Still Running Off at the Keyboard

Saturday, November 19, 2005

JUSTIN PASSED THE BAR EXAM

so "congratulations" are in order.

Now we need to pray up a permanent job for him at the firm where he has been working temporarily!

# posted by Carrie : Saturday, November 19, 2005

Friday, November 18, 2005

PICTURES OF ORTHODOX CHURCHES

Justin sent in a link to this website that has hundreds of pictures taken in Eastern Europe of Orthodox churches and people. You can spend hours looking at all of them. I've chosen a few of the gems to blog if you don't have time to go through them.

Orthodox wedding (Why can't American wedding dresses look like this one?)

Russian church interior

Bulgarian church

Polish interior

Russian gingerbread church

Russian convent on a spring evening

Russian church interior

Cathedral, St. Petersburg

Polish interior

Polish icon

Russian church

Serbian interior

Barbed wire in Serbia

Polish interior

Russian church

Poland--priest with candlesticks

Polish interior

Polish interior

Russian church

Polish interior

Russian vestments

Russian cathedral

Russian church

Russian church

Cathedral of St. Basil

Face of a Serbian Patriarch

Serbian ritual

Belorus church

Russian monastery

Serbian interior

Polish interior

Polish interior

Russian church w/northern lights

A hand

Polish interior

Greek church

Icon

Russian monastery

Polish church at night

# posted by Carrie : Friday, November 18, 2005

JESUITS PURSUING THE RELIGION OF PSYCHOLOGY

The name "Jesuit" often produces a groan in traditional Catholic circles. Their fall from grace is widely known. The Jesuit-in-chief of "America" magazine Fr. Thomas Reese resigned shortly after Benedict XVI was elected. His magazine had been the object of complaints from Cardinal Ratzinger about coverage on sensitive Church issues.

Jesuit run Georgetown University often makes the news with their opposition to things Catholic--most recently a speech by Cardinal Arinze. How did the Jesuits go from being "Pope's men" to being leaders of dissent in the Church?

While researching psychosynthesis, an interview with Dr. William Coulson turned up in Google. It sheds some light on the Jesuit situation.

When Coulson's name comes up, it is usually in connection with the IHM nuns, a community that subjected themselves to the mental fiddlings of the people at Esalen, and specifically to Carl Rogers' student William Coulson. That fiddling is well represented in the interview. But there is something else there as well.

From the interview:

COULSON: The college campus was sold. There is no more Immaculate Heart College. It doesn't exist. It's ceased to function, because of our good offices. One mother pulled her daughter out before it closed, saying, "Listen, she can lose her faith for free at the state college."

Our grant had been for three years, but we called off the study after two, because we were alarmed about the results. We thought we could make the IHMs better than they were; and we destroyed them.

TLM: Did you do this kind of program anywhere else?

COULSON: We did similar programs for the Jesuits, for the Franciscans, for the Sisters of Providence, of Charity, and the Mercy Sisters. We did dozens of Catholic religious organizations, because as you recall, in the excitement following Vatican II, everybody wanted to update, everybody wanted to renew; and we offered a way for people to renew, without having to bother to study. We said, we'll help you look within. After all, is not God in your heart? Is it not sufficient to be yourself, and wouldn't that make you a good Catholic? And if it doesn't, then perhaps you shouldn't have been a Catholic in the first place. Well, after a while there weren't many Catholics left.

TLM: Now, you mentioned that the religious orders had received a mandate from Vatican II to renew themselves according to the original spirit of their founders, which would have been wonderful.

COULSON: Yes.

TLM: For example, the original spirit of the Jesuits was Saint Ignatius Loyola...

COULSON: That's right. Speaking of Saint Ignatius, I brought with me a letter that Carl Rogers got, after we did a workshop at a Jesuit university in the summer of '65. One of the young Jesuits, just about to be ordained, wrote as follows about being with Rogers at an encounter group for five days: "It seemed like a beautiful birth to a new existence. It was as if so many of the things that I valued in word, were now becoming true for me in fact. It is extremely difficult to describe the experience. I had not known how unaware I was of my deepest feelings, nor how valuable they might be to other people. Only when I began to express what was rising somewhere deep within the center of me, and saw the tears in the eyes of the other group members because I was saying something so true for them, too-only then did I begin to really feel that I was deeply a part of the human race. Never in my life before that group experience, had I experienced so intently; and then to have that --
TLM: "Reacting to my phoniness"?
COULSON: "My phoniness." But what is his phoniness? Well, his phoniness is among other things his Catholic doctrine. Because if you look within yourself, and you find the Creed, for example, you can imagine someone saying, "Oh, you're just being a mama's boy, aren't you? You're just doing what you were taught to do; I want to hear from the you." The proof of authenticity on the humanistic psychology model is to go against what you were trained to be, to call all of that phoniness, and to say what is deepest within you. What's deepest within you, however, are certain unrequited longings, including sexual longings. We provoked an epidemic of sexual misconduct among clergy and therapists-
TLM: And it seemed to be justified by psychology, which is supposed to be a science. Now, the documents of Vatican II are never read, but they include beautiful and profound things. One can also find very naive things, including the statement that theology should profit from the insights of contemporary social science. I don't know which document that was, but it gave you people. ...
TLM: ...these other orders, like the Jesuits, even when they saw that the IHMs were almost extinct, nevertheless they invited the same team in.
COULSON: Oh, yes. Well, actually we started with the Jesuits before we started with the nuns. We did our first Jesuit workshop in '65. Rogers got two honorary doctorates from Jesuit universities. They thought we were saviors. I don't know whether you remember, but in '67 the Jesuits had a big conference at Santa Clara, and there was a lot of talk about the "Third Way" among the Jesuits.
TLM: You were involved with that, too? It had to do with lifestyle.
COULSON: Yes, lifestyle. We did not consult directly on that conference, but we were cheerleaders.
TLM: What is this Third Way?
COULSON: The first two ways are faithful marriage and faithful celibacy. But now there was this more humane way, a more human way-all too human as I see it today. The idea was that priests could date. One priest, for example, defined his celibacy for me as, "It means I don't have to marry the girl."
TLM: Only a Jesuit could have said that.
COULSON: As a matter of fact that wasn't a Jesuit. I think the Jesuits are capable of bouncing back because they had such strong traditions of their own, and God willing they will. A good book to read on this whole question is Fr. Joseph Becker's . It reviews the collapse of Jesuit training between 1965 and 1975. Jesuit formation virtually fell apart; and Father Becker knows the influence of the Rogerians pretty well. He cites a number of Jesuit novice masters who claimed that the authority for what they did-and didn't do-was Carl Rogers. Later on when the Jesuits gave Rogers those honorary doctorates, I think that they wanted to credit him with his influence on the Jesuit way of life.

