Red flags are up!
He writes and speaks on things of a Œspiritual nature¹ and defines spirituality in his book *The Holy Longing* as what we do with the fires inside of us, about how we channel our eros*.
Attached please
find a little review on Fr. Rolheiser's writings. See
what you think.
Perhaps they are not documented enough? His writings are
not authentic
Roman Catholic but those of the 'other' sort that calls
themselves
Catholic. Unfortunately this kind is in many stations of
religious life.
I was speaking
to a director of religious ed at my new parish. She
warned me that
I might not like sponsoring a person into the Church or
coming to RCIA
because they like to present all sides,even the most
"liberal" because we all come together at the
Eucharist. Father Rolheiser
definitely
agrees with that! She is right in that I could not be silent
in the face of
heterodoxy and indeed must not be. If all this liberal,
feminist,
new-age, gnostic junk can be presented and all are forced to
'tolerate' it,
then why can't Marian Devotions and Adoration of Jesus in
the Blessed
Sacrament also be presented--that is if all sides are truly
'welcome'.
Evil can only be
overcome with good we know from Holy Scripture and from
Pope JPII. I
hope to further adoration and other true devotions in my new
parish.
My home parish is in a state of great disarray. I am still
coordinator of
the hours of adoration there but can no longer teach there
(I am a Marian
Catechist). But my diocese is proudly 'american catholic'
and I am sure
you understand what I mean by that. It is not easy to be a
Roman Catholic
here!
But we do the
best we can and pray for change and for holiness to win
out. A
number of the dissenters listed on Our Lady's Warriors have been
invited to my
diocese and paid for by diocesan funds. I give directly to
the parish
office because my money cannot go to sponsor dissent.
Let me know
what you think of the review .
What I see in a cursory search is that this priest was a
presenter at the infamous 'religious education' conference that is held in LA
every year. I looked at his website and see the picture of him, a nice
looking man in civil, not clerical, attire. In skimming an article on St.
Therese he compares her to Teilhard de Chardin!
He has not a clue! My gut feeling is not too
good. He appears to be a very popular lecturer and writer of a sort of
spirituality that is like that of a cross-less Christ. He writes about
another author thus:
To die in a good way, she states, is not a question of
whether or not death catches us in a morally good moment or a morally bad one
(dying drunk in a bar as opposed to dying in a church). Rather, to die a happy death
is to die in honesty, without pretence, without the need to lie about our
lives.
Red flags are up!
Ave Maria!
There is one more area that I could comment
upon in Fr. Rolheiser's works
and it is something that I see in the "liberal" religious in my area
too. They do not seem to believe in the supernatural or in miracles.
Those things are pooh-poohed or ignored.
In Fr. Rolheiser's writings on St. Therese
(tormented on her celibate cot)
he
writes of her illness calling it a severe depression when she was a
child and her sisters were going to Carmel. What he
does not mention is
how she came out of that and that occurred when she saw Our
Lady smile.
Yes, the novenas and prayers of her family were heard by Our
Lady and
from her statue--now known as the Lady of the Smile- the
smile of Our
Lady cured the little Flower. Father does not seem to
have noticed that.
In
his book "The Shattered Lantern"" he writes :...nor is the road
back
that of miracles, apparitions, inexplicable healings, Marian
apprearances
and extraordinaty religious experiences. Yet, I am here
to tell you that
my
reconversion some 11 years ago occurred at the hands of Our Lady,
Queen of Peace, at Medjugorje. But I have heard our
'progressive'
religious attack all miracles and scripture; for some reason
they cannot
accept these tings of heaven. Nor could the scribes and
pharisees of Our
Lord's time with the miracles before their eyes. So sad.
Red flags are up!
He writes and speaks on things of a Œspiritual nature¹ and defines spirituality in his book *The Holy Longing* as what we do with the fires inside of us, about how we channel our eros*.
Fr.
Rolheiser is a Roman Catholic priest and member of the Oblates of Mary
Immaculate. He is a lecturer and
writer with a weekly column that is carried in more than 50 newspapers
worldwide. He is the author of
numerous books as well. He has been a priest for 28 years.
Fr. Rolheiser has been a speaker at the Los Angeles Religious Education
Conference that is conducted yearly and that is where I first encountered his
name.
He writes and speaks on things of a Œspiritual nature¹ and defines
spirituality in his book ³The Holy Longing² as ³what we do with the fires
inside of us, about how we channel our eros².
Finding that definition a little confusing, I went to the dictionary
and the definition of eros is: the aggregate of pleasure-directed life
instincts whose energy is derived from libido and another definition is that
eros is: love directed toward self-realization.
Whoa!
The Œchanneling of eros¹ does not seem to be in line with a
spirituality as taught and understood by the Roman Catholic faith. Father
Rolheiser that how we channel that fire is our spirituality and compares the
burning of the spiritual fires in Mother Teresa, Janis Joplin and Princess
Diana.
