What does the Catholic Church have in common with the New Age?
Marx Hubbard is New Age. Marx Hubbard is a Theosophist. Marx Hubbard is an agent for change. One doesn't have to depend on documentation from anti-Catholic Protestant Fundamentalist sites to know that. One doesn't have to be an occultist to know it either. Just read anything from Barbara Marx Hubbard, visit the website, connect the dots of her references. Spiritualists such as Marianne Williamson, a New Age author many Catholics - religious and laity - enjoy reading, is also what I would call a co-agent for change, admired by Marx Hubbard. If this isn't evidence that inclusive-minded, dissident, women religious and dissident Catholics have embraced heretical teaching - I don't know what is.
I will post a few sections with familiar buzz words - signal expressions common in many parishes and religious ed programs these days - all from Hubbard's web site:
Synergetic Community. In the developmental path it is soon obvious that one cannot fully express and manifest unique creativity in chosen work in a world that is dissonant and unreceptive to our vocations. We cannot change large systems, or fix dysfunctional systems. We do what Bela H. Banathy calls for, “transcend and create” through the visioning of the ideal state and then creating design spaces to work toward that state, realizing new potential by building upon unfolded potential.
“The evolutionary quantum jump, the big change, will happen in our myriads of communities, living and acting all over the evolutionary landscape. They will become the forces of conscious evolution”
Key words: co- evolution, co-creation, community, synergy, vision.
Conscious Evolution - agents for change.
I’ve realized that the psycho-spiritual evolution of the individual is going much faster than the societal transformation is able to keep up. Though we have many wonderful initiatives in terms of transforming society as a whole, it’s still quite embryonic.
You will be like gods:
As we become aware as a species that we have tapped into these “powers of the gods” we realize we can guide these powers, and we must ask ourselves: toward what? What is the meaning of our new powers? In our existing religions, there’s really no social vision or developmental path to direct these powers. This is not to diminish the role religions have played, for they have provided us a transcendent potential toward which we can move; whereas our secular liberalism offers no such transcendent potential or vision. It’s basically a humanitarian ideal of comfort for everyone. But while we need to attend to these humanitarian needs, the human spirit will never be satisfied by simply being fed, housed and clothed.
There are theories suggesting that Gaia, this living system, is itself intelligent.
We can apply these ideas to ourselves. To consciously participate in this experience rather than merely being a passive witness, we can identify ourselves with the conscious Force seeking to manifest through evolution, developing our untapped cocreative potential. In my own efforts at self-evolution, I hold three aspects of consciousness in my heart simultaneously: I am an expression of the Whole Story of Creation; I am a vital participant in expressing my creativity to serve that Evolution and my own evolution; and thirdly, I am one with Source. This is Evolutionary Consciousness.I think it is telling that a major Roman Catholic organization is publicly hosting an occultist to address its assembly. It is really just the tip of the proverbial iceberg as to how deeply the Catholic Church in the United States is infected by New Age spirituality - typically based upon evolved anthropological/psychological/spiritual consciousness.
The quality that distinguishes evolutionary consciousness is that you feel the emergent potential within yourself and you are driven with a passion as great as the desire for self-preservation and self-reproduction, but turned now toward self-evolution and self-expression for the sake of yourself and the world. - Foundation for Conscious Evolution
This stuff is nothing to joke about or make fun of. It is serious precisely because it is epic delusion, and the salvation of many souls are at stake.
Addendum: What does Marx-Hubbard think of the Catholic Church?