Coulson pulls no punches where humanistic psychotherapy is concerned, and he should know, being at the center of it for a number of years.

Humanistic psychotherapy, the kind that has virtually taken over the Church in America, and dominates so many forms of aberrant education like sex education, and drug education, holds that the most important source of authority is within you, that you must listen to yourself. Well, if you have a baby you're carrying under your heart, get rid of it. Women who came into the Center for Feeling Therapy with children were forced to put them up for adoption. The only person who was allowed to have a baby, in an eerie preview of David Koresh, was the principal founder of the institution. All the other babies were killed, or sent away, in the name of getting in touch with the imperial self.

Coulson notes that transpersonal psychology is the newest trend and that it is a religion that masquerades itself as science:

TLM: Vitz tells me that there's a lot of soul searching going on now in the profession of psychology; he says they're exhausted. Would you agree with that, that they are at a dead end?

COULSON: Indeed, they've had to turn to New Age psychologies. You remember Maslow coined the term "the third force" for humanistic psychology. But Maslow quickly came to see that there was something on the horizon which he called the fourth force. It has since come to be known as transpersonal psychology. It's the fastest growing field of psychology; but it is primarily New Ageism, because it doesn't want to endorse traditional religious faith. It is psychology trying to be religion, because it understands that humanistic orientation is inadequate.

TLM: The title of [Dr. Paul] Vitz's book suggests that humanistic psychology sometimes acts like a religion, or even is one in some sense.

Unfortunately it does seem as though the Catholics teaching Ignatian Spirituality have not gotten the message. They have a lot of company among the practitioners of the New Age spirituality. Perhaps as we look for the cause of sexual abuse in the clergy, we should be looking much more carefully at the philosophy used in the formation of these abusing priests. If Assagioli's variety of humanistic psychotherapy named psychosynthesis has been used, it would be easier to understand why the women religious and the priesthood has fallen apart. The source of psychosynthesis intended that to happen because that source hates the Church.

One person promoting psychology as a kind of religion is Gerhard Wehr. Wehr wrote a book titled JUNG AND STEINER: THE BIRTH OF A NEW PSYCHOLOGY. Robert Sardello's School of Spiritual Psychology eLetter promotes the book. There you can read:

If one goes even a little way into the labor of self-knowledge, it soon becomes necessary to re-imagine one's place within whole world and indeed the whole of existence. Most of us do not have the capacities to do this on our own. Thus many of us find ourselves in a liminal place. No longer dominated by mass consciousness, we are left on our own, without ground or the capacity to steer a course for ourselves. Then we find we no longer belong to the guiding myth of the time the technological myth, the myth of materialism. Where do we go? We need a new myth, a large imagination within which understanding of who we are makes sense. In medieval times, Dante offered a whole soul cosmology of this kind. He couched it in Christian tradition, language, and practice, because that satisfied his need for a means to convey a large picture within which we can find our place. Such a cosmology interprets us; it tells us who we are, what we are doing, where we came from, where we are going.

Both Jung and Steiner have given us a cosmology within which we can see ourselves soulfully. That is why both are worth lifetimes of study. We should not make our task easy by considering these two individuals as only providing systems that agree in certain ways and diverge in others. Nor should we try to simply determine which one to follow. Both decried followers, but hoped to see independent workers inspired by their efforts.

To combine Jung and Steiner is to double the occult influence. Jung was heavily into the occult. Steiner was a Theosophist before he invented Anthroposophy. He never abandoned his theosophic thinking which he gleaned from clairvoyant access to the Akashic Record. Once again we are talking about a Source that would like to see the destruction of the Church.

We define ourselves by the tenets of our belief system. We make all of our decisions based upon it. It is so fundamental to our being that we don't even notice that it's there. We believe, instead, that our way of thinking is just a part of being human. But that entire belief system can be destroyed, and the psychologists seem to be in the process of trying to destroy it. Spiritual Psychology seems to be the religion of the twenty-first century.

We wonder why Catholicism seems to be dying. I would suggest that the reason lies in the New Age psychology/Theosophical religion that has weaseled its way into our spirituality. Until that is evicted, we have little hope of recovery.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

# posted by Carrie : Friday, November 18, 2005

Thursday, November 17, 2005

A PRIEST AND HIS PAINTINGS

Over at Bettnet, Dom and commenters have been tracking the activities of a priest in the Boston Diocese, Father Michael Monti Parise.

"As a Catholic priest, I find that I can express my feelings, my spirit and my ideals through painting. I have been painting with acrylics on canvas since 1996 and my portfolio includes over fifty paintings thus far. Most of them are in a 30" x 40" format."

What ideals would those be, Father?

Check out the "New Work (as of September 1, 2004)" link which will take you here. WARNING: bodies lacking clothing.

These paintings appear (or appeared yesterday) on the parish website. Today they are not accessible, and Dom speculates about why.

This priest is listed on the Calendar of queer art events.

He participates in Gay Art Forum.

And you thought priests were kept busy dispensing the sacraments, didn't you? ;-)

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

EMAIL FROM LEE PENN

After reading his story on Opus Dei in the current issue of "SCP Journal" I emailed Lee with a few questions. The following is his reply.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
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Carrie, you had asked me for additional info pertaining to Opus Dei.

========================================

Pertaining to OD's position on the US:

========================================
First, this story from the Boston Globe about Fr. John McCloskey, an Opus Dei priest who has brought numbers of prominent Republicans in to the Catholic Church.

Boston.com / News / Boston Globe / Magazine / The Crusaders
http://www.boston.com/news/globe/magazine/articles/2003/11/02/the_crusaders/

McCloskey has a vision of a purified Church and the breakup of the US as a result of the present culture wars.

Key quotes, with bold type added by me:

"There is a glow to the priest when he talks. Something lights him up inside, and its intensity is increased by the mild way he says what he's saying. The words, harsh and unyielding, seem not so much a departure from the mainstream as they do a living refutation that there is any mainstream at all, not one to which the priest has to pay any mind, anyway.