One of those truly is a model for authentic spirituality and has been
beatified by the Church but the other two do not show great promise for leading
souls to union with God.
Father¹s
writings include writing of Œspirituality of sexuality¹ and says this of
celibacy: "...when Christ went
to bed at night he was in real solidarity with the many persons who, not by
choice but by circumstance, sleep alone... Anyone who because of unwanted
circumstances is effectively blocked from enjoying sexual consummation is a
victim of a most painful poverty... To sleep alone is to be poor.
To sleep alone is to be stigmatized... outside the norm for human intimacy and to feel acutely the sting
of that... when Jesus went to bed alone he was in solidarity with that pain, in
solidarity with the poor².
Fr. Rolheiser also written of St Therese: Therese was, by nature, a very lonely
personŠshe lived celibate and single in a monastery within which there were
long periods of silence and the rules forbade most kinds of intimacy and
contact. Her loneliness was more
of a moral natureŠit is in this deep inner place that we ultimately feel most
alone.
More deeply than we long for a sexual partner, we long for
moral affinityŠour deepest longing is for someone to sleep with morally.
This preoccupation with the supposed sexual spirituality of
Our Lord Jesus Christ and of St. Therese is certainly something to give
concern. Father goes on to write of St. Therese as she ³slept alone on her celibate
cot² that ³she was, as are all restless persons, tormented by constant
yearning.²
I never got that sense that this dear Saint was ³tormented²
and certainly not because she slept celibately and alone! Yes, she is the Saint
of desires but as St. Augustine said of the knowledge of God, ³Our souls are
restless until they rest in You².
The desires and restlessness are met in the knowledge of God. Our Lord and many of His dear saints
were not Œblocked¹ from sexual consummation!
Rather they gave totally of themselves and the nuptial
meaning of their bodies to God for the furthering of the Kingdom of God.
In another area, Father writes about his four pillars that
support a Œhealthy marriage of Christianity and spirituality¹. They are: private prayer and private
morality (whatever that is), social justice and mellowness of heart and
spirit. Contrast that to the four
areas of the Catechism of the Catholic Church with the common area being
prayer. The other pillars cited in the Catechism are the Profession of Faith
based on the Apostles Creed, the Celebration of the Christian Mystery based on
the Sacraments and Life in Christ based on the Commandments and teachings of
the Church.
Father Rolheiser asks in one writing what does it mean to
Œlose one¹s soul¹? Not eternal
damnation, he suggests. but it is to become Œunglued¹ or to fall apart.
³When I don¹t know where I am going, then I lose my soul.
This is what Jesus meant when He asked, ³What does it
profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul.²?
This reviewer can see where to come unglued might mean the
loss of peace but the loss of the eternal soul is something totally different
and Jesus meant what He said when He said that the loss of the soul that meant
eternal damnation was the greatest loss of all.
In another recent writing from July 10, 2005 Fr. Rolheiser
writes that ³We commit the unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit when we
live so long inside of a lie that our soul can no longer recognize truth or
forgiveness. That¹s why Martin Luther
warned: ŒSin honestly¹. In
John¹s Gospel, Jesus doesn¹t talk about the sin of the Holy Spirit. But gives
its lesson instead in reverse. He tells us that the SINGLE condition to enter
the Kingdom, to go to Heaven, is to refuse to lie, even if we are weak and
sinful². All of this seems to fly
in the face of the Beatitudes! Is
it not possible for an Œhonest¹ person who commits all sorts of crimes and sins
to come to damnation?
There are
uncountable Œspiritual¹ writers in this day and age. One who is a priest and
who has lived Holy Orders for many years and who had many years of training to
enter that Sacrament, does command a certain respect based on those facts
alone. Such a person is deemed credible and perhaps as a guide to help souls in
the seeking of God and in the Catholic sense because he is a priest. Yet the Œspirituality¹ that Father
writes of is of his own thought and making and not in keeping with the science
of spiritual direction so long established in the Roman Catholic Church. There
is a great deal of self-introspection and not enough looking to Jesus Christ,
our Lord and Savior, for fulfillment. There is not the seeking of the graces
Our Lord merited on the Cross for our salvation and the means of living in that
state of grace so as to be pleasing to God. Much talk of categories of loneliness or a nebulous
spirituality does not guide anyone to Truth. And Truth is more than just not
the telling of a lie. The need to accept all that Jesus revealed to us through
the Apostles and through the Church He founded does not seem to carry weight
but rather we can figure things out for ourselves with our categories and
gnostic knowings.
This reviewer cannot recommend the writings of Fr. Ronald
Rolheiser for those interested in authentic Catholic spirituality and searching
to know Jesus Christ, the Savior. Authentic prayer and devotions, meditations
on the Passion, the reading of Holy Scripture and frequent reception of the
Sacraments will be, by far, the better investment of time.