Posted on 02/23/2003 6:34:01 AM PST by american colleen
I'm writing this from "Our Lady of Florida Passionist Retreat House" where later today I will begin my annual retreat. As so many of you know -- especially my brother priests, deacons, and religious women and men, who are asked by the church to make a retreat each year -- this time away, spent in prayer, silence, reflection, spiritual reading, and listening to the conferences of a retreat master, is an extraordinary occasion of grace, renewal, and spiritual regeneration. I thank God for this gift, I thank all of you for letting me off work, and I promise you a place in my daily prayer.
In less than two weeks, the entire church will begin a similar period of prayer, penance, and spiritual revival. We call the church's annual retreat Lent, and it begins this year on Ash Wednesday, March 5. As you have probably heard, this Lent, many of our parishes, at my request, will offer the Renew program (with the others opting to do it next fall). We are all familiar with Renew, as the entire archdiocese benefited from it over 15 years ago. It is a six-week endeavor where groups meet throughout parishes for prayer, reflection on Sacred Scripture, study, mutual reflection, and discussion. It has a proven track record, with thousands of people hailing it as a very effective means of sound evangelization, catechesis, and interior conversion.
This session of Renew is particularly timely, as it addresses the painful effects of the scandals of sexual abuse in the church. None of us have been unscathed by this trauma; every Catholic has felt shame, sorrow, shock, sadness. Yet, as we believe with all our heart and soul, wherever there is dying -- emotional and spiritual dying because of this -- there is rising through the mercy and power of God. We call this the paschal mystery: the dying and rising of Jesus, and our immersion into it. Simply put, this Renew program is based on the premise that the current scandals in the church offer all of us an invitation to spiritual rebirth and recommitment (rising) after an intense period of dying because of all the trials the church is experiencing.
Now, don't worry: Renew is not going to dwell exclusively on the scandals. It will dwell on God's word, on prayer, on church teaching, on the Lord's presence in your small group of believers, on the necessity of conversion, and the call to fidelity, on the power of the Eucharist and the sacrament of penance, on the Lord's call to serve one another in genuine charity -- all potent, traditional Lenten themes.
So, I trust you get my point: if you're looking for a good Lenten resolution, you can't go wrong in signing up for Renew. Everywhere I go, people ask me, "How can we learn from all these scandals, how can we get on and move ahead as a more purified, holier, more faithful church?" Here's one way -- Renew.
From the Wanderer:
By Beth Roney Drennan
(Editor's Note: Imagine a Catholic spiritual renewal program that teaches participants to pray pagan prayers to a female Jesus with a ring through her nose, to meditate using the techniques described by an Indian Jesuit the Holy See has judged a "grave danger to the faith," to read the works of a feminist Scripture scholar who speaks of "sacred sodomy," to commit sacrilege and blasphemy by creating their own liturgies, and to become involved in parish-based "social action" programs manipulated by the world's most powerful forces for secularism, materialism, and hedonism.
(Imagine such a program having an imprimatur: It does, that of the archbishop of Newark, N.J.. Theodore E. McCarrick.)
(For many Catholics across the United States, this very program is being pushed by their chancery apparatchiks and parish leaders, as this special two-part report by Beth Roney Drennan makes clear.)
BARABOO, Wis. — The Diocese of Madison, Wis., along with many other dioceses and archdioceses in the United States, is now in the midst of a major "spiritual renewal" — ostensibly designed to prepare Catholics for the Church's third millennium and to "revitalize parishes" — utilizing the Paulist Fathers' RENEW 2000 program.
An extensive review of the contributors and promoters of RENEW 2000, however, reveals that the program is in serious conflict with the teachings of the Catholic Church.
This review of RENEW 2000 materials, based on more than 600 hours of research, is sufficient to show that there are a significant number of dissident, heterodox, and/or Call to Action-associated names in the RENEW 2000 materials, and, in its present form, the RENEW 2000 program represents an unacceptable risk to the Catholic faithful due to a combination of factors.
