The Humanism of Peace

Some 300 representatives from a number of world religions gathered in Lyon, France for a three day meeting sponsored by the Community of Sant’Egidio, a self-described "Church public lay association” with communities throughout the world, dedicated to “prayer, communicating the Gospel, solidarity with the poor, ecumenism and dialogue.” Founded in 1968, the Community of Sant’Egidio has sponsored interreligious International Meetings since the mid-1980’s, as a means of “promoting mutual understanding and dialogue among religions, in a horizon of peace,” and “living the spirit of the Assisi World Day of Prayer, proposed by John Paul II in 1986.”

This year’s gathering, which took place from September 11-13, 2005, was titled The Courage to Forge a Spiritual Humanism of Peace, and was attended by a large number of religious and political figures, journalists, activists and educators. Conferences were presented on such topics as “Dialogue and the World’s Religions Post 9/11,” “John Paul II’s Spiritual Legacy: the Spirit of Assisi,” “60 Years after Auschwitz: Jews and Christians in Dialogue,” “The Moslem-Christian Dialogue: Present, and Future Perspectives,” “Catholic and Orthodox Christians: the Quest for Unity,” “What is Humankind? The Anthropologist’s Quest in the 21st Century,” “Europe: What vision for the Future?” and similar religious/globalist themes.

On September 13^th, the assembled religious leaders released an Appeal for Peace. Beginning with a “homage to the memory of John Paul II, a man of dialogue and a tenacious witness of the sanctity of peace,” the appeal proclaims that “the world is tired of living in fear,” that “religions do not want violence, war or terrorism,” and that “the art of dialogue” is the means to create “a civilization where people live together.”

Zenit reports (Sept. 12, 2005) that Pope Benedict VXI sent a message to the participants gathered in Lyon in which he appealed "to the people of our time, and in particular to young people, to have the courage to commit themselves ever more actively in favor of peace and dialogue, which alone can allow one to envision the future of the world with hope." The message, sent through Cardinal Angelo Sodano, Vatican secretary of state, urged the participants to "implore from God the gift of his peace, supported by Christ's promise, 'My peace I leave you, my peace I give you,' so that they will be able to respond to all the demands and thus be builders of peace."

Comment: It is a given that the only time religious leaders, activists and politicos can “come together” is for the express purpose of denying the uniqueness of Jesus Christ and His Church. This San’Egidio meeting was no small affair. Just a few of the participants included such diverse figures as the Archbishop of Canterbury, the President of Mozambique, the Chief Rabbi of Israel, the Presidential Advisor to the United Arab Emirates, the President of the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, the Archbishop of Washington, the Rector of Egypt’s Al-Azhar University, the Armenian Patriarch of Constantinople, the Archbishop of Westminster, and a representative of the World Bank.

Given the utter disregard for Jesus Christ as Divine Redeemer and Judge of mankind which forms the very foundation of the “humanism of peace,” it is difficult not to focus on the Pope’s admonition that “peace and dialogue ...  alone can allow one to envision the future of the world with hope.” The only hope for the future is “peace and dialogue?” What does this mean? Without Christ as the foundation stone, to what avail is the “anthropologist’s quest for humankind,” or yet more surveys on decades worth of ineffectual, degrading ecumenism and interreligious pandering?

Similarly, on September 13, 2005, Archbishop Giovanni Lajolo, Vatican secretary for relations with states, delivered an address to a conference on The Role of the Catholic Church in the Process of European Integration. The name “Jesus Christ” appears once in this address: “The past is present not only as memory of what was and is no longer, but what was done in the past continues as a living reality in the context of faith in God, who is the God of Jesus Christ, the God of Abraham, of Isaac and Jacob, the God of the living and not of the dead.” Well, it ain’t Viva Cristo Rey!

The Catholic participants in such gatherings as the Sant’Egidio affair are fiddling while Rome burns ... and takes the world along with it. They live their lives as though Our Lady of Fatima had never opened her mouth. A “peace” founded upon anything but the Prince of Peace? Our Lord Himself told us where that leads: “And every one that heareth these My words and doth them not, shall be like a foolish man that built his house upon the sand, and the rain fell, and the floods came, and the winds blew, and they beat upon that house, and it fell, and great was the fall thereof.”

