Dr. Seuss condemned
Toolan, David
sion on a matter that cried out for bipartisanship. It's possible, of course, that Republicans will view this differently after the election. The voters who want this to end could choose to...
...His stress on awareness, I would say, tries to get at the difference between theory and experience, external conformity and interiorized faith, or the letter of the law versus the spirit...
...Every good Christian," says the preface to Ignatius of Loyola's Spiritual Exercises, "ought to be more ready to give a good sense to the doubtful proposition of another than to condemn it...
...SEUSS CONDEMNED Grinches go after de Mello his past summer was one of the more depressing I can remember, and it had nothing to do with E1 Ni~o...
...Above all, he was an artist in helping people to reimagine God--as much greater and more giving than they had dreamed...
...Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger's Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) was busy tightening up and closing down...
...Since then, he has operated on a free-lance basis, but has not hesitated to take initiatives--such as officiating at wedding ceremonies for Catholics who have undergone civil divorce proceedings--not calculated to endear him to his former episcopal superiors...
...The cleric, Father (or "bishop," as he now describes himself) Pat Buckley, is a validly ordained Roman Catholic priest who worked for some years in the ordinary parochial ministry before falling out with his bishop...
...Herbert Hoover may look like a hero compared with us...
...I came away with a deepened recognition of how, in G.M...
...Guenka, who was de Mello's insight meditation teacher, to see if I could arrange a retreat with him...
...The key to understanding de Mello's writings (largely story collections) is to have made one of his retreats...
...Hopkins's words, the Holy Spirit "over the bent world broods...
...The Vatican complains of "ambiguity" and "perplexity" in interpretation...
...At various points in his books," says the CDF's explanatory note, "institutions of the church are criticized indiscriminately...
...And in that period of my life I wanted a silent retreat...
...A story from de Mello's The Prayer of the Frog (Gujarat Sahitya Prakash) is cited as evidence: "A public sinner was excommunicated and forbidden entry to the church...
...In May of this year, he was ordained as a bishop by the equally dissident Bishop Michael Cox, David Toolan, S.J., is an associate editor of America magazine...
...When I was in Bombay in the summer of 1975, I made an appointment with a Mr...
...Kristol thinks Clinton should be tossed from office...
...What would the Vatican have done, do you suppose, if it had had to deal with that Galilean upstart who went about calling the religious authorities of his time "whitened sepulchers" and "hypocrites...
...But what I most remember is his image of God--beyond words yes, but boundless in generosity, love, and forgiveness...
...Then, by means of a procedural ruling, came the effective nullification of the teaching power of regional and national bishops' conferences--and more depressing still, the acquiescence of the bishops in the status of office boy...
...9 1998, Washington Post Writers Group David Toolan DR...
...he was, I felt, the only interesting and believable guru I met on my six-week tour of India...
...He also should have been sued for violating copyright laws, for the stories he "borrowed," without credit, from others...
...The ordinand is Sister (or Mother, as she now wishes to be called) Frances Meigh, who was born an Anglican, converted to Catholicism at the age of twenty-one, married and had three children, had her marriage annulled, and was consecrated as a hermit under canon law 603 in 1994 by Bishop John Crowley of Middlesborough, in the North of England...
...In my judgment, Father de Mello's Sadhana: A Way to God (Doubleday) remains the best Catholic "how to" book for someone looking for instruction in methods of prayer...
...What I found, in other words, was the gospel, and the very orthodox spirituality of the fourteenth-century classic, The Cloud of Unknowing--a God who is incomprehensible to intellect but knowable to love and to love alone...
...Rome sometimes gives the impression it has forgotten that our roots lie in the Hebrew prophets, the force of whose criticism is directed against the home team...
...De Mello used an odd principle to get at the unfathomable goodness of God--the idea that God couldn't be worse than you and I, but had to be at least as good as we are at our best...
...Would that this text were inscribed over the door of Cardinal Ratzinger's office...
...But of course...
...And moderate Republicans may suggest that Clinton be rebuked but allowed to govern...