Asked if she has seen a paradigm shift in Catholic theological circles:
"I'll never forget when I was staying with a group of nuns in South Bend, Indiana, during a Fourth of July weekend. I was there at the same time that WorldCom and Enron were falling. And there was a Catholic priest there named Diarmuid O'Murchu who wrote a book called Quantum Theology. Anyway, he got up and he said, "Evolution was working for billions of years before organized religion, and it will be working for billions of years after organized religion." And then, as a Catholic priest speaking to a group of nuns, he said, "The Catholic Church will not hold, because not only is the story wrong but the hierarchy is wrong. The structure is wrong. The whole thing is wrong." And the nuns all stood up and cheered! Now, they loved Jesus. It had nothing to do with not loving Jesus. And I suddenly thought, "Maybe this is the way it has to happen. Hierarchical, mechanistic structures are not adequate for an interactive, conscious, evolutionary world." And those structures are going. What we hope is that they don't collapse too fast and lead to complete chaos.
Incidentally, I think that all the major world religions were founded in an earlier phase of human evolution by people whose consciousness clearly was way beyond the ordinary - Source
I'm posting my comment from the post beneath here too, because it's relevant in my mind, for both.
ReplyDeleteThere's a simple discerning check re religious. Ask them (nuns or priests or bishops) if they have a relationship with Our Lady and pray the Rosary.
You are absolutely right on.
Delete"yet the Son of man, when He cometh, shall He find, think you, faith on earth?” (Luke 18:8)
ReplyDelete2 Thessalonian 2:3
Let no one deceive you in any way; for that day will not come, unless the rebellion comes first, and the man of lawlessness is revealed, the son of perdition,
1 Timothy 4:1-2
Now the Spirit expressly says that in later times some will depart from the faith by giving heed to deceitful spirits and doctrines of demons, through the pretensions of liars whose consciences are seared
You got it! Thanks for the scripture Servus.
DeleteBut Servus - how does that not equally apply to Arius, or to the "Reformers" like Luther ad Calvin? It seems to me that faithful Catholics in those days would have remembered those verses?
DeleteIs what we are facing now tge worse it has ever been - or the worse it ever will be? Sure, we have heretical nuns in the US, but how many faithful communities are being built up worldwide? The church is making leaps and bounds in places at from its core lands in the West - much as it was spreading like wildfire among New World Indians just as whole nations in Europe were being lost to te Reformation.
I just don't like looking for evidence that we are on the end times. Everyone seems to alwas think their own age is right before the end. Better just to do what we can, pray, and be assured that we can NEVER predict the end.
Oh, I forgot Mohammed - all the lands of the original Christian Church swept under the heel of the Muslims, and millions converted to Islam, a threat which continued to strike until the 17th century.
DeleteMerc,
Deletewe've been in the "end times" since Jesus ascended into heaven. we just keep getting closer and closer. I just read a quote from Pere Lamy who said :
"Penance, penance, penance -- terrible times are coming. The times we are living in now (1914-1918) are as nothing to what we are soon to see . . . How Our Lord must have suffered! And yet Christians are always seeking pleasure! If it were thus in the green wood, how shall it be in the dry . . . When we are not in the state of grace (our guardian angels) would like to help us but they cannot. They often save us from accidents. Our Lady was weeping all over the world (1929). There are few devout souls nowadays…
I hate to be the bearer of bad news but things are much worse now than they were when I was growing up in the 1970s.
I keep repeating this whenever I can but Father Ripperger's article regarding "generational spirits" really helped shed light on this very issue. It's in the latest (Summer issue 2012) of Latin Mass magazine. It is EXTREMELY enlightening.
If it helps, we've been in the end times since Christ's ascension - or it from the Incarnation?
DeleteAnyway - focus on the errors and note how widespread they are, and the reaction of Catholics is to make fun of those who have been responsible for mixing it up in the Church - some of these nuns may have been in formation departments of seminaries, taught at colleges and universities. It's omnipresent.
It's not a joking matter. I have no idea what it means as regard end times and all of that - it's infecting the faith - just as all the other heresies have done through the ages.
The pope is even warning the US about threats to the faith in this country.
Priests and bishops better knock off the comedy club rhetoric and act decisively.
Terry, I understand what you mean.
