Priest warns:
What do we find on the Archdiocesan website?
A recommendation for Father Diarmuid Ó
Murchú’s 2005 book, The Consecrated Life: The Changing
Paradigms.
This seems to rehash the same ideas he presented in his 1995 book, Reframing Religious Life - itself seemingly an updating of his 1980 book, The Seed Must Die - Survival or Extinction.
The 1995 book merited a Doctrinal Statement by the Spanish Bishops' Conference, which was subsequently published in L'Osservatore Romano in March 2006.
Summary: The Doctrinal Commission of the Bishops' Conference of Spain presents this Doctrinal Note in order to bring to public attention the seriously erroneous affirmations found in the book "Reframing Religious Life. An Expanded Vision for the Future," by Father Diarmuid O'Murchu, M.S.C. According to Father O'Murchu, religious men and women "should leave the Church and take on a non-canonical status" since "the values of the Religious life belong to a more ancient pre-religious tradition."
He therefore marginalizes Christian revelation and its ecclesial transmission, abolishes the need for redemption and proposes a non-Christian vision where the "Kingdom" or the "Reign" is a substitute for Jesus Christ and his Church.
And we wonder why "lay ministers" in the Catholic Church seem not to understand - let alone affirm - the Catholic faith?Father O'Murchu also disfigures the sense and significance of the religious vows of poverty, obedience and chastity. In the final analysis, the proposals made in his book, far from promoting a renewal of religious life, will rather bring about its destruction.
