleased. You all are my daughters. You understand. You are in the presence of Grace" [Um. . .ooooookay. . .cross myself and say a quick "Hail Mary"]. Taylor was "frightened and unsettled," sadness filled the room, yet no one suspected that this might be a sign that they were opening a door to the abyss and attracting the demonic [Exactly. . .'cause that's very likely what they did. . .what's that about demons coming to us as angels of light?].

For where is Jesus Christ in their worship? In the "Liturgy of the Cosmos," Sr. Worcelo explains, there is a fusion of "the story of Jesus, the story of the earth, and the story of the cosmos" into "one vast intertwined evolutionary epic." Here Jesus is "embodied in cosmos and thus never separate from it" [thus undermining the uniqueness of his incarnation; thus giving lie to the previous declaration that these women are still Catholics] and He suffers another "Passion" in the "wasting of the planet." What an absurdity! Jesus Christ cannot be fused with His creation: He has ascended into Heaven and cannot be "embodied" in the material cosmos so as to be inseparable from it. Such a gross error in a Christian puts one's salvation at risk.

Greening the Eucharist

Green sisters not only grow food as "priestly practice," but cook it as a "daily Eucharistic ritual" to affirm the human body as an "extension" of earth's body. Ordinary food, they claim, is a "blessed sacrament" uniting them to "the more-than-human world" and nourishing them "by the Divine directly." One sister declares, "We are the earth nourishing itself." [This is a really, really bad Walt Whitman parody. Whitman's excuse was that he lived in the 19th century and spent too much time sniffing the "scented herbage of his breasts"].

With few exceptions the sisters are vegetarians. Why? Let Sr. Jeannine Gramick explain: "I no longer believe in the old cosmology I had been taught -- the hierarchical pyramid of creation in which human animals, near the top of the pyramid, are assigned more worth than non-human animals and other beings toward the bottom." After studying with the Trappist monk Colman McCarthy, she became a vegetarian because she stopped seeing "non-humans" as "inferior to humans" [but she's depriving those poor steaks. . .I mean, cows of joining with her sacred flesh! So selfish]. Taylor notes that such "biocentrism," common among the green sisters, is "identified" with deep ecology. What Taylor does not point out is that deep ecology is a neo-pagan movement [I doubt that sister would much care that her views are neo-pagan. . .just another label for her to wear proudly in defiance of Evil Penis Centered Power Structures]. No one can reasonably deny that we should be good stewards of the natural world, but biocentrism and deep ecology are wrong to put human beings on a par with other animals and as inferior to the ecosystem. This view is a pillar of population control and so part of the Culture of Death.

Green sisters eat organic food because they think it still has the divine life-force in it. Sr. Wild explains that the important thing is the "spirit of the food" we eat: "I go for quality of Spirit in my food." Eating dinner for her is a daily "eucharist" with the "body of the earth and sun." Similarly, Sr. Miriam MacGillis remarks, "If we truly saw the Divine in a potato," we would not commit the "sacrilege" of "turning it into Pringles" [I do see the divine in a potato! They are especially divine with real butter, bacon bits, and lots of black pepper. . .wait, is saying "black pepper racist?]. Since they consider it already blessed and a "manifestation of the Divine," green sisters do not bless their food. Hard to believe, but some actually "ask the food to bless them" [That's funny. I had a Snicker's bar ask to bless me once. . .admittedly, it was well after my third bourbon].

They regard cooking as a source of "resistance and even power." Since the Church will not let them celebrate Mass, Taylor says, they bring "the essence of that ritual into a daily mindful practice available to all" [Sister, you're bringing some sort of essence into your meal, but it ain't the essence of the Eucharist]. Sr. MacGillis explains that Transubstantiation "is a very sacred word referring to Jesus Christ speaking over the bread in which the outer form didn't change but the bread itself transformed on the inner plane where God was present. This has been going on all along. This is not an act confined to specially designated human beings…." In short, Sr. MacGillis sees the Catholic mystery of the Eucharist as nothing special: the same thing has been happening all along with ordinary food [I wonder if the Jews know about this. 'Cause they were pretty insistent back in Jesus' day about blessing their food. I think sister is being religiously intolerant here]. She once had a mystical experience in which she recognized "eucharist" in a bowl of organic vegetarian chili: "It was gospel and eucharist in a sacrament so simple, so holy, my heart brimmed with gratitude" [OMG! That happened to me once too! Of course, my chili was con carne and the onions weren't well-done, so maybe it was a mystical experience of the methane kind]. Despite all their protests to the contrary, the green sisters are surely departing from Catholic Tradition in their view of the Real Presence.

Taylor observes that the green sisters retain many traditional words of Catholicism -- vows, Mary, Transubstantiation, Gospel -- but they mean radically different things to these sisters.

Greening the Stations of the Cross

Doubtless the most egregious departure from Catholic Tradition is the Earth Meditation Trail at Genesis Farm, which has been imitated across the land. The Trail is made of "stations" to evoke, in Taylor's words, "the Catholic paraliturgical activity of walking the 'stations of the cross.'" It is a "series of prayer stations" that depicts not Christ's Passion, but "the earth's Passion" [yea, like having these acolytes tread about yammering on about how sacred She is].

The "pilgrim" who walks the Trail first comes upon a "womb opening" called the "Station of Life/Death/Transformation" [again, sounds sticky]. The guidebook instructs "her" (apparently only women go there) to pass through it, touch some stones, beat a drum, and repeat three times: "Behold I come. My name is _____. Accept me here. Accept me now. " Further on, she is told to pick up a "prayer stone" that will hold the "spirit" of her "life journey" and to listen to that stone "just as the stone will listen to and absorb the prayers, thoughts, and questions" she will have on the Trail [stone, stoned. . .same thing]. Then she arrives at the "Council of All Beings," a circle of stones and trees where she assumes the role of a non-human creature to discuss "what is wrong on earth" ["she assumes the role of a non-human creature". . .yea, I bet she does. . .this is called "voodoo"]. She then walks along the "Path of the Great Elders," a line of old maple trees, and comes to the "Place of At-One-Ment," where a stone seat faces a scarred cherry tree that survived being surrounded with barbed wire. Here she is told to reflect on "human sins" against the natural world and ask forgiveness from "this community" [I think I threw up a little in my mouth. . .].

Taylor remarks that the "At-One-Ment station" [oy, we were nattering on about "at-one-ment" way back in 1983 in the Episcopal Church. . .I thought these were supposed to be trendy sisters. . .no one is honest anymore. . .sad] evokes the Catholic Sacrament of Confession. Perhaps, but forgiveness here is purely imaginary. There are many more stations until the Trail loops back to the "womb opening," now approached from the other side, and the guidebook instructs the "pilgrim" to reflect on her "last moments of life in this body." This body? Is this a reference to reincarnation? [yes, this time sister comes back as a real moonbat. . .but one with wings but with the same craving for juicy insects]

Taylor notes that the Trail is labyrinthine (perhaps a better word would be serpentine) and that both "indoor and outdoor labyrinths" are now "wildly popular among green sisters, Catholic religious sisters and brothers in general, and the Catholic and Protestant laity." Have they forgotten that the original labyrinth was a deathtrap with the bestial Minotaur at its center? [yea, but they will soon be reminded. . .]. At Genesis Farm, the labyrinth is designed to bring the "pilgrim" into deeper union with the earth as "Divine," for, as the guidebook says, "When the interconnectedness of all things is felt, then it is clear that the Earth is the source of our survival." To believe that the earth is the source of "our survival" is indeed a deathtrap.

Taylor thinks the Trail is effective precisely because it uses the Catholic "stations format" and works "from within the system" [exactly like the serpent in the Garden did when he first tempted man to believe that he could be divine without God]. When components of a tradition are "deployed," she says, new rituals quickly become "traditional." Indeed, in the last decade, Earth Meditation Trails have become popular. Sr. Theresa Jackson, who installed one at the Monastery of St. Gertrude in Idaho, explains that "The 'Passion of the Earth' is designed to be a spiritual exercise that enables people to see the earth and the cosmos not only as God's creation, but as the most basic expression of God's very self." Note well, the earth and the cosmos, not Jesus Christ, are the most basic expression of God's very self. If this isn't pantheism, what is? Yes, God is omnipresent, but He is also transcendent and is never to be identified with matter. Again, this is an error that comes from not distinguishing the temporal from the eternal, and matter from spirit [no, it comes from rebelliousness and a desire to lead others into damnation. . .just like the first rational creature who rebelled out of a sense of undeserved neglect and petulant anger].

Another abuse of the Stations of the Cross is the "Cosmic Walk," a meditation sequence on what Fr. Berry calls "the universe story." In Winslow, Maine, green sisters have 25 stations in a pine grove where people can "walk the story of the universe" and come to know that story "in their own bodies." The Cosmic Walk is also popular in a portable version created by Sr. MacGillis. This involves a long rope placed in a spiral, with 30 index cards representing the stages of evolution. Standing at the place of the first "Flaring Forth," the "pilgrim" is to reflect that she too is 15 billion years old, and at the end of the Walk, she is to declare, "Today I know the story of myself." Thus, the "pilgrims" of the Cosmic Walk become "the story participating in its own telling," and experience their being as "the cosmos 'made flesh.'" More, they learn that "there is no finite created world, only an ever-expanding universe constantly changing, and of which humanity is inseparably a part."

Well, for a person to become the "cosmos made flesh" is to sink far below the level of common humanity, far below the great gift of being made in the "image of God." Besides, for a Christian to become the "cosmos made flesh" is to lose the even loftier status accorded by our Baptism of being made a son or a daughter of God through Jesus Christ [yup, but the loss of a sense of one's baptism is probably the point. . .let's not forget the demonic origins of this gibberish]. In fact, to become an "inseparable" part of the temporal universe is to give up hope of eternal life. It is to embrace the temporal as if it were the eternal, the penul­timate as if it were the ultimate reality.