He is talking about a futuristic essay he wrote that rosily describes the aftermath of a "relatively bloodless" civil war that resulted in a Catholic Church purified of all dissent and the religious dismemberment of the United States of America.

"There's two questions there," says the Rev. C. John McCloskey 3d, smiling. He's something of a ringer for Howard Dean -- a comparison he resists, also with a smile -- a little more slender than the presidential candidate, perhaps, but no less fervent. "One is, Do I think it would be better that way? No. Do I think it's possible? Do I think it's possible for someone who believes in the sanctity of marriage, the sanctity of life, the sanctity of family, over a period of time to choose to survive with people who think it's OK to kill women and children or for -- quote -- homosexual couples to exist and be recognized?

"No, I don't think that's possible," he says. "I don't know how it's going to work itself out, but I know it's not possible, and my hope and prayer is that it does not end in violence. But, unfortunately, in the past, these types of things have tended to end this way.

"If American Catholics feel that's troubling, let them. I don't feel it's troubling at all."

If it sounds like a call from an Old Testament desert, that's not where the 49-year-old McCloskey operates. He's the priest of the power corridor, right there on K Street in Washington, where you can look out the windows of his Catholic Information Center and see the sharpies flocking on the sidewalk, organizing the complicated subleasing of various parts of the national treasure.

In keeping with his surroundings, McCloskey has lobbied for his vision. He grew up in Washington, D.C., and until the late 1970s was a successful trader with Merrill Lynch. However, in 1981, he joined the priesthood through the ultraconservative Opus Dei Society. He was ordained by Cardinal Roger Etchegaray, an influential Vatican troubleshooter.

Ironically, while he defends traditional prerogatives of the institutional church, McCloskey has discomfited parts of it, including conservative Catholics, as surely as has any renegade Dutch theologian. In 1990, for example, after a stormy five-year tenure at Princeton University, McCloskey was dismissed as an associate chaplain after students and faculty petitioned for his removal. They claimed that McCloskey violated academic freedom by counseling against taking courses taught by professors whom McCloskey deemed "anti-Christian," which McCloskey argued was part of his pastoral role. Advising Catholic parents shopping for a college for their children, he later wrote, "If you encounter words and phrases like 'values,' 'openness,' 'just society,' 'search,' 'diversity,' and 'professional preparation,' move on."

Since returning to Washington to run the Catholic Information Center for Opus Dei, McCloskey has taken his mission onto Meet the Press and to CNN. He's preached it in USA Today and in The New York Times. More famously, he has brought into Catholicism several members of the conservative elite. McCloskey personally baptized Judge Robert Bork, political pundits Robert Novak and Lawrence Kudlow, publisher Alfred Regnery, financier Lewis Lehrman, and US Senator Sam Brownback of Kansas, whose baptismal sponsor was another senator, Rick Santorum of Pennsylvania. In 2000, McCloskey baptized Mark Belnick, the embattled top lawyer at Tyco International, who responded by donating $2 million to a Catholic college and to an antiabortion group.

McCloskey makes no apologies for his role as the apostle to the punditocracy. (One of the volunteers at the Catholic Information Center is Linda Poindexter, a former Episcopal priest and the wife of Iran-contra figure and Bush administration official John Poindexter.) He has written that the Gospel was most successfully preached not to the poor but rather to the educated middle and upper classes.

"I don't talk politics with them," he says. "It just so happens that they're Catholics, and I have to be informed about key issues in order to talk to them, because they're not just issues to these people -- they're a matter of natural law; they're a matter of divine revelation and things of that sort. I don't tell them how to vote on this issue or that issue. Ever. But if it seemed to me to be a moral question as to what the material cooperation with evil is on this bill or the other, I might be able to give them some guidance."

On so many of these issues, McCloskey seems already to have lost. In a March 2002 Gallup Poll, 75 percent of Catholics in the United States favored the possibility of married priests and of women priests. Since 1970, polls of US Catholic women have consistently shown that more than 60 percent reject the Vatican's teachings on artificial birth control. More recently, a Harris Poll found that only 24 percent of American Catholics were opposed to embryonic stem-cell research. Other recent polls indicate that support for legalized abortion among US Catholics tracks closely with that found in the general population. McCloskey has no use for the borrowed language of political polling: He thinks that 52 percent or that 80 percent or that 70 percent should just leave the church, because they've left already.

"There's a name for Catholics who dissent from church teachings," he says. "They're called Protestants.

"As someone who's really a Catholic -- and if you asked me, I'd say I consider myself a Catholic -- it's something that you hope doesn't interfere with your citizenship, but that's reality. What I'm saying is, a lot of Catholics who were totally faithful to the church started to assimilate, but the assimilation was not simply in terms of 'I'm a Catholic, and I'm also an American.' It was also giving in to the Protestant secular ethos of the United States of America."

McCloskey says he speaks to a dwindling band of "the faithful" -- a "righteous remnant," as the theologians call it. If some of that remnant happen to be judges and newspaper columnists and senators and corporate lawyers, McCloskey doesn't judge them for that, not even when he discusses a famous 1996 issue of the conservative Catholic magazine First Things -- one to which Bork, among others, contributed his thoughts. That issue examined, as it said, "possible responses to laws that cannot be obeyed by conscientious citizens ranging from non-compliance . . . to morally justified revolution."

"It embraced," McCloskey says, brighter than the afternoon, "the whole question of the legitimacy of the regime. As a Catholic, what do you obey? What do you not obey? For a serious Catholic who believes in things according to faith, these are serious questions." And he's sure about them, so sure that he sits there and shines, brighter than the day, talking about the godly way things can fall all apart."

=============================================

Here is the essay that the Boston Globe writer and McCloskey were discussing:

2030: Looking Backwards

http://www.catholicity.com/mccloskey/articles/2030.html

Here are some key parts of the article:

"As it turns out, those few years in prison and the torture were wonderful for my spiritual life and did not leave me incapacitated at all, not like the confessors of the twentieth century.