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The Paulist Fathers' "evangelization" project RENEW 2000:
• 1) Utilizes reference names or writers whose work has been hostile to and in direct conflict with Catholic teaching;
• 2) Requires extensive research to discover the background of its contributors;
• 3) Will reach and influence a vast number of Catholic faithful for a significant length of time;
• 4) Will reach faithful who have been told by their pastors and bishops that the program is entirely safe and who have not been put on notice that the program harbors any dangers;
• 5) Will reach many laypersons who are not sufficiently educated in Catholic teaching to be able to identify or recognize dangerous theologians and passages;
This report recommends that the RENEW 2000 materials be immediately examined by the American bishops to confirm these findings and that, if these findings are confirmed, the program should be recalled and prohibited.
Background
Call to Action (4419 N. Kedzie, Chicago, IL 60625) is a Chicago-based dissident organization which takes its name from the U.S. bishops' 1976 "celebration" of the bicentennial of the United States. At the meeting in Detroit's Cobo Hall, Oct. 21st-23rd, 1976, orchestrated by Bishop Joseph L. Bernardin, then general secretary of the National Conference of Catholic Bishops, CTA delegates (predominantly Church bureaucrats, many of whom still retain their chancery positions or posts in Catholic institutions) produced an agenda that would transform the Catholic Church in the United States into an Alinsky-style, socialist "people's organization" and set in motion a plan to radically upend the Church's moral teachings, liturgy, doctrine, and discipline.
CTA annually holds a national conference and many regional ones. The group, run by a staff, board, and volunteers, is rumored to be relocating to the Milwaukee area soon. CTA publishes an illustrated newsletter (Call to Action News [CTA News]), a "progress report" on Catholic Church reform (Church Watch), and a reflective journal (Spirituality/Justice Reprint). CTA also maintains an online bulletin board. Its directors are longtime Catholic dissidents Dan and Sheila Daley.
CTA's goal is to decentralize, disassemble, and "reinvent" the Catholic Church; to mainstream heretical teachings in the Catholic population which break with 2,000 years of Catholic teaching.
These novelties would significantly change the historical understanding of the sacraments, greatly reduce the authority of Holy Scripture, destroy the priesthood, change the name of God to include female names, promote a variety of practices which are mortal sins (including lesbianism and homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia), and integrate pagan chants and rituals into the liturgy.
One can correctly state that Call to Action is the "ideological icon" for a generation of dissident theologians and teachers whose standard operating procedure is to take practices and terms that are acceptable to Catholics on the surface and restructure those practices and terms to their own ends.
For example, "small faith communities" is a concept that, used in conjunction with correct Church teachings and adequate pastoral supervision, can be a healthy resource for revitalizing parishes. Dissident theologians, however, such as those in CTA, are well aware that Catholics trust the notion of small faith communities. Therefore, they have taken the small faith community concept and, like poisoning an apple, have laced it with a deadly innovation: using small faith communities as a technique to decentralize Church authority and slowly wean lay people's reliance away from correct Church teachings and a divine hierarchy to turn instead toward a new heterodox gospel of defiance and sin.
This theology of defiance finds an unlocked door where lay people, uneducated in true Church teaching, trust blindly in the title "Catholic" — which title some theologians and teachers inaccurately claim for themselves. The end result can be theological derailment whereby Catholics are seduced into accepting false teachings which promise a broader and easier path; but which, in fact, comprise error, disobedience, sin, eventual de facto excommunication, and the death of the soul.
Hear Them
"If the institutional Church won't meet our needs, we'll do it ourselves. We're not asking permission anymore," snapped CTA speaker Anthony Padovano, president of CORPUS, a CTA-affiliate organization, in his opening address to a 1996 CTA conference (Crisis Online, February, 1996, "Inside Call to Action," Mary Jo Anderson).
CTA's goal is "the surrender of all ecclesial authority" (Crisis Online). "Padovano insists that CTA members are called to heal the Body of Christ wounded by structures of 'dissatisfaction' and 'systems of hierarchies' imposed by 'pathologic' Popes. . . . Padovano himself has a pathological dislike for Pope John Paul II and has suggested initiating an 'impeachment process' " (ibid.).
A priest contributing to CTA News expresses "so much anger about [Joseph Cardinal] Ratzinger and our Pope."
"They [CTA members] are vein-popping mad with . . . John Paul II, whom they regard as a pre-Vatican II troglodyte" (Crisis Online). CTA members view the Vatican with suspicion and find it "intimidating" and "obsessive."
