A critical assessment of some of OFM priest Richard Rohr‘s views, founder of the Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) in Albuquerque, based on one YouTube presentation.
Saint Josemaria Escrivá used to teach that the Mass is the center and root of the spiritual life. Vatican II called the Eucharist the summit and source of Christian life. There is no way to overstate the centrality of the Mass in the Catholic Faith, so I would be very suspicious of any teaching that doesn’t lead back to the Eucharist one way or another, and of any sort of spirituality that does not revolve around and is fundamentally nurtured by the Holy Sacrifice. And I am certain that there’s something wrong with somebody that suggests that the mass might be an optional feature of Christian life. Richard Rohr seems to suggest that much when he brings up the memory of some boys’ confessions…
First, he chuckled at the recollection, suggesting with his tone and gestures, how silly and retrograde it was to confess the sin of intentionally skipping Sunday mass. And, towards the end of that YouTube (1:22:10 timestamp), he indignantly proclaims: “it is evil to teach that missing Sunday mass is evil!”
Now, as far as I know, nobody teaches that missing Sunday mass is evil, in the common current sense of the word as something egregiously malicious that causes grave harm to others. Therefore, he is very likely alluding to the very Catholic doctrine of mortal sin, and to the precepts of the Church, which indeed bind the Catholic’s conscience with mortal sin. Under this assumption, he not only misunderstands the notion of sin and does not appreciate the value of the Mass, but he would also be openly challenging the authority of the Church.
The misunderstanding of sin as something evil is very common nowadays. But the truth is that the current definition and implication of what is evil does not equate with the Catholic notion of sin, not even of mortal sin. Nobody really feels like a sinner, because nobody wants to be evil. And the truth is, most people aren’t evil. But all of us are sinners. Except for Jesus and Mary, everybody else is a sinner. And if you think you are not, just check two of Jesus’ parables: the rich man and Lazarus, and the goats and the sheep. It’s pretty clear that in both cases, neither the rich man nor “the goats” were condemned for doing something ‘evil,’ but rather for failing to do something good.
So let us turn our eyes to the one paradigmatic sin, which is the source of all other sins and all the evil in the world—the original sin of Adam and Eve—and hopefully put to rest this absurd notion that only what we commonly understand as evil can really be considered a sin.
The story of Genesis may be allegorical (or not), but its meaning is very clear: we reject the love that God offers us when we disobey His command, no matter how arbitrary it may seem to our limited comprehension. Nobody would think that eating a fruit from a tree can be considered evil. But there should be no doubt, even in the least attentive reader, that eating from the tree was a mortal sin: “In the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” (Genesis 2:17). And, it seems to me, neither would Fr. Richard deem it evil to eat from the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But I wonder if he paid enough attention to realize that it was a sin, and a mortal one. He seems very comfortable deciding what is good and what is evil all by himself, and redefining the concept of mortal sin.
I don’t know, and it’s not to the point, whether there was a literal tree and a literal fruit. Still, the message is clear: a willing disobedience to a known command from God is inexorably followed by death. Obviously not the kind of death that is the loss of this animal and ephemeral life, but the real Death to the real Life for which we were created: a sharing in the everlasting life of God.
And it makes perfect sense. Why? Because the Life of God is the eternal Love between the Father and the Son: the Holy Spirit. Spirit is Life. Life is love. When we hear that God offers us his Love, we must understand it also as an offer of Life—a Life giving Love, if you prefer. It is a love connection through which the divine Life flows from Creator to creature. And love—any love—must be found in freedom and truth. Disobedience—and the doubt that causes it—denies the basic truth of who God is in relation to who we are and, therefore, also denies the truth of the total dependency of the creature from the Creator.
By consenting to the doubt that God may not have our best interest at heart—“God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God (Genesis 3:5)”—,we are withdrawing the requisite faith in the love of God. Without faith in His Love, we take away the possibility of our acceptance, resulting instead in the rejection ipso facto of God’s offer of love. And, ipso facto, we lose our connection with the Love of God; which is to say, we lose the Life of God. Death may be portrayed as punishment for sin, though it is better characterized as its consequence. It’s more like ruining your car as a consequence of ramming it against a telephone pole, than getting a ticket for speeding.