In 1993, Taylor notes, Pope John Paul II issued a "condemnation of 'nature worship' by feminist Catholic groups in America, highlighting tensions in the relationship of faith to nature." The Pope warned the U.S. bishops during their July 1993 ad limina visit: "Sometimes forms of nature worship and the celebration of myths and symbols take the place of the worship of the God revealed in Jesus Christ." But he took no disciplinary action. Taylor believes that a "major punitive action" at this point from the bishops would only "unify" the green sisters [and deprive them of the revenues they collect from Catholic dupes who believe that these retreat centers are still Catholic because they are listed in the diocesan directory]. It is doubtful they would ask to be released from their vows, she says; they would more likely ignore the bishops or team up with other nuns to appeal the decision. While they do not openly show "disrespect" toward the "institutional Church," she adds, they are not "pushovers," for they are "intensely networked" and thus have a great "resistance to outside interference" [i.e., obedience to the legit authority of the Church they claim to serve. . .my experience though tells me that these sisters go to bed every night praying to Mother Gaia for a bishop to confront them or ban them from his diocese. . .they thrive on opposition and conflict, so what better way to solidify their rebellion than to have The Man come down on them with his "laws and stuff" and try to control them. They would love it]. They compare themselves to the rhizome, vegetation that cannot be easily eradicated because it is "diffuse and horizontal rather than central and vertical."

Green sisters are propagating their errors as fast and as far as they can by books, lectures, retreats, icons, and workshops. One can only wonder: Where are our shepherds? [Maybe they got lost in the labrynith somewhere. . .did Bishop forget his string. . .again?!]

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God bless, Fr. Philip, OP

Reaching down for higher things

30th Sunday OT: Ex 22.20-26; 1 Thes 1.5-10; Matt 22.34-40
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

St. Paul, ever the romantic(!), writing in his first letter to the Corinthians, insists that “love is patient, love is kind. Love is not jealous, is not pompous; it is not inflated; it is not rude; it does not seek its own interest [. . .] but rather rejoices with the truth”(1 Cor 13). He goes on to write that love bears, believes, hopes and endures all things; and finally, he declares, as if he has never grieved a betrayal or lost his heart to passion: “Love never fails.” The romantic whispers, “Yes!” The cynic scoffs, “Bull.” The pragmatist asks, “Really? Never?” The Catholic exclaims, “Deo gratis! Thanks be to God!” Who needs for love to never fail more than he for whom Love is God? This is why Jesus teaches the Pharisees that the spiritual heart of the Law is: “You shall love the Lord, your God, will all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind [. . .] You shall your neighbor as yourself.” Listen to Paul again, “Our Lord is patient, He is kind. He is not jealous, is not pompous; He is not inflated; He is not rude; He does not seek His own interest [. . .] but rather Our Lord rejoices with the truth.” Though Paul is writing to the Corinthians to show them how we must love one another—patiently, kindly, selflessly—we cannot, cannot love at all except that Love Himself loves us first. Therefore, with the Lord and because of the Lord, we love Him, one another; and we rejoice with His truth.

Now, that we must be commanded to love says everything that needs to be said about the weaknesses of the human heart, soul, and mind. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we do not eagerly enthrone love in the center of our being, making all we do the children of charity. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we do not love as a way of giving thanks for our very existence, for the gift of being alive. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we do not reason with the grace of God’s wisdom, with the deliberative power granted to us as creatures created in His divine image. That we must be commanded to love tells us that we are not God but rather creatures imperfect without God, longing for God, grieving our loss yet yearning for the peace and truth of His Being-with-us.

Think for a moment of the ways we have struggled in our past to find some small portion of peace and truth. Moses returns from Mt. Sinai to find his people giving themselves over to the idols of their former masters in slavery. Paul admonishes the Corinthians for turning to “worldly philosophies” for their much-needed wisdom. He lashes them for rutting indiscriminately in the flesh, surrendering body and soul to disordered passion and vice. Jesus teaches against the legalistic blindness of the Pharisees; he calls them “white washed tombs,” beautifully, lawfully clean on the outside but stuffed with rotted meat on the inside. In our long past we have turned to idols, pagan philosophies, debauchery and license, and taken an easy refuge in the dots and tittles of the law. Each of these reach for the peace and truth we long for, but none grasp the love we need.

Think for a moment of the ways you yourself have struggled in your past and struggle even now to find some small portion of peace and truth. Do you look to the idols of power, wealth, possessions, or Self to find your purpose? Do you scratch your itchy ears with the wisdom of the world? With the profound systems of material science, the occult mysteries of New Age gurus, the glittering gospels of prosperity and celebrity? Perhaps you search for and hope to find some peace in your body, your flesh and bones. Do you worship at Gold’s Gym, Kroger and Target, Blockbuster, or CVS, searching for peace in a perfectly sculpted body, a full belly, a house full of things, a visual distraction, or over-the-counter cures for the nausea and headache of a life that will not love God? Or, perhaps in this election season, you look to parties and politicians to give you hope and security. Do you look to the Democrats to give you the ease of a well-funded government entitlement? Or perhaps you look to the Republicans to secure your place near the top of the economic food-chain? Do you think Obama will give you hope? Or that McCain will give you security? When we reach down for higher things, we grasp the lowest of the low and in our disappointment we name the Lowest the Highest, and then, in our pride, we pretend to be at peace. To do otherwise is to confess that we are fools fooled by foolish hearts, that we are stubborn mules needing the bridle and bit.

And perhaps we are fools. Perhaps this is why Jesus finds it necessary to command us to love God and one another. Why command what we would and could do willingly? In Exodus our Lord must command that we not molest the foreigners among us. That we must care for the women who have lost their husbands and children who have no family. He must command us not to extort money from the poor or strip them of their modest possessions for our profit. We must be commanded not to kill one another, not to steal, not to violate our solemn oaths, not to worship alien gods. Why doesn’t it occur to us naturally to care for the weakest, the least among us? To help those who have little or nothing? Why must we be commanded not to destroy the gift of life, not to lie or extort, not to surrender our souls to the demonic and the dead? We must be commanded to love God, to hope in His promises, to trust in His providential care because in our foolish hearts we believe that we are God and that we have no other gods but ourselves.

Are we fools? Probably not entirely. But we are often foolish, often believing and behaving in ways that give lie to Paul’s declaration, “Love never fails.” God never fails, but we often do. When we make the creature the Creator, giving thanks and praise to the bounty of our own wisdom, we reach down for the higher things and convince ourselves that we have grasped truth. We do this when we believe that it is not only sometimes necessary but also good to murder the innocent; when we believe that it is right to murder the inconveniently expensive, those whom the Nazis called “useless eaters,” the sick, the elderly, the disabled. We reach down for higher truths when we create markets for housing in order to exploit for profit the homelessness of the poor. We are foolish when we raise impregnable borders around the gifts we have been given , gifts given to us so that we might witness freely to God’s abundance. We do foolish things because we believe we are God, and so, we must be commanded by Love Himself to love. But surely this is no hardship. Difficult, yes. But not impossible. With Love all things are possible.

What must we do? To love well we must first come to know and give thanks to Love Himself. He loved us first, so He must be our First Love. Second, we must hold as inviolable the truth that we cannot love Love Himself if we fail to love one another. Third, love must be the first filter through which we see, hear, think, feel, speak, and act. No other philosophy or ideology comes before Love Himself. This mean obeying (listening to and complying with) His commandments and doing now all the things that Christ did then. Fourth, after placing God as our first filter, we must surrender to Love’s providential care, meaning we must sacrifice (make holy by giving over) our prideful need to control, direct, order our lives according to the world’s priorities. Wealth and power do not mark success. Celebrity does not mark prestige. “Having everything my way” does not mark freedom. Last, we must grow in holiness by becoming Christ—frequent attention to the sacraments, private prayer and fasting, lectio divina, strengthening our hearts with charitable works, sharpening our minds with beauty and truth in art, music, poetry, and while being painfully, painfully aware of how far we can fall from the perfection of Christ, knowing that we are absolutely free to try again and again and again.

Though we often fail love, Love never fails us. Remember: who needs for love to never fail more than he for whom Love is God?

Abortion alternatives

I'm sick of hearing that Catholics only care about babies in the womb. . .

Here are some Catholic funded alternatives to abortion:

Real Alternatives

Birthright

Alternatives2Abortion

Pregnancy Support (Canada)

These links took me all of ten minutes to find and list, so please don't tell me that the Church supports pregnant women but not mothers.

You are lying. Plain and simple.

UPDATE: and how did I forget The Nurturing Network (link fixed)!? N.N. is assisted by my former student and mother of five, Jana Holmes. Five? Is it five now, Jana? ;-)

His positions are evil. . .

Many of my friends from my days as a Marxist-feminist-postmodernist ideologue have been asking me lately how I can resist supporting an Obama presidency.

My answer--much to their horror--has been simple: "Because I used to be a Marxist-feminist-postmodernist ideologue, and I understand the party-line of the movement:

-- destroy the notion of objective truth with appeals to diversity, difference, and multi-cultism;
-- eliminate the possibility of rational discourse by elevating the affective above the rational;
-- convert all public political discourse into emotive appeals to race, gender, class, and sexuality;
-- define "freedom" as "freedom from constraint" and never as "freedom to do what is right;"
-- attack all secular opposition as "oppressive, self-centered, and fearful;"
-- attack all religious opposition as "superstitious, fundamentalist, and ignorant;"
-- use "white liberal guilt" to attack economic growth and prosperity;
-- feed over-educated narcissism with the prospect of ruling, finally, and ruling more than the meager resources of an English/women's studies department at a state university."

Why do I oppose Obama? Simple. His political positions are evil. This man believes that it is morally acceptable to kill children. He believes that it is morally permissible to attempt to kill a child in the womb, fail, and then leave the child to die once delivered alive. This man believes that all Americans should participate in his evil by being forced to pay for the genocide of abortion with federal tax dollars. That the overwhelming majority of children murdered in the womb are black seems not to concern him at all. He has promised to eliminate all democratically enacted laws against the murder of children by signed the so-called "Freedom of Choice Act" if elected. This will enshrine the Supreme Court's 1973 decision, Roe v. Wade into federal law.

That the MSM has chosen again and again to ignore, obfuscate, distort, and lie about his connections to domestic terrorists, international Marxists, local communists in Chicago, and his involvement with other radical left-wing groups like the vote-stealing ACORN cadre only adds to my deep suspicison and unease. Though these are more strictly political concerns and do not rise to the level of his promotion of child murder, they are nonetheless deeply distrubing to this American citizen.

