An Ancient Structure To Beckon Gods"?

[Denise]

Fr. Pat McCloskey, O.F.M., the Editor of St. Anthony Messenger (SAM), published by the Franciscan Friars in Cincinnati, knows he's in trouble.

When Fr. Thomas Reese, S.J., Editor in Chief of the Jesuits' America magazine, was in effect sacked by the Holy See's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in May, Fr. McCloskey was quoted in a Boston Globe story (May 10) as saying, "It would be hard for any Catholic editor not to say, 'Well, if this can happen to America magazine, perhaps it could happen to others.'" Well, yes, McCloskey could be next.

An editorial in SAM (Aug.) bellyached about the sacking of Fr. Reese. The editorial says he was let go because he published dissent and orthodoxy in an equal way, with the editorial claiming that when "treatment is noticeably unequal [in favor of orthodoxy], today's well-educated Catholics know the deck is being stacked." Actually, most Catholics are ill-educated, by the likes of the Jesuits and the Franciscans, and are unable to discern error and recognize the objective truth of the Catholic Faith.

Apparently, SAM is going to keep doing what it's been doing. The cover story for the August SAM is "Labyrinths: The Inward Journey" by Gerilyn Wartonick Herold. Ms. Herold visited La Providencia Spiritual Retreat Center in Alpine, Calif., where Sister Pat and Sister Millie constructed the first labyrinth (which is walked in) in the U.S. Ms. Herold says that when she first saw the outdoor labyrinth, "It looked like an ancient structure to beckon gods. It frightened me." An apt response. She should have turned around and gone home. But she didn't. She got hooked: "As I started the walk..., with each step, I was listening, settling and drifting into a pleasant place of peace." It's too bad Ms. Herold didn't read the Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, signed by Cardinal Ratzinger, where it is stated: "Some physical exercises automatically produce a feeling of quiet and relaxation, pleasing sensations, perhaps even phenomena of light and of warmth, which resemble spiritual well-being. To take such feelings for the authentic consolations of the Holy Spirit would be a totally erroneous way of conceiving the spiritual life" (#28).

Ms. Herold quotes Sister Pat as saying, "We love the labyrinth because it's ecumenical." But Ms. Herold doesn't tell us how ecumenical La Providencia really is. According to two articles in San Diego News Notes (Sept. 1999), La Providencia is deeply into Eastern religions and New Age spirituality. Sisters Pat and Millie offer prayers directed to Mother Earth, accompanied by "the ringing of chakra bells (a practice derived from Hindu beliefs about energy balancing and healing)." On the walls of the retreat house are mandalas (that "symbolize wholeness in Hinduism and Buddhism"). And there are Spring Equinox celebrations and meal blessings with "chimes inscribed with the words, 'we are all mothers of God.'"

But Ms. Herold does tell us this: "Archaeologists believe labyrinths date back 4,500 years, though no physical evidence survives. The 'Earth Labyrinth' -- built to honor the Earth Goddess -- appeared in Crete around 1200 B.C. and is the oldest on record" (italics added). This doesn't seem to bother Ms. Herold in the least.

Ms. Herold introduces us to the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress from Grace (Episcopalian) Cathedral in San Francisco, which is where Matthew Fox (an ex-Catholic priest) holds his "Rave Masses" and other New Age frolics. Ms. Herold says that priestess Artress resurrected the labyrinth in the 1990s (this is true; and by the way, Sisters Pat and Mille caught the labyrinth craze from Artress). Ms. Herold tells us about Artress's book Walking a Sacred Path: Rediscovering the Labyrinth as a Spiritual Tool. But what Ms. Herold doesn't tell us about that book is most interesting.

According to Lee Penn's new book False Dawn: The United Religions Initiative, Globalism, and the Quest for a One-World Religion: "Artress...says that she first encountered the Labyrinth in January 1991, when she decided to 'return to a Mystery School seminar with Dr. Jean Houston, an internationally known psychologist, author, and scholar whom I studied with in 1985' [Walking a Sacred Path, pp. 1-2]." Penn comments: "In the 1990s Houston was best known to the public as the 'guru' who helped Hillary Clinton contact the spirit of Eleanor Roosevelt. In 1966, Houston and her husband Robert Masters had published The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience, a book that hailed the 'transformative effects' of properly guided use of psychedelic drugs."

Penn continues: "With Artress' New Age cosmology comes unorthodox theology. 'The labyrinth is a large, complex spiral circle which is an ancient symbol of the Divine Mother, the God within, the Goddess...' [Walking a Sacred Path, p. 67]."

In a sidebar, SAM tells you how "to locate a labyrinth near you." Thanks, SAM, for leading your 300,000 unwary Catholic readers into the fever swamps of the pagan goddess and the New Age.

newoxfordreview.org

[KarlB]

Ms. Herold introduces us to the Rev. Dr. Lauren Artress from Grace (Episcopalian) Cathedral in San Francisco, which is where Matthew Fox (an ex-Catholic priest) holds his "Rave Masses" and other New Age frolics.

Birds of a feather.. flock together..

[Marguerite F]

Ms. Herold quotes Sister Pat as saying, "We love the labyrinth because it's ecumenical."

I wonder if sister has ever read what some of the ancients thought of labyrinths...following is a story many have read in their Greek Mythology classes about the Minator and its labyrinth...or "house of deception".

Ovid says that Daedalus built a house in which he confused the usual passages and deceived the eye with a conflicting maze of various wandering paths (in errorem variarum ambage viarum) (Metamorphoses 8.161): THE LABYRINTH

"so Daedalus made the innumerable paths of deception [innumeras errore vias], and he was barely able to return to the entrance: so deceptive was the house [tanta est fallacia tecti]" (8.166-68).

Ecumenical? With who ? For who? The gods of the pagan realms....how sad.

St. Francis DeSales pray for us and for our religious leaders that they may gain wisdom and understand of the One True God.
Blessings,
MargueriteF