Diarmuid O’Murchu rethinks the Incarnation, a Tom Fox interview
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Sacred Heart Missionary priest, social psychologist and author, Diarmuid O’Murchu lives in London, lectures internationally and has written extensively on the New Cosmology. In this interview, he talks with Tom Fox about his radical re-imagining of the Christian path and freeing Jesus from what he calls the captivity of ideological reductionism. | |||||
Episode 1: Growing up poor (22 min.) "I had an early connection to the land, growing up in Ireland, O'Murchu tells interview Tom Fox. "We were extremely poor. … I encountered Teilhard de Chardin in the late '60s in the seminary and found a powerful resonance with his optimism and his sense of the sacredness of all things." | |||||
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Episode 2: Expanding our minds and souls (21 min.) "We need to rethink our notion of sacraments and the Incarnation," O'Murchu tells Fox. "God has been fully at work in our world for millions of years and especially so as humans evolved some 6 million years ago. The Incarnation needs to be viewed in a new and much larger context." | |||||
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Episode 3: The sacredness of God's creation (13 min.) Tom Fox asked O'Murchu how he would like to be remembered. "As someone who helped others to become more aware of the sacredness of God's creation," he replied. | |||||
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In his latest book, Diarmuid O’Murchu continues his radical re-imagining of the Christian path that he has presented in Quantum Theology, Reclaiming Spirituality, Poverty, Celibacy and Obedience, Religion in Exile, and Evolutionary Faith. In Catching up with Jesus: A Gospel Story for our Time," he sets out to free Jesus from what he calls the captivity of ideological reductionism that includes academic rationality, absolute dogmas, white imperialism, male exclusiveness, the cult of redemptive violence, ecclesiastical domestication, middle-class respectability, distorted personalism, and insipid religiosity. That’s a load for a timid reader. He sets the story of Jesus within the context of the grand sweep of time and claims that Jesus is "not the beginning of some unique divine enterprise but rather its fulfillment." | |||||
Veronica here, Again, Tom
Veronica here, Again, Tom Fox, Thank you for yet another fine interview. Listening to Fr. O'M voice is a delight.(My parents were born in Ireland ) I agree that Fr. O'M has a gift to relate this mystery we all live into words that can be understanding. Thank you.
As I was listening to this,
As I was listening to this, I truly wanted to cry. I thought, how could a priest believe this stuff? He talks about his belief in "creation spirituality" and how he is not sure if he believes in God, but knows that God believes in him.
All throughout the interview I was on the verge of crying, as I previously stated. This was because I saw this man and people like him, using kind words to destroy our faith. His words sound nice and good to the nominal Catholic and they can be easily tricked by them. Throughout the interview, but especially in the first part, he tells us that he was told by his superiors that his understanding of Catholicism and Catholic history was "superficial". He naturally writes this off. Yet, I found myself agreeing with his superiors after just the first few minutes of this interview.
I was upset up until the last few minutes of the interview when I became enraged. He actually had the unmitigated gall to say that Jesus Christ is NOT the first incarnation of God, that God incarnated Himself 6 million years before. He does not get into how God did this though. He reduces the sacraments to nothing more than "rites of passage".
When the interviewer asked him what type of praying he does, I was hoping that he would at least say something that is traditionally Catholic, such as the Centering prayer or the Rosary. Nope. He comes right out and says "tanscendental meditation." Why? Cuz he sees nothing incompatible in it with Christianity.
It is no wonder then that when he was asked to say a Mass for a local convent, he had no idea that the feast day was the Feast of the Transfiguration.
Cool Catholic blogs:
American Papist
The Cafeteria is Closed
Shrine of the Holy Whapping
The song says" I will hold
The song says" I will hold your people in my heart." Clearly you have done that.
And I hear how you grieve for them. I usually don't agree with you, but I must tell you how much I admire you.
Fr. O'Murchu states that
Fr. O'Murchu states that religous should be constantly on the cutting edge. The problem is that most individuals' needs are more basic and ordinary, but just as important. He admits that he has had no experience with normal priestly life. Like Jesus in the gospels, it is less cutting edge than it is totally compassionate to the person right there at the given moment. The full meaning of the Kingdom of God is unfathomable and crucial to Christian life, TODAY. It is important because it comes from Jesus, not because it is on the cutting edge.