DeleteServus, I do not see how things are worse now than they were in the 70s and 80s. Remember that the corruption we are seeing in LCRW is a holdover from that period, not something beginning now. Maybe you are right, I dunno.
I do know the Church has been growing in other parts of the world, and that things are tightening up here in the US.
I do not know how to do penance beyond what I do at times of penance (Lent and Advent). I've
been told to not try to do penance beyond that, due to my warped mind and concept of God. I guess "Christians seeking pleasure" applies to me, since I do not understand why pleasure is bad. I go out to eat and drink with friends on occasion, like to read books on secular topics, and I really
like to listen to music. But I do feel really, really, bad and guilty about this, and am nervous that God is mad at me for it, so I guess that's good ...
Merc - there are movements with in the Church influenced by this stuff - I've been writing about one of them from time to time. An evolved anthropology, if you will.
DeleteGotta run.
And I know for a fact that I am not a devout soul ... Never have been. I hbe never been close to God, nor felt his love. Praying is about the most painful, last thing I want to do, and reading about religion does nothing but terrify me.
DeleteAnd by the way, WWII, with over 70 million dead and entire nations destroyed and displaced, certainly fits tge description of "the times we are living in now are nothing as what we are soon to see"
I'd say the bishops have a job on their hands. These sisters just don't seem to get it.
ReplyDeletecan now talk at great length about the New Age Movement. Basically, the New Age Movement is, I repeat, Oriental Meditation, Oriental Prayer, or Mysticism that has penetrated many Christian circles. There are communities that follow that pattern. For example, there are Religious communities of women that follow the New Age pattern in meditation and prayer. And all I can say is that those communities, which have adopted these New Age ideas are all - I mean this sincerely - in danger of dissolusion. At the root of the New Age Movement, is the denial of an infinite, personal God, who created the world. And consequently, once you say that then how much you use the name God, no matter how much you talk about prayer and meditation, that prayer and mediation is no longer to God, but either to the unknown forces in the world or to one's self. And, you know, all I can say is, that one reason the New Age Movement has so deeply infected, as I should say, the Western world is because the Western world, unlike the Oriental world, has become very materialistic. Preoccupied with things that you can touch, taste, feel, see, experience with your body. The Western world needs a reformation. It needs to discover that there is a real world that you cannot touch, taste, see with your bodily eyes, or hear with the bodily ears. The real world - God is very real, God is God, does not have a body or extension in space, or size or weight. There is the angelic world, which is, as we say purely spiritual. Each angel is an individual person. Each of us, we believe, has a spirit; our souls dwelling within us. We believe this spirit, our soul, continues living consciously after the body dies."
ReplyDeleteI sometimes think Hardon was a kind of prophet...I don't think things will go well for the Sisters.
Merc,
ReplyDeleteaccording to a Poll less than 30% of Catholics believe in the real presence in the Blessed Sacrament.
Mass attendance (just in America) has dropped from over 80% in the 1950s to under 20% today. that means over 80% of Catholics do not live (know) their faith.
I mean it's not even worth arguing that the situation is critical. Priests and Nuns who have abandoned the faith, preach heresy and rebellion against the magisterium. Modernism is common place even in so called "Catholic institutions". A great majority of Catholics who contracept.
Maria, I firmly believe Father Hardon was a prophet!
"Ordinary Catholics will not survive this age, only heroic Catholics will survive!"
Father John Hardon
"Unless we recover the zeal and the spirit of the first century Christians—unless we are willing to do what they did and to pay the price that they paid, the future of our country, the days of America are numbered." — Fr. Hardon
" When we say that the Church is faced with a crisis of faith, we mean just that. It is a critical period in the Church’s life when millions of her faithful are confused about their beliefs. They are uncertain about what as Catholics they are to hold. And as a result they are emotionally insecure, bewildered and, in Christ’s words, wandering as sheep without a shepherd.”
