Running Off At The Keyboard

In my diocese (Cleveland) there is a program called "Vibrant Parish Life" which is just beginning at my parish. It appears to be the program that will be used to consolidate parishes in order to address the shortage of priests and perhaps economic problems as well. In looking through the website for this program, it became clear that it uses the methodology created by Dr. David Cooperrider of the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. This methodology, called Appreciative Inquiry, or AI, is known internationally as the structure that enabled the United Religions Initiative program of Episcopal Bishop William Swing to organize. Its central premise is a concentration on the positive--and only on the positive--aspects of an organization. Is AI being used in any other US diocese? If anyone reading this blog has information about Appreciative Inquiry being used in your diocese, would you please email me.

In my diocese (Cleveland) there is a program called "Vibrant Parish Life" which is just beginning at my parish. It appears to be the program that will be used to consolidate parishes in order to address the shortage of priests. In looking through the website for this program, it became clear that it uses the methodology created by Dr. David Cooperrider of the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. This methodology, called Appreciative Inquiry or AI, is known internationally as the structure that enabled the United Religions Initiative program of Episcopal Bishop William Swing to organize. Its central premise is a concentration on the positive, and only on the positive, aspects of an organization. Is AI being used in any other US dioceses? If anyone reading this blog has information about Appreciative Inquiry being used in your diocese, would you please email me.

For some reason I posted a link to an article about Cardinal Kasper which doesn't show up on my blog. So, I'll give it another try. Cardinal Kasper is attempting to clarify the Catholic position on conversion of the Jews, since the bishop's statement, "Reflections on Covenant and Mission," has clouded the issue. The story comes from Catholic News Service {Quote} Cardinal Kasper said he wanted to "take the bull by the horns" and discuss the sensitive issue of mission--in part, he said, because Christian-Jewish dialogue must look honestly at the hardest questions. He said he recognized that the topic of mission evokes bitter memories among Jews because of forced conversions in the past. "We sincerely reject and regret this today," he said. He noted that the Catholic Church now condemns all means of coercion in matters of faith. But mission must be discussed, because it is a key concept for the Christian faith and part of the Christian identity, he said. "We cannot cancel it, and if we should try to do so, it would not help the Jewish-Christian dialogue at all. Rather, it would make the dialogue dishonest and ultimately distort it," he said. "If Jews want to speak to Christians, they cannot demand that Christians no longer be Christians," he said. {End quote} This post is continued below with Alice von Hildebrand's comments.

Continued from previous post...Alice von Hildebrand takes on a similar question in her article in the current issue of New Oxford Review when she asks "What's 'Offensive' & What's Not," which she sums up with this concluding argument: {Quote} The conclusion we can draw is that the Jews offense at Dominus Iesus is not justified. This document is nothing but an expression of essential Catholic belief. Beliefs held in good faith are not intended to hurt and attack other people, but only to objectify the Catholic Faith. To put pressure upon people of other faiths because the contents of their beliefs are "subjectively offensive" is to shift the whole issue away from the essential question, "are they true?" to a totally different question, "do I feel offended by them?" It is a psychological trick aimed at making a person whose beliefs one rejects feel "guilty" because of his "insensitivity" to the feelings of others, and to therefore put him in a weaker position, from which he has to defend and justify himself. It is typical of the subjectivistic world in which we live that the question of "offense" has replaced the question of truth. We are facing a grave disease, and it is high time that we measure the seriousness of the consequences: the dethronement of truth and its substitution by purely emotional extravagance. {End quote}

EWTN News has a short article about Senator Trent Lott's claim that when the new Congress convenes, "We will move the partial-birth abortion bill." He believes it will pass this time. Can he make this happen?

There is an interesting discussion taking place at Amy Welborn's blog about how the Church must change in order to restore trust in our bishops. I believe that part of the problem may be in the selection of bishops which is a rather secretive process. A Papal Nuncio is very powerful in this process. If we had a bad Nuncio, we could conceivably have bad bishops. For a description of the selection of bishops look at this Georgetown website for an article by Thomas J. Reese, S.J.

For most of my life I've been a sucker for soft fur and a purr, but none of the critters have persuaded me to like fur on the sofa. Cats are high maintenance, but then came Pounce. I get just the right amount of purr and fur when the neighbor's cats come for a treat. Plus, the vacuum lasts a whole lot longer. In thinking about St. Francis recently, I wondered what drew animals to him and whether he was a channel for God's grace to the animals who came to him as the hymn attributed to him seems to imply. Which led to wondering if God would use me to send His love for a neighborhood cat. When next the cat came over I tried a prayer, "God send your love for this creature through me." The cat seemed to respond, finding new pleasure in my petting. When I stopped, she put her head under my hand to persuade me to continue. And so, I thought, maybe there is something to this prayer business and the idea that we are Christ's Body or at least His channel of grace. In the Buddhist News website today (http://www.buddhistnews.tv/current/reiki-F.php) ((I still don't know how to include a link here)) there is an article from the Philadelphia Inquirer about reiki, a Japanese technique adapted from Tibetan Buddhism, which uses the hands to focus spiritual energy in order to heal by tapping into a "universal energy" which surrounds people, opening the chakras in the process. The article describes Catherine Holdsworth, a certified reiki practitioner, who works with AIDS patients two or three times a week at her internal-medicine office at Tample University. There are other Catholic practitioners of this therapy. Franciscan Sister Nora Meyer, SFP, describes praying to Jesus and seeing Jesus in her patients while using healing touch therapy. (http://www.franciscansisters.org/currentministries/United%States/power_of_healing_touch...) She speaks of having a patient describe to her the aura of light the patient could see surrounding her after a healing touch session. The patient believed the aura was the same as one surrounding a picture of a saint. The Lindenwood Conference and Retreat Center in Donaldson, Indiana sponsored by the Poor Handmaidens of Jesus Christ sisters, together with Memorial Hospital and Healing Arts Center, offere a number of Healing Touch and Thought Field Therapy programs, all of which concentrate on "energy based concepts." (http://www.lindenwood.org/programs.html) Instructors in these programs include a psychotherapist and a nurse graduate of the American Institute of Holistic Theology. Another community of nuns, the Dominican Sisters of Great Bend, Kansas, at The Heartland Center for Wholistic Health offered programs and taught classes in reiki according to their website which I printed in October 2001. In accessing the website today, I discovered that it is completely changed and the reiki offerings are not listed. However, Sister Anita Schugart, OP, Director, Reiki Master and Massage Therapist, and Sister Cecilia Ann Stremel, OP, Reiki Master and Reflexologist, as they were listed in the 2001 website, are still at the center. (http://www.ckan.com/hcwh/index,html) Putting and in Google Advanced Search brought up two pages of entries. Talking about "energy" flowing through us and our world is trendy. Talking about "Supernatural and Actual Grace" is not. Are they the same thing? Is healing touch merely the trendy secular spin for a very Catholic concept; or is there more than one source of "power" and "energy"? Catholics have long been warned not to contact disembodied spirits. Spiritism is a sin against the First Commandment forbidden by CCC 2117, which says "All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others--even if this were for the sake of restoring their health--are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion...Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploration of another's credulity." Yet saints have been known to have the power to heal through touch. What is--where is-- the fine line that separates "healing touch" from "spiritism" and how can we be sure never to cross it?

# posted by Carrie : 1:59 PM

Since I've been feeling guilty about taking up so much of Amy Welborn's hospitality, I've decided to give this a try. Not being particularly computer literate, this may turn into a bigger challenge than I'm up to, but anyway, here goes...