Monday, February 13, 2006
COVENANT - OLD AND NEW
A reader sent in Fr. John Hardon's explanation of "The Covenant in Revelation".
He doesn't specifically address the present position of the Church on the "Jewish Covenant", but indirectly he addresses it by saying that "The Old Testament Covenant was only a preparation for Christ's Covenant and there would be no other."
He lists four Covenants:
1. The Covenant with Noah
2. The Covenant with Abraham
3. The Covenant with Moses
4. The Covenant with David.
It is the Covenant with David that we keep today: "As the Jewish people rejected Christ, as a result Paul was chosen." "The Apostles were chosen as the ministers of the New Covenant." "The Old Testament Covenant was not abrogated, destroyed, but raised by Christ."
Where, then, does this leave the modern day Jew in Catholic theology? Where does this leave the Talmud and the Kabbalah? Can a Catholic dabble in Tarot as Hans Urs von Balthasar would appear to have done by sanctioning MEDITATIONS ON THE TAROT? May a Catholic adhere to the teachings of visionaries that sound Catholic, even though the Church has not investigated and approved the seer, as von Balthasar did with von Speyer? Or do these visionaries represent the practice of divination specifically forbidden by the First Commandment...a practice closely associated with the doctrine of the Kabbalah?
The visionary experience, and mysticism in general, practiced within Roman Catholicism via the Charismatic Renewal with its roots in Jacob Boehme, provides fertile ground for the destruction of the Church via a supression of doctrine.
Since the monks who are the heart of the centering prayer movement have affiliated the movement with a Gurdjieffian church in Austin, these questions become core questions of the faith.
Has God rejected His Chosen People? Does He still seek them, and will they one day come home? Does God take back His Covenants?
We appear to be at a crossroads. Rejecting this mysticism will keep us on the path of Aquinas and Augustine. Embracing it may not necessarily throw us immediately off the path to God, but dangers lurk at every turn.
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
