Wednesday, August 10, 2005
WHAT IS HAPPENING TO THE CATHOLIC RELIGIOUS LANDSCAPE ?
Shepherds of Christ Ministries is an umbrella group for Our Lady of the Holy Spirit/Our Lady of Light. Rita Ring and Fr. Edward Carter (now deceased) are the visionaries at the foundation of this apostolate. The books and messages come through the two of them. There are many pictures in the linked website of the image on the Clearwater, Florida bank building, and the story behind it. Shepherds of Christ Ministries bought the bank building for more than two million dollars and operate out of it a sort of shrine. They also operate a shrine in China, Illinois, as well as the Morrow, Ohio facility, and presumably Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center.
It looks solidly Roman Catholic. They are saying all the right things about Eucharistic Adoration, the Mass, the Blessed Virgin, prayer for priests. But there are those Gnostic Jesus eyes. There is the priest accused of sexual abuse and forbidden to minister whose spiritual books are nevertheless being distributed at the Center website. There are those troubadour love songs. There is the triteness, and the plethora of visionaries seeing a multitude of things including a shapeshifting Mary.
There is another apostolate dedicated to the Holy Spirit in Cincinnati, Ohio. Recently at Mass I happened to notice a supply of free booklets titled "Novena to the Holy Spirit: Help me to know you" written by George E. Schulhoff A.H.S. This booklet is published by the Apostles of the Holy Spirit, 2709 Woodburn Ave., Cincinnati. As you can see by clicking the "Holy Spirit Chapel" link on the left at this webpage, they operate a chapel out of the same facility as Our Lady of Light/Our Lady of the Holy Spirit. George Schulhoff was not a priest. He founded and ran Schulhoff Rental Equipment and Sales, devoting spare time to the founding of the Apostles of the Holy Spirit beginning in 1948.
Some of the statements in the booklet cause me to hesitate. On day two George writes "Wake me up" as Gurdjieff, founder of the Enneagram, would also desire. On day four Schulhoff asks the Holy Spirit to "take possession of me." On day six the gift of piety "will bring you to ecstasy in My intimacy." His day eight reference to "Love - Fear" brings James Twyman's talk on the same two subjects immediately to mind. Twyman's source according to some was "A Course in Miracles". Interesting that Apostles of the Holy Spirit and Jesus are mentioned in this index to a book presented by the Foundation for a Course in Miracles. They are not necessarily talking about the same thing, of course, but the love gospel is very much a part of "A Course in Miracles" if this index is any indication. It is certainly not Catholic.
OUR LADY OF LIGHT PUBLICATIONS
Within the website of Our Lady of the Holy Spirit Center is the webpage for Our Lady of Light Publications. I could not find a separate address for this publishing house.
There is an organization out of Sante Fe, New Mexico which is titled Our Lady of Light Publications, where you can also read Mary's messages, including this Letter of Love, delivered through the writings of visionary Michelle Rios Rice Hennelly.
Hennelly receives messages from Mary in the form of dictated letters which she disperses via her website. The letter of love linked above is an interesting example of this. In that letter you can learn that Mary is the Divine Cosmic Mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth. Her messages are primarily about love, including love-making, and about higher knowing, meditation, spiritual practices and prayer.
Hennelly assures us that Mary is a divine being who is not about religion, dogma or division; and that in essence we are exactly like God and that we too are divine love. She tells us that we are in the end times and that the "Age of God" is approaching.
Hennelly describes contemplation as "a process of examining what is in the mind and how it affects us, while meditation takes us beyond the mind. Contemplation is important to come to know what is in the mind and how it influences our perception of and our experiences of the world." I think I can hear St. John of the Cross groaning!
In an elaboration on love-making, Hennelly tells us that
During love-making this life-force is unleashed and in orgasm, for a moment, we experience God. The small self is left behind, and we experience our essence joined with God. So the energy of love-making is a sacred gift, and love-making itself is an opening to light, love, and God. his (sic) is a complex topic, as are many of the topics Mary has taught me. Love-making is not sex. It is not lust. It is really not of the flesh. It is about the Spirit coming into and filling one. Mary describes the energy of love-making as sacred and love-making itself as a blessing. She says that the joining of two souls in love-making is a miracle that few people understand.
Mary wants to dispel our confusion about the true nature and purpose of love-making. She wants to restore it to its proper place in God's plan for us as a way to experience the divine and a path to God....
Love-making occurs when two souls, who are joined in love and whose hearts are open, come together in a bond of intimacy and mutual commitment. In love-making the sacred life-force comes alive and joins with the divine energy of love in the heart. The joining of these energies brings the lovers to a higher level of consciousness and opens them to an experience of the divine....
...the body becomes the temple in which the divine comes to life as God created it to be. The energy created in love-making can be used to expand our light, to heal ourselves and others, and to create as God creates. It can be used to change water into wine, multiply loaves and fishes, and calm the waters. This is part of the miracle of love-making and the energies related to it that Mary says few people understand.
What Hennelly is describing in those passages is sex-magic promoted by occultism--magical sacred sex--the alchemical wedding. Ritualized it is the Hieros Gamos brought to the attention of the world in THE DA VINCI CODE. Occultists believe that sexual energy can be harnessed to bring about the will of the participator.
The second part of Hennelly's letter discusses the need to "awaken." If you have read any of the material of Russian occultists G. I. Gurdjieff and P. S. Ouspensky, that term will be very familiar. Awakening is a major component of their occultism. Their idea of being awake is to learn to know clairvoyant, parapsychological, occult worlds.
Hennelly suggests that we turn to Christ, Buddha, Krishna, and Mary in the midst of the coming wars and confusions which will usher in the antichrist.
More can be read about Hennelly and her husband R. Kevin Hennelly at this page in their website.
Michelle Hennelly is a "gifted mystic, visionary, healer, and spiritual counselor." R. Kevin Hennelly "received a BA in Economics from University of Notre Dame and a MS in Foreign Service and a Law degree from Georgetown University. After practicing international law for several years, he entered the field of psychology, earning a MA in Counseling Psychology from Pacifica Graduate Institute and a MS in Clinical Psychology from The Fielding Institute. He spent a number of years as a psychotherapist and college professor before devoting himself full-time to writing and publishing.
You can see the books they have published here, among them MARY'S WAY: ROMANTIC LOVE AS A PATH TO GOD.
The Notre Dame Magazine website promotes this book, calling it "A perspective on love and marriage and how intimacy can be a path to God." What does it say about the University that they are promoting this book, described on Hennelly's website as a disclosure of "the sacredness of sexual energy, and the power of the feminine as embodied in Mary [which] has been intentionally concealed since the early days of Christianity. It culminates in stunning revelations about Jesus and Mary Magdalene, the passion of Jesus, love and suffering, the last Fatima message, the demise of institutional religion, and the momentous changes currently facing our world"? Perhaps it says that Notre Dame University is no longer Catholic?
The Blessed Virgin Mary was--well--a Virgin. Attributing this sexual message to her is offensive in the extreme.
There is an abstract online also at the Notre Dame website (scroll down) of R. Kevin Hennelly's "Working Paper #95 - July 1987" titled "The Psychological Roots of Political and Ideological Violence: A Jungian Perspective."
Access: New Age Esoteric Web Link Index webpage devoted to channeling provides a link to Hennelly's book A TIME OF FIRE. You can read endorsements of the book here, including one by Robert Powell, Ph.D., Co-founder of the Sophia Foundation and author of The Sophia Teachings. Powell, you may recall, is the translator and promoter for Valentin Tomberg's book MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT.
One last installment of the Hennelly's love gospel can be read here. It's pure New Age rhetoric.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
