This tradition [in which Centering Prayer stands] was handed on by the Hesychists of Eastern Orthodox tradition, and in particular by the sixth-century Syrian monk known as Pseudo-Dionysius; Meister Eckhart, John Ruysbroek, and the Rhineland mystics of the Middle Ages; the anonymous author of The Cloud of Unknowing in the fourteenth century; later by the Carmelite tradition exemplified by Teresa of Ávila, John of the Cross, Therese of Lisieux, and Elizabeth of the Trinity; and in the last century by Thomas Merton.
Fr. Thomas Keating, Open Mind, Open Heart, 20th anniversary ed. (London: Bloomsbury, 2006), 5.
Who was John (or Jan) Ruysbroeck? He was a Flemish Augustinian Canon who lived in the 13th and 14th centuries. He was beatified in the early 20th century. Ruysbroeck taught that union with God required detachment from all created things and the sacrifice of one’s self-centeredness.
Ruysbroeck completely rejected methods like Centering Prayer. He wrote:
When a man is bare and imageless in his senses and empty and idle in his higher powers, he enters into a rest through mere nature . . . without the grace of God. These people err gravely. They immerse themselves in an absolute silence that is purely natural, and a false liberty of spirit is born from this. Having drawn the body in upon itself, they are mute, unmoving. . . . They mistake these types of simplicity for those which are reached through God. In reality they have lost God…
And in this natural rest one cannot find God, but it certainly leads a man into a bare vacancy, which may be found by Pagans and Jews and all men, how wicked soever they may be, if they can live in their sins without the reproach of their conscience, and can empty themselves of every image and of all activity. In this bare vacancy the rest is pleasant and great. This rest is in itself no sin; for it exists in all men by nature, whenever they make themselves empty. But when a man wishes to practise and possess it without acts of virtue, he falls into spiritual pride and a self-complacency, from which he seldom recovers. And he sometimes fancies himself to have and to be that to which he shall never attain. When a man thus possesses this rest in false quietude, and all loving adherence seems a hindrance to him, he clings to himself in his rest, and lives contrary to the first way in which man is united with God: and this is the beginning of all ghostly error.
Adornment of the Spiritual Marriage, chapter LXVI .
Methods similar to Centering Prayer were known to the saints and mystics of previous eras — and rejected by them. In Ruysbroeck’s day, The Brethren of the Free Spirit taught a quietistic pantheism. Ruysbroeck wrote Adorment of the Spiritual Marriage to combat the errors of the group known as the Brethren (and Sisterhood) of the Free Spirit, particularly as taught by a woman named Bloemardinne.
Bloemardinne and others taught that when one reached union with God, he no longer needed to perform any virtuous acts or even pray. Like the Gnostics, they believed they could indulge their flesh without sin, because of their level of perfection.
In fact, Centering Prayer is more like the practices of those Ruysbroeck opposed than it is like his own practice and teaching.
For devout Catholics, that question is a no-brainer. Judaism and Christianity were revealed by God. Other religions are attempts by humans to understand the transcendent and achieve some kind of salvation. While, as Nostra Aetate taught, other religions do contain some goodness and truth, they also contain much error. Some of them are even influenced by demonic powers, as both the Old and New Testaments clearly teach (see 1 Cor 10:14-22, for example).
The CDF says of non-Christian religions:
one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic and requirements are never obscured. (On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, no. 16)
Yet, in this video (below), Fr. Thomas Keating says, “Faith, when it becomes contemplative, begins to perceive the oneness behind all religions.” Religious doctrine, he says, no matter from which religion, is necessary “as a stepping stone” toward this ultimate reality. Once reached, religious practice and belief is no longer “absolutized.”
This video is just one of many examples in which Fr. Keating avoids speaking about the truth of Catholicism or Christianity in general, as compared to other religions. He makes the Catholic Faith into simply one of many possible ways of moving towards the divine (albeit, the way he has chosen).
Watch the video yourself, and then I’ll comment on a few other aspects of what he says.
Note also in the video his Buddhist understanding of the self. What is the cause of all our ills? Fr. Keating says it is our “separate-self sense.” In other words, the sense that I am someone separate from everyone else, that I am a person, and that there are other persons who are distinct from me.
Contrast this idea with what the CDF says about Christian prayer:
[Prayer] expresses therefore the communion of redeemed creatures with the intimate life of the Persons of the Trinity. This communion, based on Baptism and the Eucharist, source and summit of the life of the Church, implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘You’ of God.” (On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, no. 3)
Without a “separate-self sense,” we cannot even practice Christian prayer. Recognizing that God is a personal being, distinct from ourselves (also personal beings, made in His likeness), is absolutely foundational. The CDF also says,
an absorbing of the human self into the divine self is never possible, not even in the highest states of grace.” (No. 14)
Fr. Keating quotes the greatest commandment, “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind” (Mt 22:27). But how is it possible to love God at all, if he is not someone separate from ourselves? Without separate selves, love is just a nice word. One ends up seeking fulfillment, release, etc., rather than intimacy and the Divine Will. This is ultimately selfishness, not love. The CDF says:
From the dogmatic point of view, it is impossible to arrive at a perfect love of God if one ignores his giving of himself to us through his Incarnate Son, who was crucified and rose from the dead. (No. 20)
I did not notice a single mention of redemption or even of Jesus in this interview on (supposedly Christian) “spirituality.”
In much of the video, Ken Wilber (the interviewer) and Fr. Keating deal with psychology, as though science could confirm or deny spiritual truth. In fact, the CDF identifies the substitution of psychology for spirituality as one of the problems with modern methods of prayer. And this erroneous substitution is intimately bound up with the rejection of the truth of our separateness from God:
[Erroneous modern prayer methods] incite [man] to try and overcome the distance separating creature from Creator, as though there ought not to be such a distance; to consider the way of Christ on earth, by which he wishes to lead us to the Father, as something now surpassed; to bring down to the level of natural psychology what has been regarded as pure grace, considering it instead as ‘superior knowledge or as ‘experience.’ (On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation, no. 10)
We see once again that the CDF has addressed numerous ideas taught by Fr. Keating and other Centering Prayer advocates and found them problematic. The fact that the CDF never mentions Centering Prayer or Fr. Keating by name is completely irrelevant.
