Monday, October 17, 2005
DR. BOURGEAULT ON TAIZE AND PSALMODY - AND FALLING IN LOVE WITH A MONK
The may 2004 Quarterly Newsletter of the Order of St. Helena includes an article by Rev. Cynthia Bourgeault, Ph.D. titled "The Hidden Wisdom of Psalmody" in which she writes:
In Christian chant, neither the vibration itself nor the music is sacred. Certainly Christian chant makes use of vibration as all chant does. But it is not primarily about sacred vibration. Christian chant is also not about the rhythmic, almost hypnotic repetition of a single prayer phrase or mantra—although the very popular Taize chant, named after a small monastic community in eastern France that began developing this new style of chanting shortly after World War II, works on this principle. Their powerful new form of Christian chant resembles some of the more ancient traditions of Eastern and Sufi chanting. But it is a departure from the traditional understanding of Christian psalmody.
According to Bourgeault Taize chant is a "departure from the traditional understanding of Christian psalmody," but can she speak with authority?
The Order of St. Helena is an Anglican religious community for lay and ordained women according to their website.
Bourgeault speaks for The Contemplative Society, "an ecumenical, not-for-profit association founded in 1997 to encourage a deepening of contemplative prayer based in the Christian tradition...rooted in prayer, silence, mindful work, and in the 1500-year-old wisdom of our Benedictine contemplative heritage. There is a picture of Brother Roger on the website.
Another page in the website features a letter from Cynthia Bourgeault on the death of Brother Roger whom she refers to as "one of my own beloved mentors on the path. It was thanks to him that I became a Christian in the first place."
The "Program Components" page in The Contemplative Society website indicates that "Centering Prayer is the basis of our teaching, but all meditation paths are welcome and honored." They engage in "Wisdom teaching" and say about it:
Deepening contemplative practice leads to a deepening, or "wisdom," understanding of the Christian spiritual path. Through "Wisdom Schools" with resident teacher Cynthia Bourgeault and regular guest teachers, we attempt to awaken to the unitive dimension of the gospel and to encounter afresh the person of Jesus Christ as the source and fulfilment of our Christian Wisdom."
The Fall Schedule elaborates further on the teachings of The Contemplative Society. There you can read that
* The heart is "the organ of spiritual perceiving within each of us, created for awakening, reorienting, transformation and maturing."
* At the Society retreats seekers learn of "Jesus as Wisdom Master and inner teacher".
* You can study in their "Wisdom Schools." They tell the prospective student that "From time immemorial there have been wisdom schools to raise human consciousness and transform society, and work with the core practices that sustain this transformation of consciousness: meditation, contemplative prayer, lectio divina, the language of sacred gesture, and the daily practice of mindfulness, inner observation, and surrender."
* In Cynthia Bourgeault's session titled "Learning To See" "Unitive (or non-dual) consciousness will be explored with particular attention to kenosis, or self-emptying, the path taught and modeled by Jesus as the "royal road" to unitive consciousness."
* You can also discover that the May 5-7, 2006 program in Ottawa, Ontario will feature Cynthia Bourgeault and Richard Rohr.
This is where the mentoring of Brother Roger leads? Should a Catholic parent have a problem in sending their teenage Catholic son or daughter to Taize?
Well, her book, LOVE IS STRONGER THAN DEATH: THE MYSTICAL UNION OF TWO SOULS is featured on the SteinerBooks website along with numerous books by Rudolf Steiner and other Anthroposophists, including one titled "Isis Mary Sophia." There is a category on the list titled "Channeling, Angels, and Past Lives." Robert Powell's book THE SOPHIA TEACHINGS is there. Powell is the translator of MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT. There is a whole series of Findhorn books, which should not be a surprise considering that Findhorn was the first New Age utopian community and uses channeling of elemental spirits to make vegetables grow larger than life, and since Findhorn uses Taize services. James Twyman's books are there. Twyman is the man who is resurrecting Catharism. There are books on meditation written by Steiner. Keep in mind that Steiner channeled his material--or to be more accurate he accessed the Akashic Record to obtain his information. There is a segment on Spirit Beings and material on Tarot Cards, and another on the Holy Grail. The list is an occult reading list par excellence. So what is a follower of Brother Roger doing among them?
Bourgeault's book is published by Lindisfarne Books. Some of you know the implications of that.
She has written a book on centering prayer.
She has written for "Gnosis" magazine.
Perhaps the most obvious evidence that the mentoring of Brother Roger has led Cynthia Bourgeault into territory that violates the First Commandment according to the CCC is this book review:
Love Is Stronger than Death: The Mystical Union of Two Souls
Cynthia Bourgeault
Lindisfarne Books 05/02 Paperback $14.95
ISBN 1-58420-002-2
Rafe, a 70-year-old Trappist hermit, met Cynthia Bourgeault, a 50-year-old Episcopal priest, at a monastery in Snowmass, Colorado. Their three-year love affair was, as the author puts it, "a union of hearts that would endure beyond the grave and allow us to grow toward one complete soul." Following in the spirit of Christ, they practiced radical self-abandonment, which in some spiritual circles has been called "the Fifth Way." In this pioneering work, Bourgeault discusses the nature of their conscious love and "the great grace of work together beyond the grave." Couples who feel a strong erotic connection, share a deep and rich spiritual practice, and are completely devoted to each other will find cues here on how to keep their dance going beyond death.
More than any other book in recent memory, Love Is Stronger than Death reveals the spiritual adventures available to those who are true soul mates. Bourgeault discusses the four building blocks of soul work beyond the grave: the reunion of souls, building the second body, the vow, and working in the wonders. She goes on to share her post-death encounters with Rafe and the manifestations of his "body of hope."