"Anything Vatican-based needs to be looked on warily at this time," a CTA leader wrote to this reporter.
The Vatican uses its role "to intimidate" and "sacrifices everything to its obsession with restricting access to contraception and abortion," stated Frances Kissling, head of a CTA-affiliate organization, Catholics for a Free Choice, a militant pro-abortion group.
"We encourage our members to 'rebirth' the Church," CTA states in its online directory. In 1997, regular CTA speaker Thomas J. Gumbleton, an auxiliary bishop of Detroit, called for "gay and lesbian church members, including bishops, priests, and nuns," to "take courage" and to "come out" and "publicly declare their sexual orientation"; and he "pleaded" for the Church to "create the community in which this can happen," so that the Church can "much more fully and quickly appreciate" homosexuality (CTA News, April, 1997).
CTA News boasts of having created such a community at one of its conferences: "One woman told a CTA board member that she is a lesbian who 'came out' at the CTA event: It's the only place I felt safe enough' " (CTA News, March-April, 1996).
Mary Jo Anderson writes this summary of what she witnessed at a CTA conference: "The final plenary session speaker was Sr. Sandra Schneiders [a RENEW 2000 writer] . . . [who spoke on] 'Feminist Interpretation of Scripture'. . . . If she, or her confederates, were made a popess . . . whole chapters of 'problematical texts' would be jettisoned. . . . All of Scripture is recast to fit feminist theology, complete with sacred sodomy."
In 1996, cameras for EWTN recorded a CTA conference in Detroit in which (see box for transcript) feminist abortion "liturgies" — designed to support women as they prepare to have an abortion — are promoted by lesbian speaker Diann Neu (another RENEW 2000 writer) along with "consecrations" of bread and wine by women.
The video shows the CTA women using the priest's words of consecration and holding their hands toward "harvest bread" and wine, "consecrating" it, and then administering the "eucharist" to each other; it shows the women reciting a revised Nicene Creed, now called Woman's Creed; it shows Neu addressing Catholic women from a podium, stating that "there is power in darkness."
Forward, Now
Call to Action's 1998 Annual Meeting: Halloween in Milwaukee. A topical look at CTA's upcoming 1998 (Oct. 30th-Nov. 1st, Milwaukee) conference brochure (http://www.call-to-action.org/ confbindepth.html) gives a representative sampling of the latest CTA ideology:
• "RENEW 2000 and small faith communities: Imagining Future Church' ": RENEW 2000's diocesan director from Illinois will speak on the small faith community process, the expected result of which is to replace the Church with a "community of communities" and non-male leadership.
Fr. Art Baranowski, a Detroit priest who is cited in RENEW 2000 materials, will also speak.
• "Abortion: A Day of 'Dialog' " is planned in which "pro-choice" participants will share their position — not to "debate" but rather to "increase understanding." "Ground rules of respect and confidentiality" will allow pro-abortion CTA members to "speak our own values and beliefs."
CTA's formal dues-paying affiliate, Catholics for a Free Choice, publishes a guide (Abortion: A • Guide to Making Ethical Choices) which identifies its five basic beliefs, including these: "The decision to abort can be a moral decision justified by many circumstances"; and "Abortion must be legal for women."
• Lesbian lecturers: Lesbian "life partners" and theologians Mary Hunt and Diann Neu will discuss the Women-Church movement. In recent months, several major city newspapers, including The Chicago Tribune and The Washington Post, focused on the growing practice of women celebrating home liturgies.
The Tribune report on Women-Church activities included the following-quotation: "Comparing themselves to early Christians who met secretly in catacombs, women gathered in Dierks' dining room, . . . read scripture, and discussed their individual interpretations. Then they passed around a loaf of homemade bread and a good bottle of wine after blessing them, either using the words a priest says during mass — 'This is my body, this is my blood, do this in memory of me' — or using their own variation.
"'I felt awestruck after it was over,' Dierks says. . .'The church's official position is that we were breaking the law but the wisest people I knew were joining me' " (Feb. 15th, 1998, 13:8).
• WICCA/witchcraft: Several workshops feature topics that are explained on witchcraft Internet sites. Sample topics: "Triple Image," "maiden, mother, crone," prayer to the "four directions," "Sacred Circles," Halloween, "Samhain," and the healing of auras.
