Would you be shocked to hear that seminarians at our Redemptoris Mater seminary were being taught that Catholicism has been “contaminated” by archaic religious systems?
Don’t be. It’s a deeply held belief of men who have taught at the seminary here and they have committed themselves to teaching it.
Let me explain.
Thank you Chuck for doing this research. While in the Way things are presented little by little, so that it is very hard to tell what is wrong with their teaching. Plus, we are trained very early on to hold our catechists in great esteem. There is absolutely no thought in the Way that what we are being taught is against the teaching of the Church and heretical.
ReplyDeleteI hope my friends still in the Way read your article and realize that real discernment means taking a critical look at everything that is said, and when things are wrong they consider coming back to the Church for the truth.
Thank you Chuck and Tim.
Quetajodes, Pinche y Bastardo Senior Chuck White.
ReplyDeleteMore "fruit" of the Neocatechumenal Way.
DeleteFor your info, these NCW priests/ seminarians are now teaching the Spanish language so the young are so gong ho. Father Edivaldo had a mass in Spanish sometime in early Jan. We are an island and a people with our own language. So what now? Mass in Spanish to be introduced later on?
DeleteThe "fruit" of name calling...ai adai.
DeleteAs for the Masses in Spanish - Fr. Santiago celebrated a "special Mas" in Spanish in Chalan Pago a few months ago before being sent back to Japan. I thought the seminarians were supposed to be learning our local Chamorro language. It's all part of the facade.
imo this is the infra-structure being put into place for the anti-pope & the tribulation.
ReplyDeleteJust out of curiosity...what ever happened to the Nuncio in responding to our letters, or even Rome for that matter? Maybe, this is just seen as a petty problem that is to die down soon? We are wasting our breath if the higher ups are not doing anything about these issues!
ReplyDeleteWe don't know and we don't care. We will speak truth and do what is right anyway. It was lay people like us that finally put a stop to 50 years of clerical sex abuse. It took 30 years.
DeleteYeah I wrote to the Nuncio about you (Tim) and Chuck White and the rest of you. 80 pages of this bashing fellow Catholics! YOU HAVE FAILED GOATS!
DeleteOld man from Santa Rita
Nuncio reads short and to the point letters. Read protocol about writing to the nuncio. You just made a fool of yourself.
Deleteyou think that your bashing, scares us, think again old man from Santa Rita. You are a neighbor of the village in Agat....SCANDAL!!!!!! !!!!!!!!!!!!!
May you should go the the Library and do a research and write a thesis on scandal!!!!!!
Letters to the nuncio are not the most important things. What is important is the speaking of truth and justice on this page. This Tim Rohr has always done.
DeleteHey old man... thanks for writing to the Nuncio. All attempts to get the Nuncio's attention to what is happening on our island is worth the time and effort, even if it comes from people like you who do not understand what is really happening. The facts are the facts, and the truth that is known will set you free. Hopefully it will set us all free of this NOW (Neo-Ostrich Way) nonsense.
DeleteIt seems that many of the traditional catholics, who converted to the NOW, are so emotionally commited to their communities that they refuse to aknowledge the truth. Those who grew up or discovered God for the first time in the Way do not know any better. But those walking the way, who grew up in the TRUE CATHOLIC CHURCH, should be able to recognize that something is different in a very wrong way, especially if their intent is to stay Catholic. Many Catholics have converted to different faiths such as Protestant, Lutheran, Jehova, etc. If they choose Kiko's teachings, which goes against sacred beliefs of the Catholic faith, then they choose to convert to the Way. It is okay if you choose the Way, just stop pretending to be Catholic. Go do your thing somewhere else and stop leeching of the Catholic community here on Guam and around the world. That includes you Anthony Apuron; you have abandoned your sheep. Stop using and abusing your sheep, leave the money and power behind, and follow Kiko if you choose him as your pope.
Rene Girard: article found in alumi.stanford.edu
ReplyDeleteHe began to see the Bible as "anti-myth"—a description of humankind's long climb up from barbarity. Violence, retaliation and a vengeful God evolve over centuries into themes of forgiveness, repentance and the revelation that the scapegoat is innocent, culminating in the Crucifixion.
