In Seminary, there was an enormous amount of material and thought and doctrine the school desired to give its students. We resorted to attacking strawmen to build our theology. The prof would point to a teaching from some Catholic or some other denomination and tell us where they went wrong. The straw men were silent and went down like dummies.
Without a doubt the writer that has the most positive influence on me in the last three years is Richard Rohr, a Franciscan founder and director of a Study Center in New Mexico. Steeped in the magisterium of the Roman Catholic church yet deeply attuned to the intellectual life of students and the contemplative life of the great mystics, Rohr writes of the true spiritual life and of God's loving ability to reach as low as needed to transform us....sometimes I read half a page and have to stop because he has blown my thoughts toward His presence.
He has enough knowledge to protest the errors of his tradition and enough respect to see how it molded him. I could not become a Catholic big C although I am a catholic little c, but I feel no need to state areas where I may or may not agree because what he writes is changing me deeply as I take it into my journey. Try Everything Belongs, Immortal Diamond, or Falling Upward. (if you are over 35)
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