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.

What is the Enneagram?  Although it has some surface similarities to classic temperament theories, it is widely recognized as an unscientific, New Age tool. In fact, it was mentioned by name in the Vatican document Jesus Christ, Bearer of the Water of Life: a Christian reflection on the “New Age.”  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:

The organization NETWORK, of which she has also been a leader, has been called out for problems as well.

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.