Archbishop Levada: Call Your Office!
Bishops are busy men, and no doubt sometimes so busy that they aren’t aware of what’s being published in their own diocesan papers. We hope that explains the hideous column that appeared in Catholic San Francisco (Dec. 7, 2001), the paper of Archbishop William Levada of the San Francisco Archdiocese.
The column is about the “cosmic Christ.” It’s by Fr. Ron Rolheiser, who takes his inspiration from Teilhard de Chardin, who went out of fashion a couple decades ago but is now, with the popularity of the New Age movement, making a comeback. Now, Rolheiser is no flaky Frisco priest, let that be clear. Flaky, yes, but he’s billed as a “theologian” and “award-winning author” who “serves in Rome as general councilor for Canada for the Oblates of Mary Immaculate.”
Rolheiser tells us that the cosmic Christ means that “the mystical and the hormonal, and the religious and the pagan are part of one thing, one pattern, all infused by one spirit, all drawn to the same end, with the same goodness and meaning.”
Getting more specific, Rolheiser tells us that “everything — be it…the instinctual hunt for blood by a mosquito…or the genuflection in prayer or altruism of a saint — is ultimately part of one and the same thing, the unfolding of creation as made in the image of Christ and as revealing the invisible God,” adding that “God’s face is manifest everywhere.”
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