LOL! So tell us what you really think of Pope Francis. On the other hand, … maybe you better not.
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Chardin certainly had issues although Pope Benedict XVI actually quoted him. Like so many theologians and philosophers, we can appreciate what is good in their writings while not accepting the whole package.
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- I first became aware of Chardin when I hung out with Catholic Charismatics of St. John the Baptist Catholic Charismatic Community in San Francisco, in the mid-1970s, which held public and closed prayer meetings in an unused hall on the campus of the Jesuit Catholic University of San Francisco. Because several of the community’s leaders were either Jesuit Priests or University Professors.
- Initially, I seriously tried to read through several of his books, The Divine Milleu and The Phenomenon of Man seem familiar titles. Unfortunately, not much stayed with me other than the term “the Cosmic Christ” and the part where Chardin said something about celebrating the Eucharist with sand and water if you don’t have unleavened bread and wine.
- I wasn’t offended, just surprised. After all I remembered my days as a Southern Baptist, when trays of broken Saltine Crackers and a tiny tiny cup of grape juice were passed through the congregation. Sand and water seemed a bit of a stretched connection to the Lord’s Supper in the New Testament, especially after my Lutheran experience with unleavened wafers and real wine.
- But I survived and remember it all and value the rare opportunity to Remember Jesus’ gifts.
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That is true but he seems to have been more accepted after that and both Pope Benedict and Pope Francis have praised his work.
I like Pope Francis although I know various traditionalist Catholics do not.
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And some seem to think that their reading of the Bible is the only possible path to knowledge.
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And that truth comes from reality, while only admitting part of reality.
Good Lord, what a scary combination - Catholic Charismatics and Jesuits! Does the Catholic Charismatic movement still exist, or has it been laughed out of the Church by now?
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I, for one, am looking forward to the day he’s replaced. The worry is, however, he may be paving the way for someone even worse.
Hardly a recommendation - we’re talking about a Church hierarchy that declared John Paul ll - the mad modernist Koran-kisser and lover of all things pagan - a saint!
When Catholic priests go to get educated, 99.99% of them chose to study something in the Humanities - usually psychology, sometimes philosophy.
Thankfully, evolution is a complete irrelevance in mainstream Catholicism. No one talks about it - except maybe fleetingly in a Catholic highschool biology class.
Hello, Chris. I am a fellow Catholic. Why do think accepting the evolution story is important?
I accept the scientific evidence that suggests life on earth evolved (so to speak), but as for the neo-Darwinian theory about how it evolved, I don’t accept it and I don’t see accepting it as at all important. I happy to accept the history of life for what it is - a mystery that cannot ever be solved.
We can’t even be sure about what happened, so I’ll leave attempting to explain how it happened to the atheists who consider that futile quest important.
- Australia is a far distance from Los Angeles, and I don’t keep my finger on the pulse of Aussies, atheist or theist, but a quick search on-line seems to suggest that Christianity Down-Under has declined from 1971 to 2021: “the amount of people identifying as having no religion is also growing, from 6.7% in 1971 to 38.9% in 2021.” So, it wouldn’t surprise me to hear that somebody’s out-laughing Catholic non-Charismatics. Is Australia losing religion: The State of the Church
- If you’re interested in more current info, check out Catholic Charismatic Sites - Australia I don’t know how far in the bush your parish is, but somebody at one of those sites can answer your questions about the Charismatics in Australia.
- If you want to know what Catholic Charismatics are up to world-wide, you’d have to get out more:
- “The largest Charismatic movement today is the Catholic Charismatic renewal, found in significant numbers mainly across Latin America. The largest Catholic Charismatic populations are in Brazil (61 million), the Philippines (26 million) and the United States (18 million), though the highest concentrations of Catholic charismatics are in Guatemala (34% of the country), Puerto Rico (31%) and Brazil (29%).” [Source: Pentecostal/Charismatic Christianity - Dr. Todd Johnson, May 27, 2020]
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Compared to the size of the universe, Australia is very close to Los Angeles.
Those numbers are extremely disturbing.
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My parish isn’t in the bush - it’s located on the coast. On a clear day, we can see Los Angeles.
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Why disturbing? While I do not fall into the charismatic camp, I think church growth is good, and the appeal of charismatic religious movements is higher in populations that perhaps are more emotionally oriented in their culture. I just wish churches were more open to those of us who tend the other direction, American evangelical churches are somewhat dismissive to those of us on the outer reaches of the spectrum of emotion to reason dominant thought.
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I have some fond memories of the Catholic Charismatic Renewal folks in Indiana and Illinois, where they held regular gatherings where all the catholic faiths (which they defined as adhering to the Nicene Creed and being sacramental) were welcome. We’d scrape up Episcopalians, Lutherans, and the occasional Methodist to pack a van and go make our presence known.
I wonder if they’re still as openly ecumenical.
For what it’s worth, there were Jesuits and Benedictines among the leadership.
I knew a professor who attended a Lutheran church where the pastor/priest had two doctorates (and was what Anglicans would call “high church”) early Sunday morning and then a Charismatic church after. He liked the solid grounding in scholarly and liturgical realms of the first and the wild exuberance of the second (where he said he got his “emotional catharsis” for the week).
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This brought to mind a Sunday morning where during the sermon I was reading a book on Christology and someone pounced on me for not paying attention. So I showed her the notes I’d been taking, those in green ink being about the book I was reading and those in blue about the sermon. Two friends with me got a good chuckle at her consternation since they had been in enough classes with me that they knew I could double-track.
Sadly that’s gotten harder over the years.
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We cannot really multitask, but we can multiplex (as in electronic signals) with varying degrees of success. Maybe the carrier frequency is inversely related to age. 
Ha! I love it!
There is solid research about that. I have been educated about it but do not remember much. What I remember is that it takes some time to switch from one topic to another, and the minimum time needed for the switch increases with age. That is why an attempt to multitask is less efficient than concentrating on one task for a longer time period before switching to another task.
Currently, the time period between switches from one interest to another has dropped much. If I remember correctly, the average among younger generations has dropped to less than one minute. That means the brains are more strained and the efficiency of working has dropped compared to the situation two decades ago when the comparable average was much above two minutes. No wonder ADHD-style behaviors seem to be more common, even among those that do not suffer from ADHD themselves.
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