On October 25, Fr. Thomas Keating, architect of the Centering Prayer movement, passed away. Please join me in praying for the repose of his soul.
I have always tried to keep my criticisms focused on the practice of Centering Prayer, not on Fr. Keating himself or any of the others who teach or practice the method. My work has never been about personalities or judging others, but about combating the errors that can keep people from an intimate relationship with God through prayer.
That crusade has not come to an end. In fact, in some ways it has intensified.
Several months ago a Facebook friend informed me that Centering Prayer instructor Kess Frey had written a book in which he mentioned my work, among others’. I promptly bought and studied the book, Bridge across Troubled Waters. Now I have issued a response.
I updated and expanded Is Centering Prayer Catholic?The second edition of the book addresses Frey’s arguments as well as Fr. Keating’s. Dr. Anthony Lilles, Dean of St. John’s Seminary in Camarillo, California, wrote the foreword.
Dan Burke has invited me to record several episodes on Divine Intimacy Radio, talking about the book and the problems with Centering Prayer. I will let you know when they will air, so that you can join us.
My hope for all of us is that we attain the deepest intimacy with Christ possible in this life, so we can enjoy His presence immediately and eternally after death. May we live for Him alone.
Fr. Thomas Keating and the Dalai Lama in Boston in 2012. (Photo by Christopher, Wikimedia Commons)
This post analyzes the latest newsletter of Contemplative Outreach Chicago (March 2018). Contemplative Outreach is the organization co-founded by Fr. Thomas Keating and David Frenette and others to promote and teach Centering Prayer. Sometimes it’s difficult to see what is wrong with the method of Centering Prayer. The problems with the Centering Prayer movement become clearer when we consider the theology associated with it, as well as the other New Age teachings, heterodoxy, and political liberalism that the organization promotes.
Here are seven problems found in this short newsletter. They cast serious doubt on the organization’s claim to be teaching Christian prayer.
1. Gnosticism
Wisdom of the Gospel of Thomas: Although the newsletter reveals that the Gospel of Thomas was discovered at Nag Hammadi, it blatantly lies when it says, “Scholars are in general agreement that it is a legitimate text that is consistent with the canonical gospels.”The Gospel of Thomas is a Gnostic text.Gnosticism was one of the major heresies in the early Church. When the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) wrote its authoritative document On Some Aspects of Christian Mediation,it identified pseudo-gnosticism as one of the two “fundamental deviations” behind “erroneous ways of praying” (no. 8).
2. Neighbor = Self?
“Learning who you truly are is the work of the method of Centering Prayer. Our invocation from Jesus is to love our neighbor as ourself, not as much as ourself,” writes Alan Krema.
In other words, according to the Contemplative Outreach Chicago Coordinator, we love our neighbor because our neighbor and ourselves are at heart indistinguishable. We are in “Union,” which in this case means “you” and “I” are basically two different words for the same thing. This is an instance of non-dualism – also known as monism. Non-dualism/monism teaches that everything is one. Monism was condemned as a heresy at Vatican I:
“If anyone shall say that the substance and essence of God and of all things is one and the same; let him be anathema. “
This heresy is commonly taught by Fr. Keating and Contemplative Outreach.
Loving your neighbor is meaningless, if your neighbor is not a real person separate from yourself. What you are then loving is not your neighbor at all, but the “Ultimate Reality” of which you and he are only shallow manifestations. There is no person at all in the philosophy. No one to love, no one to be loved. There is no “you” to love anyone.
The second greatest commandment thus becomes a mere statement of Eastern religious thought.
3. The Enneagram
Contemplative Outreach is enamored of the Enneagram.
“when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith.” (no. 1.4)
4. Retreat with Nancy Sylvester
Nancy Sylvester “is the former President of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious (LCWR)”. This organization had so many problems that it underwent a Vatican investigation earlier this decade. The result can be read here:
But most problematic is the organization she founded, The Institute for Communal Contemplation and Dialogue. Its website is replete with New Age teaching, including using Hindu mandalas at retreats, “re-imagining” the Creation Story, and the adulation of Cynthia Bourgeault’s non-dualist theology. Sylvester calls us to “exercise contemplative power” to bring about, among other things, “ecclesial transformation.” Which appears to be a sophist way of saying “changing the Church to our liking.”
5. Beth O’Brien
Beth O’Brien, who will lead the “Midwest Wisdom Schools” advertised, writes in her biography on her website:
“Inspired by Teilhard de Chardin’s writing on human energy and convergence, she continues to seek an ever-deepening knowing within an evolutionary and incarnational (embodied) spirituality.”
6. Religious Indifferentism
Phil Jackson, former president of Contemplative Outreach Chicago, shares his adventure of backpacking alone in the West. In his reflection, he refers to Abraham, Jesus, Mohammed, and Buddha as though they are all worthy of the same level of respect, although they represent diverse religions and only one of them claimed to be (and was in fact) God.
7. Vibrations of God?
But, as often, the quote from Fr. Thomas Keating crowns it all. It begins:
“We’re all like localized vibrations of the infinite goodness of God’s presence.”
Say what?
This issue of the newsletter of Contemplative Outreach Chicago is typical of other issues I have read, and the newsletter of Contemplative Outreach, Ltd. It is full of New Age thought, religious indifferentism, the monist heresy, and the just plain weird. There is very little of the Gospel, although the organization claims Centering Prayer is just a modern version of the prayer of the saints.