• Formerly excommunicated theologian Tissa Balasuriya will speak. Paul Collins, currently under Vatican scrutiny for his heretical writings about the papacy (per CTA brochure), will also speak.
• Catholic lesbian and gay agenda: Past and present presidents of the gay/lesbian group Dignity/USA will speak out for "lesbians, gay men, bisexuals, and transgendered persons" in their "quest for equality in the Church." Topics will include "domestic partner rights" and will refer to the Holy Spirit as "Sophia Wisdom."
• Also, a "woman-only" workshop will teach Catholics about "woman-to-woman relationships," including that of "lover," so as to "honor the diversity of woman-spirit."
• In other workshops. Catholics will learn about "the sacred marriage of Jesus and Mary Magdalen"; the meaning of the Eucharist will be rethought; the question, "Can a Male Savior Save Women?," will be raised; "Inclusive Jesus" classes by Christine Schenk (of Cleveland-based Future-Church) will proclaim that "the male chauvinist Jesus currently proclaimed by Rome is biblically untenable"; and Robert McClory, cofounder of CTA News and a veteran CTA board member, will teach on the "Necessity of Dissent." McClory, an ex-priest and a longtime friend of the late Cardinal Bernardin, was presented with an award by Francis Cardinal George, O.M.I., at the Archdiocese of Chicago's May 5th, 1998 Media Recognition Luncheon.
CTA conferences have a longstanding reputation for weird, often occult, workshops. In Chicago, 1995, participants at Matthew Fox's "Seven Chakras" workshop were presented with a "ritual" in which a priestess-prostitute guided people into self-impregnation to recreate the self as a goddess or god (Crisis Online).
The cover of Fox's book on creation spirituality features a picture of a squatting black woman in African garb, legs spread open, from between which emerges a globe on an umbilical cord. She is surrounded by a Native American woman, a Hindu woman, and a huge black raven which stands looking up to where the globe is being birthed. The three women and raven are encircled by a huge rattlesnake holding its tail in its mouth.
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(To Be Continued: Next week's installment will name the theologians and .dissenters, long associated with Call to Action and its affiliates, who had a role in preparing, or are cited as authorities or sources for the laity, in the RENEW 2000 program.)
(Beth Roney Drennan is an attorney in Baraboo, Wis. Much of the research found in this report will also appear in a separate review of RENEW 2000, to be published by Women for Faith and Family.)
© The Wanderer, 201 Ohio Street, St. Paul, MN 55107, 612-224-5733.
By Beth Roney Drennan
BARABOO, Wis. — In reviewing the RENEW 2000 materials, it became clear that, while the program had a "Catholic" shine to it and employed a vocabulary vaguely enough Catholic to deceive the unwary, a cursory examination of the "sources" behind the program reveals its insidious, even diabolical, agenda.
RENEW 2000-CTA Connections The RENEW 2000 materials that I reviewed (Small Christian Communities, Called to Lead, and several shorter texts) appear orthodox at first glance.
The name "Call to Action" appears nowhere in the materials. But the section entitled "Feminist Spirituality" is unadulterated CTA anti-Church agitprop. In it, one reads:
"The foundations of feminism are basically religious...."; "Many Christian women and men who recognize the relationship between many feminist goals and the realization of God's reign are developing a spirituality which integrates a feminist consciousness.... There has been an exclusive emphasis on male imagery when talking about God. When God is imaged as only masculine, we lose the particular expression of God that is feminine."
God is then described in the text as a "homemaker, midwife, baker woman, and mother hen." Then, in direct conflict with the Catechism and the Magisterium, the text states: "To refer to God exclusively in masculine pronouns like he, him, and his or in masculine images like father and king is to limit our perception of the divine."
The text promotes "integration of feminist consciousness," arguing that attitudes contradictory to feminist spirituality can be found in the church (small c), that such practices are "disturbing and painful," and that enlightened, feminist-minded people are "challenging" the church (Called to Lead, book 2, pp. 130-131).
The following section promotes an "Ecologically Sensitive Spirituality," a major CTA/dissident theme (one which exploits the otherwise good notion of ecology, misusing it to lead Catholics to dabble in paganism).
Herein, the text tells Catholics that we are to profoundly "reverence" the planet; that earth reverence is even a "moral priority"; and that feminist consciousness and earth reverence are linked and essential for "all Christians."