I thought I would take a few minutes of your time to give you an overview of the developments in the Church since the last Great Jubilee of the year 2000. After all, as you are only 25, barely of canonical age, you don't have much memory of the events leading up to our present vigorous and healthy state of the Church in the Regional States of North America."

and

"Dissent has disappeared from the theological vocabulary."

and

"Ironically in this year 2030 we are only 10 % of the population, but it is a rock solid fulcrum of which Archimedes would be proud. Upon that fulcrum we can transform the world if we stay the course."

and

"We finally received as a gift from God what had been missing from our ecclesial experience these 250 years in North America -- a strong persecution that was a true purification for our "sick society." The tens of thousands of martyrs and confessors for the Faith in North America were indeed the "seed of the Church" as they were in pre-Edict of Milan Christianity. The final short and relatively bloodless conflict produced our Regional States of North America. The outcome was by no means an ideal solution but it does allow Christians to live in states that recognize the natural law and divine Revelation, the right of free practice of religion, and laws on marriage, family, and life that reflect the primacy of our Faith. With time and the reality of the ever-decreasing population of the states that worship at the altar of "the culture of death," perhaps we will be able to reunite and fulfill the Founding Fathers of the old United States dream to be "a shining city on a hill."

===================================================

Here is an article in Crisis Magazine defending the Opus Dei practice of bodily mortification - wearing the cilice and self-flagellation:

Crisis Magazine

http://www.crisismagazine.com/julaug2005/giesler.htm

Key quotes:

"The cilice, a sharp chain worn around the leg, is really a derivation of the ancient hair shirt, which originated in the region of Cilicia in Asia Minor. It was used for many centuries in the medieval and Renaissance Church as a means of purifying the senses, atoning for sin, and winning grace for others. So too was the discipline, a whip of knotted cords applied to the back, imitating Christ's scourging at the pillar."

and

"Despite all this, voluntary mortification has an enduring power for both the body and soul. Self-denial helps a person overcome both psychological and physical weakness, gives him inner energy, helps him grow in virtue, and ultimately leads to salvation. It conquers the insidious demons of softness, pessimism, and lukewarm faith that dominate the lives of so many today.

In contrast to the extremes of sadism or masochism, corporal mortification is grounded in a healthy view of man and the world around him, namely, that all of us are flawed and have sinful tendencies within us. The practice itself dates back to biblical times and finds its greatest _expression in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross"

and

"But corporal mortification isn't confined to Christians. Most religions throughout the centuries have recognized the need for powerful, even bloody sacrifices to appease the divine."

and

"The word 'mortification' comes from the Latin words mortem facere, meaning 'to produce death.' A person who is mortified has accomplished a kind of death in himself to those obstacles separating him from God, and therefore genuine happiness. These barriers include pride, the excessive emphasis on the self or one's own feelings or ideas; laziness, the tendency to do the minimum; and sensuality, the excessive attachment to bodily pleasures, whether food, or drink, or sex. Mortification is the process of 'putting to death' these lower desires and appetites so that the purified man might live."

and the story, after extensive praise of mortification, ends thus:

St. JosemarÃa EscrivÃ¡, who himself suffered many persecutions and misunderstandings, performed heroic mortifications and sacrifices to serve God and help souls. Through it all, he was able to maintain a cheerful and optimistic attitude that inspired those around him. "If things go well, let's rejoice, blessing God, who makes them prosper," he once wrote. "And if they go wrong? Let's rejoice, blessing God, who allows us to share the sweetness of his Cross."

Encouraging words.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Rev. Michael Giesler is a priest of the prelature of Opus Dei and the chaplain at the Wespine Study Center in St. Louis."

====================================

Lee

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

PODCASTING PRIEST

Amy reports that Fr. Sibley is back online podcasting.

If you know what it is and how to make it work (which I don't), go check him out.

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

A COWARDLY DECISION ?

LifeSite reports that Father Jean-Pierre Aumont, the rector of St. Joseph's Oratory in Montreal, has issued a last minute cancellation of a pro-life conference scheduled to take place at his facility. The cancellation is said to be due to threats from the pro-choice and homosexual community. Montreal police say they did not request the cancellation and were prepared to offer "adequate protection." The cancellation came while conference participants were already on their way to Montreal.

Thanks to a reader for the link.

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

WORLD PRESIDENT BILL CLINTON

LifeSite reports:

NEW YORK, November 16, 2005 (LifeSiteNews.com) - Disgraced former U.S. President Bill Clinton has been hailed as "The Most Influential Man in the World," by Esquire magazine. In the December issue of the magazine set to hit newsstands Thursday, Esquire Editor-in-Chief David Granger says Clinton is poised to become "something like a president of the world or at least a president of the world's non-governmental organizations."

Clinton, whose fame has survived revelations of sexual impropriety, perjury and constant reports of other shady occurrences at the Clinton White House which would have killed any other political reputation, continues to wow audiences worldwide. Clinton who was, already in 2003, rumoured to be seeking to lead the United Nations (se coverage: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2003/feb/03021905.html ) has also launched his own global initiative to right the wrongs of the world. (see coverage: http://www.lifesite.net/ldn/2005/jul/050715b.html )

Continue reading...

Hat tip to a reader.

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

HINDUS THREATEN TO BURN CHRISTIANS

From a World Net Daily link sent in by a reader:

More than 60 Christian converts in northern India will be burned to death if they refuse to return to Hinduism by Sunday, a group of extremists has warned.

The radical Hindus severely beat the converts' pastor, Feroz Masih, in a Nov. 4 attack in the state of Himachal Pradesh, accusing him of "forcibly converting" Hindus, reported Compass Direct, a news service that monitors persecution of Christians.

Continue reading...

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

NON-CHRISTIAN PRACTITIONERS OF PSYCHOSYNTHESIS - WHERE ARE THEY FOUND?

I've mentioned the Theosophical Society in conjunction with Roberto Assagioli before. In their website you can read the book "THE SEVEN HUMAN POWERS: LUMINOUS SHADOWS OF THE SELF, by Shirley J. Nicholson.

The following passages are taken from Chapter 1, "Psyche and Cosmos":

Freud introduced the concept of the subconscious as the realm of our worst antisocial selves, the sewer of the mind and heart. C. G. Jung expanded that idea to include the collective unconscious, including the memories and capacities that all humans have shared since the birth of humankind. Roberto Assagioli and other more recent transpersonal psychologists have added the concept of the superconscious, the part of ourselves that, though unconscious, is grander and more noble than our ordinary conscious selves. Transpersonal psychology now includes parts of the Self that transcend the individual—universal experiences of higher consciousness that are not limited to a personal mind. ...

