Thursday, July 07, 2005
EMAIL FROM LEE PENN
Until now, I have said little in writing about Benedict XVI, or about his selection of Archbishop William Levada, presently ruling in San Francisco, as the new Prefect for the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - Ratzinger's old job.
Below, I offer the data that I have in hand, suggesting that the appointment of Levada to the CDF my prove to be a disaster. I see two alert flags:
1. Levada's support for the United Religions Initiative, and
2. his sad record in dealing with abuse by Catholic clergy.
Defenders of the Pope say that Levada is academically and intellectually qualified for his new job, and that the past is not necessarily a prologue. That would be nice, biut I would not bet the rent -- or the beer money -- on this being so.
Use this data, or forward it to others, as you see fit.
Lee
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Item 1 -- from my article published in March 2002 by The Christian Challenge, a traditionalist Anglican magazine:
URI Gains RC Support,
Despite Vatican Opposition
Report/Analysis By Lee Penn
The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
March 22, 2002
The Vatican has firmly opposed the "syncretism" of the United Religions Initiative (URI) founded by California Episcopal Bishop William Swing, but that has not stopped some U.S. Roman Catholic leaders from supporting the controversial interfaith venture anyhow.
In fact, the worldview of the URI, which some believe can lead only to a one-world religion, now appears to be common among U.S. Catholic leaders as well as Catholic religious.
The 2000 URI Annual Report's list of donors includes the Roman Catholic Diocese of Oakland, California (the first Catholic diocese in the U.S. to give official support to the URI); women religious from six orders, and male religious from two orders.
Newer URI backers within the U.S. Catholic Church include the Archdiocese of San Francisco. Interfaith forums and services which took place January 24 show that the Archdiocese, while not officially endorsing the URI, is cooperating closely with it. Moreover, several prominent Catholics in the Archdiocese, including the director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs, serve on the URI board of directors.
The interfaith forum and prayer services held in San Francisco January 24 to coincide with the papal interfaith prayers for peace at Assisi the same day, show the extent to which URI beliefs and practices now influence the local Catholic Church.
At the Mass for Peace held at the National Shrine of St. Francis on January 24, Monsignor Robert E. McElroy, preaching about the parable of the Good Samaritan, said in part: "We must...create a common vision of the new heavens and the new earth which can be created by the conversion of the human heart: from war to peace, from hatred to love, from power to justice...Let us unite in prayer and action with the Hindu and the Orthodox, the Jew and the Buddhist, the Presbyterian and the Muslim, so that we can journey forth as Samaritans all, united in the search for true peace and true community."
On the afternoon of January 24, the Archdiocese of San Francisco and the University of San Francisco (USF) held an "Interfaith Dialogue," attended by 100 people, including Archbishop William Levada, who sat impassively as some Catholic speakers fudged on the Christian faith.
The event featured a multi-faith panel of discussion leaders, among them Fr. Francis Buckley, S.J., head of the theology department at USF. Buckley asserted in part that "All human religious traditions contain something of truth and value planted there by God, and a respect for God urges us to appreciate that truth and value, take it into our own hearts, and be enriched by it."
"Hence Catholic universities like the University of San Francisco should try to make Jewish students better Jews, Muslims better Muslims, Hindus better Hindus, Baptists better Baptists, and Catholics better Catholics. This calls for a paradigm shift,"from "distinguishing 'us' from `them,' to envisioning a powerful magnetic force, drawing all persons and institutions toward a mysterious center, and thus drawing them closer to one another."
Another one of the several speakers, Fr. Francis Tiso of Our Lady of Mt. Carmel parish in Mill Valley, California, avowed his love for "my Lord Jesus Christ" more clearly than the other Catholic speakers. He also noted that religious extremism is not the only cause of violence in the world, and that the faithful are persecuted.
Nevertheless, Fr. Tiso followed Bishop Swing's lead in going from rejection of religious violence, to rejection of evangelism, and linking the first with the last. He said, "Could we restrain ourselves from proselytism and coercion?" He also proposed that would-be converts to Christianity be sent back to their native faiths.
Bishop Swing described the URI's history, and said that people now see interfaith work as "essential" after September 11. He said, "We have to come to grips with the violence in our own scriptures, with all the times that we call people heathens, pagans, and infidels, and ... with how much of the religious market we wish to corner."
In contrast to all the other symposium leaders, Imam Abu Qadir Al-Amin of the San Francisco Muslim Community Center spoke clearly and unapologetically from within his own tradition, explaining how the tenets of Islam are conducive to interreligious peace and dialogue.
Archbishop Levada wound up the event by quoting an aphorism by Catholic dissident theologian Hans Kung that is a favorite of Bishop Swing and the URI: "No peace among nations without peace among the religions; no peace among the religions without dialogue between the religions."