Interfaith Evolution?

In a September 12, 2005 report, the Religion News Service (RNS) asked the question, “Is Open Source Spirituality the Next Evolutionary Step Beyond the Interfaith Movement?”

“Open Source Spirituality” touts itself as “a new movement derived from a powerful new idea born recently in the software industry.” In the software world, open source means that the underlying software source code is accessible and free for anyone to use and improve, providing only that they, too, make any of their software source code improvements accessible and free for all to use and improve. The birth of the open source has been called “a powerful facilitator for the democratization of information flow around the world.”

Translated to the world of global spirituality, the Open Source Spirituality movement uses as its “source code” all the available sources from humanity's collective spiritual wisdom. This assembled heritage of spiritual wisdom is then made accessible and free in various online data bases for all individuals and organizations to use and further improve. The originators or collectors of this spiritual source material share their spiritual wisdom additions or improvements in this Open Source Spirituality collaboration and thereby help co-create and expand a new type of global spiritual commonality, aided by the fact that “there is no requirement of allegiance to some particular religious or cultural ‘ism’ or particular religious authority to use it, add to it or improve it.” According to the Open Source Spirituality facilitators, this “dynamic, evolutionary synthesis” results in a process of “natural pruning that occurs resulting in the emergence of more useful and/or appropriate spiritual wisdom.” This newly emerged wisdom may “transcend earlier spiritual wisdom in its universality, inclusiveness, meanings, values, or in the way that it better integrates all spiritual and physical life wisdom into more useful maps and metaphors for not only the co-creators and participants in the global spiritual commons, but for all of humankind.”

Proponents of Open Source Spirituality believe that, while the mainstream interfaith movement was a “positive step towards improving religious tolerance, reducing religious violence and in the evolution towards the evolutionary emergence of open source spirituality,” it often turned into “subtle recruitment for one faith or another.” Because those involved in interfaith dialogue were “committed to maintaining their respective religions and spiritual paths,” such a dialogue “made interfaith impotent as a tool for the active assembly, expansion and/or cross-pollination of humanity’s spiritual wisdom into an evolving and dynamic global spiritual commons.”

Comment: Let’s cut to the chase. According to the Open Source Spirituality (OSS) brain trust, spirituality is defined as “the innermost and most critical essence of all religion as opposed to religion’s outermost characteristics such as its social beliefs, doctrines, rituals and organizational structures, authorities and hierarchies.” If there was any more code stuffed into this OSS propaganda, the CIA would be analyzing it.

Open Source Spirituality claims that its “newly emerged wisdom” may transcend “earlier spiritual wisdom in its universality, inclusiveness, meanings, values, etc.” And, sure enough, if you go to OSS’s online matchmaking service, you’ll find the requisite photos of smiling homosexual and lesbian couples mixed in with the usual generic heteros. You’ll find the requisite cheerleading for the “new Integral Philosophy and Integral worldview,” a combination of science and mysticism which defines “the emerging and implied values of the Open Source Spirituality movement and the expanding global spiritual commons it is co-creating.” Hey, one must be true to those “emerging” values!

And, perhaps most telling of all, you’ll find out that among the participants in OSS are those “spiritually courageous individuals” who “want to customize or re-energize their religion or personal spirituality by picking and choosing ideas and practices from the best wisdom of the world's greatest religions and spiritual traditions (or from any other source for that matter), often without any particular attachment to the doctrine or allegiance for that particular source.” There are not only “cafeteria Catholics” out there…. There are “cafeteria New-Agers,” as well. “What is Truth?” asked Pilate. “Who cares?” replies OSS.