RENEW 2000 materials also echo the CTA mission to undercut the authority and reliability of Scripture, guarding against "too narrow" an approach to Scripture (Called to Lead, book 1).
The sacraments are similarly dethroned: "There is a more fundamental or primordial way in which God is with us" than merely "the seven sacraments," because "all of life is sacramental" and we should realize that "such things as sunsets are also God's presence in our midst." Catholics are taught that marriage as a sacrament was once "doubtful" and that theologians have considered "the question of how sexual intercourse could be a means of grace" (Called to Lead, book 1, pp. 5-9).
Throughout the RENEW 2000 materials appear the names of CTA-associated feminists and other CTA or dissident authors listed as RENEW 2000 contributors or in citations.
For example, RENEW 2000 quotes CTA feminist Sr. Sandra Schneiders (of "sacred sodomy" fame); Schneiders' photo appears on the cover of CTA News, receiving a standing ovation at a CTA conference for her speech promoting female priests. In the RENEW material, Schneiders is cited in Small Christian Communities ("A Vision of Hope"), pages 280 and 290, quoting from her book, New Wine Skins: Reimagining Religious Life Today (Paulist Press). Her books are also listed in the bibliographies for additional reading.
Other CTA names which appear in RENEW 2000 materials are: Monika Hellwig, Joann Wolski Conn, radical feminist Scripture scholar Elizabeth Johnson, rabid anti-Catholic Franciscan priest Michael Crosby, and New Age guru Thomas Berry.
Revealing Forewords
The materials promoting so-called small faith communities (really, "no faith communities") recommend the works of Fr. Art Baranowski, a regular speaker at CTA conferences, including this year's in Milwaukee.
CTA News praises Baranowski, who says the goal of establishing small faith communities is to "reinvent the church, refound the church — with a different structure and leadership."
Utilizing this method, parishioners can be weaned away from traditional parish life, decentralizing into small faith communities which then elect leaders and maintain superficial ties to the parish; such groups, also called "house churches," can develop their own beliefs, prayers, and rituals (Crisis Online).
A primary goal of RENEW 2000 is to institute small faith communities. "The RENEW process is a stepping stone" to small faith communities and has already produced some 360,000 such groups (Small Christian Communities, p. 14).
"The great majority of those who had participated in RENEW said that it was one of the important influences on their decision to join a small community following their participation in RENEW," claims William D'Antonio in his foreword to RENEW 2000 Small Christian Communities.
Hellwig, a well-known modernist and dissenter, and Msgr. Philip J. Murnion, a disciple of the Marxist theoretician Paulo Freire, write the forewords for RENEW 2000 materials.
Hellwig's book, Understanding Catholicism, "rethinks" the meaning of the Eucharist and even the Resurrection. Hellwig, who is of Georgetown University and who is a foe of The Catechism of the Catholic Church, will speak at this year's CTA conference.
Murnion, a disciple of Call to Action instigator Msgr. John Egan, has been the U.S. bishops' major "expert" in "parish revitalization" and "development" for more than 20 years — a period of unprecedented decline in American Catholicism. He is also a principal author of the late Joseph Cardinal Bernardin's controversial document, Called To Be Catholic, which was even repudiated by four American cardinals.
The CTA/lesbian pro-abortion Feminist's Prayer to the Four Great Spirits is also part of RENEW 2000 materials (Called to Lead, book 2). In this prayer/exercise, participants stand in a circle, arms outstretched, and pray to the "Great Spirits of the Four Directions, North, South, East, and West" and "to the Great Spirit of All That Is Below" — which is actually in the text of RENEW 2000, along with its author's name: Diann Neu, the lesbian-feminist CTA speaker.
Alarmingly, the idea of prayer to the "four directions" which Neu teaches RENEW 2000 participants is also an intrinsic part of WICCA (witchcraft) worship of the goddess, Gaia, according to WICCA web sites. (For example: http://members.aol.com/haheinz/gc10.htm#enneagram, p. 2. Warning: never view a witchcraft web site without consulting a spiritual director.)
RENEW 2000 Authors
CTA Dues Payers
Call to Action was the spearhead for a 30-member group called Catholics Organized for Renewal (COR). To be a COR member, a group must: 1) be in agreement with CTA's written statement about renewal; 2) attend meetings; and 3) pay $150 per year to benefit CTA in part (igc.org/cta).
