By Dan Burke, SpiritualDirection.com. Re-posted by permission.
Has the Vatican ever addressed the topic of Centering Prayer or the teachings commonly held by those who advocate or practice Centering Prayer?
Yes, the approach to prayer commonly referred to “Centering Prayer” has been formally and specifically addressed by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (we provide the text of this important document below). Here’s a little background that might be helpful.
In a kind of spiritual awakening during the 70s and 80s there were a growing number of well-intentioned Catholics who began to explore the integration of non-Christian Eastern prayer practices and traditional forms of Catholic prayer. There were sufficient concerns about the outcomes of this effort to prompt a response by the Vatican through then Cardinal Ratzinger (now Pope Benedict XVI), who issued the letter below to all of the Bishops of the Catholic Church warning of the potential errors in this area.
One only needs a cursory understanding of the history and teachings of Centering Prayer to understand that it is clearly dealt with in this document. As well it is important to note that the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith has not condemned or suppressed the Centering Prayer movement here or elsewhere. It simply proposes corrections, reforms, and redirection to ensure that those inspired to seek Christ through prayer do so in keeping with the time-tested and faithful traditions and inspirations of Christ and his Church.
Just to be sure that I am being charitable regarding this topic, I don’t condemn honest people seeking to deepen their prayer life through those who have popularized the method. All Catholics who care about their faith will constantly seek to improve their relationships with God and will thereby constantly find themselves correcting their spiritual trajectory. This gentle but specific treatment asks all of us to evaluate the practices and trajectory of our prayer lives to ensure we are pursuing God in a manner that pleases him and is thereby in keeping with Church teaching on the subject.
Regardless of where you stand on the issue, if you are a serious Catholic seeking an authentic and profound relationship with Christ in prayer, this document is a must read.
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LETTER TO THE BISHOPS OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH ON SOME ASPECTS OF CHRISTIAN MEDITATION
Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, October 15, 1989
I. Introduction
1. Many Christians today have a keen desire to learn how to experience a deeper and authentic prayer life despite the not inconsiderable difficulties which modern culture places in the way of the need for silence, recollection and meditation. The interest which in recent years has been awakened also among some Christians by forms of meditation associated with some eastern religions and their particular methods of prayer is a significant sign of this need for spiritual recollection and a deep contact with the divine mystery. Nevertheless, faced with this phenomenon, many feel the need for sure criteria of a doctrinal and pastoral character which might allow them to instruct others in prayer, in its numerous manifestations, while remaining faithful to the truth revealed in Jesus, by means of the genuine Tradition of the Church. This present letter seeks to reply to this urgent need, so that in the various particular Churches the many different forms of prayer, including new ones, may never lose their correct personal and communitarian nature.
These indications are addressed in the first place to the Bishops, to be considered in that spirit of pastoral solicitude for the Churches entrusted to them, so that the entire people of God–priests, religious and laity–may again be called to pray, with renewed vigor, to the Father through the Spirit of Christ our Lord.
