EVANGELICALS TURNING TO CATHOLIC "SPIRITUALITY"
Pastor Dale Morgan
*EVANGELICALS TURNING TO CATHOLIC "SPIRITUALITY"*
By: David Cloud [FBIS]
Many Evangelicals and Catholics are turning to Roman Catholic styles of
spirituality (which in many cases they have borrowed from pagan
sources), such as ritualistic, rote prayers, chanting, meditation,
centering prayer, and "the daily office."
The January 2001 issue of Christianity Today contained a lengthy
description by Mennonite pastor Arthur Boers of his visit to four
ecumenical religious communities-Taize, Lindisfarne, Iona, and
Northumbria-and his increasing love for liturgical practices. Boers
testifies: "About two decades ago, on a whim, I bought a discontinued
book by a famous Catholic priest. As a convinced evangelical Anabaptist,
I was skeptical. But I was also curious. As it turned out, this book
became the starting point in my recovery of a fuller prayer life through
the daily office."
The Roman Catholic connection is very strong in all of this. Roger
Schutz, founder of the Taize community in France, participated in the
Catholic Vatican Council II, which was held from 1962 to 1965; and Pope
John Paul II himself visited Taize in October 1986. When George Carey,
the Archbishop of Canterbury, took 1,000 youth to Taize in 1992, "he was
struck at how evangelicals, Catholics, and charismatics all felt at
home" (Christianity Today, Jan. 8, 2001).
Christian and secular bookstores have begun carrying many books
promoting "this pre-Reformation form of spirituality." These include The
Cloister Walk, Book of Hours, The Soul Aflame, Evensong, A Book of Daily
Prayer, The Divine Hours, and The Prayer Book of the Medieval Era.
On a visit to Golden Gate Theological Seminary (Southern Baptist) in
February 2000, I noticed that most of the required reading for the
course on "Classics of Church Devotion" are books by Roman Catholic
authors: Spiritual Exercises by Ignatius of Loyola (founder of the
Jesuits), The Cloud of Unknowing (by an unknown 14th century Catholic
monk), New Seeds of Contemplation by Thomas Merton (a Catholic convert
from Anglicanism), Confessions of Saint Augustine (one of the fathers of
the Roman Catholic Church), The Imitation of Christ by Thomas Kempis,
Selected Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, and The Interior Castle by
Teresa of Avila (the latter two are Catholic "saints").
The works of Roman Catholic mystic Madame Guyon are very popular in
evangelical churches and schools.
On August 31, 2003, I visited the Vineyard Fellowship in Anaheim,
California, for research, and the speaker, a Vineyard pastor, preached a
message on contemplative prayer that was deeply influenced by Roman
Catholic spirituality. The speaker described contemplative prayer as
"gazing at length on something" and as "coming into the presence of God
and resting in the presence of God," as lying back and floating "in the
river of God's peace." The speaker described sitting on a couch "in the
manifest presence of Jesus." He quoted St. John of the Cross, "It is in
silence that we hear him." He recommended the writings of the late
Thomas Merton (a Catholic priest who converted from the Anglican
Church), who wrote a book on contemplative prayer and whose voice is
influential in the "centering prayer" movement. Merton spent the last 27
years of his life in a Trappist monastery devoted to Mary (Abbey of Our
Lady of Gethsemani in Kentucky) and promoted the integration of pagan
practices such as Zen Buddhism and Christianity. The titles of some of
his books were "Zen and the Birds of the Appetite," "The Way of Chuang
Tzu," and "Mystics and the Zen Masters." For three years, Merton lived
as a complete hermit. The Vineyard speaker described personal
revelations that he has allegedly received from God, claiming that on
one occasion Jesus said to him, "Come away, my beloved," and he obeyed
by staying in a monastery for some days. He used several Catholic
"saints" as examples of the benefit of contemplative prayer, and there
was no warning whatsoever about their false gospel, their blasphemous
prayers to Mary, or any other error. In fact, he recommended that his
listeners "read the lives of the saints." He mentioned St. Catherine of
Siena and said that Christ appeared to her and placed a ring on her
finger signifying her marriage to Him, thus giving credence to this
deception. He mentioned "St. Anthony," one of the fathers of the deeply
unscriptural Catholic monasticism. Anthony spent 20 years in isolation,
and after that, according to the Vineyard pastor, the "saint's" ministry
was characterized by "signs and wonders."
One of the seminars advertised for the annual Cornerstone Festival in
Bushnell, Illinois, scheduled for June 30 - July 3, 2005, is
"Pilgrimage: Creativity & Contemplative Prayer" led by Debra Strahan.
The official program says: "Debra will be speaking daily at the Prayer
Tent on traditional methods of prayer and the part creativity and art
expression plays in breathing life into worship. She will speak on
Lectio Divina, or praying the Scriptures, with an accompanying workshop
using beads as a tool for concentration. Also there will be direction in
processing and meditating on the installation pieces in the Pilgrimage."
Rick Warren, senior pastor of Saddleback Church in southern California,
frequently quotes from Roman Catholics to promote meditation, centering
prayer, and other Catholic-pagan forms of spirituality. In The Purpose
Driven Church and The Purpose Driven Life, Warren advises his readers to
"practice his presence" as per Brother Lawrence (of the Roman Catholic
Carmelite Order), to use "breath prayers" as per the Benedictine monks,
and to practice meditation as per Richard Foster. Warren quotes from
John Main (Benedictine monk who believes that Christ "is not limited to
Jesus of Nazareth, but remains among us in the monastic leaders, the
sick, the guest, the poor"); Madame Guyon (a Roman Catholic who taught
that prayer is not from the mind does not involve thinking); John of the
Cross (a pantheist who believed the mountains and forests are God); and
Gary Thomas (who defines Centering Prayer as "a contemplative act in
which you don't do anything; you're simply resting in the presence of God").
Warren also quotes from Mother Teresa and Henri Nouwen, both of whom
were universalists who believed that men can be saved apart from
personal faith in Jesus Christ. When Mother Teresa died, her longtime
friend and biographer Naveen Chawla said that he once asked her bluntly,
"Do you convert?" She replied, "Of course I convert. I convert you to be
a better Hindu or a better Muslim or a better Protestant. Once you've
found God, it's up to you to decide how to worship him" ("Mother Teresa
Touched other Faiths," Associated Press, Sept. 7, 1997). Henri Nouwen
said, "Today I personally believe that while Jesus came to open the door
to God's house, all human beings can walk through that door, whether
they know about Jesus or not. Today I see it as my call to help every
person claim his or her own way to God" (Henri Nouwen, Sabbatical Journey).
Nowhere does Warren warn his readers that these are dangerous false
teachers who held to a false gospel and worshipped a false christ.
The Lord Jesus Christ warned about repetitious prayers, and He gave no
liturgy to the churches apart from the simple ordinances of baptism and
the Lord's Supper. There is no New Testament pattern for the use of rote
prayers, chanting, ringing bells, wearing special clothes, lighting
candles, and such things.
Rome replaced New Testament spirituality, which is a living relationship
with Jesus Christ through by faith in the Scriptures, with its false
tradition and dead liturgy and sensual worship. It is sad to see men who
profess to be "anabaptists" and evangelicals going back to this ritualism.