Lately I’ve been studying two books, Intimacy with God: An Introduction to Centering Prayer by Fr. Thomas Keating, and The Three Ages of the Interior Life by Fr. Reginald Garrigou-Lagrange. Fr. Keating’s book spends much time talking about the heresy of Jansenism, proposing Centering Prayer as an antidote. In this post, I’d like to look at how Centering Prayer, rather than solving the Jansenist problem, falls into the opposite error of quietism. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange (hereafter, G-L) provides most of the foundational material below.
In his chapter “Mortification According to the Gospel,” G-L names practical naturalism and Jansenism as the two opposing errors on mortification. One branch of practical naturalism is quietism, a seventeenth century heresy promulgated by Miguel de Molinos.
Passivity
“Molinos held that ‘to wish to act offends God, who wishes to be the only one to act in us.’ By no longer acting, he said, the soul annihilates itself and returns to its principle; there God alone lives and reigns in it…
“Molinos deduced from his principle that the soul should no longer produce acts of knowledge or of love of God, nor should it think any more of heaven or hell, nor any longer reflect on its acts or defects…
“He recommended that in prayer one should remain in obscure faith, in a repose in which one forgets every distinct thought relating to the humanity of Christ, or even to the divine perfections or to the Blessed Trinity, and that one should remain in this repose without producing any act.”
Compare that with the teaching of Fr. Thomas Keating on Centering Prayer:
“The only initiative we take during the period of centering prayer is to maintain our intention of consenting to the presence and action of God within.”
“The spiritual journey does not require going anywhere because God is already present within us. It is a question of allowing our ordinary thoughts to recede into the background… A thought in the context of this method is any perception that appears on the inner screen of consciousness. This could be a concept, a reflection, body sensation, emotion, image, memory, plan, noise from outside, a feeling of peace, or even a spiritual communication. In other words, anything whatsoever that registers in the inner screen of consciousness is a ‘thought’ in the context of centering prayer. The method consists of letting go of every kind of thought during the time of prayer, even the most devout thoughts.”
“If you wait, God will manifest Himself.”
“Our basic core of goodness is dynamic and tends to grow of itself.”
(Open Mind, Open Heart, 7, 20-21, 24, 160)
Acquired contemplation or just a nap?
Molinos thought that he was teaching people “acquired contemplation.” This is a term never used by the Church Fathers or Doctors of the Church. It can be misleading. For the Carmelite saints, particularly Teresa of Avila, the stage just before infused recollection was (acquired) recollection. It is not contemplation properly speaking, but actually a very simplified meditation.
G-L says of Molinos’ version of prayer:
In reality the contemplation thus acquired by the cessation of every act was only a pious somnolence, far more somnolent than pious.”
Fr. Keating actually compares Centering Prayer to sleep (Open Mind, Open Heart 23). He also says:
“Some people in the [Cistercian] community, as well as visitors coming to the guest house, complained that it was spooky seeing people walking around the guesthouse like ‘zombies.'”
“The experience of deep rest, cumulative now since we are talking about a year or two of practice, automatically causes the body to rest, and indeed to rest in a greater degree than in sleep.”
(Intimacy with God, xviii, 43).
Authentic Christian prayer does not produce a zombie-like state. Although sometimes one may fall asleep during prayer, such sleep is not so much a function of prayer as a result of one’s lifestyle or health. Lots goes on in Christian prayer, whether primarily active or infused by God.
Similarities to Buddhism
G-L says of practitioners of Molinos’ quietism:
“Their state reminds one more of the nirvana of the Buddhists than of the transforming and radiant union of the saints.”
Fr. Thomas Keating asks:
“Why were the disciples of Eastern gurus, Zen roshis, and teachers of TM… experiencing significant spiritual experiences without having gone through the penitential exercises that the Trappist order required?”
“In Zen there is a particular practice that is quite close to Centering Prayer in that one just sits in the prescribed posture, paying no attention to thoughts.”
(Intimacy with God, xiii-xiv, 34)
The need for mortification
Speaking of the necessity of mortification in Chapter XX, G-L identifies four reasons for it:
the consequences of Original Sin
the results of personal sins
“the infinite elevation of our supernatural end”
imitation of the crucified Christ
This list is enlightening when one applies it to Centering Prayer. Fr. Keating downplays the role of mortification in the Christian life, linking it with the heresy of Jansenism. He presents Centering Prayer as an option for people at any stage of the spiritual life, even absolute beginners. He became frustrated with Trappist spirituality after years of practicing traditional prayer and mortification without reaching the state of infused contemplation. He proposed Centering Prayer as a way to hasten the process, introducing beginners to a “contemplative” life.
Fr. Keating reduces Original Sin to a “lack of awareness” of God’s presence.
Instead of speaking much about overcoming personal sin, he focuses on getting rid of the “emotional programs” of the “false self.”
In place of the supernatural end of the spiritual life, Keating sees contemplation as a natural process, linking it to evolution. He avoids speaking of redemption, sanctification, or transformation in Christ, except in terms of a change of awareness.
Christ plays a surprisingly small role in his teaching, and Christ’s Passion is seldom mentioned.
Here is an excerpt of one of his rare passages on the Passion:
“Christ’s passion as I understand it, is our own human misery. He has taken upon himself all the consequences of the human condition, the chief of which is the feeling of alienation from God… his cry on the cross is our cry of a desperate alienation from God, taken up into his, and transformed into resurrection…
“The cross that God asks us to accept is primarily our own pain that we bring from early childhood.”
(Intimacy with God, 177, 178)
So for Fr. Keating, Jesus’ death and resurrection is primarily identification with us, rather than a sacrifice for sin. And our “cross” is not mortification out of love for Christ, but the emotional pain that Centering Prayer brings to the surface of one’s consciousness.
Since Fr. Keating downplays the four things that make mortification necessary, according to G-L, it is no wonder that he downplays mortification itself. Fr. Keating seeks to help everyone jump to the end of the Purgative Way without years of mortification, turning away from sin, and living virtuously. Fr. Garrigou-Lagrange, on the other hand, seeks to lead beginners through the Purgative Way by just such means, encouraging them to persevere through difficulties, because the goal is so far beyond our dreams.