Esoteric traditions throughout history have understood in precise detail the many functions and levels of consciousness. They offer a model for the realms that comprise the human psyche, with its depths and shallows, its beauties and horrors. These traditions have also taught us how to develop latent aspects of the self and how to awaken our finer unconscious potentials. ...

According to Theosophy, as well as to Vedanta and other Indian systems, “The reality behind all is Brahman, pure consciousness,” as the Indian sage Shankaracharya put it. ...

Leading scientists are finding support for this ancient idea in contemporary quantum physics. Saul-Paul Sirag says, “There is only one consciousness in a cosmic sense.” Fred Alan Wolf concurs that there is “one basic consciousness in which we are all one”. ...

Ken Wilber,[who often speaks at Catholic events] a principal theorist in the transpersonal movement, refers to this level of experience as a deeper within and a wider beyond.

Practices such as Yoga and meditation are designed to help us wake up to the reality of our true being in atma. They teach us to quiet the mind and find stillness at deep levels within. We slowly come to identify with that aspect of ourselves that is beyond the seemingly separative outer levels and rooted in the essence that permeates all. We come to sense unity within diversity, or as Blavatsky states, “from ONE light, seven lights” (Secret Doctrine 1:122).

The Theosophists look to psychology as often as the Catholics do in this post-Vatican II Church.

The Chief of The Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids, Philip Carr-Gomm, is trained in psychosynthesis.

Kabbalah Course On-Line refers to psychosynthesis on the webpage titled "Liber Initium (A Guide for Beginners)" "What is Magick?":

Magick is "the art and science of causing change to occur in conformity with will". This is the definition given by the occultist Aleister Crowley, who was one of the most influential occultists of the early 1900's. It basically means that any act that you undertake, so long as it conforms with your will, is a magical one. To begin with, it sounds like a loose description - surely it means that everything is a magickal act, and everyone is therefore a magician? This is partly true - the Universe has to be a magickal place for magick to work - but as you will see as you undertake your studies and work, few people understand their own will and the nature of the universe around them. In that sense, we begin ignorant and only through our enquiries do we uncover our own nature and begin to perform real acts of Magick in accord with that nature. ...

So, if we are to understand our Will, surely this is just psychology then? There is a whole school of Psychology, "Psychosynthesis," dedicated to the discovery and use of will. Is that not enough? Well, most magicians begin by studying psychology to gain a deeper understanding of their psyche, and this is recommended before further study is undertaken to ensure that later work does not overbalance the person and turn them into a stark raving mad lunatic. This is probably the worst danger to any occultist - and those around them! It is like building a house of cards; you have to have a nice solid foundation, as wide as possible, before adding anything else on top of it. It doesn't stop you (witness the hundreds of 15 yr. old wannabes on the newsgroups asking how to summon demons), but it damn sure makes life easier later on!

Not surprisingly then, given the Crowley source, the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn also looks to psychology and psychosynthesis:

Regardie often related Reichian ideas to the magic of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. He was particularly fond of one magical exercise called the Middle Pillar Ritual. In this technique the magician visualizes successive spheres of light at various points above, below, and along the spinal column while vibrating certain words. This generates a certain kind of energy, which, according to Regardie, is identical to Reich's orgone. This energy is then circulated around and through the entire body by means of further visualization.

Legitimate esoteric orders have always been primarily intended to provide a context within which initiation may safely and effectively occur. As will be shown here, there are many parallels between initiation and forms of psychotherapy that take into account the spiritual dimensions of growth. Regardie even advised that the two should be considered as complementary processes, and that initiation should always be accompanied by some form of psychotherapy.

Israel Regardie wrote the rituals for the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn. Scroll through the website. There is a picture of Christ crucified entwined with snakes. The familiar Rosicrucian cross is pictured as well.

The Wikipedia description of Psychosynthesis indicates that the objective is in essence to become your own god:

In the true Western fashion, Tranpersonal Self is not just the target of "I", the impersonal Self-it is the living source, the fount of symbols, messages and the guide. In this respect, Assagioli merges Eastern Tantric tradition ( disidentified "I" who becomes the chief actor of "projective" experiences of identification with various symbols of the superconscious/Bardo) and Western tradition of Higher Self as living guide (Inner God, Christ, Lapis).Also, Assagioli draws on wide field of experiential material of existential psychology ( Maslow, Frankl,..).

Becoming your own god and manifesting your own will is in tune with New Age concepts, as would be expected considering the source is Djwhal Khul. Why, then, is psychosynthesis, which promotes these two concepts, finding a home in what appears to be the Catholic right--Ignatian spirituality? Where are the Jesuits trying to take the Catholic faith?

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

MORE CATHOLIC PRACTITIONERS OF PSYCHOSYNTHESIS

Alice Bailey's spook, Djwhal Khul, has gotten his message planted at the heart of Catholic spirituality in a number of places.

The Foundation for Human Development President and CEO, Sr. Paul D'Ornellas, trained in counselling in England, Ireland and the U.S.A. Psychosynthesis is one of her four major influences. The Foundation offers Contemplative Prayer and Movement workshops and Centering Prayer taught by Contemplative Outreach.

Renewal for Ministry at All Hallows College offers a fall program that includes:

The Incredibility of Christian Faith; Fundamental Themes in Moral Life; Scripture for Life; Spirituality and Literature; Celtic Roots; Liturgy and Cathechesis; Prayer; Social Analysis and Integrity of the Earth; Psychosynthesis – a way of perceiving life; Understanding Love; Ministerial Identity; World Religions; Inner Journey; IT Skills; Technology & Ministry; Aesthetics & Spirituality. (Modules may vary)

Incredibly, Assagioli's psychosynthesis seems to be paried with Ignatian Spirituality in several places.

On the Diocese of Edinburg Retreats website a program for clergy and licensed lay ministers led by Rev. Andrew Walker, the retreat leader, is director of the London Centre for Spirituality and co-director of the Ignatian Spirituality Programme and rector of St. Mary Woolnoth in London. He is also a Psychosynthesis counsellor, trainer and supervisor. The theme for his retreat is "Becoming Whom We Contemplate". Since we contemplate God, what is he telling the Edinburg clergy??