...The man was a mesmerizing storyteller, of course, and could have made it as a standup comic in the Catskills...
...The final blow came on August 23 with a CDF "notification" that the writings of Father Anthony de Mello have been examined and in part found wanting--"incompatible with the Catholic faith" and a cause of "grave harm...
...De Mello's insight into the liberating effects of awareness derives from his training in Buddhist vipissana ("insight") meditation...
...I think he should be censured and allowed to serve out his term...
...Commonweal | 0 October 23, 1998...
...The public's sentiment on this issue is exactly right: Let's decide and get back to business while there is still business to get back to...
...Bishop Crowley is a former private secretary to Cardinal Basil Hume of Westminster, and reputedly destined for further promotion in the hierarchy: the embarrassment potential of the event is therefore significant...
...Seuss...
...They won't let me in either!'" Has Rome lost its sense of humor...
...Some of de Mello's early texts, the CDF acknowledges, "can be helpful in achieving self-mastery, in breaking the bonds and feelings that keep us from being free, and in approaching with serenity the various vicissitudes of life...
...The Vatican is bewildered by de Mello's emphasis on "awareness" and "interior enlightenment" over against Scripture, doctrine, and belief--and puts the worst possible construction on de Mello's awkward formulations...
...The ceremony, which was attended by about 150 people, represents the conjunction of a series of unlikely occurrences and extraordinary people...
...The voters who want this to end could choose to send them a message...
...After a brief run, it seems that episcopal collegiality has now been relegated to the department of obsolescent terms in the holy Roman church...
...De Mello was not writing theology...
...What came out of that pedestrian principle was a radical doctrine of divine abundance and grace...
...And what did I find...
...De Mello lets the church off easy in comparison...
...Will our grandchildren look back on us and say we were the generation so obsessed with the Clinton scandal that we couldn't pull ourselves together to prevent the human costs of a worldwide economic downturn...
...He took his woes to God: 'They won't let me in, Lord, because I am a sinner.' 'What are you complaining about?' said God...
...It was one of the most enriching experiences I have ever had--it cleared the mental and emoCommonweal 9 October23,1998 tional passages, opened up the whole psychophysical system...
...But overall de Mello's writings are said to exhibit a "progressive distancing from the essential contents of the Christian faith...
...Most Americans and--despite many pious statements to the contrary--most members of Congress also know where they stand...
...Bishops were ordered to ensure that the offending texts are withdrawn from sale and not reprinted...
...For years I resisted attending one of his retreats--because in adapting to American culture I thought he talked too much...
...he was a collector of parables, and loved to shake people up, get them thinking or reimagining...
...But in the early 1980s I finally gave in...
...our schedules did not allow it...
...First came the extension of "almost-infallible" to disputed questions like women's ordination and Anglican orders...
...No luck...
...Particularly objectionable, it is alleged, are his concept of the unknowability and cosmic impersonality of God, his sense of Jesus "as a master alongside others," a preference for "enlightenment," criticism of the church, and an excessive focus on this life rather than life after death...
...Guenka was a successful entrepreneur, of crockery and dairy products, who gave insight retreats on the side...
...John Horgan CALL ME 'MOTHER' Ordained to be renegades he campaign for the ordination of women in the Catholic church took a dramatic turn on September 14----but whether it moved forward, backward, or sideways is difficult to determine---with a ceremony at a small church north of Dublin in which a sixty-seven-year-old female hermit went through a ceremony of ordination presided over by a dissident priest who had himself undergone a rite of episcopal "consecration" five months earlier...
...Otherwise, since he borrowed freely from other religious traditions, especially the Sufi tales of Idries Shah, he will be misconstrued...
...As one Jesuit wag put it, going after de Mello, the very popular Indian Jesuit retreat master who died suddenly of a heart attack at age fifty-six in 1987, is a little like condemning Dr...
...It would be another decade before I was able to make a ten-day Buddhist insight retreat (in Barre, Massachusetts), which consisted of eight hours of silent meditation a day...
...But to return to Admiral Stockdale's question: Who are we...
Vol. 125 • October 1998 • No. 18