Now, before you pop off in the comboxes about Catholic priests not being political, let me say this: at no time during my solemn profession as a Dominican friar in 2003 or during my priestly ordination in 2005 did I EVER renounce my U.S. citizenship; my right to free speech; my right to the free practice of my religion; or the free expression of my opinions in a public milieu. Nor should you take my opposition to the evil of the possibility of an Obama presidency as an endorsement of a John McCain presidency.

If you want me to support Obama you will need to demonstrate to me one thing and one thing only: how does the actual murder of 1.7 million children every year in the U.S. (and the inevitable increase in that number if B.O. is elected) outweigh any possible good that B.O. might do as a Marxist-feminist chief executive officer of the U.S.

All I can say at this point is: thank you God for constitutional term limits.

Fr. Philip Neri's Top Five of Just About Everything!

As is abundantly evident from my recent posts and comments, I have been in something of a funk lately. I have a Roman cold. I'm not sleeping well (again!). And this $%#@ election is driving me nuts.

BUT none of these is reason enough to stay cranky. So, I've decided to lighten the mood a bit by posting on some of my favorite things. My challenge to bloggers: you do it too!

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Fr. Philip Neri's Top Five of Just About Everything!

Top Five Weird Food Combos:

1. blackeyes & mayo on cornbread
2. peanut butter & banana on Ritzs
3. roasted chicken with yogurt & peanuts
4. apple/celery soup with pesto
5. vanilla ice cream with peanut butter and balsamic vinegar

Top Five Fav Halloween Costumes He Has Worn:

1. creepy surgeon with bloody knife
2. albino vampire with handcuffs
3. High Goth magician complete with goatee and earring!
4. Spartacus with sword (my mom's icing spatula)
5. ghost of a gorilla killed by poachers

Top Five Fav Christmas Gifts:

1. a doctor's home visit kit (three years in a row! yes!)
2. a LED digital watch in 1979. . .only kid in school with one of those
3. a tuition check from my parents in 1986
4. Santa's Magical $50 that appears in my stocking annually (yes, I have stocking!)
5. a stereo system with my first ever cassette: Huey Lewis and the News

Top Five Fashion Statements I Wish I Had Never Made:

1. getting my ear pierced in 1990 (ugh)
2. wearing a paisley shirt with poofy sleeves and an antique broach in 1985 (ugh-ugh)
3. letting my hair grow down to my shoulders a la George Michael ca. 1989
4. daily wear of all black--jeans, turtle-neck, boots, overcoat, glasses
5. plaid golf pants, burgundy IZOD shirt, pink IZOD sweater, loafers w/the penny ca. 1982

Top Five Dumb Things I Have Done That I Can Admit to in Public:

1. Frequently going out of town to parties with a drunk friend driving (stupid, stupid)
2. Moving into a large antebellum home with colleagues from my department who eschewed cleanliness and domestic responsibility like a rabid squirrel on crack
3. Agreeing to purchase a package of three-year magazine subscriptions that cost $600 (yea, I got out of it)
4. locking myself out of my apartment minutes after my roommate drives off for the weekend and then breaking the small window on the kitchen door only to realize that the small window is in fact not just a piece of the door but the entire window: $80 for replacement.
5. Helping some friends "clear out" their liquor cabinet before a move (shudder)

Top Five Dumbest Things I Have Ever Said:

1. 1986: the women's bathroom in the lobby of our dorm had no interior door. I was the RA on desk duty during fall sign-in for the freshmen. A mom comes in and asks for the bathroom. I directed her. Not wanting anyone to walk in on her unexpectedly, I offered: "Would like for me to watch?"
2. 1991: I was giving a literature exam, sitting at the desk in front of the class. After about fifteen minutes of quiet, for no apparent reason, I barked out: "KNIFE!"
3. I was at home one Christmas and my mom asked to me mix up some walnut brownies. I read the directions on the box and proceeded to mix. My mom comes into the kitchen and watches me mix the batter with my hand. My defense? "The directions say 'mix by hand'"!
4. To a psychotic patient on the adult unit of a psych hospital: "Are you going to throw that at me or come with us to time out?"
5. To my future housemate wanted to confess something to me before I allowed him to move in. We sat down, and he very solemnly declared, "I'm a Wiccan." I said, "Oh, I thought you were gay."

Top Five Books I Wish I Had Never Read:

1. Creative Visualization
2. Jonathan Livingston Seagull
3. It
4. The Book of Mormon
5. Handbook of Witchcraft

Top Five Things I Would Change in My History:

1. Go to grad school in psychology rather than English
2. Go to teach English in China ten years later than I did
3. Work for several years btw undergrad/grad school
4. Play sports/habituate myself to the gym in high school
5. Never start drinking

Top Five Religious Names that I Rejected in Favor of Philip Neri:

1. Br. Michael Mary of the Five Wounds of Jesus, not including the One on His Shoulder
2. Br. Philippe-Marie of the Sorrowful Mysteries of the Most Holy Rosary
3. Br. Dominic of the Most Holy Face and Most of the Neck
4. Br. Angelo of the Litany to Baby Jesus, Son of Mama Mary
5. Br. Aldred of the Stocial Countenance, Brick of Westhamptonshire.

Title of my autobiography (to be published posthumously): Sittin' in the Shade With the Fat Kids Reading: The Life and Most of the Good Times of Philip Powell

Church is not Wal-Mart (UPDATED)

[NB. Permission to repost/copy with proper attribution is given.]

I had a much longer piece, but I scrapped it for something a lot shorter and more to the point.

1). The Roman Catholic Church isn't WalMart or Burger King; it's the Body of Christ.

2). Catholic priests, nuns, sisters/brothers and laity aren't employees; we are members of the Body of Christ.

3). The doctrine and dogma of the Catholic Church are not consumer products that the Church's employees sell to those who want them; Catholic doctrine and dogma express the unchanging truth of the faith.

4). Life in a Catholic parish is not a trip to Disney Land or Target or McDonald's where your consumer needs and whims are catered to by the whimpering clergy and lay staff; parish life is the life of Christ for the local Catholic family.

5). You do not come into the Catholic Church b/c you like the building better than you like the Methodist chapel; or because the priest at the Catholic parish is cuter than the Baptist preacher; or because you heard that the homilies are shorter at St. Bubba's by the Lake than they are at the Unitarian Church. You come into the Catholic Church because you believe that the Catholic faith is the truth of the gospel taught by Christ himself and given to his apostles.

6). Leaving the Catholic Church because a priest was mean to you, or because sister whacked you with a ruler, or because the church secretary looked at you funny is as stupid as giving up on the truths of math because you hate your high school algebra teacher. Why would anyone let a crazy priest or a cranky nun or anyone else for the matter drive you out of the faith you believe is true? My only conclusion: you never thought it was true to begin with; or, you have a favorite sin the Church teaches against and crazy priests and cranky nuns is as good an excuse as any to leave and pursue your sin all the while feeling justified b/c Father and/or Sister are such jerks.

7). Anyone who comes in the Catholic Church thinking that they will find clouds of angels at Mass dressed as parishioners; hordes of perfect saints kneeling for communion; seminaries packed with angelic young men burning to be priests; a parish hall stacked to the ceiling with morally pure people eager to serve; and a priest without flaw or blemish, well, you're cracked and you probably need to go back and try again. Telling Catholics that they aren't perfect makes as much sense as telling fish they're wet. We know already. Move on.

8). Of the hundreds of priests and religious I know, I know two who could count as saints right now. The rest of us are deeply flawed, impure, struggling creatures who know all too well that we fail utterly to meet the basic standards of holiness. For that matter: so do you. Get in line.

9). The Catholic Church owes no one a revision of her doctrine or dogma. She didn't change to save most of Europe from becoming Protestant, why would you imagine that she would change just to get you in one of her parishes?

10). If you want to become Catholic, do it. But do it because you think the Church teaches the true faith. If a cranky priest on a blogsite is enough to keep you from embracing the truth of the faith, then two things are painfully clear: 1) you do not believe the Church teaches the faith; 2) and you care more about expresssing your hurt consumer feelings than you do for your immortal soul.

Fr. Philip, OP

UPDATE: Yes, I am a priest, and a huge part of my ministry is to console, to be present, to advise, and to try my best to shine out the light of Christ. As a Dominican friar, I do all of that first and best by telling the truth! The best pastoral approach is always to tell the truth, so please, forget the notion that "to be pastoral" is somehow opposed to "telling the truth" or "teaching the faith."

The Truth is Always Pastoral.

Do NOT test the Lord

29th Sunday OT: Isa 45.1-4-6; 1 Thes 1.1-5; Matt 22.15-21
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma


The Pharisees show Jesus a Roman coin and ask whether or not they should pay Caesar’s taxes. Matthew tells us that “knowing their malice, Jesus said, ‘Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?... ‘Whose image is this and whose inscription?’ They replied, ‘Caesar's.’ At that he said to them, ‘Then repay to Caesar what belongs to Caesar and to God what belongs to God.’" Much has been made of this infamous distinction between what is God’s and what is Caesar’s. And even more could be made of it during this tense political season. I have preached before that ultimately the distinction is meaningless because everything belongs to God, including Caesar himself. I will not belabor the point. Rather, this morning the more interesting moment in this story is the moment Jesus calls the Pharisees out for questioning him, or more precisely, for “testing” him. According to Jesus, the Pharisees test him out of a malicious hypocrisy; that is, a hateful insincerity, a spiteful duplicity. Their apparently sincere question about paying taxes is really a contrived event to catch him up, a staged incident, choreographed and scripted to force Jesus into either treason against Rome or blasphemy against God. Jesus skillfully dodges the trap with an ultimately meaningless answer, but Jesus teaches his lesson nonetheless: “I am not who you want me to be, Pharisees.”

Let’s get down to the question: who do you want God to be? Father, Mother, Santa Claus, mischievous elf, mythical Ego, Jungian archetype, Ground of Being? Spiritual direction often starts with a question about one’s image of God. Our prayer life tells us volumes about how we understand who God is for us. In desperate times, an image of God emerges. Suffering carves out of us a hard figure of God. When we reach beyond ourselves, beyond the possibilities of easy helps and cheap fixes, we usually reach out toward heaven and call on our God for His care, His rescue. And this is exactly what we ought to do. There is nothing so humbling and spiritually purifying as a moment of desperation, a flash of weakness, or damaging stupidity that drives us to God’s comfort. But we must be careful: “Why are you testing me, you hypocrites?” Our God is not our student, every ready to be questioned, every ready to be tested.