The Vatican document you cited does not refer or apply to the practice of Centering Prayer. It’s unfortunate you received erroneous info from someone who may have been well-intentioned. The following document should clarify:
http://www.contemplativeoutreach.org/faq-item/response-then-cardinal-ratzinger’s-1989-“letter-bishops-catholic-church-some-aspects-christ
Yes, I have read Contemplative Outreach’s response to this criticism and even before I knew much about Centering Prayer I found that response completely unconvincing. Here are some quotes from the CDF document: “grace, which always has the Holy Spirit as its source is not a good proper to the soul, but must be sought from God as a gift” (#8). Fr. Keating says that contemplation is not a gift, but is constitutive of the human soul. Errors in prayer “incite him to try and overcome the distance separating creature from Creator, as though there ought not to be such a distance” (#10). Fr. Keating and C.O. teach non-dualism. “Similar methods of meditation, on the other hand, including those which have their starting-point in the words and deeds of Jesus, try as far as possible to put aside everything that is worldly, sense-perceptible or conceptually limited. It is thus an attempt to ascend to or immerse oneself in the sphere of the divine, which, as such, is neither terrestrial, sense-perceptible nor capable of conceptualization” (#11). This describes CP perfectly. Attempts “to fuse Christian meditation with that which is non-Christian” (#12). Fr. Keating admits openly that he and the other Trappist monks were looking for a point of connection between eastern and western spiritualities, and even a quick Google search brings up many hits of him saying in interviews that there is no real difference between Christianity and Buddhism or Hinduism, just that they come out of different cultures and our faith “requires” us to speak in a certain manner. “[O]thers go further and, using different techniques, try to generate spiritual experiences similar to those described in the writings of certain Catholic mystics. Still others do not hesitate to place that absolute without image or concepts, which is proper to Buddhist theory, on the same level as the majesty of God revealed in Christ, which towers above finite reality” (ibid.). This is very obviously what C.O. teaches and is all over Fr. Keating’s writings. “To this end, they make use of a ‘negative theology,’ which transcends every affirmation seeking to express what God is and denies that the things of this world can offer traces of the infinity of God” (ibid.). Fr. Keating and C.O. both speak often of the via negativa or apophatic prayer in this erroneous manner. “There is otherness in God himself, who is one single nature in three Persons, and there is also otherness between God and creatures, who are by nature different” (#14). Fr. Keating says in a YouTube video that “there is no other,” and that people advanced in the spiritual life come to see this supposed reality. “The seeking of God through prayer has to be preceded and accompanied by an ascetical struggle and a purification from one’s own sins and errors, since Jesus has said that only ‘the pure of heart shall see God’ (Mt 5:8)” (#18). Fr. Keating and C.O. reduce this ascetical struggle–which is the letting go of everything outside of God’s will–to the letting go of one’s thoughts and feelings during prayer. Very little is ever said by Fr. Keating about struggling against sin and temptation, or growth in virtue. Where it is said, it is only done in passing. All the emphasis is on the technique.
I could go on, but this is only a comment, not a blog post. I hope to write a complete post on this in the future, quoting directly from C.O. and Fr. Keating to show how they most certainly do teach and practice what the CDF was criticizing.
If you desire union with God, Teresa, which I hope you do, meditate on Sacred Scripture daily and practice obedience to God in even the smallest things. Then let Him take the initiative and lead you onward, rather than trying to grasp contemplation through a change in your level of consciousness. That is the way the saints taught and lived. Methods or techniques of prayer cannot make one a contemplative. Only God can.
Thank you for your comment. I’m currently in a class in the archdiocese of Atlanta, through the University of Dayton. This is my succession and it is a book by Abbott Casey, a Trappist Monk. He is slowy bringing in the use of techniques that are ways of Hinduism or yoga or middle eastern practices. I have never seen these practices ever give Jesus Christ and the Holy Cross Mention as the one true God. How could we possibly the centering on the one true God it’s if it is referred to as their deities. St James is buried in the cathedral in India so I know that one true and holy gospel has been brought there for all to understand and know. I do have some devout friends from India that are Catholic and their devotion lies in the holy mother as they say it. Our blessed Mother is how we say it. That’s the type of difference that Catholics can live with especially because we are giving the holy mother of God the recognition she deserves as she points the way to her son, Jesus Christ. Christ plainly says there is no other way to his father except through him. I am nowhere close to a theologian I’m just plain old charlie being in love my Catholic faith. Pope Benedict was a very good Pope and I believe he can see now by his retiring how the door is trying to be opened the other way. I will never practice any other method then trying to say quietly in adoration whenever I can get there. God the Father told Saint Catherine of Siena and their dialogues that we need to use our inner eye and that’s where we’ll find him. But I tried to consciously sit and pray that inner eye very easily takes me to my moments of adoration and I can visually see the Lord sitting there watching me. Thanks
I share with the love of God that you are ensnared in religiosity…mostly contrived by a human intellect reliant organized religion. The simplistic remedy is to allow the scriptures to speak “to” you under the primary guidance of the Holy Spirit. I pray your spiritual eyes, ears, and heart, are opened to receive pure truth.
Hello, Jim. Thanks for your prayers. The first problem with your position is that Sola Scriptura is unbiblical. The second is that it is completely foreign to historic Christianity until the Reformation. “I know Him in whom I have believed.” And I found Him and daily grow in union with Hi, in the Catholic Church, which He established for this purpose. God bless.