Forgive me for opening a thread that hasn't had much activity for some time now, but I'm new to this forum and just came across a subject that is dear to me, i.e. "Centering Prayer."

I've been doing CP for about 35 years now, as taught by Fr Keating.

Phil in his OP, put a link to by Fr. John D. Dreher's article "The Danger of Centering Prayer," which has been used in various Catholic Forums to attack CP. The problem is, Fr Dreher's article borders fraudulent. For one, he states that the origins of CP came from dialogs hosted by the then Abbot, Fr Keating, at St Joseph's Abbey in Spencer, MA, where spiritual masters from Eastern Religion gave talks and taught about Transcendental Meditaion. From this Fr. Dreher jumps to the conclusion that this is how Fr Keating and Fr Pennington(RIP) learned about Centering Prayer and is what they've been teaching since. This not close to being true. Fr Keating and Fr. Pennington both wrote on where CP came from and how the term came about.

Essentially, back in the late 60's and early 70's when young people were leaving the Church and going to the East in search of meaning in life, the Vatican asked the heads of the various contemplative orders of the Church, to begin dialog with Eastern masters to learn what was drawing young Catholics to them. Hence, Fr Keating hosted meetings with members of these spiritual masters at the Abbey. However, what they learned wasn't that the Eastern Religions were doing Centering Prayer, but instead, they were doing a form of contemplative prayer. They of course knew that the Catholic Church already had a rich tradition of contemplative prayer, but ut just wasn't taught outside of monasteries. So, they decided to teach about contemplative prayer as taught by the mystics lkie Abba Isaac and St. John of the Cross. They merely called it "Quiet Prayer."

It began to catch on with both religious and lay people. On a particular week-end on which Fr Keating and Fr Pennington taught this method of contemplative prayer to Catholic religious, the participants came up with the term, "Centering Prayer." Fr Keating says that they probably got it from St. John of the Cross in that they had discussed his canticle, "The Living Flame of Love." If you read the Canticle and St. John's commentary, you'll see where he speaks about going to the "Center" to be in the presence of God. Hence the term "Centering Prayer," became the norm.

I found it odd that Fr Dreher never went to St. Joseph's Abbey to speak with Fr. Keating on the topic, being its only an hour away from his own parish in R.I. Also, if you read what he says about Centering Prayer, it is completely the opposite of what Fr Keating writes about it.

Anyway, Fr. Pennington also wrote about the origins of centering prayer in his book, "Centering Prayer," and I have found a web site with that part of it here;

http://www.kyrie.com/cp/a_gift_from_the_desert.htm

This site has plenty of information concerning "Centering Prayer."

Regards
Jim

Hi Jim,

You'll notice that, in my opening post, I took issue as well with Fr. Dreher's criticisms, and also that of EWTN. I don't know how much of this thread you've read (how many hours in a day does one have, anyway? ), but you'll see that the criticisms are much more nuanced, and are not at all intended to discourage people from this practice.

Peace, Phil

Hi Phil,
I read through much of this thread, and my intent was not criticism of what I read, but rather to help feed understanding on Centering Prayer.

In Christ
Jim