Still Running Off at the Keyboard

FR. BRYCE SIBLEY'S ARTICLE IN NOR

In the March issue of "New Oxford Review" Fr. Bryce Sibley unpacks the theology of Fr. Richard Rohr. A sample of what's in the article:

Rohr makes it very clear that he does not want to be limited to having to call God "Father." He writes in Adam's Return (which was the basis for his presentations)[Fr. Sibley attended one of his conferences]that we must "find public ways to recognize, honor, and name the feminine nature of God...."

Rohr bases this claim on his belief that "God is the ultimate combination of whatever it means to be male and whatever it means to be female." He asserts that God is in no way sexed, and here he seems to be in agreement with the Catechism, which states: "In no way is God in man's image. He is neither man nor woman. God is pure spirit in which there is no place for the difference between the sexes" (#370). However, this does not mean that it would be proper to refer to God as "Mother." Rohr's thesis runs into the problem of Divine Revelation: Christ has definitively revealed God as Father. To say that God could just as easily be called "Mother" is in direct contradiction to Divine Revelation. As the Catechism states, "Jesus revealed that God is Father in an unheard-of sense: He is Father not only in being Creator; he is eternally Father in relation to his only Son, who is eternally Son only in relation to his Father..." (#240).

So much for the goddess.

After discussing a letter from Fr. Rohr that is posted on a Soulforce (homosexual advocacy website) "supporting this organization's mission", Fr. Sibley writes:

Since homosexual activity is the ultimate denial of sexual difference. Rohr's support of homosexual-advocacy groups such as Soulforce (and thus his implicit support of homosexual activity) is a radical contradiction of the apparent importance he places on sexual difference in his presentation on "male spirituality." As the Catechism states, "Basing itself on Sacred Scripture, which presents homosexual acts as acts of grave depravity, tradition has always declared that 'homosexual acts are intrinsically disordered.' They are contrary to the natural law. They close the sexual act to the gift of life. They do not proceed from a genuine affective and sexual complementarity. Under no circumstances can they be approved" (#2357).

There is a defense of doctrine in the article that I particularly liked:

God has given us the gift of reason so that we might understand His laws and meditate upon His Revelation. Faith is a supernatural gift for the intellect, which allows us to know what God knows. Both faith and reason must work together in spiritual life, and this necessarily creates in the Church a place for doctrine and dogma. By refusing to search for and acknowledge a definitive right and wrong, especially in the moral life, one becomes a fool, not a sage. It is just this type of muddled thinking that is used to justify the moral relativitism present in the Church and in the world. And certainly this leads to moral chaos, when no one can claim to know right from wrong.

Rohr's critique of the young who search for orthodoxy betrays a subtle ad hominem argument--he contends that it is just because the young are young that they believe such things. He does not address their position, but casts off the position outright simply because of their age.

And then there is the "Pagan Ritual" passage:

A central theme of Rohr's "male spirituality" is the importance of ritual for the transformation of the male. Through these rituals, these rites of initiation, the man is supposed to experience his powerlessness through some form of suffering, and later emerge as Jonah from the whale, a transformed and more spiritually aware man. Traditionally the sacred liturgy and the rituals surrounding the Sacraments were the way in which Catholics (both men and women) experienced this ritualistic initiation and transformation (especially through the Sacraments of Initiation). Rohr, however, criticizes Catholic ritual for not having any efficacy in the form that it presently takes. His concern is that the Sacraments lose the ability to transform if their accompanying ritual does not produce a desired psychological effect.

I will be the first to admit that there is something lacking today in the Church's sacramental celebrations, but Rohr's proposal for solving this problem is strange. Instead of advocating an authentic renewal of the Sacraments and the rituals surrounding them, he has taken it upon himself to create new rituals that, he hopes, will speak to the men of today. In fact, the appendix of Adam's Return gives an outline of a sample rite for men. The sponsoring of such male rituals is one of the main activities of Rohr's Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Men from around America pay hundreds of dollars to "find themselves" in the New Mexico desert. What makes these rituals problematic for discerning Catholics is that they draw from and retain elements of various pagan rites of initiation.

I hope we will hear more from Fr. Bryce Sibley in the months ahead. I've missed his blog.