As we enter the Sacred Triduum, may God give us the grace to persevere, to hope against hope, that He will be faithful to His promise. “He who has begun a good work in you will be faithful to complete it” (Phil. 1:6). The only way to Easter is through Good Friday.
Nun in Prayer by Charles Camino (Wikimedia Commons). Christian prayer always stays close to Christ.
We have been examining the teaching of Fr. Thomas Keating and other Centering Prayer advocates, comparing them with Orationis formas (Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation). In parts 2 and 3 of this series, we looked at Centering Prayer’s relationship to pseudognosticism. Now we turn to the essence of Christian prayer.
Throughout this series, quotes from Church documents and the saints are in purple. Quotes from Centering Prayer advocates are in green.
“The meditation of the Christian in prayer seeks to grasp the depths of the divine in the salvific works of God in Christ, the Incarnate Word, and in the gift of his Spirit. These divine depths are always revealed to him through the human-earthly dimension.” (OF, no. 11)
What separates Christian prayer from eastern forms of meditation? Christian prayer uses the material world, especially human nature, as a starting point for pondering divine truth.
So, we see a mountain and we turn our minds to God’s majesty. We see a bird and we ponder freedom from attachments. We see an infant and we marvel at the Incarnation. Natural, every day sights and sounds move us to prayer and to closer union with God.
Jesus Himself reveals God to us “through the human-earthly dimension.” Since He did not come to save angels, but humans, He became one of us–forever! Jesus never ceases to be a man. We forever go to God through Him, in a human mode. We cannot and do not relate to God as either the angels (pure spirits) or the beasts (mere material creatures) do. We have a particular way of drawing near to God–the human way.
How does true Christian prayer differ then from erroneous prayer forms? Orationis formas continues:
“Similar methods of meditation, on the other hand, including those which have their starting-point in the words and deeds of Jesus, try as far as possible to put aside everything that is worldly, sense-perceptible or conceptually limited. It is thus an attempt to ascend to or immerse oneself in the sphere of the divine, which, as such, is neither terrestrial, sense-perceptible nor capable of conceptualization.” (ibid.)
Prayer becomes problematic when it strives to put aside everything that is earthly, including thought, imagination, and affections. Beginning with a “sacred word” or a passage of Scripture is not sufficient, if one then tries to move beyond thoughts, images, and concepts. One must continue to relate to God in a human mode until God Himself lifts one to something higher. And even then it is something one cannot prolong or replicate.
Footnote 12 of Orationis formas explains further:
“Pope John Paul II has pointed out to the whole Church the example and the doctrine of St. Teresa of Avila who in her life had to reject the temptation of certain methods which proposed a leaving aside of the humanity of Christ in favor of a vague self-immersion in the abyss of the divinity. In a homily given on November 1st, 1982, he said that the call of Teresa of Jesus advocating a prayer completely centered on Christ ‘is valid, even in our day, against some methods of prayer which are not inspired by the Gospel and which in practice tend to set Christ aside in preference for a mental void which makes no sense in Christianity. Any method of prayer is valid insofar as it is inspired by Christ and leads to Christ who is the Way, the Truth and the Life .'”
Christian prayer is centered on Christ. The Church teaches this concretely. The Christian meditates on Christ, talks to Christ, loves Christ in his prayer. He does not try to get beyond doing so. There is no getting beyond Jesus, because He is the Second Person of the Trinity! No one comes to the Father but by Him.
A “mental void” is not Christian prayer.
Now, at this point, Centering Prayer advocates will protest, “We don’t seek to create a mental void! Centering Prayer is not about making the mind blank!”
Really? Then what do these words of Fr. Keating mean?
“The method consists in letting go of every kind of thought during prayer, even the most devout thoughts.”(Open Mind, Open Heart)
He defines “thought” to include
“a concept, a reflection, body sensation, emotion, image, memory, plan, noise from outside, a feeling of peace, or even a spiritual communication.”
Fr. Keating also says in response to a reader’s question:
“[Y]ou need not worry about experiencing what you may interpret as a blank once in a while. If you notice you have a blank, that’s a thought; merely return to your sacred word.” (Open Mind, Open Heart)
Now, tell me, what is the meaning of “mental void,” if not “absence of thoughts or images?” “Turning away from thoughts” is just another way of saying “trying not to think about anything.” It sounds gentler. It’s not supposed to be violent. And Fr. Keating admits most people have trouble doing this, telling them not to worry about it too much. But a mental void is clearly the goal he has in mind (pun intended).
Christian prayer does not turn away from thoughts, images, and emotions. Christian prayer turns toward Christ.
The Christian turns away from thoughts about hobbies or plans for the day, in order that his mind may focus on Christ. Thought is not an evil. It is nothing to be ashamed of. It does in itself not keep one away from God. One does not turn away from all thoughts, only profane thoughts, in order to think sacred thoughts. Sacred thoughts lead one to God.
Christian prayer meditates on the truths of the Faith until God gives the gift of contemplation. Letting go of thoughts should be a response to God’s action in prayer, not a method the Christian performs on his own.
Next time, we’ll consider what Orationis formas says about eastern religions.
Virtue and Nobility Putting Ignorance to Flight by Tiepolo (Wikimedia Commons).
We continue going through the document Orationis formas (On Some Aspects of Christian Meditation), comparing its cautions with the teaching of Fr. Thomas Keating, Contemplative Outreach, and other leaders of the Centering Prayer movement.
Let’s return to pseudognosticism, which we began discussing in Part 2. As in this whole series, quotes from Church documents and saints and Fathers are in purple. Quotes from Centering Prayer practitioners are in green.
Footnote no. 8 of Orationis formas explains:
“Pseudognosticism considered matter as something impure and degraded which enveloped the soul in an ignorance from which prayer had to free it, thereby raising it to true superior knowledge and so to a pure state…”
How do Centering Prayer advocates view matter?