In researching RENEW 2000 materials and CTA/COR documents, two names are frequently seen and listed as heads of CTA-COR dues-paying groups: John O'Brien and William Thompson (also editor for CTA News).
O'Brien, a leader of CORPUS, Baltimore, an association of dissident ex-priests led by Anthony Padovano, is quoted in RENEW 2000's book on Leadership and ministry, and his books are listed on the RENEW web site in the section on small Christian communities.
Thompson, staff coordinator for COR, appears in RENEW 2000 in the leadership manual Called to Lead, book 1, p. 146.
Note the issues represented by the following list of groups which are among the 30 CTA-COR groups:
• Conference of Catholic Lesbians, Dignity (gay/lesbian group);
• Catholics for a Free Choice (pro-abortion);
• Chicago Catholic Women (all-female small faith communities that celebrate "mass" in their homes without a priest);
• Creation Spirituality (sponsored the "Seven Chakras" workshop mentioned in the previous article);
• New Ways Ministry (homosexualist group).
Full Circle
RENEW 2000 materials also feature CTA-linked "renewal" groups.
Neu (author of the prayer to the "four directions") is a cofounder of WATER (Women's Alliance for Theology, Ethics, and Ritual), a group which CTA lists in its online link directory (www.call-to-action.org/resfulldirectory.html).
WATER appears in the RENEW 2000 materials, as do many other CTA-linked groups.
RENEW 2000 even recommends that Catholics join some of these groups, such as Pax Christi (Small Christian Communities, p. 254); Pax Christi appears 13 times on the CTA list. Another example: "Join ... Global Education Associates (GEA)," says one RENEW 2000 booklet.
GEA works with UN agencies (see web site) to create "a human world order" (RENEW Conversion booklet, p. 42). GEA's founder, Pat Mische, is promoted in Call to Action's calendar of events (call-to-action.org).
Further, GEA's own web site address is igc.org/gea, which should be significant to Catholics because the igc.org title page (IGC stands for Institute for Global Communications) features this statement: "ALERT: Protect Minors' Access to Abortion" (igc.org/igc). Despite these alarming associations, Pat and Gerry Mische are nonetheless quoted in RENEW 2000 texts.
Pat and Gerry Mische's GEA, according to their own web site (http://www.igc.org/gea), is "a partnership of individuals and organizations in 90 countries working to enable people to understand and respond constructively to the crises and opportunities of today's interdependent world. Emphasis is on the development of global ethics, values, and systems related to peace, economic well-being, ecological balance, human rights, and democratic participation.... Project Global 2000, a global partnership for a humane and just world order. PG 2000 is an international partnership of United Nations agencies and nongovernmental organizations....
"GEA affiliates, partners, and associates are linking their personnel, expertise, and institutions in partnership with four UN agencies on behalf of Education for ALL (EFA).... EFA was launched at the 1990 World Conference on Education for All with the cosponsorship of UNICEF, UNESCO, the United Nations Development Program, and the World Bank."
A brief sampling of other CTA-associated names in RENEW 2000 materials shows Fr. Patrick ("the old Church is dead") Brennan (Chicago, national-level CTA speaker); Fr. Michael Crosby, O.F.M. Cap. (Milwaukee, national keynote speaker for CTA); Mary Hunt (CTA celebrity and frequent CTA speaker, also the life companion of RENEW 2000 prayer author Neu [Catholic World Report, January, 1996, p. 30]); retired Archbishop Peter L. Gerety, while not in the RENEW materials, was the archbishop of Newark when the RENEW program was launched.
Getting Gross ChristSophia, a female Christ with a pierced nose, is promoted in a 1992 video series featuring RENEW 2000 coordinator and coauthor of the primary RENEW 2000 text Margo LeBert.
LeBert is coordinator for RENEW 2000 and has been "American coordinator for the international office of RENEW in Plainfield, N.J." She coauthored the primary RENEW 2000 text, Small Christian Communities.
A few years ago, LeBert was featured in a video series called InnerAction.