"People are against my theory, because it is at the same time an avant-garde and a Christian theory," he says. "The avant-garde people are anti-Christian, and many of the Christians are anti-avant-garde. Even the Christians have been very distrustful of me."
During a meeting last year of an informal philosophical reading group, Girard recounted the Old Testament story of Joseph, son of Jacob, bound and sold into slavery by his "mob" of 10 half-brothers. At first, "they all get together and try to kill him. The Bible knows that scapegoating is a mob affair." Joseph establishes himself as one of the leaders of Egypt and then tearfully forgives his brothers in a dramatic reconciliation. It is, Girard said, a story "much more mature, spiritually, than the beginning of Genesis." Moreover, the story has no precedent in archaic literature.
"Like many biblical stories, it is a counter-mythical story," he said, "because in myth, the lynchers are always satisfied with their lynching."
Girard's anti-sacrificial interpretation of Christ's passion has many ripple effects? How could it not?
ReplyDeleteIt's based on the concept that God is non-violent, which is certainly true. In Girard's case, though, God's non-violence precludes Jesus' sacrifice and even precludes God judgments and punishments.
There are several problems with this. Here are just some of the issues:
1) We cannot pit God's love against his justice, two of His perfections. Pitting them against each other forces us to ignore His justice.
2) Girard says that it is absurd to think that Jesus and his Father made a "pact" to have Jesus violently sacrificed for us. In truth, Jesus was both the Priest (offerer) and the Sacrifice. Girard seems to forget that the Father and the Son both possess the divine nature in the Trinity, which makes the analogy of a father and son "pact" break down pretty quickly.
3) One cannot forget that Jesus imbues suffering with meaning through His Passion on the Cross. A meaning that it did not have before and a meaning which allows us to join our sufferings to His. That is not absurd.
Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary: Understanding the Bible Anew Through the Mimetic Theory of René Girard
ReplyDeleteSECOND SUNDAY OF EASTER -- YEAR A
RCL: Acts 2:14a, 22-32; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
RoCa: Acts 2:42-47; 1 Peter 1:3-9; John 20:19-31
"Dreaming of Peace" is a sermon that is among my most passionate and, I think, most articulate cases for nonviolence at the heart of the Gospel. It was inspired by a nightmare about executions during the night before preaching it. Waking up so revulsed by the dream of executions, it occurred to me that that's what was behind Thomas' doubts. Doubting a resurrection itself would be strange, since Thomas had recently seen Jesus raise Lazarus. From the sermon:
No, Thomas was struggling with the idea that God would choose to raise someone who was executed in shame. Thomas doesn't just demand to see Jesus in order to believe. He demands to see the marks of his execution! He wants to see the nail prints in his hands and the place where the sword pierced his side. He was still shuddering at the horror of the one whom they thought to be the Messiah having been executed. Jesus was supposed to save his people from centuries of being oppressed. Jesus was supposed to help them turn around the oppressive violence of the Romans. How could one who seemed so powerless against that violence actually be the one who is saving us from it? Impossible! God raise him in power as the Messiah? He'll believe that when he sees the nail prints and puts his hand in Jesus' side.
And here's the main point:
The cross as a repulsive execution brings us face to face with the heart of the matter: that our cure for violence is sacred violence, a violence we say is O.K. for the sake of keeping order, and that God's cure for violence is completely different than ours. God submits to our sacred violence in the cross and reveals it as meaningless and powerless compared to God's power of life. The resurrection of the one whom we executed puts us face to face with absolutely the most difficult thing for us to believe -- namely, that the only way to ultimately cure violence is to completely refrain from doing it, even if it means submitting to it, revealing its meaninglessness compared to the Creator's power of life. We need to keep believing in the violence we use to try to stop others from using violence on us. We refuse to believe that there could be a way of stopping violence that doesn't involve violence -- or "force," since we generally want to call what we do something else other than "violence." Thomas wants to know, we want to know, how someone who seemed so powerless against the violence could actually be the one saving us from it. If we want to truly be challenged by something impossible for us to believe, try believing that there is ultimately a nonviolent way to stop violence. Believing that God could raise someone from the dead is nothing compared to that.