Matter and spirit
Fr. Keating writes in The Mystery of Christ:
“By becoming a human being Christ annihilated the dichotomy between matter and spirit. In the Person of the Divine-Human Being, a continuum between the divine and the human has been established. Thus, God’s plan is not only to spiritualize the material universe, but to make matter itself divine. This he has already done in the glorified humanity of his Son. The grace bestowed on us by the Ascension of Jesus is the divinization of our humanity. Our individuality is permeated by the Spirit of God through the grace of the Ascension and more specifically through the grace of Pentecost. Thus we, in Christ, are also annihilating the dichotomy between matter and spirit. Our life is a mysterious interpenetration of material experience, spiritual reality and the divine Presence.”
Typically, Fr. Keating’s words tangle truth and error. Jesus united God and man in one Person. He united Spirit with flesh, Creator with creature. Through His Passion we are able to attain union with God as well. We will (and already do to some extent) “partake in the divine nature” (see 2 Pet 1:4).
But is it correct to say that “Christ annihilated the dichotomy between matter and spirit?” Fr. Keating, as we saw in an earlier post, believes that “contemplation resolves all dichotomies.” This is non-dualism. Non-dualism is not a Christian concept. Christianity believes in opposites: evil truly is the rejection of good, not just a word we use for things that make us uncomfortable. Jesus does not blend matter and spirit. He does not erase the difference between them. He was and is fully God and fully man, not a hybrid.
The idea that Jesus’ divinity and humanity were somehow blended together is actually an ancient heresy. As the Second Council of Constantinople decreed:
“We think that God the Word was united to the flesh, each of the two natures remaining what it is. This is why Christ is one, God and man; the same, consubstantial (homoousios) with the father as to the divinity and consubstantial with us as to the humanity.”
Neither the flesh nor the spirit is annihilated. Nor are they mixed. There is not, nor could there ever be, “a continuum between the divine and the human.” (More on that in a future post.)
The Catechism enumerates the early heresies concerning Christ’s two natures:
“The first heresies denied not so much Christ’s divinity as his true humanity (Gnostic Docetism)…
“The Monophysites affirmed that the human nature had ceased to exist as such in Christ when the divine person of God’s Son assumed it…” (nos. 464 and 467)
And then the Catechism clinches it, bringing us back to Fr. Keating’s assertions and their opposition to the teaching of Orationis formas:
“Because ‘human nature was assumed, not absorbed’, in the mysterious union of the Incarnation, the Church was led over the course of centuries to confess the full reality of Christ’s human soul, with its operations of intellect and will, and of his human body. In parallel fashion, she had to recall on each occasion that Christ’s human nature belongs, as his own, to the divine person of the Son of God, who assumed it. Everything that Christ is and does in this nature derives from ‘one of the Trinity’. The Son of God therefore communicates to his humanity his own personal mode of existence in the Trinity. In his soul as in his body, Christ thus expresses humanly the divine ways of the Trinity:
“‘The Son of God. . . worked with human hands; he thought with a human mind. He acted with a human will, and with a human heart he loved. Born of the Virgin Mary, he has truly been made one of us, like to us in all things except sin.'” (CCC no. 470, quoting Gaudium et Spes)
The Incarnation does not “annihilate the dichotomy between matter and spirit.” Instead, it unites matter and spirit. It allows us to be united with God in our intellect, our will, and even our body. We are not fully human without our bodies–thus, the Resurrection of the Dead. We will not be ghosts in Heaven. Nor will we be angels.
Christ sanctified matter. He did not “set us free” from it. He freed us from sin’s hold over matter. Now we can think, love, eat, and drink in union with God and for His glory.
Pseudognostic knowledge
Does Centering Prayer teach that the human soul is “in an ignorance from which prayer had to free it, thereby raising it to true superior knowledge and so to a pure state?” Yes!
“As long as the human condition is experienced as separate from Ultimate Reality, it is subject to ignorance and illusion, weakness and suffering.”
In other words, for Fr. Keating separation from God is an illusion born of ignorance. If only we would recognize our oneness with God, suffering would cease!
But this is not the Christian view. Although man could not even exist without God holding him in existence, God calls us to a much deeper union with Himself that sin prevents. Weakness and suffering are clues to reality. They teach us that something is terribly wrong. We suffer because man as a species rejected the true path to union with God, desiring to be “like God” while living in disobedience to Him. In this sense, separation from God is a reality. Recognizing this reality is fundamental to redemption. Christ came to solve this problem. It is no illusion!
Perhaps the most basic idea underlying Centering Prayer is that we need to have a new awakening, a new consciousness. In his book Open Mind, Open Heart, Fr. Keating defines transformation as:
“a restructuring of consciousness in which the divine reality is perceived to be present in oneself and in all that is.”
Of course, there is a sense in which God is present in oneself and all creation. But ignorance is not our most basic problem. Sin is. When we make overcoming ignorance the central problem of the spiritual life, we inhibit true transformation, in which God changes our actions and desires, in which He makes us holy.
Let me sum up what I’ve been saying by returning to Orationis formas, as it speaks of the the resurgence of pseudognosticism and another early heresy on prayer:
“Both of these forms of error continue to be a temptation for man the sinner. They incite him to try and overcome the distance separating creature from Creator, as though there ought not to be such a distance; to consider the way of Christ on earth, by which he wishes to lead us to the Father, as something now surpassed; to bring down to the level of natural psychology what has been regarded as pure grace, considering it instead as ‘superior knowledge’ or as ‘experience.’
“Such erroneous forms, having reappeared in history from time to time on the fringes of the Church’s prayer, seem once more to impress many Christians, appealing to them as a kind of remedy, be it psychological or spiritual, or as a quick way of finding God.” (OF, no. 10)
Can anyone still maintain that Orationis formas was not directed towards practices like Centering Prayer?
We will continue next time by examining more fully the purpose of Christian prayer as explained in this document.
Eduardo Verastegui prays with other Catholics during the dedication of the Shrine of Our Lady of Guadeloupe in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. (Photo by Dan Rossini, all rights reserved.) Christian prayer is always communal.