Obviously, like most politicians probing an opponents weaknesses, the Pharisees are trying to trip Jesus up by asking him the “are you still beating your wife?” sort of question. No answer is good, any answer will be vacuous in the end. The point of the exchange is not to find the truth but to expose a hated enemy as worthy of one’s hate. Jesus calls this attempt malicious and hypocritical. Malicious because their intent is evil and hypocritical because they know that they are not asking a real question but setting a trap. Their insincerity is poisonous. But only to themselves. Who do they need him to be? Or perhaps the best question: who do they hope he turns out to be? Given their institutional investments and political commitments, no doubt the Pharisees hope he turns out to be little more than a madman from Nazareth.

Given your institutional investments and political commitments, who do you hope Jesus turns out to be? Jesus says to give to Caesar what is his and give to God what belongs to Him. Of course, this means that we give all things to God in the end b/c all that belongs to Caesar really belongs to God. For a while, while we walk around on the dirt, we give Caesar his due—his taxes, our obedience to his laws within our duties to God, our civic participation. But in giving Caesar his due now our hearts must always be inclined to a longing and a goal well beyond Caesar’s temporary crown; focused fiercely, permanently on the Crown of Heaven. The Pharisees hope to use this apparently split allegiance to force Jesus into a political-religious quagmire. They need for Jesus to be a madman or a traitor or a blasphemer, so they test him in their malicious hypocrisy, rigging the test to give them the result they hope for; and in getting the hoped-for answer, relieving them of any duty to preach his message, teach his word, or offer him their obedience as the Messiah promised by the prophets.

Rather than giving them what they hope for, Jesus says, in essence, “I am not who you want me to be.” Jesus is not a traitor or a blasphemer. Nor is he a revolutionary or an institutional cog. He is not a preacher of flaccid tolerance nor a fire-breathing demagogue. He is neither Democrat nor Republican; he is not Obama nor McCain. He is the Prince of Peace who comes with a death-dealing sword to deal death to our sin. He is the Lamb of God who comes with a scourge to beat the unfaithful faithful for their hypocrisy and out of his temple. He is the Final Judge who died for us, making us clean before the Father’s throne. He is the Lion of David’s House who gently shepherds, protects, and provides. He tells Isaiah: “I am the LORD and there is no other, there is no God besides me. It is I who arm you, though you know me not, so that toward the rising and the setting of the sun people may know that there is none besides me. I am the LORD, there is no other.”

And no other is the LORD! Not the state, not a political party, not an institution, not a person or an idea or a theory. Nothing made can save us. Nothing passing can give us eternal life. If it can die, it cannot give Life. If it can change, it cannot impart perfection. If it can fail, it cannot gift us with goodness. That we want a man, a party, a system, or an idea to save us, to give us life, to grant us goodness is a sin as old as Eve’s yes to the serpent’s gift. Like the maliciously hypocritical Pharisees, don’t we often find ourselves testing Jesus to see who he will be for us today? Just poking him a bit to see if he will budge on a favorite issue or yield a bit on a favorite sin? Recently, I watched a youtube video of a Catholic rally for Prop 8 in CA. A woman approached the young men and screamed at them: “Jesus preached tolerance!” Since Prop 8 is designed to define marriage as a union between one man and one woman, we can assume that the woman—shown in the video harassing the men—believes that the first-century Jewish rabbi, Jesus, would “tolerate” a marriage among a man, another man, and the first man’s sister. You are either tolerant or you’re not. Tolerance tolerates no intolerance.

Let’s conclude here with this: Jesus fails the Pharisee’s test. Turns out that he is not who they hope he is. He is not the traitor, the blasphemer, the arch-heretic they had hoped for. Neither is he the hippie-dippy feminist peacenik, nor the fiery-eyed God of Righteous Vengeance Come to Smite Our Enemies, nor the sagacious prophet with a stoical temper. He is the Judge, the Lamb, the Prince, the Child, the King, the Seed, the Vine, the Word, the Spirit. He is the LORD. And there is no other and no other is the LORD.

Empty to be Filled

26th Sunday OT: Ezk 18.25-28; Phil 2.1-5; Matt 21.28-32
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma


Think about standing in line before the Pearly Gates and seeing in front of you the IRS agent who audited your taxes and ruined you financially; the infamous Hollywood Madame who kept a client list and caused the downfall of several prominent politicians and televangelist; the German serial killer who butchered his victims, stored their bodies in his deep-freezer, and on occasion thawed out a piece or two for dinner. Imagine these folks ahead of you in line and think about how they might have gotten where they are. Tax collector, a prostitute, a serial killer. We could add several others: the HIV-AIDS infected man who intentionally sleeps with other men to spread the disease; the bankers and portfolio managers whose greed helped cause the current economic disaster; political leaders in countries all over the world who starve, torture, murder their citizens for power; the list could go on, and so the line into heaven could get longer and longer. But the question here is: seeing these people ahead of you in line, you have to wonder, how did they get here? Such profoundly evil people in line to heaven. How?

The quick and easy answer, of course, is God’s grace. But that’s not much of an answer because no one is in that line without God’s grace. What does it mean for a serial killer or a avaricious banker to experience God’s grace, repent of his sin, and find himself in a line to heaven? Remember our question from last week: are you envious of God’s generosity? Man’s capacity to receive God’s grace is not limitless. However, there is no limit to God’s generosity. Limitless grace poured into a limited vessel means one thing: overflow; assuming, of course, that the vessel is indeed filled. But for a sinner to be filled requires a certain awareness that he/she is empty in the first place.

Is this the point that Jesus is making about the son who refuses to work but then repents and does as he is asked to do. Having refused to work, the son is ripe with disobedience, rigid with refusal and dissent. Being so far from his father’s will, he is keenly aware of being lost. That despair drives him back to his father’s will and saves him. The other son, accepting his father’s will, eagerly agrees to work but fails to follow through. His disobedience is compounded by deceit. Believing himself to be filled with his father’s will, he is not “empty enough” to repent. He coasts, if you will, on his initial good will, believing that this is sufficient to save him from his father’s wrath.

How do serial killers, corrupt politicians, prostitutes end up in heaven with you, the righteous son or daughter? If they end up there, they do so first because the absence of the Father’s will hurts too much to ignore. How long can a creature turn from its Creator and not feel the yawning emptiness of desire denied? To be created is to have purpose. We are purpose given flesh and spirit. You cannot NOT be what you were made to be for very long and fail to feel the corruption of your refusal. To repent of your refusal is like a tremendous rebound, the further you stretch away from God’s will, the harder, the faster, the tighter the comeback! A glorious SNAP! right back into the will of the Father.

Standing there in line with the other sinners, all of those who recognized the emptiness of their disobedience and repented, you can look around you and see some of the infamous wretches of history. If they are there, they are there because they figured out that they are limited vessels, overflowing with the limitless graces of a loving God. The ones you are not likely to see standing in line are those who believed to the end that they were vessels once filled, always filled, and needing nothing more from God than His push for their own initial yes, they pursue other, smaller desires. Having taken a sip of His grace, they believe their thirst is quenched and drink no more.

Is there a better definition of hell?

Are you jealous of God's generosity?

25th Sunday OT: Is 55.6-9; Phil 1.20-24, 27; Matt 20.1-16
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma


We’ve all heard the joke about St. Peter welcoming a group of people from different denominations into the Kingdom of Heaven and then sneaking them past a room full of Catholics (or Baptists or Mormons, etc) and telling the new arrivals as they near the room, “Be quiet. They think they are the only ones here.” Har, har. Chuckle, chuckle. Isn’t it silly to think that only members of your own denomination are going to heaven? Isn’t it silly to think that only members of your own religion are going to heaven? In fact, it probably is silly, or even slightly prideful to think so. Does this mean that everyone will go to heaven? No. Does this mean that can go to heaven despite our denominational membership? Yes. Does this mean that we don’t need to be members of the Body of Christ to go to heaven? Absolutely not; it means nothing of the sort. So, why is it silly to think that only Catholics, or only Baptists, or only Methodists are going to heaven? Well, as our Lord clearly states in this morning’s reading from Isaiah, “…my thoughts are not your thoughts, nor are my ways your ways…As high as the heavens are above the earth, so high are my ways above your ways and my thoughts above your thoughts.” Given this, let’s ask of ourselves the question the landowner puts to his whiney workers, only make it a question to us from our Lord, “Are you envious because I am generous?”

What does it mean to be envious? Our Lord blesses all of us with certain gifts that He then nurtures in order to move us closer to Him. His love in us is perfected as we use His gifts to serve others. So long as we are using our gifts to serve others, His love is being perfected in us. The constant temptation, of course, is to covet the gifts of others, to envy their blessings and pine for the gifts we do not have. As I lust after your gifts, I ignore my own and God’s love is not being perfected in me. Envy is one of the easiest means the Devil has for distracting us away from our charitable duties. Not only do we serve his ends by failing to serve one another, we fret away in envy, allowing the seed of our Lord’s love in us wither from inattention. For the Devil, it’s a two-fer, two sins for the price of one.

What do we mean by God’s generosity? By nature, God is diffusive Goodness; that is, what God is is Goodness in limitless abundance, diffused without diminishment across His creation. We are attracted to His perfection so that our imperfect nature might be made whole. That it is even possible for us to be made whole in His perfection is His gift of Himself to us. This gift of human nature perfected in the divine was made flesh in Christ Jesus. Think of it this way: Jesus is who we will be if we accept the gift of his sacrifice for us; Jesus is who we were made to be if would only use our gifts in the same way that Jesus gave (gifted) his life for us—willing, sacrificially. The Cross of Calvary and the Empty Tomb of Easter are the fulfilled promises of a generous Father who knows no limits to His abundance. God is not generous; His is Generosity per se. Being generous is not what God does; it is Who He Is.