When we talk about "faith in God," it seems to be no problem for Christians to talk in terms of a God who backs our most deeply held values of sanctioning violence against the people we deem as bad, evil. But such talk increasingly causes me to have doubts about what we really mean by "faith in God" if we claim a Messiah who suffered violence but never dished it out. Is the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ the full and true revelation of God, or not? Is there some additional event needed to save us -- like a second coming of Christ that's completely different -- namely, full of sacred violence -- than the first coming? Isn't that why apocalypses like the Left Behind series are so popular among Christians? Like Thomas on Easter evening, we just can't quite come to believe that an executed Messiah is what saves us. http://girardianlectionary.net/year_a/easter2a.htm Penny
Tim, just out of curiosity, do u think the neo priests are using this lectionary since this is what is being taught at the RMS seminary? what do u think this sermon means as it goes against the teachings of the church? We are defending our faith!
ReplyDeleteJust to clarify, the book is Girardian Reflections on the Lectionary. Just reflections, not a lectionary. But yes. Girardian thought obviously permeates the seminary as Chuck White has demonstrated here: http://junglewatch2.blogspot.com/2014/04/the-xiphias-gladius-project.html
DeleteI wonder if Junee who attends the John Paul II "Seminary" has a non-Neo spiritual director who corrects the misconceptions he is being taught at the Neo seminary. Otherwise his theological development will be distorted and he may develop some Neo attitudes and thinking unconsciously.
DeleteUnbelievable! A Renee Girard Lectionary. I wonder if the neo priests use this for their homilies! That is a very scary thought.
ReplyDeleteFound this interesting
ReplyDeleteI am not saying that George Martin is promoting Girard's theories in his works. Martin can speak for himself in terms of his presentation of religion in his songs of fire and ice. But in his attentiveness to the details of archaic religion he might be inadvertently showing us some things that Girard found fascinating and worthy of serious inquiry. Girard believes that Christianity offers something new in terms of the religious aspirations of humanity and sees it as counteracting and negating the sacrificial violence that is justified by archaic religion. I highly doubt that Martin's simulation of medieval Catholicism will end up playing this role in his series. But in showing his audience a vision of archaic religion, Christians might find the opportunity to discover for themselves how their own Faith is different from the archaic religions that have preceded the revelation of the Gospel.
Father Steve Grunow is the CEO of Word on Fire Catholic Ministries.
Anon 9:09 pm:
ReplyDeleteWe should not disagree with Girard that Jesus is the antidote to man's violence. We should hold that He is indeed that, but also much, much, more. Having said that, we should reject some of Girard's premises:
1) That natural religion began with its myths, prohibitions, and ritual human sacrifice in order to quell violence. Despite man's history of violence, this is a severely pessimistic view of fallen man. It cannot account for all religion, and all sacrifice, for that matter. On the contrary, man's natural religious proclivities are God-given, although able to be corrupted. I have yet to find in Girard's writings any acknowledgment of this. Take Cain's thank offering, or Noah's as counter examples from the Sacred Scriptures. Or the countless sacrificial instructions found in the Old Testament.
2) That the gospels, especially the passion of Christ should not be interpreted sacrificially. On the contrary, one would have to reject huge swath's of Sacred Scripture to hold this position, and indeed Girard has (or or least he did in years past). Sacrifices commanded by God, including the Passover sacrifice, in Old Testament would need to be dismissed instead of being held, as the Church Fathers did, as "types". Kiko calls the reflections on the Atonement of St. Augustine, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, St. Anselm, and St. Thomas Aquinas as "juridical and clumsy rationalizations" and "deformations". I hope to recap the prayerful reflections of these Doctors of the Church soon as a rebut. One would also have to adopt an atrophied view of the Trinity to stay with Girard. Christ was both the Priest and the Victim of the sacrifice of the Passion, as the events and words of the Last Supper so clearly show.
I meant, "Abel's" offering. Sorry about that.
Delete