In Part 1, we saw that Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of ChristianMeditation (Orationis formas) addresses modern errors in prayer, regardless of their origin. Therefore, the criticisms in this document from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) can be applied to Centering Prayer, even assuming that Centering Prayer was not derived from eastern religions.
Secondly, we saw that Orationis formas defines prayer as “a personal, intimate and profound dialogue between man and God” (no. 3). Centering Prayer does not acknowledge an essential difference between God and man. It proposes no dialogue, only awareness. Therefore, by the standards of the CDF it is not Christian prayer.
Now let’s continue comparing the rest of the document to the teachings of Fr. Keating and other leaders in the Centering Prayer movement. As in this entire series, quotes from Church documents are highlighted in purple. Quotes from Centering Prayer advocates are highlighted in green.
Prayer belongs to the Church
Numbers 6 and 7 of Orationis formas speak of the connection between prayer and revelation, and even to the Church’s teaching authority. Here are some snippets:
“There exists, then, a strict relationship between Revelation and prayer…
The prayer of Jesus has been entrusted to the Church…
The Christian, even when he is alone and prays in secret, is conscious that he always prays for the good of the Church in union with Christ, in the Holy Spirit and together with all the Saints.”
Now, Centering Prayer advocates would never simply state that the Church has no business regulating their method of prayer. Nor would they claim to be outside the communion of saints. So why do I quote from this passage?
Centering Prayer is connected with dissent from fundamental Church teachings. Part 1 showed how Fr. Keating teaches erroneous (and peculiar) doctrine regarding Original Sin, Baptism, and the Eucharist.
Here are some other examples:
Centering Prayer is taught and practiced by many who advocate for women’s ordination,such as “womanpriests” Suzanne Dunn, Ruth Lindstedt, and Jeanette Love. (Many other “womenpriests” say they teach about “contemplative prayer,” which I imagine is mostly a euphemism for Centering Prayer in this context).
Indifferentism is rampant in Centering Prayer teaching.Fr. Keating and his “disciple” David Frenette say openly that the differences between Christianity and Buddhism are largely culturally conditioned, rather than real disagreement. Interestingly, they don’t say this on the Contemplative Outreach website, which caters to Catholics.
Centering Prayer is also regularly taught alongside New Age practices such as the Enneagram or Yoga (see the Message from the President of Contemplative Outreach in this link).
When the leaders of the Centering Prayer movement promote a myriad of theological errors, can they really claim that they pray in communion with the Church?
Ancient, New Age errors
The CDF writes about the errors the early Church Fathers combated:
“In combating the errors of pseudognosticism the Fathers affirmed that matter is created by God and as such is not evil.” (OF no. 8)
Centering Prayer has a gnostic element. The Fathers and saints teach that the created world falls short of God’s greatness. They teach that we cannot fully comprehend God with our intellect. But Centering Prayer goes well beyond this.
Fr. Thomas Keating misquotes Mark 8:34, writing in Open Mind, Open Heart:
“Unless you deny your inmost self and take up the cross, you cannot be my disciple.”
He adds the word inmost, then interprets it for the reader:
“Denial of our inmost self includes detachment from the habitual functioning of our intellect and will, which are our inmost faculties. This may require letting go of not only ordinary thoughts during prayer, but also of our most devout reflections and aspirations insofar as we treat them as necessary means for going to God.” (Open Mind, Open Heart, 20th Anniversary Edition, p. 13)
In other words, for Fr. Keating, we don’t need reflections in order to grow close to God. We don’t need aspirations. We don’t need to use our intellect or will or imagination–the very faculties that distinguish humans from brute beasts. This teaching is pseudognosticism.
A Christian view of humanity acknowledges that our thoughts, feelings, aspirations, and imaginings can only get us so far in the spiritual life. After that, we need a special help from God. That is, once we have exhausted what we can do with the natural human gifts God gave us when He created us, working with the help of ordinary grace, He gives us supernatural contemplation which we could never obtain in any other way.
We do not prepare for the greater gifts by rejecting the lesser gifts. We prepare for the greater gifts by making good use of the gifts we already have.
The CDF addresses this question more fully later:
“The meditation of the Christian in prayer seeks to grasp the depths of the divine in the salvific works of God in Christ, the Incarnate Word, and in the gift of his Spirit. These divine depths are always revealed to him through the human-earthly dimension. Similar methods of meditation, on the other hand, including those which have their starting-point in the words and deeds of Jesus, try as far as possible to put aside everything that is worldly, sense-perceptible or conceptually limited. It is thus an attempt to ascend to or immerse oneself in the sphere of the divine, which, as such, is neither terrestrial, sense-perceptible nor capable of conceptualization.” (OF no. 11)
These “similar methods” are among the erroneous ones the CDF is cautioning us against. They try to set aside everything earthly and sense-perceptible out of a mistaken idea that this will lead to immersion in what is beyond our senses–the Divine, or God. This exactly describes the teaching of Fr. Keating and his colleagues.
Next time, we’ll look at further errors in prayer addressed by the CDF.
Buddha Siakianuni (photo by Boryzo, Wikimedia Commons). Is Centering Prayer inspired by eastern religions?
In 1989, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF) issued Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation. Cardinal Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, signed the document. The Latin title is Orationis formas (OF). Its purpose:
“[M]any feel the need for sure criteria of a doctrinal and pastoral character which might allow them to instruct others in prayer, in its numerous manifestations, while remaining faithful to the truth revealed in Jesus, by means of the genuine Tradition of the Church. This present letter seeks to reply to this urgent need, so that in the various particular Churches, the many different forms of prayer, including new ones, may never lose their correct personal and communitarian nature.” (OF no. 1)
It goes on to detail several problems found in modern prayer methods.
Some Aspects of Christian Meditation does not mention any problematic practices by name. Instead, it gives general principles by which the bishops are to help reform prayer movements to bring them into line with the faith.