So, what does it mean then to ask, “Are you envious of our Lord’s generosity?” This question is a direct challenge to and a rebuke of the stinginess of spirit exemplified in the whiney workers who complain to the landowner about the pay they receive for a day’s work. Why do the latecomers receive the same pay when they have not done as much work? What’s the real complaint here? We’ve worker longer, so we deserve more pay. The landowner’s response is just: “My friend, I am not cheating you. Did you not agree with me for the usual daily wage? Take what is yours and go.” This parable is usually read as a rebuke to the Jews who complain that they have done the work of following the Law and now the Messiah pops up and offers the Lord’s mercy to any and all regardless of whether or not the latecomers have fulfilled even one obligation under the Law. The landowner (God) justifies his generosity, “What if I wish to give this last one the same as you? Or am I not free to do as I wish with my own money?” As members of the Body of Christ, are we ready to say to the Lord, “No, you may not do as you wish with your gift of salvation. We’re earned ours; they haven’t.”

If this sentiment rises in our hearts even for a moment, we need to ask again, “Are we envious of the Lord’s generosity?” Now, does this mean that our Lord will save everyone? No, it doesn’t. It means that the possibility of salvation is universal. No one is excluded from the invitation to become a member of the Body. If our Lord’s generosity reached into the freed will of every person and compelled acceptance of this invitation, then we could say that we are not free. What has been made absolutely clear to us is that the Body of Christ was raised from the tomb on the third day, resurrected and ascended, he sits at the Father’s right hand. Also made perfectly clear to us is that the Body of Christ, the Church, will be raised on the last day; resurrected and ascended, she will sit at the foot of the throne in heaven.

Our Lord has every right to be jealous of our love. We tend to wander now and again, and His jealousy reminds us not that He is petty, but that His love is necessary for our eternal lives. Though God is jealous of our love for Him, we cannot be jealous of His love for us. By nature, our God is Love and His love, that is, God Himself, is diffusive. How do you hoard God? How do you “stock up” on God and ration His love for His creatures? You don’t! And if you try, you will fail, and you will fail with dire consequences. Are you envious that our God is generous? If so, then you are wallowing in a bit of dangerous irony, dwelling rather cynically in a very shallow, self-righteous puddle. We must be diffusive of the Love that saved us, or we must get out the way…

Can good Catholics dabble in New Age practices? (Revised)

In this post I want to offer what most Christians believe to be the very basics of our faith. By way of comparison, I will offer as well the New Age/neo-pagan revision of these beliefs, concluding that the two are incompatiable in a single spirituality. For those Christians who may be considering engaging in some sort of spiritual practice that might be suspect, I offer a series of questions at the end to help you decide whether or not any particular practice is compatiable with the faith. This comparison and my questions are of necessity incomplete but nonetheless a good start. Also, as a Catholic priest, one shouldn't be surprised that I have written from a decidedly Catholic perspective.

I. Christian Basics

GOD: “We believe in one God, the Father Almighty, maker of heaven and earth, all this is seen and unseen…” GOD is. No predicate the human mind can discover or invent, no predicate that the human tongue can pronounce or garble can follow the verb “is” in that sentence and be absolutely accurate. In fact, “GOD IS.” God is not a being, the sort of being that possesses existence as a quality. GOD is BEING, per se. Paradoxically, God is wholly Other and intimately Father; He is Absolute Distance and Necessary Love. In more traditional terms, God is both utterly transcendent and personally immanent. Given this, Christians cannot think of their Creator as The Watchmaker Who Makes and then abandons what he has made, or as Earth Spirit, our planet as a god. The Watchmaker image denies God’s immanence in His creation. The Earth Spirit image denies God’s transcendence.

CREATION: “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth. . .and saw that it was good.” Christians prejudice the description of all the things around us when we call these things collectively “creation.” By definition a creature is something that is created, that is, made by its creator. A wedding cake is a creation of the pastry chef. We do not find wedding cakes growing naturally in the forest. Cars are designed and made by engineers. We do not dig up new cars like we would potatoes. Creation, the whole universe seen and unseen, is a creation, designed, made, and sustained by its Creator, God. Creation cannot be its own Creator. This follows logically. That which is created cannot be its own creator since it would first have to exist in order to create itself. That which does not exist cannot cause itself to exist because it would have to exist first in order to be a causal agent. Given this, Christians cannot believe that creation is its own creator. All of creation is necessarily dependent on its Creator, utterly contingent, wholly and completely gratuitous. Creation is worthy of our care because the Creator called His creation “very good.” However, since “goodness” applied to creatures makes sense only in reference to Goodness Himself, Christians cannot worship God’s good creation as they would God Himself.

CHRIST: “We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ…who for us men and our salvation… was crucified…suffered, died, and was buried and rose again…” For Christians, Christ is understood simultaneously in three different ways: Christ the Anointed One (both human and divine), Christ the Event (the coming), and Christ the End (the coming again). Christ the Anointed One is both human and divine, fully man and fully God. He is the Word spoken at creation (“God said…”). He is the Word made flesh (“Born of the Virgin Mary…) and He is the final and unique Self-revelation of God (“And the Word was God…”). The coming of the Christ into human history was an intervention, a breaking into both our lives as humans and into the stories we tell about our lives. He came for a very specific purpose: to offer us the chance to be reconciled to the Father and to live with Him eternally. To accomplish this purpose, he suffered for us, died for us, and rose again in order to make it possible for us to follow him back to the Father. He not only shows us the way back, he is the Way Back. And not only is he the Way Back, he is right now who we will be once we are back: both human and divine, immaculate spirit and resurrected flesh, perfectly human. Given this, Christians cannot believe that Jesus is merely human, or merely divine, or only a teacher/prophet/sage, or that he is one of many saviors sent by God. Jesus Christ is final. He is unique. And his is the only name given under heaven and on earth of our salvation.

To sum up: Christians believe that God is wholly Other and intimately present and working in His creation, a creation that is entirely dependent on His will to exist. Christians believe that the Jesus Christ is the only means of salvation for creation. No other god, prophet, sage, teacher, or savior can offer God’s human creatures the intimate relationship necessary to draw us to Himself.

II. New Age/Neo-Pagan Revisions

Typically, the New Age movement rejects these ideas and replaces them with what amounts to pantheism, that is, a belief that God is His creation, that creation is not only holy but divine, and that Jesus is one savior among many who make it possible for us to find ultimate happiness and peace.

Since the beginning of the Church at Pentecost, Catholics have embraced some combination of these false teachings in order to do what Adam and Eve wanted to do in the Garden—make themselves gods without God. The serpent offered our first parents the knowledge they needed to bypass the laws of their Creator so that they might join the divine pantheon without His assistance. Since that time, various “Gnosticisms” (salvation by knowing how) have plagued the Church. These Gnosticisms are easily identified in the Church today: the rejection of the finality and uniqueness of Christ by overemphasizing his “cosmic” character and by turning his incarnation into an archetypal event that has happened many times before and after the birth of Jesus; the rejection of the apostolic Church as Christ’s living body in an attempt to diffuse the authentic witness of the apostles so that personal experience becomes the sole criterion for the truth of the faith; the rejection of the historical character of the Christ event as essential to determining the nature of the Church herself, that is, by rejecting the historical facts of Christ’s life (that he was a man, that he was a first-century Jew, etc.), New Age Catholics foster false teachings such as the possibility of ordaining women to the priesthood and that the primacy of Peter among the apostles was merely an organizational convenience; the rejection of the Church’s liturgical heritage in favor of syncretistic ritual, novelty for the sake of novelty in sacramental practice, and an emphasis on the sacred feminine that borders on goddess worship (for example, the so-called “Sophia Christologies” of feminist theologians and the insistence of these feminists that the Church embrace inclusive language when addressing God in liturgy, “Our Mother who art in Heaven…”).

Most all of the religious practices of New Age Catholics are in some way a rejection of the proper relationship between the Creator and His creation. Believing that they will make themselves into gods without God, these folks embrace any number of liturgical practices that focus their intellect and will on themselves, making themselves into their own end. In other words, they worship themselves as already divine but fundamentally ignorant of their own divinity. Liturgical worship then becomes a matter of “coming to know” themselves more fully as always-already divine. Of course, this sort of Gnostic salvation creates a class of Fully Knowing Christians who are enlightened in their divinity. And, predictably, this elite class chafes at the authority of the Body of Christ when taught the truth that they are not enlightened but rather darkened in their rejection of the faith.

III. Discernment Questions

Given all of this, how does a faithful Catholic avoid New Ageism in his or her spiritual journey back to God? Ask these questions:

1). Does this practice clearly embody the proper relationship between myself as a dependent creature and God as my creator? Am I being taught to see myself as divine rather than good and holy?

2) Does this practice require me to reject the historical facts presented to me in scripture and tradition? (e.g., does the practice require me to reject Jesus as both fully human and fully divine incarnated as a first-century Jewish man?)

3). Does this practice lead me outward to God, or inward toward myself? (NB. A properly Catholic practice might lead you inward to God but in the end God is always both immanent and transcendent; that is, God is not found solely “inside me.”)

4). Does this practice have a reputable history in the long tradition of the Church herself, or is it something recently invented, cobbled together from other traditions, or merely an updated Gnostic practice rejected in the first four centuries of the Church?

5). Does this practice require me to involve myself with “spirit guides” or “energies” that lay claim to an existence apart from God as Creator?

6). Does this practice require me to reject as fundamental to my created nature my dignity as one made in the image and likeness of God Himself? Or to reject in another person his/her dignity as a creature of a loving God? (e.g., any practice that requires you to reject your embodied spirit as male/female, or violates human dignity by making the person into something easily killed, enslaved, neglected, etc.).

7). Does this practice ask me to ignore God’s providence by seeking answers to questions or seeking after insights into my future through divination?

8). Does this practice ask me to worship other gods or make created things into idols? (e.g., some forms of meditation, yoga, healing all rest on false notions of the body/spirit relationship and require a certain amount of willful negligence of one’s Creator).

9). Does this practice assume my accomplished divinity and then ask me to become more aware of this divinity as a means to salvation/enlightenment?