Julian Maddock's CV lists courses in Ignatian Spirituality and Essentials of Psychosynthesis, as well as a couple of sessions with Richard Rohr. He is a "Trainer on the 3rd Year of Ignatian Spirituality Course, London. He is also a Verger at St. James's Church, Piccadilly, London, and has been connected with Creation Spirituality. I can't tell if he is Catholic or Anglican.

Walworth Cenacle offers Sisters Kathleen Lyons and Kathleen Hopkins who are Psychosynthesis therapists in private practice. They teach an Ignatian Spirituality Course.

The Psychosynthesis & Education Trust offers The Enneagram Workshop with Trainer Kathleen Lyons, a registered psychosynthesis psychotherapist and a trainer at the Psychosynthesis & Education Trust. She has a private practice and is Director of the Ignatian Spirituality Course and a member of the Cenacle Congregation in London.

# posted by Carrie : Thursday, November 17, 2005

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

CATHOLIC PRACTITIONERS OF PSYCHOSYNTHESIS - WHERE ARE THEY FOUND?

Yesterday I blogged one example of the use of this discipline in a Catholic setting in the Diocese of Albany. There are more.

1. At the Jesuit run Santa Clara University in the School of Education, the Graduate Program in Pastoral Ministries lists the thesis papers 1986-Present in their website. No. 65 on the list is "Latno, Michele. Psychosynthesis: A Way to Prayer, 1994".

2. The Archdiocese of Southwark on-going formation of priests offers a list of their Committee & Staff. On the list is Ms. Margaret Philpot who has "a diploma in counselling/psychotherapy having completed three years training at the Psychosynthesis and Education Trust." It is stated that she is "one of the two OGF Committee members responsible for Priestly Individual Support."

3. Bro. Wayne Teasdale gave the Keynote Address at The Many Faces of Spirit: Celebrating through the Arts & Dialogue event held July 19-20, 1996 at the Catholic Newman Center, Lexington, Kentucky. Two speakers at this event were practitioners of psychosynthesis. There is a lot more in this conference line-up to raise the eyebrows, too.

The Saturday Workshops at this event offered "Centering Prayer: Experiencing God's Presence", "The Power of the Dream: Psyche Speaks", "Earth Consciousness/Earth Journaling", "The Essence of Yoga", "Ideas and Music of G. I. Gurdjieff", "Human Transformation: An Islamic Perspective", "The Stephen Story: The Face of AIDS", "Awareness through Movement", "The Enneagram: Nine Faces of Spirit", and more topics that seem to be directed at some agenda other than interreligious dialogue that was the announced purpose of this event.

Mary Greene, one of the speakers whose topic was "A Psychological/Spiritual Map of the Human Consciousness", is listed as "psychologist and a director of the Kentucky Center of Psychosynthesis for twenty years."

Another speaker, John Parks, who spoke on "The Spirit as Expressed in Poetry", is listed as "a director of the Kentucky Center for Psychosynthesis for the past twenty-two years and is a member of the Gurdjieff Foundation of Kentucky."

Walter Bado, topic "The Voluminosity of Gothic", is "director of the Newman Center in Lexington. Consequently it must be assumed that this conference and its subject matter had the full knowledge and backing of the staff at the Newman Center.

Lance Brunner, topic "Giving Voice to Spirit: Chanting & Sonic Meditation", "is a co-director of the Lexington Shambhala Meditation Center." Would that be the Shambhala of Benjamin Creme/Meitreya?

Psychosynthesis is just one of the many strange aspects of this event held at a Catholic facility. Jesus Christ is nowhere mentioned in the workshop descriptions. This event took place nine years ago. I doubt that many Catholics who give their contributions to the Newman Center collections have any idea such things as this are what their money is being used for.

At the bottom of the website which lists the Saturday Workshops is a link to the Spiritual Growth Network, the sponsoring organization. It will take you to their weblog. Scroll down to the entry titled "Righteousness is a Horse Named Trojan." There you can read that "dissent is not only inevitable to the process of growth, but also necessary for wholeness, holiness and authentic community", and "The Pilgrim, on the other hand, believes that the church must be constantly and insistently challenged by the world....'Every heresy is the revenge of a forgotten truth.' The Pilgrim discovers truth outside traditional sacred texts...". You can discover that "Dissent [is] Intended by God" and that "The right to dissent is imbued, then, with holiness poured forth by God who introduced difference and diversity so that we might learn from and grow through one another." There is a lot more in this group to raise red flags than just psychosynthesis.

I couldn't help but notice that the website for "The Many Faces of Spirit" event used a rainbow bar to separate the sections, much like the Alice Bailey database uses a rainbow bar at the top and bottom of their entries.

4. Another example of psychosynthesis in the Catholic Church is The Open Door, Inc., "the active ministries of Msgr. Chester Michael." Msgr. Michael "has been a Roman Catholic priest for over 60 years. He was first exposed to the psychology of Carl Jung during graduate studies at the University of Notre Dame in 1956....He has used the techniques of psychosynthesis, specifically that of Initiated Symbol Projection, during his many years of pastoral counseling and spiritual direction for both individuals and groups." He is currently retired but "is still very active in giving retreats, workshops, spiritual direction and running the Spiritual Direction Institute."

# posted by Carrie : Wednesday, November 16, 2005

EMAIL FROM DR. BOND

Dear Friends,

Those who followed the Diocese of Scranton's scandalous efforts to protect the homosexual predator priests of the Society of St. John, namely, Carlos Urrutigoity and Eric Ensey, will not be surprised to learn that the Diocese of Scranton is once again attempting to prevent the release of the psychosexual records of another one its homosexual predator priests:

http://www.thetimes-tribune.com/site/news.cfm?newsid=15573033&BRD=2185&PAG=461&dept_id=415898&rfi=6

In the meantime, the members of the suppressed SSJ have completely abandoned their former home in Shohola, PA, and their web site has finally been removed. However, until Urrutigoity and Ensey are laicized, and the remaining priests of the SSJ are properly disciplined, the battle to expose the unrepentant members of this group will continue.

Pax vobiscum,

Dr. Jeffrey M. Bond

# posted by Carrie : Wednesday, November 16, 2005

Tuesday, November 15, 2005

PSYCHOSYNTHESIS IN THE DIOCESE OF ALBANY

Roberto Assagioli's channeled system which he termed Psychosynthesis is the specialty of a counselor who is presenting a program on weight control for the Catholic Diocese of Albany.