Contemplative Outreach, the official promoter of Centering Prayer, claims that the document was not addressing Centering Prayer. In this series, which will span several posts, we will examine many points made by the CDF and compare them to statements made by Contemplative Outreach, Fr. Thomas Keating, or other prominent Centering Prayer practitioners. Since these posts will be loaded with quotes, I have decided to color code them to help distinguish which document is being cited. Quotes from the CDF appear below in purple. Quotes from Contemplative Outreach and Fr. Keating, et. al., appear in green.
Non-Christian meditation
Orationis formas begins by addressing the influence of non-Christian religions on new prayer methods:
“The ever more frequent contact with other religions and with their different styles and methods of prayer has, in recent decades, led many of the faithful to ask themselves what value non-Christian forms of meditation might have for Christians… Observing that in recent times many traditional methods of meditation, especially Christian ones, have fallen into disuse, they wonder whether it might not now be possible, by a new training in prayer, to enrich our heritage by incorporating what has until now been foreign to it.” (OF no.2)
Response from the Contemplative Outreach FAQs page:
“Cardinal Ratzinger’s ‘Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation’, written in 1989, was not directed to Centering Prayer, which is the traditional form of Christian prayer, but rather at those forms of meditative practices that actually incorporate the methods of Eastern meditations such as Zen and the use of the Hindu mantras. The letter is chiefly concerned with the integration of such techniques into the Christian faith.” (My emphasis)
Is this characterization correct? Orationis formas never uses the word “mantra.” The first footnote in the document does mention Hinduism and Zen, however, in this way:
“The expression ‘eastern methods’ is used to refer to methods which are inspired by Hinduism and Buddhism, such as ‘Zen,’ ‘Transcendental Meditation’ or ‘Yoga.’ Thus it indicates methods of meditation of the non-Christian Far East which today are not infrequently adopted by some Christians also in their meditation.” (My emphasis)
Now, I would say that the phrase “methods inspired by” eastern religions is not as restrictive as “forms of meditative practices that actually incorporate the methods of Eastern meditations…” This interpretation can be refuted, but the footnote goes on to say:
“The orientation of the principles and methods contained in this present document is intended to serve as a reference point not just for this problem, but also, in a more general way, for the different forms of prayer practiced nowadays in ecclesial organizations, particularly in associations, movements and groups.”
In other words, the CDF is concerned with any forms of prayer that exhibit certain problematic elements, even those that may have not been consciously inspired by non-Christian religions.
So, on this point, Centering Prayer is not off the hook. In looking at Orationis formas we need to examine whether the Centering Prayer method contains problematic elements, rather than ask what the origin of those elements is.
Even so, I find this sentence from OF no. 2 interesting, given the many discussions I have had with Centering Prayer practitioners:
“Other Christians, caught up in the movement towards openness and exchanges between various religions and cultures, are of the opinion that their prayer has much to gain from these [eastern] methods.”
Repeatedly, Centering Prayer practitioners refer to the teaching of Vatican II’s Nostra Aetate that the “Catholic Church rejects nothing that is true and holy in these [foreign] religions.” They also accuse me and others who reject Centering Prayer of “fearing” the eastern influence found in Centering Prayer. In fact, I hear words similar to these frequently, “Christian prayer has much to gain from eastern religions.”
So here the Contemplative Outreach FAQs contradict the arguments of many Centering Prayer advocates.
Now let us move on to the actual cautions of the CDF document and see how they apply to Centering Prayer.
It’s personal
What is prayer? The CDF states:
“For this reason, [prayer] is defined, properly speaking, as a personal, intimate and profound dialogue between man and God. It expresses therefore the communion of redeemed creatures with the intimate life of the Persons of the Trinity. This communion, based on Baptism and the Eucharist, source and summit of the life of the Church, implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘You’ of God.”(OF no. 3)
Centering Prayer rejects the idea of “a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘You’ of God.” Here are a two examples that demonstrate the error.
Fr. Keating writes:
“God and our true Self are not separate. Though we are not God, God and our true Self are the same thing” (Open Mind, Open Heart, 2oth Anniversary edition, p. 158).
In this YouTube videohe makes the point even clearer, saying that “You and the Other [meaning God] are one, always have been…”
How can you fly from yourself to God if you are already one with God?
The communion Fr. Keating proposes is not based on Baptism and the Eucharist. If we have always been one with God, what difference do the sacraments make? For Fr. Keating, the significant difference is one of consciousness, for he says that through Baptism:
“our sense of separation from God and from others is destroyed.” (ibid. 159)
Notice, it is not a real separation from God that Baptism overcomes, in Fr. Keating’s view, just “our sense” of it. In other words, our communion with God is not based on Baptism.
What about the Eucharist? Fr. Keating writes:
“The Eucharist is the celebration of life: the coming together of all the material elements of the cosmos, their emergence to consciousness in human persons and the transformation of human consciousness into Divine consciousness…” (Open Mind, Open Heart, p. 128)
Frankly, I’m not sure what Fr. Keating is talking about here, but we see again the emphasis on a change of consciousness, rather than moral conversion.
Where there are no separate people there can be no dialog. It’s no surprise, therefore, that no communication takes place in Centering Prayer. Without words, concepts, ideas, or images, how does one speak to God? While turning away from inspirations and feelings, and making no use of Sacred Scripture or the truths of the faith, how does one listen to God? No speaking and no listening means no dialog.
Now, it’s true that communication between God and the soul can take place at a level beyond words, concepts, and feelings in infused contemplation. Nevertheless, if there is no exchange on some level, there is no dialog. Awareness is not dialog, especially when that awareness is not about someone who is essentially other than oneself.
Christian prayer involves (at least) two persons. Jesus is a Person, God the Son. Christian prayer goes to God through Him, although it often addresses the First or Third Person of the Holy Trinity. Prayer is addressed from a person to a separate Person (or the other way around; God also communicates with the soul during prayer).
Without a “personal, intimate, and profound dialog,” the CDF says there is no Christian prayer. Therefore, Centering Prayer is not Christian prayer, whatever else it may be.