Whereas the traditional Christian idea of afterlife tends to emphasize souls at rest, Cynthia's experiences of Rafe involve mobility and majesty. She speaks of "the pure essence of his presence and the immense energy of his love — minus the physical body." And most amazing, Bourgeault has access with her beloved to a "book of life" containing "the sum total of their earthly impressions and memories, whether or not these experiences were actually shared in human life." This is a wonder inducing guidebook to the marvels of love and the spiritual life.
In other words, Episcopal priestess hermit Dr. Cynthia Bourgeault, who was mentored by Brother Roger of Taize, is a medium who channels the Catholic hermit monk Brother Rafael Robin, with whom she began a love affair prior to the divorce from her second husband. That, in short, is what we are being told. Channeling is a practice of Theosophy and Anthroposophy and New Age religion, all of which are condemned by Roman Catholicism.
The monastery in Snowmass, Colorado where Bourgeault met Raife is this one. It is linked on the centering prayer website. These monks have a substantial ministry within Roman Catholicism.
It would be easy to dismiss the book report as the imaginings of a fevered reviewer if it were not for the words of Bourgeault herself. In the August 1998 issue of "Raven's Bread," a quarterly newsletter for hermits, in her essay "SoundingSolitude", she tells us that she is a professed hermit now living in British Columbia. She complains of the difficulties of "the craft" as it is currently practiced in modern life, and indicates Br. Raphael Robin was her hermit teacher in Snowmass, Colorado, a Trappist Monastery. She tells us that "Some people thought Raphael wasn't a true hermit - a position that he himself agreed with completely." And she tells us that
Rafe, I believe, was a dervish. The term is Sufi. It doesn't exist in western Christendom, where one must chose the fork in the road between "cenobitic" or "eremitical" expressions of the religious life. Dervish is neither - or both. Some dervishes spend their lives mostly in craggy solitude. Others, more typically, emerge from their solitude to teach or take on a disciple, to pass on their heartfire to another living soul; some even marry and raise families. But under this variety of lifestyles and circumstances, there is something unmistakable that characterizes a dervish - an innermost essence that is always there, regardless of the outer expression.
How does a Catholic monk become a dervish? Perhaps there are clues in Bourgeault's article in "Modern Paths". Titled "From Here to Eternity," in this essay she describes Rafe's reading material:
I didn't connect with Raphael right away. After that first conversation, there didn't seem to be any real urgency to get to know him better. We were already old friends, and there was an easy sense between us that the details of each other's lives would fill in as they needed to. He'd stop by sometimes with eggs or bread from the monastery, or to work on the old pump that kept the house where I was staying precariously in water. Little by little we discovered that we'd read the same books and wrestled with the same questions. Like myself, he was fascinated by G.I. Gurdjieff, that early twentieth-century spiritual genius who had laid out a path of transformation frequently referred to as the "Fourth Way." Most of Rafe's library up at the hermitage (in addition to his Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare) consisted of books by Gurdjieff and Gurdjieff's three most prodigious disciples, P.D. Ouspensky, Maurice Nicoll, and J.G. Bennett. In a self-taught fusion of Fourth Way ideas and Christian apophatic mysticism, his deepest wish was "to have enough being to be nothing."
Gradually over the course of the next two years, as I shuttled back and forth between Maine and Colorado, our lives became more intertwined. One dismally dark Maine winter day he phoned me up out of the blue to see if there was an uninhabited offshore island he might come live on — "to join you more deeply in what your life has been," he said. And one golden Colorado morning that next summer, in the back of the monastery chapel right after mass, he again took both my hands in his and searched my eyes with a look so full of solemn portent that I knew he'd be by later on and the love so long smoldering between us would burst into flame.
Is this what monastery life is about today?
CCC 2116: All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
Where were you taking Catholic children when you taught them spirituality, Brother Roger? Why are you condoning Taize, Pope Benedict?
From The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita: A Masonic Blueprint for the Subversion of The Catholic Church a booklet written by John Vennari:
Eventually, a Pope would be elected from these ranks who would lead the Church on the path of "enlightenment" and "renewal." They stated that it was not their aim to place a Freemason on the Chair of Peter. Their goal was to effect an environment that would eventually produce a Pope and a hierarchy won over to the ideas of liberal Catholicism, all the while believing themselves to be faithful Catholics. (p. 3)
Now then, to assure ourselves a Pope of the required dimensions, it is a question first of shaping for this Pope a generation worthy of the reign we are dreaming of. Leave the old people and those of a mature age aside; go to the youth, and if it is possible, even to the children....You will contrive for yourselves, at little cost, a reputation as good Catholics and pure patriots. (p. 8)
Pope St. Pius X, who ascended to the papal chair in 1903, recognized Modernism as a most deadly plague that must be arrested. He wrote that the most important obligation of the Pope is to insure the purity and integrity of Catholic doctrine, and he further stated that if he did nothing, then he would have failed in his essential duty.
St. Pius X waged a war on Modernism, issued an Encyclical (Pascendi) and a Syllabus (Lamentabili) against it, instituted the Anti-Modernist Oath to be sworn by all priests and theology teachers, purged the seminaries and universities of Modernists and excommunicated the stubborn and unrepentant.
St. Pius X effectively halted the spread of Modernism in his day. It is reported, however, that when he was congratulated for having eradicated this grave error, St. Pius X immediately responded that despite all his efforts, he had not succeeded in killing this beast, but had only driven it underground. He warned that if Church leaders were not vigilant, it would return in the future more virulent than ever. (p. 14)
It looks like St. Pius X was prophetic.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