# posted by Carrie : Tuesday, November 15, 2005

WHISTLEBLOWER PRIEST EXPRESSES HIS DISILLUSIONMENT

in a Matt Abbott column:

"Amazingly, after four years, I have still not heard anything significant about my 'trial.' In fact, from what I understand, my case has still not been received by the Vatican, where it may sit for many more years. And again, this is a trial about my behavior, not the bishop's, nor the chancellor's, nor the behavior of so many homosexual priests.

"I believe all is lost unless some wealthy individual gives me the necessary funding to do a real exposure — the money being used primarily for my predicted legal defense because the Church will do, and has done, everything to prevent their dirty 'little' gay secret from being exposed. And the last thing I want is to end up in prison worrying about homosexual rape; I had too many 'roving' eyes in the priesthood.

"So it looks like the evil men have won. A priest for ever — utter nonsense! A Church that teaches the fullness of truth in faith and morals — total baloney! And the good people in the pews? Simple, blind, stupid sheep who are still totally culpable every time they pay a dime to the Church without first insisting on the fullness of truth about this horrendous moral tragedy. A brief 'instruction' from the Vatican will do nothing to solve this outrageous moral dilemma, nor prevent the infiltration of future homosexual men; in fact, it will probably encourage even more to join.

"Am I angry? Not anymore. Just completely and utterly disgusted. Living in poverty in a 30 ft. trailer has completely killed my spirit and robbed me of any 'happy' life. Unlike most people, I have no companionship, no support, no happy memories, no busting photo albums, and no real purpose for continued life. Ultimately, I blame God for it all.

"Apparently, even the Almighty is totally powerless and completely useless in fighting for the proclamation and defense of moral truth from his Church. And yes, that is a prayer said for the millionth time to a Father who just doesn't seem to care! I have more concern from my earthly father who can barely remember my name, then from a Father who supposedly knows every hair on my head. Unless this problem is solved soon, my faith is dead. And anyone who says to me to have faith, without first solving this moral impasse in the Church, has neither real faith, nor any sense of logic (truth) with which to speak.

Continue reading...

I sympathize, Fr. Haley, and share your frustration. Until the whole story is told of who, what, where, and when, we will not be healed. Where is God?

Blogger credit to New Oxford Review.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

# posted by Carrie : Tuesday, November 15, 2005

SEEKERS OF THE RAINBOW BRIDGE - ROBERTO ASSAGIOLI

Alice Bailey mentioned "Antahkarana work" in an address she gave October 8, 1943 which is available at the School for Esoteric Studies website. Since the nuns frequently talk about "energy", the passage is interesting:

When you have really grasped that the work of the occultist is primarily the handling of energy, then whether you are young or old there is no inhibition of any kind, provided you have all your mental ability and are able to use force rightly. Thus the task we have is the right direction of energy, to act as unconscious or conscious channels for spiritual energy. ...

Some people deal with spiritual energy before they are ready to deal with Soul energy. Some day we will be able to handle it directly when we know the Soul as One. At present the major effort of students is largely directed to Soul force, but what we are after in the [Antahkarana work] and this group is to bypass Soul force and work with spiritual energy, which comes from the Monad.

Somewhat further into the address she tells her audience:

It will be apparent to you, therefore, that these higher spiritual faculties can only be brought into play when the bridging Antahkarana is beginning to play its part.

In the question and answer session following her talk, she confirms a student's conclusion that the adept "is trying to direct energy and to be a channel."

Lest anyone have any illusion that she was speaking as a Christian, she demonstrates her hostility to Christian doctrine:

Take the New Testament, St. James version, and look for the sentences in italic. All those italics are interpolations, and on some of them the whole doctrine of the Church is built up. These sentences were never uttered by Christ.

She believed Jesus was an incomplete Master who was not the same as the Christ:

...you have these various grades towards which we look and aspire, but none of the Masters is of the same rank as the Christ, because He is pure Monad. Jesus is not of the same rank. That is why Sixth Ray people are so difficult, because their Master is not complete in his consciousness yet. Sixth Ray people can be a disruptive force in a group, isolated by their devotion, their sense of personality. Jesus was a militant person. It was he who took the sword, who took the whip.

She closes this address with an implication that religion is not essential but humanitarianism is.

Some of the greatest spiritual forces in the world are not religious people, but they are great humanitarians.

There is one more noteworthy point which she makes in this address. Speaking of the school of which she is a "senior disciple" she mentions another member:

There are people in the School like Roberto Assagioli and others who are in direct relationship with the Masters.

Since just previous to mentioning Assagioli, she mentions that "We have to direct energy and be channels..." in the school, Bailey has told us that Roberto Assagioli was a channeler.

Assagioli was something else as well--the founder of Psychosynthesis, a division of the field known as Transpersonal Psychology. Assagioli was Bailey's disciple. Joseph D. McNair, a faculty member of Miami-Dade Community College, School of Education, has included a paper on his website titled Roberto Assagioli, Psychosynthesis, and the Esoteric Roots of Transpersonal Psychology." Here, too, is confirmation that Assagioli channeled, and his disembodied spirit contact was the same spirit contacted by Alice Bailey, namely Djwhal Khul:

Assagioli's known work with the Tibetan Master Djwahl Kuhl[sic] began in January 1933, when he was told that by the time he would reach his fiftieth year, he would have achieved "the difficult undertaking of becoming the sannyasin in the western world"....

(Oddly enough, Bro. Wayne Teasdale claimed to be a sannyasi.)

It was from Djwhal Khul (DK) that Assagioli got his methodology:

In his instructions of June 1934, DK states: "I would like you to write an article upon the Power of the dedicated Will"--the first step in a life-long study of Will by Assagioli. With a subtle hint of work to come, DK also triggered the beginnings of what, almost 40 years later, was to become The Meditation Group for the New Age and the beautiful, isolated center known as Meditation Mount, located in Ojai, California. DK wrote, "Your suggestion, secondly, that there should be a center at X of international usefulness is of real value and can be materialized if you work without haste and keep the conditioning of it in your hands and in the hands of no one else." His instructions to Assagioli were to "Meditate much upon it, but take no steps until after...."