We will continue next week with Part 2 of this series.
Praying in the Dominican Church in Danzig by Daniel Chodowiecki (Wikimedia Commons)
This series by Dan Burke originally ran at SpiritualDirection.com. It is reposted her (slightly edited) by persmission.
In this third post we will explore the dangers of reducing God to a cosmic force along with ways we can better gain a healthy perspective on prayer and enhance rather than diminish our progress in prayer (you can read the first post here and the second post here).
Depersonalization
The final and most dangerous aspect of modern popular teaching on prayer is depersonalization. The danger here lies in an essential denial of two central doctrines of Christianity: first, the Incarnation (Christ really did come in the flesh) and second, the distinction between Creator and creature (I am not God and He is not me).
The historical reality of the Incarnation of Christ leads us to the critical understanding that God is person and we can commune with Him as such. This is similar to saying, “My wife is a person, and I am a person, and therefore we can commune most fully as persons.” Now, if I were to treat my wife not as a person but as an ethereal cosmic being, communication would break down in short order.
We can envision two contrasting scenarios that illustrate this point.
1. In the non-person prayer orientation, the husband claims to love his wife and yet stares past her in a self-entranced muttering while she stands ignored. It doesn’t matter that he intends or wants to love her, or is open to loving her; his approach is self-centered rather than other-centered.
2. In a person-oriented understanding of prayer, the adoring husband kneels before his spouse and recites poetry rooted in an exalted language of love and adoration. As he offers his love, all his attention is focused on her. She receives his love, as it is clearly for her alone. This is true intimacy, even if only the beginning of a more complete intimacy of the marital embrace.
God is not a distant idea or cosmic force to be communed with in some dazed stupor or blank mind created by the misuse of a mantra-centered method. These distant, ephemeral, and spiritual sounding descriptions of God and their related ideas are acid to the soul. They radically misrepresent who God is, how He has chosen to reveal himself to us, and what it means to be in a personal relationship with Him.
If God is in any way depersonalized, then his Incarnational essence and personhood can easily be morphed into some kind of cosmic force to be harnessed or absorbed into. Even worse, this can and does lead unsuspecting Catholics into the pseudo-faith of pantheism: “He is everything, and thus I am He.” In the end, the gurus of this false gospel seek to lead the naive practitioner to the center of their being where they then discover who they really are. The great triumph of this false prayer is the “realization” that we are God, because there is no substantive distinction between us (they call this “non-dual thinking”). Clearly, this idolatry will in no way lead us to heaven and is most definitely leading many down the broad path to spiritual destruction.
How can I protect myself?
The key to avoiding these errors is to be aware of them, but not to focus on them. Instead, we need to immerse ourselves in the truth. How? Begin with spiritual reading and meditation on the Catechism, and the Compendium of the Catechism, on the topic of prayer. These treatments are far from dry and, word for word, are the most valuable teachings on the topic in all of the Church aside from the words of Christ Himself. Second, we should immerse ourselves in the writings of the doctors of the Church, particularly those who have come to bear significant influence on how the Church understands what it means to commune with God (like Saints Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross, and Thérèse of Lisieux). Modern writers like Fr. Thomas Dubay and Fr. Jacques Philippe provide fantastic resources on prayer that are faithful to this profound and rich Catholic tradition.
Beyond these helpful resources, there are a handful of publishers of materials on prayer and the spiritual life that can be trusted without reservation. Three of these are Emmaus Road Publishing, Ignatius Press, and Scepter Publishing. Emmaus Road publishes my book, Navigating the Interior Life, in which I provide a time-tested and practical road map to understanding spiritual direction and what it means to enter into a progressively deeper relationship with our Lord. They also publish Ralph Martin’s marvelous work on this topic entitled, Fulfillment of All Desire. For more recommended reading on prayer and the spiritual life, check out EWTN’s Religious Catalogue.
Finally, we should close with a profound example of an authentic relationship with God – a look into a heart that truly understands what it means to commune with the Blessed Trinity. In Blessed Elizabeth of the Trinity’s prayer, we find a living and beautiful dismantling of all of the errors we have discussed in this series of posts.
“O my God, Trinity whom I adore, let me entirely forget myself that I may abide in you, still and peaceful as if my soul were already in eternity; let nothing disturb my peace nor separate me from you, O my unchanging God, but that each moment may take me further into the depths of your mystery! Pacify my soul! Make it your heaven, your beloved home and place of your repose; let me never leave you there alone, but may I be ever attentive, ever alert in my faith, ever adoring and all given up to your creative action.
O my beloved Christ, crucified for love, would that I might be for you a spouse of your heart! I would anoint you with glory, I would love you – even unto death! Yet I sense my frailty and ask you to adorn me with yourself; identify my soul with all the movements of your soul, submerge me, overwhelm me, substitute yourself in me that my life may become but a reflection of your life. Come into me as Adorer, Redeemer and Savior.
O Eternal Word, Word of my God, would that I might spend my life listening to you, would that I might be fully receptive to learn all from you; in all darkness, all loneliness, all weakness, may I ever keep my eyes fixed on you and abide under your great light; O my Beloved Star, fascinate me so that I may never be able to leave your radiance.
O Consuming Fire, Spirit of Love, descend into my soul and make all in me as an incarnation of the Word, that I may be to him a super-added humanity wherein he renews his mystery; and you O Father, bestow yourself and bend down to your little creature, seeing in her only your beloved Son in whom you are well pleased.
O my `Three,’ my All, my Beatitude, infinite Solitude, Immensity in whom I lose myself, I give myself to you as a prey to be consumed; enclose yourself in me that I may be absorbed in you so as to contemplate in your light the abyss of your [greatness]!” (http://www.elisabeth-dijon.org/v_en/prayer.html)
Dan Burke is the Managing Editor of the National Catholic Register, President of the Avila Institute, the administrator of SpiritualDirection.com, and the author of several books on mystical theology.