It all sounds like something out of Msgr. Benson’s Lord of the World. By its own admission, Open Source Spirituality is against the “social beliefs, doctrines, rituals and organizational structures, authorities and hierarchies” of religion as opposed to “spirituality.” For “religion,” one may as well substitute “the Roman Catholic Church” and get it over with. And, as bizarre as the interminable OSS psycho-babble may sound, this type of “techno-syncretism” is the wave of the future. In the ongoing battle with “principalities and powers,” it is only to be expected that a neutral entity, in this case the philosophy of the software industry, should be employed in an assault against Revealed Truth. Demons are not ignorant beings. On the contrary, they are fallen angels. One underestimates them at one’s own peril.

A “New-Age” Kind of Chancellor

Spirit Daily reports that “the chancellor of a major American diocese has defended the use of both yoga and a form of esoteric therapy called ‘reiki’ as ways of enhancing prayer and healing in a Catholic setting [the Church of the Resurrection in Solon, Ohio] – a view that many would find to be in contradiction of the Vatican.”

Reiki (pronounced ray-key), whose popularity is growing in Catholic convents, parish halls and hospitals, is describe as "a technique for stress reduction and relaxation that allows everyone to tap into an unlimited supply of 'life force energy' to improve health and enhance the quality of life.” It incorporates elements of many alternative healing practices such as psychic healing, auras, crystals, chakra balancing, meditation, aromatherapy, naturopathy, and homeopathy, some of which, like yoga, have clear links to the New Age and are advertised on such websites.

Despite a recent document on the New Age issued by the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Inter-religious Dialogue, in which the Vatican warned that "some of the traditions which flow into New Age are ancient Egyptian occult practices, Cabbalism, early Christian gnosticism, Sufism, the lore of the Druids, Celtic Christianity, mediaeval alchemy, Renaissance hermeticism, Zen Buddhism, Yoga, and so on,” Father Ralph E. Wiatrowski, Chancellor of the Diocese of Cleveland, defends the teaching of yoga and reiki in Catholic parishes. "The energy stuff is extreme, but you need to see all of this as part of the gift of healing," he said. "It helps in understanding the totality of healing and can be as valuable as therapeutic touch .... While such things are not formally encouraged, it does not seem that there is anything present to warrant concern."

The Chancellor of Cleveland has also come to the defense of a rendition of the Blessed Mother, a statue in the same Church of the Resurrection in Solon, which appears to depict Mary in the nude. Fr. Wiatrowski likened this figure of the Blessed Mother to figures in the “Last Judgment” paintings, which are draped in gossamer robes. "Tastes in art vary from person to person," he argued. "The Blessed Mother is clothed."

According to Spirit Daily, the woman who had originally complained about this statue replied to the Chancellor, "I received your response and looked again at the photo of the statue of Mary.  I must have a problem with my eyesight because, to me, the outline of the Blessed Mother's body is quite obvious.  Again I have to say that this is a very sacrilegious way to show respect for the person whose name is synonymous with purity and modesty."

Comment: A glance at the statue of Our Lady in question is enough to condemn it as unsuitable for a Catholic Church or anywhere else. While the anatomy of the figure is not brought into sharp relief, there is no sense that the figure is, indeed, clothed. It is a primitive sort of rendering, a generic pagan goddess without warmth or character.

And its defense by the Chancellor of the Cleveland Diocese is eloquent proof that, once sound doctrine flies out the window, common sense will follow. When Jesus Christ becomes passé, when post-conciliar “Catholics” hunger for something more— then the New Age (or “Open Source Spirituality”!) is more than ready and eager to step in.  From there, it is a short step to a restructuring of the Blessed Virgin from the glorious reality into crass propaganda.

Just how boneheaded is Fr. Wiatrowski’s defense of his supposedly “gossamer draped” statue? In a February, 2000 article titled, “The Naked Madonna,” published in The Tablet (UK), Sarah Jane Boss described a carved limewood statue of the Virgin and Child which stands in St. Matthew's Church, Westminster:

Looking at the group straight on, the child appears naked, and the mother is seen to have bare legs and feet, and to be seated on a disc. The disc represents the moon, which has long associations in Marian art and devotion: "fair as the moon", says the Song of Songs, and the Church has for centuries applied this to Our Lady. Looking at the group in profile, the mother leans forward, presenting her son to the world. And from this angle it is clear that the woman is entirely naked, her bare legs and muscular arms being prominent.