10). Does this practice explicitly make Jesus Christ the only mediator between myself as a member of the Body of Christ and the Father, or does it require me to place someone else or something else between me and my Creator? (e.g., some forms of “dedication to the Blessed Mother" dangerously push this essential spiritual truth, that is, some prayers in private liturgies explicitly require the believer to acknowledge the B.V.M. as the savior.)

11. Does this practice rely solely on the power of God to achieve His desired end for me and with me, or does it require me to believe that I am capable of manipulating God through ritual or prayer? (e.g., some forms of popular devotion border on the magical in practice, "guaranteed never to fail novenas")

12). Finally, does this practice require me to understand my blessings and gifts as self-made, or am I encouraged to give thanks to God for all that I am and all that I have.

IV. Conclusion: Obedience

This list of questions could go on for several more pages. These are a few of the essential questions to get you started. The best way to avoid New Ageism in your spiritual practice is to obey the Church, that is, to listen carefully to the teachings of the Church and submit yourself to the long wisdom of our mothers and fathers in the faith. This is not some sort of “blind faith,” but rather the practice of humility and trust. Before rejecting a teaching of the Church as false or harmful, ask yourself this question: “Am I smarter, wiser, holier than 2,000 years of God’s saints?” And even if you still find yourself wanting to reject a teaching of the Church, rather than assuming that the Church is wrong and that you are right, assume for the sake of argument that you have misunderstood the teaching and seek after clarification. In my experience, people who have rejected the Church have done so not because they disagree with what the Church actually teaches but because they have failed to understand the Church. I am reminded of the example of a young man who approached me one time and informed me that he had left the Catholic Church because his roommate’s Bible Church pastor had shown him that Catholics worship Mary, a practice condemned by the bible. He was shocked to hear me say that the Catholic Church also condemns the worship of Mary as idolatrous. Without first understanding the Church’s teaching, this young man left the Church not because he disagreed with the Church, but because he failed to understand.

UPDATE: If you would like for me to answer a specific question, I will do so briefly in the combox. Unfortunately, email/comboxes are not the best forum for protracted spiritual direction. If your question is a little more involved, go ahead and leave it in the combox and I will either answer it or refer you to a source for more info.

While you're here, you might as well check out my U.S. WISH LIST and/or my U.K. WISH LIST (scroll down the list for the philosophy books) and help a friar out with the books he needs for classes this academic year! (I know, I know. . .shameless. . .but my book budget is VERY small this year! Tom, I saw that!) :-)

Oh! And the Sunday homily is almost done. . .I'm a little behind in my work. . .we start past tense Italian verbs tomorrow and I'm not sure I know the present tense all that well.

My Occult Past (such as it was...)

What I want to do with this post is point out an ancient theme in the life of the Church that shadows her ministry of teaching the apostolic faith. To do this, I want to tell a bit of my story (a VERY small bit) as a kind of witness to what happens when we give ourselves over to the relativism of the zeitgeist. My goal here is not to denounce or condemn but to inform and caution. This post is written specifically for Christians who are either dabbling in New Agey ideas and practices or those thinking of doing so. This post is not intended to persuade those who have left the Church for various occult practices to return to the Church. Nor am I offering here a systematic philosophical critique of occultism/neo-paganism. I am writing as a Christian priest for Christians who are tempted by a darker side. . .

Was I involved in the occult? Yes. How much so? More than most, not as much as some. Basically, I was an observer and a sympathizer but never a practitioner; that is, I was an avid reader of occult books and an eager audience for occult ideas, but I was never initiated into any occult group nor have I ever really participated in any occult ritual. At most, I can be faulted for attending a few Wiccan Circles at Halloween and invoking angels as a kind of magical power. The worst thing I ever did was become an expert Tarot card reader.

My interest in the occult was always a conscious rejection of Christ. During my years of occult interest I was an Episcopalian, mostly fallen away, but nonetheless fully aware of my baptismal duties and readily admitted to communion in the Church as a confirmed member. Nothing in my family background or schooling or childhood would have predicted an interest in the occult.

My earliest memories of the occult revolve around an near obsession with the TV shows Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. Nothing exactly dark and loathsome there. However, the idea that it was possible for me as a human to manipulate matter with my will alone was very, very compelling. Now, I never believed that the kind of magic done on those shows was really possible. But they stoked my imagination and lead me to further studies.

As a teenager I played with a Ouija Board with one of my friends. We did all the things that kids do to scare themselves—looked for ghosts, chanted “Bloody Mary” in front of the mirror, etc. My first inkling that this sort of thing might be dangerous came when I read a second-hand book on demonology. Is this stuff really, really real? This book scared me just enough to push me into a deeper curiosity and further research. By this time I had been introduced to the Catholic Church on a class trip to Mexico. All of the sacramental elements of the Church were on full-display in the Mexican Baroque churches we visited, especially the National Cathedral. Our Lady of Guadalupe grabbed me in Mexico City, and I had a profound conversion experience at 17, feeling powerfully the call to be a priest. Never having been to Mass or confession or anything else remotely Catholic, this experience of being called to priesthood was confusing and scary.

I decided to become Catholic. My parents objected, though not very strenuously. I became an Episcopalian simply because the Catholic Church in my university town looked like a Quaker meeting house—brick box, no sacramentals, glass doors. Unfortunately, the Episcopal Church at the time (early ‘80’s) was slavishly following the zeitgeist and slowly abandoning its apostolic heritage. With the irregular ordination of women into the priesthood (something I fully supported) and the revision of the 1928 Prayer Book (again, fully supported), the Episcopal Church became a church given over to restrained liturgical experimentation and utilitarian morality. I was enthralled to modern philosophy and postmodern critical theory (feminism, Marxism) and the Episcopal Church gave me nothing solid to hang on to during this bumpy time. It was easy to stay in the Church and worship the zeitgeist. So I did.

The one occult practice that I became very good at was Tarot card reading. It was something of a game for me at first. I would bring my deck to a party and sit in the corner doing card readings for my friends and colleagues. As I did it more and more, it became more and more necessary for me to do it. Two events lead me to see the danger of the practice. One of my Episcopalian friends asked me if I could do a reading through her for her brother; in other words, she wanted me to read her brother’s future without him present. I agreed. I didn’t know her brother. Didn’t know she had a brother. So, I read the cards. What the cards said was exactly on target. Her teenage brother was having an affair with a married woman and the husband knew. Her brother was in danger of being seriously injured or killed. My friend was so horrified that I knew this through the cards that she stopped speaking to me for months. Another incident happened while I was at a party. One of my married friends was having an affair with a married man. I knew this and thought nothing of it. When I read her cards, they told me that she and her fellow adulterer were going to get married. But before this happened her husband would die. She was freaked out to say the least. What I didn’t know at the time was that wedding plans were underway and that her husband was indeed dying. These two incidents caused me to put the cards away. I haven’t touched them since.

Another frightening incident occurred years later when I was at my lowest. While working in a psych hospital in the last 90’s I had two radically different spiritual influences in my life: a Wiccan roommate and a charismatic Protestant supervisor. My life was in shambles. Emotionally and spiritually, I was a disaster. Clutching at any and every spiritual fashion that Barnes & Noble put on its “spirituality” shelf, I drifted from Wiccanism, Druidism, angelism, various kinds of divination, esoteric Christianity, anything but the Real Thing offered through Christ.

During a particularly low period, I came home one evening from work and my Wiccan roommate began to question me about my spiritual life. This was very odd because he was always “open to the diversity” of all spiritualities and encouraged my exploration. When I remarked that his questions were annoying and inappropriate, he told me that earlier that evening he came out of the bathroom and saw a dark cloud hovering outside my bedroom door. The cloud moved away from my door and toward him. He said that he cast a “banishing spell” on the cloud several times and it drifted away outside the house. I was incredulous, of course. He was worried nonetheless and “blessed” the house with salt and incense, etc. Whatever, I thought.

The next morning, I went to my second job and my supervisor (the charismatic woman) pulled me into her office and started pelting me with questions about my spiritual life. Déjà vu. I answered very vaguely, not wanting to know of my interest in the occult. She grew frustrated and blurted out that I was under attack by demonic forces. This woman is insane! Then she told me that she and her prayer group were engaged in spiritual warfare against dark forces trying to influence the local population, and that I was a central target. Needless to say, I was more than a little dubious. She told me that during their prayer group she had a clear mental picture of me being attacked by a black cloud in my home. I asked her when this happened. She said: yesterday, Sunday. The same day my roommate saw the cloud outside my door. I became so rattled that I had to leave.

About a year later I left the Episcopal Church and became a Catholic. After a failed attempt to join what I now know is a dissident Catholic religious order, I moved home and continued working in a psych hospital. There I injured my back and got a staph infection from a patient in the injured disc. I spent two months in indescribable agony. Finally, my doctors discovered the internal staph infection (something rare I’m told) and they began treatment. For seven weeks I administered I.V. antibiotics through a PIC line inserted in my arm and running internally to my heart. It took almost seven months for me to recover fully. My infectious disease doctor told me that I was very lucky to be alive after going more than two months with an internal staph infection! Apparently, staph destroys heart valves. Anyway, during those two months I was completely dependent on my parents for everything—feeding me, dressing me, putting me to bed—I was nearly paralyzed by the pain. The humility of that experience returned me to a desire for Christ and his Church. That’s another story.

I joined the Dominicans in 1999. Being on the inside of the Church as a religious has opened my eyes to a number of problems that I recognize from my days as a fan of the occult. Everywhere, I see religious, priests, the laity giving themselves over to radical feminism and Earth worship; theologians preaching Gnostic doctrines like pantheism and pagan mythologies; the profession of various kinds of utilitarian-situational ethics in the public square; Catholics teaching pro-choice, sexual libertinism; various kinds of syncretistic liturgical theology (a dash of Hinduism here, a pinch of Native American religion there, some Wiccan rituals as decoration); but the final straw for me was then and is now the prominence of “social analysis” in among the “peace and justice” crowd in the Church, an analysis that was nothing more than Marxism in vestments. I should know. I was professed Marxist for years, and I am very familiar with the primary and secondary literature. There is also a superficial interest in postmodern philosophy and critical theory that informs some of the biblical research and instruction in the Church’s seminaries. Again, one of my areas in my doctoral studies was postmodern theory. I know it when I see it. And I know from personal experience what it does to one’s allegiance to the possibility of knowing and acting on objective truth.