On the evening of January 24, there was a "Interreligious Prayer Service" at the Catholic Cathedral of St. Mary of the Assumption in San Francisco. The bulletin for this service listed eight URI board members as prayer leaders or participants in the ceremonial lighting of candles for peace; they included Swing and one other Episcopal cleric, a Hindu nun, and a Muslim.
During the service, also attended by Levada, there were prayers and scripture readings from Hindus, Buddhists, Muslims, Sufis, and Bah'ais, along with prayers and scriptures offered by Jews and Christians.
This--the sequential offering of prayers and holy texts from representatives of many religions during a single service-gave the archdiocesan prayer service an appearance of syncretism that the papal service in Assisi avoided.
In Assisi, the members of each religion prayed and held services in separate rooms, before gathering for speeches and non-religious ceremonies in common. Cardinal Walter Kasper, president of the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity, wrote in the Vatican newspaper L'Osservatore Romano that Christians and followers of other religions "cannot pray together" because their prayers are expressions of different faiths.
*The Coming New Religion*
The Episcopal Bishop of Oregon, Robert L. Ladehoff, was listed as a 2000 donor to the URI. Other Anglican prelates who have stated support for the URI include former South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu; Episcopal Presiding Bishop Frank Griswold; James Ottley, former Anglican Observer at the UN; Samir Kafity, former Bishop of Jerusalem; and Michael Ingham, Bishop of New Westminster (Vancouver), Canada.
The URI also has attracted support from New Age and pagan quarters. Donors include an elder of the Wiccan Covenant of the Goddess and the Lucis Trust World Service Fund. The Lucis Trust promotes the writings of Alice A. Bailey, a mid-1900s Theosophist who claimed to channel the "Ageless Wisdom" of the Tibetan spirit guide Djwhal Khul. Theosophy is a Gnostic movement that arose in 1875 and has had significant influence on New Age and occult movements worldwide since then. Dale McKechnie, Vice President of the Lucis Trust, said in 1998 that the teachings of Alice Bailey "oppose what would be called orthodox Christianity. The one overshadows the other."
A key URI supporter who has longstanding links with the theosophical movement, Robert Muller, a former Assistant Secretary-General of the UN, has hailed Swing as a sage equivalent to Plato and Aristotle. In a vision of the world as it might be in 2013, Muller wrote, "Humanity is now a united world community of nations, not only economic and political, but also spiritual, following the path opened in the last century by Dag Hammarskjold and U Thant in the United Nations, by Robert Schuman in Europe, and also throughout the millennia by prophets and founders of religions, and by great sages such as Plato, Aristotle, Maimonides, Huxley, Albert Schweitzer, Teilhard de Chardin, Thomas Berry, Bishop William Swing and others."
Muller assigns an ambitious role to the URI: "The role and responsibility of the new United Religions Organization and of the World Parliament of Religions will be no less than to give humanity a new spiritual, planetary, cosmic ideology to follow the demise of communism and capitalism."
Muller views the UN as central to the coming New Religion. In My Testament to the UN, he wrote: "At the beginning the UN was only a hope. Today it is a political reality. Tomorrow it will be the world's religion."
*Sources available upon request
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Permission to circulate the foregoing electronically or reprint it is granted, including to other media outlets, provided that there are no changes in the headings or text.
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Item 2: this article, published in November 2003 by The Christian Challenge:
Catholic Support For Controversial Movement
Grows Despite Hierarchy's Opposition
By Lee Penn
The Christian Challenge (Washington, DC)
November 14, 2003
THE VATICAN stands firmly against it.
Nonetheless, Catholic support for it has spread worldwide, beyond the usual array of dissident Catholic theologians, priests, and religious orders.
"It" is the eight-year-old, controversial interfaith venture, the United Religions Initiative (URI), founded by liberal California Episcopal Bishop William Swing. Far from including only the major ancient religions, the URI has opened its doors to "spiritualities" of all sorts, including those of the pagan, occult and New Age genre. Some critics point to evidence that the URI will act to distill from these many belief systems a one-world religion. Though still relatively unknown, the URI has grown to 201 chapters and more than 15,000 adherents around the world, and has attracted some major benefactors.
At Rome in 1996, Bishop Swing received a firm rebuff from Cardinal Arinze, who was then the head of the Pontifical Council for Inter-Religious Dialogue. According to Bishop Swing, the Cardinal "said that a United Religions would give the appearance of syncretism and it would water down our need to evangelize. It would force authentic religions to be on equal footing with spurious religions."
Archbishop Michael Fitzgerald, who worked under Cardinal Arinze (and is now his successor), pointedly ignored Bishop Swing's invitation to attend the 1997 URI summit conference.
Since then, the Vatican has restated its opposition to the URI. In a June 1999 letter to Homiletic & Pastoral Review, a magazine for Catholic priests, Fr. Chidi Denis Isizoh of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue said: "Religious syncretism is a theological error. That is why the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue does not approve of the United Religions Initiative and does not work with it."