The creator of this statue, Guy Reid, is described as a “deeply devout Anglican” with a degree in theology and a deep concern for the inheritance of Christian art. He says that the nakedness of his two figures signifies Christ and the Virgin as the New Adam and the New Eve, and, while the contrast between Eve and Mary has traditionally been depicted with Eve naked and Mary clothed, he wanted to show a restoration to the primal innocence of Paradise. A homily in defense of the statue was even preached in 2002 by the Reverend Louis Weil, James F. Hodge Professor of Liturgics at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, at the Church of Saint Mary the Virgin on the Feast of the Annunciation. During his homily, Weil referred to Our Lady as a “peasant” and said that Reid’s statue “summons us to be strong and secure in our identity as the children of God.” Whatever.

It is interesting to note that this article on Reid’s naked Madonna is posted with satisfaction on the www.womenpriests.org website, a site dedicated to the ordination of women, the destruction of the Catholic priesthood, and “Body, Sex and Gender in the Church.” The article is nestled neatly alongside the usual juvenile fixations on sexual topics.

The historical Mary – with all her femininity and virtue – is anathema to the agenda of women’s ordination and to the diabolical disorientation of the unisex mentality. The Virgin’s repeated injunctions to modesty give the lie to any nude depictions of her in art, even under the guise of a “Last Judgment” figure or the “New Eve.” The statues in Ohio and Westminster are nothing more than a degradation of the Mother of God under a thin guise of theological abstractions. If a diocesan chancellor is not familiar enough with the Blessed Virgin to see this, then he needs to head back to the seminary – hopefully, one which does not employ a radical feminist to screen applicants.

Ancient Roman Statues Found In Cyrene

According to The Art Newspaper (Sept. 13, 2005), a team of Italian archaeologists has discovered 76 intact Roman statues at Cyrene in Libya. What distinguishes this particular find is that the site, once a thriving Greek and then Roman settlement, has already been under excavation for the last 150 years. Served by the nearby coastal port of Apollonia, Cyrene was once a network of urban communities equivalent to Alexandria and Carthage. Founded by Greek settlers in 631 BC, it was later ruled by the Ptolemies and then the Romans. The city, famous for its grain and a quasi-miraculous medicinal plant called silphium, was destroyed by an earthquake in 375 AD but continued to be inhabited until the Byzantine period.

In the mid-19th century, English archaeologists discovered 54 marble sculptures in the temple of Aphrodite at Cyrene, and a sacred site, made up of many temples, was discovered there by Italian archaeologists between the first and second world wars.

The latest discovery at Cyrene is the work of Mario Luni, an archaeologist from the University of Urbino, who has been working with his team at the site since 1997. Speaking to The Art Newspaper, Professor Luni said: “One morning, a collapsed wall in the Roman temple, which was discovered in the 1930s, revealed a marble serpent wrapped around a stone. We could not have known that this was only the first in a series of statues of every kind and size that we would pull from the ground. We just kept discovering them every day, for a month and a half, and found 76 in total.”

At least 12 of the newly discovered statues, all dating from the 2nd century BC and found lined up along the back wall of the temple, range from 20 to 35 centimeters in height and show Cybele, daughter of the goddess Demeter, in different poses. The remaining works, some smaller and others much larger, are dedicated to other gods. According to Professor Luni, these statues have remained undiscovered for so long because “during the earthquake of 375 AD, a supporting wall of the temple fell on its side, burying all the statues. They remained hidden under stone, rubble and earth for 1,600 years. The other walls sheltered the statues, so we were able to recover all the pieces, even works that had been broken.”

Because Cyrene is vast and spread out over an enormous area, the current excavations will take decades to complete. Professor Luni’s team will now concentrate on the immense Greek settlement, the most ancient part, which was home to successive generations of inhabitants until the Byzantine era and is, as yet, completely unexplored. “Researching the pieces will take at least a couple of years,” said the Professor. “We have photographed and catalogued the pieces and are currently restoring them.”