InnerAction and Call to Action are associated with many of the same theologians, writers, and groups. Most disturbing, however, is that the InnerAction program in which RENEW 2000 coordinator and author LeBert appears approvingly features a large, full-color icon of "ChristSophia," a female Christ with a pierced nose holding a naked, faceless fertility goddess doll with huge bare breasts.
This program recommends "to the Christian community" a new "ritual," including 16 "special chants" to the earth, to plants, to the "sisters" (special powers that help people), to powers that bring rain, to the four being powers, and to the spirit of Handsome Lake (InnerAction Cultural Blessings participant magazine, pp. 8 and 27).
Another presenter in RENEW 2000 coordinator LeBert's InnerAction series is Fr. Richard Rohr. He also heads a CTA-associated organization (Center for Action and Contemplation) and founded another (New Jerusalem).
Rohr, who has presided at the "weddings" of same-sex couples, also writes books about "enneagrams." "Enneagrams" and their concomitant "enneagram trances" are not in the Catechism, but an Internet search of the word reveals that enneagrams are a part of (again!) the WICCA (witchcraft) and paganism web sites.
Bishop Fabian W. Bruskewitz of Lincoln, Neb., has declared that the Call to Action movement "is often disguised as a sincere effort to 'renew' the Catholic Church" but masks a "hidden agenda and poison fruit which the noisier dissenters never tire of offering to their unsuspecting victims."
RENEW 2000 fits this description perfectly.
If RENEW 2000 is in your diocese, please consider copying this article and asking your bishop to make specific comments on the documentation above.
Note: Many CTA name links can be found in Call to Action News. Vol. 18, n. 1 (March–April, 1996) lists past and future CTA celebrities and speakers. Some RENEW 2000-CTA names can be found at www.renew-intl.org/catalog.htm. CTA's online site includes hundreds of CTA-affiliated names (www.call-to-action.org). Other links: Use a web search combining names and terms.
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(Beth Roney Drennan is an attorney in Baraboo, Wis. Much of the research found in this report will also appear in a separate review of RENEW 2000 to be published by Women for Faith and Family.)
Several people asked if there is any way they can do a quick or more thorough check of names in RENEW 2000 on their own or to convince others. This 'recipe' can really help, and is quick and easy:
1) Get the four leaders' manuals. There may be only one set per parish. Ask your priest or assistant if you can borrow the set.
2) The manuals are called Small Christian Communities and Called to Lead (books 1, 2, and 3). If you have time, go through other books, but only these four have big bibliographies and are easy to cross-check.
3) Turn to the bibliographies and endnotes. Also check forewords and inside front covers. Any time you see a name in RENEW 2000, write it and check it. Photocopy and mark up your photocopies to show others.
4) Take a copy of Ungodly Rage by Donna Steichen, available at low cost from Ignatius Press, 800-651-1531, even though it is not in its catalog (2nd-day mail is only $10.00 extra). Ungodly Rage is like a catalog of dissident writers. Another book to use is Call to Action or Call to Apostasy? by Brian Clowes, from Human Life International, 540-635-7884 or e-mail at hli@hli.org or http://www.hli.org. You can substitute the Clowes book for the Steichen book if necessary. Both are very good.
5) Look up the RENEW 2000 bibliography names in the back of Ungodly Rage. Then turn to the Ungodly Rage pages and read the excerpts from each RENEW writer's name.
6) Experience total dismay as you see the unbridled dissent that has been published by these writers and see that many of the RENEW 2000 writers are dissidents and heterodox.
7) Go online to the RENEW 2000 web page, www.renew-intl.org/catalog.html.
8) Look up the names of the authors and the commentators in the section which promotes books. Look those up in Ungodly Rage, too.
9) Here are some quick starter names from RENEW 2000 bibliographies that you can check in Ungodly Rage: Diann Neu, Mary Hunt, Monika Hellwig, Thomas Berry, Sandra Schneiders. Don't forget that Fr. Anthony de Mello, S.J., whose writings are in RENEW 2000, was the subject of a very recent notification from the Sacred Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.
The Lord tells us in Scripture that a bad tree cannot produce good fruit. It is more than a little ironic, then, that the "image" for RENEW 2000 is that twisted, fruitless tree. Our Lord teaches in Scripture that the blind cannot lead others and that those with a beam in their own eye cannot help others to see. It is not possible, then, that dissident, defiant, or heterodox authors could teach anything holy to the Catholic faithful.