Father John Hardon
What poll about the real presence are you referring to? Who said we were comparing things to the 50s? My pont is that things are beginning to improve over what they were in the precvious decades. The modernists themselves are old and the younger generations of priests and religious are tending to be more traditional. There are renewals all over the place. We can see trends starting to reverse, which would not have been
ReplyDeleteapparent in the 80s. Most priests I know now are fiercely orthodox, unlike the one's I grew up with. There are so many good signs, but you almost seem to want to focus on negatives, almost seem to want a chastisement to come.
Please explain how things are worse than they were in the 70s, 80s, and 90s. Because what I see is the bad fruits of those decades slowly and finally starting to be dealt with. I see good things happening, and changes coming. The Church's adversarial stance with tge
surrounding culture will only help this. Catholics will no longer be able to sit the fence.
And finally -
The Church is not limited to the US and Europe!!!!!
Also, there have been eras where Mass attendance was even worse, or when belief in tge Real Presence was even more dismal - why do you think innovations like the
elevation of the host, monstrances, and Corpus Christi processions were introduced?
I know I have no room to talk - you're a much more faithful and devout Catholic than I am, you obviously love God with a pure heart and truly live for your faith. I'm a wretch who hates to pray, whose prayer is mechanical, and who only dreads what God thinks of me, and who feels only guilt at my every action. I fear getting close to God, and I know he hates all the things I like to do that are not prayer and asceticism. So, I am happy for you that you have such a faith. I am sometimes even jealous.
But I do know that there is hope on the horizon, and that the church is wing purged of elements that ran rampant for decades.
aaa
DeleteTerry, why can't I delete my comments? Please delete all my comments on this post. I keep doing the same crap.
ReplyDeleteMerc - do I have to? I like your comments. I don't have any friends any longer and you guys are the only ones who comment.
DeleteOf course you don't have to. It's your blog. If it pleases you, then leave it up, by all means.
DeleteI just want to apologize for being a jerk.
Oh good. You aren't a jerk - ever. Anyway - I decide who the jerks are here. Haha!
DeleteWe understand, Merc. Not to worry, right, Terry?
ReplyDeleteServus: He knew that martyrdom was round the corner. I beleive he was trying to prepare us...
You know I visited a community near Washington DC a month and a half ago. I was impressed (to say the least) with their zeal for holiness and the salvation of souls but what impressed me was that some of them prayed for the grace of martyrdom during intercessions. Yes, Father Hardon knew.
DeleteThat is amazing, Servus. I have been graced to have discovered the Dominicans in DC.I don't know how I would have ever survived without them. They understand and reverence the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. They are such fine men.
ReplyDeleteI knew that the Dominican house of studies was in DC. Is that where you go? I don't need to tell you that one finds a treasure when you find priests who understand and reverence the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass! As do the IVE priests where I visited. You might enjoy this video from their seminary in Italy. http://vimeo.com/17233452
DeleteFather Z posted a video of this woman. I could only stomach a small portion of it.
ReplyDeleteThis New Age garbage is rampant in the Church. Our upcoming Idaho religious conference has some whack job doing a class on how to pray with Tibetan prayer flags. WTHell? How about a class on the rosary!!!
I agree with my Catholic law professor buddy from Gonzaga University (a Jesuit hot bed of dissent) when he says the only way to keep your faith anymore is to attend Mass (which includes hitting the collection basket), pray the rosary, keep your head down, and don't volunteer for anything in your parish. You may hit a very occasional doughnut hour.
I cannot ever see or hear the word, "theosophy" without instantly hearing
ReplyDeleteVan Morrison...."Rave on John Donne ! Thy Holy Fool !
rave on down through theosophy and the golden dawn...
rave on rave on rave on...."
the nuns who taught me, in boarding school('71) all got on a similar band-wagon, mid-70's,and now the school is no more, they actually merged with an episcopal girls school. a buddha appeared next to the Altar in photos I would receive. They lost a generation of young Catholic women. the sisters you speak of are all of that generation, now in their '70's and up. the new young ones I meet are so wonderful, so cool, so devout. Thank God. Lou
Servus: What a BEAUTIFUL video! So joyful. It made me think "He is w/us until the end of time"...