As the San Francisco Chronicle reported in June 2000, "Swing found that the Vatican wanted nothing to do with his organization."
MANY CATHOLICS, however, are not following the Vatican lead. Open supporters of the URI in the episcopate have included Cardinal Paul Evaristo Arns (the retired Archbishop of São Paulo, Brazil), Archbishop John Baptist Odama (from Uganda), Thomas Gumbleton (auxiliary Bishop of Detroit), and Archbishop John Quinn of San Francisco (the retired Archbishop of that city).
William Levada, the Archbishop of San Francisco, has not officially stated support for the URI. Nevertheless, the Archdiocese of San Francisco is--in practical terms, if not formally--cooperating closely with the URI. Diocesan spokesman Maurice Healey agreed that "through its actions, the Archdiocese has viewed the URI positively." Fr. Gerard O'Rourke, director of the Office of Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs for the Catholic Archdiocese of San Francisco, has been an enthusiastic supporter of the URI from its beginning; he served on the URI Board of Directors until 2002.
The Jesuit leaders of the University of San Francisco (USF) also support the URI. Fr. John Lo Schiavo, S.J. (Chancellor of USF) served through 2000 on the URI Board of Directors. In April 2001, Fr. Steven A. Privett S. J. (current president of USF) praised Bishop Swing's "realization that dogma divides and action unites" when he introduced Swing to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco. The Rev. John P. Schlegel, S.J., (President of USF from 1991 through 2000) donated to the URI in 2000.
Sister Bridget Clare McKeever, director of the Office of Spirituality for the Catholic diocese of Salt Lake in Utah, publicly endorsed the URI in 2001.
The Catholic Diocese of Oakland, California, donated to the URI in 2000--the only Roman Catholic diocese yet to go on the record as doing so.
URI activities have also been supported by Catholic Relief Services, the New Camaldoli Hermitage in Big Sur, California, the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, the Religious Orders Partnership (associated with Global Education Associates), Pax Christi USA, and many orders of nuns.
John Borelli, Associate Director of the Secretariat for Ecumenical and Interreligious Affairs of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB), said in November 2002, "Since the Archdiocese of San Francisco is involved in the URI, the Catholic Church is involved."
In March 2003, Borelli said, "My advice to Gerry O'Rourke from the start is that all kinds of interfaith activities are beneficial and he should be involved in the URI if he feels it is a worthwhile project." Borelli added that there has been "no formal communication from the Vatican to the USCCB about the URI." Thus, the USCCB bureaucracy is a de facto supporter of the URI.
Catholic support for the URI is worldwide. Five of the 37 URI Global Council members are Catholic, including Fr. James Channan, of Pakistan (a Consultor for the Vatican Commission on Religious Relations with Muslims and prior Vice-Provincial of the Dominican "Sons of Mary" order), and Fr. Dr. George Khoury (President of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal of the Greek Catholic Church, in Israel).
Other prominent Catholics who have endorsed the URI include Fr. Thomas Michel S.J. (director of the Jesuit Secretariat for Interreligious Dialogue); Fr. Joseph Wainaina (who has been the National Pastoral Coordinator for the Kenya Episcopal Conference); and Fr. Albert Nambiaparambil, who served in the 1990s as Secretary of Interreligious Dialogue for the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India. Catholics in Belgium, Brazil, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Uganda, Zimbabwe, and other countries have taken leadership roles in local and regional URI activity. Dissenting theologians supporting the URI include Paul Knitter (senior editor at Orbis Books and professor of theology at Xavier University), Leonard Swidler (professor of "Catholic Thought and Interreligious Dialogue" at Temple University), and Hans Küng.
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Sources available upon request. Permission to circulate the foregoing electronically, or reprint it, is granted, provided that there are no changes in the headings or text.
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Item 3: from my book, False Dawn:
See pp. 161-165 for details on the collaboration of the Archdiocese of San Francisco with the URI -- there are lots of additional details and footnotes here.
The bottom line ... Levada supports Swing's United Religions Initiative. And the interfaith officers at the US Conference of Catholic Bishops are OK with that.
Go to World Net Daily's on-line store (linked from wnd.com), or Amazon, or Barnes and Noble, or the publisher (reachable through http://www.falsedawn.us) to buy the book.
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Item 4: this collection of newspaper stories about Archbishop Levada's less-than-glorious record pertaining to the sex abuse scandal in the US:
"ArchBishop Levada's 'Holy' Record"
http://www.mgr.org/LevadasRecord.html
(The MGR site is run by a Catholic mystic in Portugal, who is a severe critic of the hierarchy and an advocate for abuse survivors.)
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If the Levada appointment is a practical sign of where the Roman Catholic Church is heading under Benedict XVI, then ...
Kyrie eleison
Lee