And lost and lifeless were we, walking in valley of darkness in this land of exile, when God became Man and dwelt among us bringing light back into the world. We were dead when God gave up His human life on the cross so divine Life could be restored back into humankind and we could be welcome back to the lost paradise where the tree of life offers its fruit.
Nowhere else as much as in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross does God pour out all His love for us. The cross of Christ is an event in history imbued with eternal relevance, because it is the sacrifice of one who is the eternal God (*). And that eternal sacrifice, offered by Christ “as Priest of the order of Melchizedek” from dawn till dusk, is made present everyday for us in every holy mass celebrated throughout the world. So we can say too, that nowhere else as much as in the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass does God pour out all His love for us. There He invites us to eat and be nourished by His body and fully participate in His redemptive and Life giving sacrifice.
The tree of the cross is the tree of life, and its fruit is the bread of eternal life come down from heaven. Every time we miss mass we miss the most precious chance to receive God’s love. We give up a chance to receive God Himself in the Eucharist! By rejecting the fruit from the tree of life we are, indeed doing something akin to eating from the wrong tree all over again.
God also gave power to the Church to bind us with her precepts. For our own good, like a mother that compels her children to get the good food, the Church commands all her children to come together as one church, one body, to accept and receive from God the greatest gift of all: the invitation to the wedding feast of the Lamb and the consummation of His infinite sacrifice of love for us on the cross.
God offers Himself to us so we can transform our lives by uniting them and everything in them to this infinite sacrifice. Every small and seemingly negligible circumstance of our lives becomes infused with infinite value when we put it on the altar to be offered to the Father together with the infinite value of the Holy Sacrifice of the Son. It is madness to waste such an amazing opportunity.
It is for our own good that the Church binds us with this “obligation” to come every week on the Lord’s day to the table of the Lord’s supper. And it is hardly an obligation when we are going to receive the greatest gift of all. Would we think it an “obligation” to go claim the one billion dollars owed to our lottery winning number? Well, yes, it is strictly an obligation, because we would forfeit the prize if we don’t claim it before the deadline. But we would be really stupid or raving mad to complain about fulfilling such an “obligation.” And one, no, three, ten, a thousand, a trillion dollars is nothing and less than nothing compared to what we get when we participate in the bloodless renovation of the Sacrifice of the Cross, the Holy Mass.
God gave a command to Adam and Eve with the warning that they would die if they did not obey; and the Church, in the name of and with Christ’s given authority, enjoins us with identical warning: willingly skipping holy mass on Sunday without a valid reason carries the same consequence: death of the soul.
“Now the serpent was more crafty than any of the wild animals the Lord God had made. He said to the woman, “Did God really say, ‘You must not eat from any tree in the garden’?” (Genesis 3:1)
Satan sows doubt, the first step in the scheme of temptation. And Fr. Richard Rohr, unwittingly or not, but very dutifully for sure, sows in the souls the doubt about one clear command among the very few that are given to us by the Church. Our mother the Church, concerned about our spiritual life and the nourishment of our souls, backed up by the authority bestowed upon her by our Saviour and two thousand years plus of accumulated wisdom, bids all Catholic faithful to celebrate the memorial of the Lord’s passion at least once a week.
Fr. Rohr thinks “it’s evil to teach kids that it’s evil to miss Sunday mass.” Don’t you hear the echo of the diabolical tempter sowing doubt in the minds of the faithful? Wouldn’t it be evil instead to cast, like the serpent in the Garden, the shadow of doubt over the clear command of the Church, the institution founded by Christ to shepherd His flock?