ReplyDeleteAre the IVE in DC. Is this where you visited? I have been praying for what seems like years for someone to lead me in the Exercises. I do go to the House of Studies. The Mass, the rosary, adoration, and Confession=the wonder recipe, Adrienne. I am with you. I have the luxury of saying the office in the morning the brothers.
Adrienne; Delio et al. They are truly, well, nutcases. A class on the rosary? Forgetaboutit. You know, I keep wondering w/ all of the religious freedom crusade, has it never dawned on anyone to hold rosary vigils? You know, instead of protests in the street?
Lou: Van Morrison. We must be about the same age. The Sacred Heart Convent I went to was the oldest one in the country and it merged w/ an Episcopalian School. When I saw those all those rotundsih nuns in LaCoste dresses, even then, I knew it was all over and that someting was terribly wrong, lol.
Terry; You are such a gracious host and btw you seem to have a lot of friends ;)
ReplyDeleteMaria, I am becoming curious.....was your school in new york state, perchance ?
ReplyDeletewas the order society of the sacred heart of Jesus....? SSHJ(I think): a French order....?
a sad memory for me: the first year they were all in the dignified long black habit: the second year, modified dress, blue, with hair peeking out: third year, they all looked like they had gone shopping at Salvation Army (actually, they probably had -). No money for shoes, clothes....Lou
Maria - Too funny! When I was on my rant about the stupid conference Aquinas was another thing I brought up.
ReplyDeleteI did the SEEL (Spiritual Exercises in Everyday Life) at Gonzaga. I benefited immensely in spite of being at a dissident University. My hubby didn't fare as well.
May I recommend the Creighton online course? It is the SEEL retreat online. You're better off on your own rather than taking the chance of a liberal spiritual adviser.
Best part? It's free!
http://onlineministries.creighton.edu/CollaborativeMinistry/cmo-retreat.html
Servus: Great video. Thank you...
Mercury, you're not a jerk. I've read this blog for a long time, and rarely comment.
ReplyDeleteSomeone/something really messed you up, leading to your belief that the Lord doesn't love you because you're so 'bad' and 'not devout enough'. Your posts sometimes break my heart, and I pray for your peace and salvation as often as I read this blog.
You've said that you have a confessor/spiritual director. I hope he is a good one and if not, that you will find a confessor in whom your trust and obedience will be well-placed. If I could hug you and convince you of anything helpful, I would. I'm a real sinner, Mercury, not an internet apologist. But it grieves me that a person like you (and yes, I can tell some things from your writing) cannot yet rest, even a bit, in God's love. Peace to you!!!
Susan
I just see how devout everyone else seems - retreats, devotions, apparitions, consecrations, etc. I do my best with the rosary, Mass, and the Divine Mercy chaplet, and I'm not even good at faithfully doing those things. And frankly a lot of it scares me, which is my fault.
DeleteI do have a hard time feeling Gods love - I know it's not all about feelings, and I know it intellectually - but still, it's really not in my heart.
Thank you so much. I too am a big sinner - I know why I did is worse than Augustine, and yet my penance is so meager. People have gone into the desert for less. That's why I feel like I can't do enough, or that I haven't made it up to God.
Adrienne; Thank you so much. I am a cockeyed optimist though. I believe God will send me a holy Jesuit.
ReplyDeleteLou: Yep. Not SSHJ. RSCJ. New York.
Lou: Do I know YOU?
ReplyDeleteIs this Suzy as in deo gratias?
ReplyDeleteMaria: Kenwood ?! I suspect I am older than you are: I think Kenwood switched to Doane Stuart in....'75 or so....
ReplyDeleteLou
I graduated in 72. It was still Kenwood.
ReplyDelete