Now, I have to say here something that some of my readers won’t like every much. There is nothing wrong on the face of it with being required to read texts that oppose the Catholic faith. I taught an entire seminar on post-metaphysical theologies using thinkers who would never darken the door of a church much less a Catholic Church. Categorically, I am NOT opposed to the academic pursuit of truth. What bothers me is that this stuff is often taught uncritically and presented as compatible with the Catholic faith. There is a difference between reading texts that oppose or deny the truths of the faith in order to “know the enemy” and combat him and being required to read these texts as a replacement for the faith. I firmly believe that most of those who read and believe these texts understand themselves to be believing Catholics in good standing with the Church. I’m not suggesting some evil conspiracy. Like me years before, they have been lead down a primrose path into a garbage heap. And frankly, I have done a poor job of challenging these tendencies, preferring stubborn resistance and polemic to good old-fashioned Dominican disputation. My unease is wholly my own creation.

Then I was despondent that I had left my postmodernist occult life behind only to find it again in the Church. As I grow in the faith, I see less and less of this sort of thing among my immediate peers (professors, younger priests, religious, and laity) but more and more in the Church at large (diocesan chanceries, retreat centers, etc.). We have all seen the websites of religious orders and dioceses that feature one sort of New Age-Gnostic practice or another. It’s out there in the Church as it has always been. But that it has always been there is no reason not to call it by name. For those Christians interested in mediation, bodily prayer, ritual, esoteric philosophy, mystical theology, revelation, and the holiness of the feminine, you won’t find a deeper treasure box than the Church. Keeping in mind the questions I presented in the post on New Agey Catholicism, it is entirely possible to live a good Christian life thoroughly steeped in the mystery of God’s love and in His “hiddenness.” If you choose to spend your time denouncing The Rules or finding loopholes in the rules, then I would suggest that you are as legalistic as the hierarchs you denounce. It takes a lawyer to challenge a law-giver head-on and find the way out of a merely legalistic attempt to control.

My goal here is not to point fingers or denounce but rather to give those who think they need help the help they need to avoid these pitfalls. I tell my story as a way of saying, “I’ve been there.” You may see “demons” as nothing more than the dark side of human consciousness or as truly fallen angels. Fine. Regardless, we are tempted by something or someone to deny the truths of the faith and to seek after our own divinity without the help of our divine Creator. This was Adam and Eve’s mistake. Don’t make it yourself.

Lift High the Cross!

Exaltation of the Holy Cross: Num 21.4-9; Phil 2.6-11, John 3.13-17
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma


Go out, come back. Leave and return. Go out, come back. Exit and enter. Egress, ingress. Exitus, reditus. We are made, and we return to our Maker. How? The Cross. The cross of Christ Crucified is the via media, the middle way from God and the middle way back to God. From God: creation. Back to God: re-creation. Being made and lost, we cannot return to God without God. He set in history—human events, the human story—the means for our return to Him: Christ on the Cross, crucified as one of us, fully human and fully divine—a bridge from here to there. Jesus says to Nicodemus: “No one has gone up to heaven except the one who has come down from heaven, the Son of Man.” And Paul writes: “Christ Jesus, though he was in the form of God, […] emptied himself, taking the form of a slave, […] he humbled himself, becoming obedient to death, even death on a cross.” Now, we should hear the familiar refrain of our salvation: “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.” And so we are saved from the eternal return to nothing from nothing; we are made perfect as our Father is perfect; “being merciful, [He] forgave [our] sin and destroyed [us] not.”

We say: amen. Or do we? If we accept this gift, we say: amen. And then what? Carry on as before? Do we as please? Live in constant regret that we killed God? Try to make a sacrifice worthy of the gift? The poet, Christian Wiman, in a poem titled, “Hard Night,” asks the same question this way: “What words or harder gift/does the light require of me/carving from the dark/this difficult tree?” What words or gifts does the Cross require of us? Paul writes that the coming of the Christ and his obedient death on the Cross, moved God to exalt His Son and to “bestow on him the name that is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bend […] and every tongue confess that Jesus Christ is Lord…” No other words. Let your tongue confess. There is no harder gift to give than the gift given on the Cross. Bow your knees at his name. And then what?

It’s not so certain, is it? Once we have confessed the Lordship of the Christ and bent our knees to his rule, what we do next is no certain thing. With the Gift of the Cross in hand, we might worship it, take it around in procession, put it to work for our health and wealth; we might be embarrassed by its necessity or feel imposed upon to react with faint gratitude. Have you ever thought that there had to be a better way? Another way to achieve your eternal life? Something less bloody, something not quite so gruesome? Have you ever been angry with Pilate, the Jewish leadership, the mob that shouted, “Crucify him!”? Perhaps praying before a crucifix, you felt a dangerous rise of bile and wanted nothing more to do with the cruelty of a god who needs blood to love? Or perhaps you felt a dark fear that once we settled in your heart the gift of a bloody sacrifice, you would never be the same again?

Yet another poet, John Ashbery, writes, “…all was certain on the Via Negativa/except the certainty of return, return/to the approximate.” If we are afraid of the Cross, this is what we fear most: to walk the via media of Christ’s crucifixion means accepting the inevitably of joining him on the Cross. Peter, in a fit of fear and false love, denied the inevitability of Christ’s defeat and, in turn, pushed against the necessity of his own crucifixion. Jesus, knowing the certainty of his Father’s Via Negativa, pushed back, “Get behind me, Satan!” Even then, he was empty, obedient to death, and ready to die on the Cross.

Perhaps we show our deepest gratitude to Christ by emptying ourselves, being obedient to death, and preparing ourselves to die in his name. Perhaps. But what does this mean for tomorrow? For today? Sitting in a room, cases packed, shoes neatly tied, waiting for martyrdom? Nothing so quietistic as all that! Paul says that we should bend our knees and confess Jesus as Lord. Walking this path of worshipful praise cannot be good exercise if we fail to do what Christ himself did: feed the hungry, clothe the naked, heal the sick. Add to this preach the Good News of God’s mercy and teach what Christ himself taught and we have beginning for our gratitude, just the barest start to what must be a life given over wholly to the path of righteousness. That’s a lot to fear. Especially when you know that the one you used to be will not be found again. At most you might think to “the return to the approximate.” But why?

Look at Moses and God’s people in the desert. “With their patience worn out by the journey, the people complained against God and Moses…” Not only are we made and made to return to our Maker, but we are rescued from death by the death of Christ on the Cross and expected then to prepare ourselves for following him to the Cross, obedient to death, bending the knee, confessing his name, and waiting, waiting, waiting for his return to us so we can return to Him. Has our patience worn out from this journey? Do we complain against God and His Church? Our desert is not getting smaller or cooler or less arid. Our days are no shorter. Our nights no brighter. Moses wanders and we follow. And our patience, already silk-thin, rubs even thinner, waiting on the fulfillment of the promise the Cross made in God’s name.

While waiting, what do we do? Some of us persevere, walking the Way. Some of us withdraw to wait. Others walk off alone. Still others erect idols to new gods and find hope in different, alien promises. Some let the serpents bite and thrill in the poisonous moment before death. Perhaps most who were with us at first perish from hearts stiffened by apathy, what love they had exhausted by the tiresome demands of an obedience they never fully heard. Not all the seeds will fall on smooth, fertile earth. If those who walked away or surrendered or succumbed to attacks on the heart, if they are out there and not here with us, what hope do we have of going forward, of continuing on to our own crosses in the city’s trash heap? We exalt the Cross. And they are not lost. Never, finally, lost. Unless they choose not to be found.

We exalt the Cross. Lifted high enough and waved around vigorously enough, even those lost will find it. Even those who, for now, do not want to be found, may see it and be healed, if they will. But they will not see what they must to be healed if those of us who claim to walk the Way do so shyly, timidly, quietly. The Way of Christ to the Cross is not a rice paper path that we must tip-toe across so as not to tear it. Or a shaky jungle bridge over a ravine that we must not sway for fear of falling. Or a bed of burning coals that we must hop across quickly so as to avoid blistering our feet. The Way of Christ to the Cross has been made smooth, straight, and downhill all the way but nonetheless dangerous for its ease. There’s still the jeering mob, the scourge, the spit and the garbage, and there’s still the three nails waiting at the end. But this is what we signed up for, right? It’s what we promised to do, to be.

Our help is in the name of the Lord. Bend the knee. Confess his name. Do so loudly, proudly and do so while doing what Christ himself did. Otherwise, who will find us among the jeering crowd, the spitting mob; who will see the Cross if we fail to lift it high?

Can you be corrected?

23rd Sunday OT: Ez 33.7-9; Rom 13.8-10; Matt 18.15-20
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS Domenico e Sisto, Roma

Priests and religious of long experience will tell you that long after celibacy and poverty have become routine for them that obedience remains the most difficult vow to honor. We can get used to not having just one person in our lives to love intimately, and we can get used to relying on the community treasury for basic needs. However, who among us ever truly becomes accustomed to relinquishing a stubborn will to the authority of another? If anything, we get more willful as we grow older, watching those with authority over us become suspiciously less and less interested in our welfare. Or so it seems. Or so the voice of that sneaky spirit of rebellion whispers to us when we are told something we do not want to hear. What do we say? I’m an adult! I’m well-educated and entitled! I know best for me! I have rights, you know! You are just as bad if not worse! That exertion of self, that pretense of individual autonomy rising in pride against a promise made long ago. And because we are being perfected and not yet so, we need to be reminded of the wisdom of humility. Constantly reminded. The foot cannot walk without the ankle. Nor the ankle bend without the leg. Nor the leg without the knee. And so on. So, a good working definition of humility might be: the submission of one’s body and soul to the necessity of playing well with others. In other words, as Christians we don’t get to take our ball home and refuse to play just because we don’t like the rules of the game. We’re in this game together (like it or not) and sometimes that means (like it or not) that we have to hear that we aren’t playing well with others. That is a message, I dare say, that 99% of us will refuse to hear. And just as many will refuse to deliver.