Make no mistake, I am not a legalistic person; rather the opposite. I am not writing out of ignorance or narrow mindedness. I know how daring it may come accross to some that I, a low rank and file catholic with no official and worldly titles, challenges the teaching of a priest of the Church entrusted with transmitting faithfully her teachings, who holds Phd titles and several published bestselling books to boot. I know that Fr. Rohr has been followed by many people for many years, that some attribute to him the way back or having remained in their faith. But I cannot remain silent seeing a false prophet leading my brothers astray.
I know that Fr. Rohr is probably well versed in Franciscan spirituality and, so I’m told, in the mysticism of St. John of the Cross. I am no expert in Franciscan spirituality, but I have not the slightest doubt in my mind that St. Francis did not, and would have never dared to challenge the authority of the Church. Quite the opposite.
I don’t hold any degrees on the mysticism of St. John of the Cross, but I’ve read enough of his writings to know that he would have never dreamt of questioning the authority of the Church. He who wrote that “we will be judged by how much we loved,” knew better than most (certainly better than Fr. Rohr) what love means for Jesus: “Whoever loves me follows my commandments” (John 14:15). He knew perfectly well too, that the commandments of the Church are the commandments of Christ, who gave her the power to bind and loose (Matthew 16:19), and that Christ himself commanded: “do this in memory of me.” (1 Corinthians 11:24)
There is a certain air about this whole presentation—and others by Fr. Richard Rohr—that insinuates an undeniable uneasiness on his part to stay within the confines of Catholic orthodoxy, and even within the strictures of the Franciscan order. And one needs not be overly perspicacious to make out the virtue of obedience as a large tripping stone in his path. His very reticence to wear the habit that his father Francis designed for the members of his order should give us a hint to the warrant for this suspicion.
He may be careful enough not to say things that directly contradict the dogma of the Church on numerous issues. Alas, his smugness got the best of him, and revealed his true colors by the use of an ill disguised condescending tone when speaking about the little kids that came to him in the Sacrament of Confession searching forgiveness for missing Sunday mass. Mind that he did not excuse the sin on account of an impossible guilt for a kid who is yet unable to drive himself. No. His contention was against a Church that teaches kids that missing mass on Sunday is a sin.
It is sad to consider that those kids are far ahead of him in the contemplative way. Or maybe not, maybe I should not be sad if my first reaction had been the same as Jesus’:
“I praise you, Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because you have hidden these things from the wise and learned, and revealed them to little children.”(Matthew 11:25)
It is little wonder that Jesus conditioned the entrance in the Kingdom of Heaven to becoming like little children. For little children have faith in the love of their father, and it is in that confidence that they obey their fathers’ commands (and their mothers’ commands—for the Church is our mother), knowing fully well that whatever our Father commands has our happiness as His sole aim and purpose.
Obedience, like little children’s obedience, is key to our salvation. Not the servile obedience of a slave to a master, but the trusting obedience of a little child to a Father that loves and knows them with an infinite love and an infinite knowledge. The knowledge that a Creator has of His creature, and of the purpose for which He created it: infinite bliss in communion with the life giving love of the Trinity. Nobody knows better than Him what makes us happy, not even ourselves—maybe particularly not ourselves. Nobody can love us more. Nobody else has the efficacious power to will for us the very summit of love and happiness. Hence the outrageous excess of love that He meant to show us by dying on a cross, lest our faith in His love were ever to falter.
Through disobedience, we lost the original innocence and the communion with God—hence, we lost the eternal life. And the Word of God, eternally begotten of and one with the Father, became flesh to model what should have been Adam’s behavior, so we could follow in His steps:
Christus factus est pro nobis obediens usque ad mortem, mortem autem crucis.
“Christ made himself for us obedient unto death–even death on a cross.” (Philippians 2:8)
I don’t think Richard Rohr even begins to understand what happens every Sunday in holy mass. In other passages of this presentation he does drop some hints, here and there, as to the extent of his personal belief in the Holy Eucharist. He says things like, “the image of the presence of God—the host…” What about real presence? Did he really mean that the host is just an image of the presence of God? Or was it just an involuntary gaffe? It would seem so, for shortly afterwards he does say, “you can offer people the real presence in the Eucharist…” But then proceeds to dash all my hopes by adding “perhaps” at the end of that sentence!
