Correspondence
McCORKELL, EDWARD & D'Arienzo, Camille & Ong, Walter J.
CORRESPONDENCE Taking up 'fiery prayer' Berryville, Va. To the Editors: In your May 20 issue, Lawrence S. Cunningham reviewed two books by Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart and The Mystery of...
...It brings the gospel into contact with the real world as never before, I believe, in the history of the church...
...To operate with the old style rhetoric would be evangelical suicide for the Catholic church...
...They are interconnected and their resolution requires difficult tradeoffs among competing interests and values...
...The priest says, "Why pray...
...We must address issues in a way that reflects our ability to grasp what is actually going on among people...
...To the Editors: In your May 20 issue, Lawrence S. Cunningham reviewed two books by Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart and The Mystery of Christ...
...Prayer is irrelevant...
...DeBernardo is on target in saying that the bishops' words "speak to a wide variety of people actively involved in the real world...
...In their conclusion (#293, not cited in DeBernardo's article), the bishops insist, "None of the issues we have addressed in this chapter can be dealt with in isolation...
...CAMILLE D'ARIENZO, R.S.M...
...Thomas Merton, shortly before 'his death, visited Calcutta where, at a conference on prayer, he expressed well what I would like to convey in this communication: You will not believe me when I tell you some of the things that are being said, of people going to a priest in confession, complaining of their inability to pray...
...I don't pray...
...To the Editors: The late Marjorie Tuite, O.P., a social activist who spent her life helping oppressed people confront the causes of poverty-racism, sexism, and militarism-regularly expressed the need "to make the connections...
...The bishops clearly have made the connections, connections that bind them to their brothers and sisters everywhere, religious or not...
...Why should you...
...Louis University (Continued on page 478) CORRESPONDENCE (Continued from page 450) Words that bind Rego Park, N.Y...
...The bishops have created a new rhetoric, finding for themselves a public audience which includes the Catholic faithful and others as well, and adjusting accordingly their own style and tone of address and their approach to subjects of concern...
...He is nowhere else but purely and simply in my neighbor...
...They attest to a deep faith, a clarity of expression, and a passion to communicate...
...The bishops' statements, Pilla argues, "must stand a test of realism in terms of being credible in a pluralistic atmosphere...
...In my ministry of spiritual counseling at our retreat house here at Holy Cross Abbey, I find that these words of Merton [still] reflect the mentality of many of our retreatants...
...They could speak to the Catholic faithful...
...And it does so at a time when the inescapable openness of the media makers the development of this inclusive rhetoric imperative...
...Your action is your prayer and if your action is twenty-four hours a day, your prayer is twenty-four hours a day...
...It is exceedingly dangerous...
...Prayer is medieval...
...Thus it is that we find many of our Christian youth turning to non-Christian traditions with their centuries of teaching on contemplative prayer, when we have sixteen centuries of a rich Christian tradition...
...WALTER J. ONG, S.J...
...Again, that's making the connections...
...In America even some Catholic theologians have elected to go along with the popular theology: God is dead...
...One of the American bishops' many great achievements over the past few years has been their development of a voice capable of addressing the entire American populace, in ways which are truly Catholic and evangelistic but not exclusivist...
...Louis, Mo...
...Others could only overhear, and perhaps misunderstand, what the bishops had to say...
...However, after having provided a very positive and comprehensive overview of Keating's two books, Cunningham went on to say...
...In the past, American Catholic bishops had developed no rhetoric that would enable them to speak effectively about matters of moral or doctrinal concern, or indeed about anything else, to the general American public as well as to Catholic communicants...
...EDWARD McCORKELL The new rhetoric St...
...Allowing for education about the use of condoms, according to Bishop Anthony Pilla of Cleveland, is ' 'pastorally effective...
...Centering prayer'' is simply a new name for an old art that the Fathers of the Egyptian desert of the fourteenth century called "fiery prayer'' (taught or infused by the Holy Spirit) and which in our own milieu has been made known and propagated by the two great classics, The Cloud of Unknowing and The Way of the Pilgrim...
...bishops' recent document, Economic Justice for All, is every bit as noteworthy as Francis De-Bernardo maintains ["Engaging Words," June 3...
...The books are only going to be useful for those who are predisposed toward an intense spiritual life and .. . who have the leisure for its pursuit...
...Francis DeBernardo, in his lucid analysis ["Engaging Words," June 3] of the effectiveness of Economic Justice for All, observes that the bishops, "in offering their tradition as compatible with, or not as competing against, secular values, use arguments of association, a common rhetorical vehicle...
...It is immaturity...
...He says their ability to do so is what makes this document "truly pastoral...
...This heartening determination to fuse realism with the proclamation of the ideal is evident in their recent decision to retain a controversial statement in their document about AIDS...
...The keynote is "horizontal...
...I spend a great part of my time educating the retreatants in a simple method of interior, contemplative prayer...
...This is the life of prayer which is relevant to the world...
...It is regrettable that so many are hesitant to embark on the journey leading to such a relationship because of the lack of spiritual teachers...
...To the Editors: The rhetorical achievement that marks the U.S...
...God is no longer transcendental...
...The new rhetoric is evidence of the way the church is living and growing today...
...It is precisely Thomas Keating's writings that I recommend...
...Many hypothetical 'persons in the pew' might rightly object that their days do not have the leisure for the two periods of centering prayer...
...This is a major apostolic achievement...
...Understood comprehensively, rhetoric governs all of the complex relationships of speaker, audience, and subject that mark any given discourse...
...Cunningham admitted that "both of these books are exemplary volumes for spiritual reading...
Vol. 115 • September 1988 • No. 15