© The Wanderer, 201 Ohio Street, St. Paul, MN 55107, 612-224-5733.
Off to Mass, I'll check back later!
Information about the original Renew program in 1986. Please read this Bishops critique before proceeding with the Renew 2000 analysis material which follows. As will be shown, not only has the Renew 2000 failed to substantially improve on the original points made by the Bishops, but degrades into proposing dissident pagan-oriented beliefs and Magisterium-condemned material.
I'm really bent out of shape about this Renew 2000 thing being touted by Archbishop Dolan. The thing about all these programs is that they do contain snippits of Truth but eventually go so bland and then so do we. Or they do not fully explain Catholic Truth. Maybe I am a throwback and archaic, but it seems that all these "new ways to reach Jesus" are just new "good ideas" and they ignore 2000 years of Catholic Tradition. But I know I am in the minority.
Dolan has been on EWTN a few times and here is a little bit about RENEW 2000 from that site:
RENEW is a parish renewal program begun in the Archdiocese of Newark in the 1970s under Archbishop Peter Gerety. Promoted through the RENEW International office of the Archdiocese it has spread to hundreds of dioceses in this country and overseas. In preparation for the Great Jubilee a second program was established called RENEW 2000. Its literature states,RENEW 2000 is a thorough spiritual renewal and evangelization process designed for parish life in the 21st century. It incorporates themes suggested by Pope John Paul II for pastoral life in this new millennium and implements his call for a new evangelization.
The RENEW concept envisions small faith communities in which groups of ten or so people meet for prayer and discussion of the faith over a period of months and even years. As an evangelization or re-evangelization method, it was designed to be non-confrontational so as to encourage people to a deeper participation in parish life without feeling threatened by doctrinal or moral issues.
However, this approach has been subject to tremendous criticism over the years. Being non-catechetical and non-judgmental it has been accused of being subject to manipulation by those who wish to further dissent within the Church, as they attempt to build up communities at odds with the hierarchical Church. This charge gained even more weight with the publication of the RENEW 2000 materials, which contained contributions from known dissenters, changes of liturgical texts to conform with feminist ideology, new age prayers and ideas and other heterodox material.
These charges were taken seriously by the former Archbishop of Newark, now Cardinal Archbishop of Washington, DC, Theodore McCarrick, who ordered that the deficient materials be changed. I am not aware of the current status of those changes. In the interim many dioceses have continued to use the materials, with some bishops forbidding the use of the objectionable Leader Books. However, even when these problematic texts are not used, the design of the RENEW and RENEW 2000 programs continue to make them greatly dependant upon the orthodoxy of the local clerical and lay leadership who conduct them, and thus subject to great variability in their implementation throughout the Church.
Answered by Colin B. Donovan, STL
That last sentence reminds me that basically, "Voice of the Faithful" types are leading *most* of the parishes in my area and they would love a program that does not depend on the orthodoxy of their beliefs. I just think that right now Catholics have to stick to the tried and true: benediction, Eucharistic Adoration, rosary, stations of the cross, regular prayer and fasting in order to get beyond the scandals.
Actually this is a great research job. Thanks for pulling the background on Renew together with the topical article.
Dolan is one of the good guys. I can't figure this out at all.
Who says Dolan is one of the good guys? I pointed out that all the signs were against him when we discussed this last time (not with you in particular, just with FR in general). The "cheesehead mitre" was not a good sign -- but then there haven't been any good signs yet.
I'm sending this to my ping list because my memory is so bad that I can't remember who the relevant Freepers are from St. Louis and Milwaukee. Last time we agreed to wait and see for the proof of the pudding. Chalk up one more item in the "clone of Weakland" column. And RENEW is not just a small item, nor is it purely symbolic. RENEW represents what the Wanderer calls "Amchurch" at its worst.
The usual suspects thought it was a wonderful gesture on Dolan's part and couldn't understand why some us lacked a sense of humour about the cheesehead.
In retrospect, it appears that the cheesehead incident was a sign of worse to come. And now worse has come with Dolan's enthusiastic backing of RENEW.
If Dolan was willing to engage in such silliness at his installation--a ceremony which calls for the greatest dignity--what else might he be capable of?
That is exactly what I was thinking!
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