Despite our discomfort in delivering such a message and despite our anger at hearing such a message, deliver and hear we must. The Lord tells Ezekiel, “If I tell the wicked, ‘O wicked one, you shall surely die [for disobeying me],’ and you do not speak out to dissuade the wicked from his way, the wicked shall die for his guilt, but I will hold you responsible for his death.” My hand may thrust the knife into my enemy’s heart and do so because my enraged brain sends the order; however, I am held responsible for his death—I am, body and soul. Me. Not just my hand, not just my brain. And when I am brought to justice for murder, it is perfectly reasonable for the law to ask: who knew he was capable of murder? Who failed to teach him the value of life? Who failed to speak out and dissuade him from this heinous crime? The law will call this “culpable negligence.” Our Lord will call it “a failure to love.”

Paul, in his letter to the Romans, referring to Christ’s teaching on the greatest commandment, writes: “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another; for the one who loves another has fulfilled the law. . .Love does no evil to the neighbor; hence, love is the fulfillment of the law.” Taking Ezekiel and Paul together we can see that love and obedience are inextricably bound together. Love without obedience is mere affection leading to raucous license. Obedience without love is mere compliance leading to belittling deference. Love with obedience is fraternal correction done well. This why Jesus, all too aware of our fragile egos and nonetheless painfully aware of the consequences of our failure, allows for the elaborate process of calling another to obedience in love: first, one on one; then, one with two or three more; then one with the whole Church. If the Church cannot extract obedience in love from the dissenter, then “treat him as you would a Gentile or tax collector,” that is, treat the stubborn one like an unclean stranger or a traitor to the family. This is not cruel. It is responsible. If you doubt this, read Ezekiel 33.7-9 one more time.

Reflecting on why fraternal correction is so difficult to deliver and receive, I am forced to look carefully in the mirror. I won’t claim to be an average American Catholic since most Catholics aren’t Dominican priests. However, my stubborn will was trained in the modernist assumptions of a working class family complete with highly individualized notions of the person and consumerist definitions of freedom and liberty. Years of education and the religious life itself have done much to inform my intellect about the problems I face as a stubborn mule, but they have done little to move my will. What does Paul say, “I do what I do not want to do. . .” Essentially, the problem is this: when confronted with fraternal correction I immediately argue myself to two conclusions: 1). the person correcting me is not qualified to correct me because he is sinful too, and 2). I refuse to listen because my corrector is motivated by ___________ (fill in the blank with “envy,” “control issues,” “personal dislike,” “political enmity, etc.) and therefore he is not correcting me in love. In one fell swoop I have committed two sins: presumption and lack of charity. And the dry well I have dug for myself gets deeper and deeper.

That explains why I don’t hear correction well. Why don’t I deliver correction well. Basically, I distrust my own motives and fear that the one I am correcting will point them out to me. Who wants to hear the ugly truth about one’s prejudices? There’s also the danger that the other guy will rebut with a correction of his own. And that correction might be true! Ouch. Like most of you, I do not want my autonomy violated by a dubious correction, and I certainly don’t want my freedom restricted by someone with an agenda that fails to take love into account. . .even if what my corrector is trying to tell in love me is true. . .maybe especially if what he is trying to tell me is true! My experience tells me that it is truly the extraordinarily holy person who can deliver and hear a correction without the sins of pride and rebellion stirring up a devilish and over-the-top reaction. Alas, holiness is required of us. For better and worse, we are nothing without love and we cannot grow in holiness without obedience.

Paul’s wisdom is our salvation here: “Owe nothing to anyone, except to love one another. . .” Said another way, possess no debt except the debt of love that you owe to those whom you have promised to love. Alone, we are nothing. Together we are Christ, made one body in one baptism for the preaching of the Word. The discipline of humility that comes from fraternal correction is made possible by and strengthened by a closed mouth and an opened heart. Difficult? Not at all. It’s almost impossible. But if this life in Christ were easy we would have no need for the Church, no need for one another.

What tempts a saint?

22nd Sunday OT: Jer 20.7-9; Rom 12.1-2; Matt 16.21-27
Fr. Philip Neri Powell, OP
Convento SS. Domenico e Sisto, Roma


None of us will blame Peter for his outburst. Jesus has just finished telling his friends how he must suffer and die at the hands of his enemies in Jerusalem. And how, after he has been dead and buried for three days, he will rise again. Peter, the Rock of the messianic faith and keeper of the kingdom keys, pulls Jesus aside and rebukes him. Peter rebukes Jesus! Peter denies the truth of Christ’s impending passion, “God forbid, Lord! No such thing shall ever happen to you.” For our own love of Christ, none of us will blame Peter for his unfaithful outburst; however, Jesus not only faults Peter for his passionate denial, but returns his rebuke with a curse: “Get behind me, Satan! You are an obstacle to me.” Jesus names Peter “Satan.” Adversary. Accuser. He also names Peter “Obstacle.” Scandal. An obstructing stone on the path. Not for the last time does Peter fall for a demonic temptation. If you were asked to pick out the temptation that traps Peter, what name would you give it?

In a prose poem his translator* has titled “[The temptation of the saint],” Rainer Maria Rilke meditates on an unnamed painting of an unnamed saint tormented by lust. Rilke, describing the saint in agony, on the verge of surrendering his battle against temptation, writes, “His prayer is already losing its leaves and stands up out of his mouth like a withered shrub. His heart has fallen over and poured out into the muck. His whip strikes him as weakly as a tail flicking away flies.” Why has this saint fallen? Rilke does not say. His meditation on the painting concludes with a meditation on the contemporary usefulness of paintings such as this. He notes the two extremes of our longing for the divine: “I could imagine that long ago such things happened to saints, those overhasty zealots, who wanted to begin with God, right away, whatever the cost. We no longer make such demands on ourselves. We suspect that he is too difficult for us, that we must postpone him, so that we can slowly do the long work that separates us from him.” Longing for God and zealous, we start with God, unready; or, longing for God but anxious, we defer and break ourselves with work and worry.

Which is Peter’s principle fault? Eager and too quick? Or fearful and delaying? When Jesus rebukes Peter for his unfaithfulness, he says, “You are thinking not as God does, but as human beings do.” Peter must have stared at his Master with complete incomprehension because Jesus turns to the other disciples and explains, “Whoever wishes to come after me must deny himself, take up his cross, and follow me.” Is this what Peter fears when Jesus reveals his fate in Jerusalem? Is Peter quailing at the inevitable pain and desolation of not only losing his beloved Master to their enemies, but knowing first hand what it the scourge and the nails feel like? Peter surrenders the Lord’s passion before it has begun. Unlike the saint in Rilke’s painting who surrenders after a great battle, Peter surrenders at the first sign of trouble. Peter’s rebuke is heated but it comes out of a “heart fallen over…”, a heart fatally wounded by created love rather than a heart eternally healed by the Creator’s love. Peter does not think as God does.

What would you name Peter’s temptation? Pride could work. Fear. Yes, fear plays its part. How about ignorance? He is tempted to rebuke Jesus without knowing the Father’s mind? Yes. Could we say that Peter has been inordinately distracted? Remember: Jesus does not say that Peter has been an obstacle for Peter. Nor does Jesus say that Peter has accused Peter. Jesus clearly rebukes Peter for obstructing his path to the passion that the Father has ordained. Peter has accused Jesus of lying. God has ordered the Passion. How then can Peter exclaim: “God forbid, Lord!”? To Jesus, Peter is Satan, accuser, adversary; to Jesus Peter is a scandal, an impediment. Peter is distracted by his created love, his natural affection and loyalty to the man, Jesus; forgetting entirely, even for just that moment, that this man he loves so furiously is also the Son who must suffer and die. Jesus will not be distracted, and so he turns to instruct his friends—with Peter’s anguished denial still ringing in his ears—that to follow him means not only loving him as Master but becoming him as Christs.

We might say that Peter is both eager and too quick AND he is anxious and delaying. In his love for Jesus he is eager to see him triumphant over his enemies. But this is not the triumph that the Son has come to bring. Now, knowing that his Master is fated to suffer and die, Peter, in a fit of anxious terror, elects postponement of the inevitable for his Master and for himself, and he succumbs to the distraction of his all too human love. This is why the Lord must be so fiercely clear with the other disciples in prophesying for them what lies ahead of them as his friends. Make no mistake, brothers and sisters, as Paul will later write to the Romans, we are called in baptism “to offer our bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God, [our] spiritual worship.” We must love as God does—sacrificially, wholly giving over—and not as man does—possessively, longing for completion.

In the first paragraph of his prose poem, Rilke surveys the painting of the saint writhing in temptation, noting that works like this one, these “strange pictures,” make the ordinary things of our counted days “stretch out and stroke one another, lewd and curious, quivering in the random lechery of distraction.” Having confessed his own anxieties about the difficulties of surrendering to divine love, preferring instead to postpone with arduous spiritual labor the inevitable union, Rilke acknowledges that delay in work is no relief: “Now,…I know that this work leads to combats just as dangerous as the combats of the saints…” Isn’t this what Jesus prophesies for all of us who will reach down, heft up a cross, and walk behind him to suffering and ignominious death? Our devotion is never simply about zeal or comfort, heated assent or cool contemplation; our devotion, the devotion that grounds us to offer our bodies as spiritual sacrifice—as Christ himself did—that devotion is always the denial of self, resistance to and defeat of the temptation to see oneself and one’s imagined needs as the index of Life’s Book. Peter attempts to distract Jesus with his immature love. He throws before Jesus an undeveloped chunk of affection, a glob of emotion. The point of Peter’s rebuke is to draw attention to his own despair at losing Christ to pain and death. Peter makes Peter the point of reference; he shouts his unwillingness to take up his cross and follow Christ to his.

What “random lecher[ies] of distraction” cause you to withhold your sacrifice? What distractions betray your conformity to this present age? How daily, hourly do you fail to be transformed by God’s love and thus fail to be renewed? Do you pull at Jesus’ cloak, hoping to keep him from pain and death? Or do you push him ahead of you, carrying your own cross as he carries his? How do you postpone following after the Lord? Perhaps, like Peter, you hope to deny the inevitability of having to follow him by denying that he must first lead.

Get behind him, Satan! You cannot obstruct what is.

*from The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge in The Selected Poetry of Rainer Maria Rilke; ed and trans. by Stephen Mitchell, Vintage International, 1989, 105.