Other passages in the conversation give us a strong clue about what he really means. And it’s not good. For example, he says:
“Presence is a relational term… if you can’t believe that God is here right now, He’s not going to be there in church, at mass…”
And soon,
“If you’re not present, there’s no real presence.”
Presence is not a relational term. True, it includes the hope for a relationship: God’s desire that we will show up and allow Him to drawn us in His love. But Jesus is present in the host regardless of the presence of other people in the temple, regardless of whether people in the temple are paying any attention to Him or chatting among themselves, regardless of the fact that those present in the temple are present to Him, indeed. Jesus is always there in the tabernacle, waiting for us, waiting to love us or, rather, waiting for us to open our hearts for Him to flood it with the ever flowing torrent of his love, pouring out of His open wounds. Jesus is always there for us. He is not a projection of our minds. His real presence does not depend on our intentional presence, otherwise it would not be really “real.”
Fr. Rohr seems to believe that it is our faith that operates the miracle of Jesus’ presence in the host. He seems to ignore that it is the power of Christ’s words that operates the miracle, ex opere operato, independently of the faith or even the state of grace of the celebrant. I can’t be sure that this is an accurate and fair description of his assumptions (that’s why I say that he “seems to believe”), but that’s what his words suggest to me.
It is bad enough that those who believe in His real real presence so many times behave as if we didn’t. But it’s even worse when we purposefully just stare right through Him. Intentional indifference to somebody’s presence—somebody’s real presence—must feel like a dagger through the heart of one who loves us so, so much, that he gave the last drop of blood of His sacred heart for us, and would give it again, and again, and again.
It makes my heart shrink in sorrow to think that the Eternal God, Creator of heavens and earth, lowers Himself so incredibly much by becoming one of us, dying a horrible death so we can have our sacrifice and model; not happy with that, He becomes even a piece of bread to be that close to us and prove His infinite love for us, only to be met by the indifference of one consecrated precisely to show us and lead us to that unfathomable love.
God is a desperate, unrequited lover, that knows no boundaries—not even death—when it comes to make sure we know how much He loves us, so that we may believe in His love to the point that nothing will stop us in the way of trusting that His desperation is only for our sake. A little child unhesitantly trusts in his father’s love, knowing fully well that he wants nothing, and will command nothing but what is necessary for his happiness. Likewise God is dying (literally) to prove that His will for us is nothing but a life of eternal happiness in union with Him.
There are many other erroneous teachings latent under things said in this YouTube video and it would become too long and tedious to debunk them all. But I’m confident that the ones described here about such crucial Catholic teachings as the notion of sin and the nature of the Holy Mass, are more than sufficient to make the reader wonder, as I myself wonder, how on earth has this wolf disguised as shepherd been permitted to lead astray so many faithful souls for such a long time. If bishops and superiors show such cowardice when it comes to protect their sheep from false shepherds like Richard Rohr, it is no surprise at all to learn of the appalling numbers coming out of the latest Pew Research on the percentage of Catholics that go to mass on Sundays, and the even smaller number of those who believe in the Real Presence of the body, blood, soul and divinity of our Lord in the Eucharistic bread and wine.
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(*) While still in the middle of writing/editing this post, thanks to YouTube algorithms I ended watching another of Richard Rohr’s presentations where he clearly states that “saying that Jesus is God is bad theology; it’s incorrect”. You can see it by yourself at https://youtu.be/MnTC4NNIACk, starting around minute 23:30. Has he even the cheek to remark “I am not being heretical”? You better believe it (or listen to it with your own ears).
How on earth is this person still teaching and preaching as a Catholic priest when he is not even a Christian? For no true Christian would ever deny the full divinity of Christ!
Who is this false prophet’s superior? What does it take to unmask this wolf in sheep’s disguise?