A communication hinting at the methodology of the Masters appears in a July 1935 note to Assagioli from The Master DK:

"I am dealing with 'building groups'--those groups which are coming forth along the teaching line and which are constructing thoughtforms which will embody the new techniques and ideas. These--during the next two centuries--will change the face of our civilization and inaugurate a period in human history in which methods will be tried and principles established which remain as yet totally unknown to the majority. This period will lead the race into a civilization and a mutual, cooperative interplay which will bring to an end the present era of selfishness and competition."

In the same instruction, DK tells Assagioli,

"You could write a book (The Act of Will) which would be a synthesis of these new psychological ideas, subordinated to a central theme which would dominate them as the head dominates the activities of the body...opportunity will come to you to reach the world with ideas that are relatively new...you must work for a year at the organization of your thought and material so that you can reach the thinkers of the world with the new ideas in the field of that oncoming major science, that newer field of service--the field of psychology."

Here, then, was the spark that lit the flame of Psychosynthesis and Transpersonal Psychology.

The Director of the Canadian Institute of Psychosynthesis, Martha Crampton, is quoted as saying:

"Assagioli had the vision and the courage to put forward in psychiatry an approach that did justice to all the dimensions of man--physical, emotioal, mental and spiritual, even though the view ran counter to the prevailing mechanistic conceptions of the time."

The paper continues:

While Assagioli's public work is well-established and a matter of historical record, his association with the Tibetan Master, Djwahl Kuhl [sic], is shrouded in the mists of time. Except for a diminishing circle of people who were close to Assagioli and were aware of the connection, and who studied with him and still alive [sic] today, nothing would be known of the esoteric background of his work.

The paper explains that Assagioli kept his channeling activities secret.

In the 1960s, Assagioli assembled a group of devoted friends who could be called his own "disciples" from several European countries and from the United States. He called this group "the committee." They met with him in Italy and began drafting a series of leaflets defining the Laws and the Principles together with appropriate meditative techniques. These were in turn refined and fleshed out by Assagioli himself. When the core group of disciples returned to their home lands, the booklets were published under the name of the Meditation Group for the New Age. Each booklet carried Assagioli's byline.

In the United States, the booklets evolved into a three year basic study now known as The Meditation Group for the New Age, and a ten-year continuation study of the Laws and Principles, known as The Group for Creative Meditation. The studies are distributed world-wide at no cost to participants by a non-profit corporation known as Meditation Groups, Inc. The group distributes Assagioli's materials to more than 7500 workers in 85 countries around the world, thus fulfilling the Tibetan Master's instructions to Roberto Assagioli. This world-wide group meditates every day on the Laws and Principles, as one.

Because the practice of meditation during the early years was looked upon as an Eastern aberration and because Assagioli's pioneering work with professional therapists was highly sensitive in it [sic] earliest years, no hint of the esoteric underpinnings could be made public. Had this happened at the time, Assagioli and his breakthrough ideas would have been subject to ridicule by his academic colleagues and he would have been denounced and ostracized from the exclusive fraternity of psychologists and psychotherapists. The work, of course, would have failed or at been [sic] been severely diminished.

Well aware of this threat, Assagioli wisely instituted what became known to his disciples as "The Wall of Silence."

Today Psychosynthesis is well established. The website for The Institute of Psychosynthesis indicates the Institute is accredited by Middlesex University as of June 1996. An MA in Applied Psychosynthes is also accredited. The Institue is also accredited as a full member of the United Kingdom Association for Therapeutic Counsellors. The Institute is also a member of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy and the European Transpersonal Association.

The Institute of Psychosynthesis initiated the founding of the Association for Psychospiritual Practitioners. There are centers for psychosynthesis in the US, in Holland, in Britain, Sweden, France and New Zealand.

Assagioli's channeled knowledge has been taken quite seriously. Another page in their website indicates they explore "the processes of self-awakening and self-expression."

Wikipedia places Assagioli among those who are considered to be leaders and inspirers of Humanistic Psychology. Leading theorists of this school of thought include Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers and Rollo May.

A list of publications in Psychosynthesis can be found here.

In the website of the School for Esoteric Studies, Ashville, N.C., an article by Jan van der Linden titled "The Way of Meditation" mentions "the father of Psychosynthesis" Roberto Assagioli, M.D. The website also offers Alice Bailey's talks.

The website of the Theosophical Society in America mentions Assagioli and Transpersonal Psychology.

The inclination for a Christian is simply to dismiss these theosophists and meditation groups as something on the fringe. Douglas Russell, M.S.W. is somewhat more difficult to dismiss. You can read his article titled "Psychosynthesis in Western Psychology" from the Fall/Winter 1981 issue of "Psychosynthesis Digest" online here.

The website of "Psychology Today" offers the bio. of a practitioner of psychosynthesis on their website.

In psychosynthesis the science of psychology and the channeled theosophical religion of Alice Bailey combine. Next time you or someone you love thinks about seeking counseling, it would be good to keep this in mind.

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!

# posted by Carrie : Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Monday, November 14, 2005

WHAT BROUGHT DOWN THE TWIN TOWERS ?

I've seen the conspiracy theory websites. This professor's statements have a ring of legitimacy:

The physics of 9/11 — including how fast and symmetrically one of the World Trade Center buildings fell — prove that official explanations of the collapses are wrong, says a Brigham Young University physics professor.
In fact, it's likely that there were "pre-positioned explosives" in all three buildings at ground zero, says Steven E. Jones.
In a paper posted online Tuesday and accepted for peer-reviewed publication next year, Jones adds his voice to those of previous skeptics, including the authors of the Web site www.wtc7.net, whose research Jones quotes. Jones' article can be found at www.physics.byu.edu/research/energy/htm7.html.
Stuart Johnson, Deseret Morning News"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three (WTC) buildings," BYU physics professor Steven E. Jones says. Jones, who conducts research in fusion and solar energy at BYU, is calling for an independent, international scientific investigation "guided not by politicized notions and constraints but rather by observations and calculations.
"It is quite plausible that explosives were pre-planted in all three buildings and set off after the two plane crashes — which were actually a diversion tactic," he writes. "Muslims are (probably) not to blame for bringing down the WTC buildings after all," Jones writes.
As for speculation about who might have planted the explosives, Jones said, "I don't usually go there. There's no point in doing that until we do the scientific investigation."

Continue reading...

Thanks to a reader for sending in the story.