Monday, October 10, 2005
NEW AGE AND TAIZE SERVICES
The Vatican is sufficiently concerned about new religious movements and their effect on the faithful and impact on Catholic doctrine to have issued a lengthy statement on combatting their errors. Young people are especially vulnerable to New Age concepts because Catholic catechesis has been poor for the last few decades.
World Youth Day is intended to draw young people back to the Catholic faith, yet Brother Roger was present at the first World Youth Day, and Brother Alois was present at the recent World Youth Day in Germany as reported by Catholic News Service. Brother Alois is a Catholic priest.
That article indicates Brother Roger told the Pope he would be at WYD spiritually and that "our community of Taize wants to walk in communion with the Holy Father." It quotes Pope John Paul II as saying during a 1986 visit to Taize "Like you, pilgrims and friends of the community, the pope is only passing through. But one passes through Taize as one passes close to a spring of water."
Since Brother Roger was present at the first World Youth Day in 1984, this is a long-standing symbiosis.
"Christianity Today," in an article about Brother Roger's death compiled by Ted Olsen says that at Taize "worship of Christ [is done] in very simple form." That form has appealed to churches all over the world who are running Taize services, and according to Ruth Gledhill who quotes from the Taize songbook,
Song is one of the most essential elements of worship. Short chants, repeated again and again, give it a meditative character. Using just a few words, they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind.
The article indicates something else:
Few are aware of the extent to which the soft, rhythmic harmonic chants of Taize influenced the development of the new age and ambient genres that have moved into the secular mainstream.
Is this what Catholics have now embraced? It is what the New Age has embraced.
The first New Age community to form was Findhorn in Scotland. From the Findhorn website, the webpage on "Meditation," we can see that Taize services take place in two places daily." We can also read that "Meditating individually and collectively is a cornerstone of the spiritual practice in the Findhorn Community." The Findhorn website's "Community News" webpage carries an obituary of Brother Roger. There we can read that "Taize singing is a mainstay of Findhorn community spiritual practice."
Given such a predominance in a New Age community, an article at Beliefnet which addresses "Contemplative Practices," written by Cynthia Bourgeault, a resident teacher for the Contemplative Society, is pertinent. The article dissects Christian chant, contrasting it with Taize chant. It reads in part:
In Christian chant, neither the vibration itself, nor the music is sacred. Certainly Christian chant makes use of vibration as all chant does. But it is not primarily about sacred vibration. Christian chant is also not about the rhythmic, almost hypnotic repetition of a single prayer phrase or mantra--although the very popular Taize chant, named after a small monastic community in eastern France that began developing this new style of chanting shortly after World War II, works on this principle. This powerful new form of Christian chant resembles some of the more ancient traditions of Eastern and Sufi chanting. But it is a departure from the traditional understanding of Christian psalmody....
Singing contemplative psalmody is a matter of staying close to the meaning of the text, and being in it and with it.
She describes the source of Christian chant, mentioning in particular the fifth century Desert Father John Cassian, and takes note of where Christian meditation took a New Age path:
But [John Cassian is] not intending for us simply to say it over and over and over again like a mantra, a focal point for a kind of concentrative meditation. This slight but important misinterpretation was introduced by the late Dom John Main, founder of the Christian Meditation movement, who saw in Cassian's words an authorization in Christian tradition of a meditation practice he had first learned from an Indian swami. But while catching Cassian's words, he missed the intent of these words...
In Christian chant the words are important because they help us to know God better, to learn more about Him. In Taize chant the intention is to produce "peace, harmony and spiritual connection through the simple candle-lit worship service" according to the First-Plymouth Congregational Church which uses Taize services and lauds their "Sound of Silence." In fact the webpage indicated that in Taize services "The simple, repetitive songs wash over you like a mantra...They can act almost like a quasi-hypnotic trance." and "the spiritual magic comes through the power of simplicity."
The website tells us further:
There is no sermon or prepared message in traditional Taize services. Freed from the limits [of] doctrinal or theological concerns, the service is able to speak to each person's spiritual needs through music, scripture readings, prayer, and meditation.
Apparently so, given the prominence placed on Taize services at Findhorn.
My question, then, is why is the Roman Catholic Church, on one hand, trying to warn the faithful about the dangers of New Age, while at the same time the other hand is gathering up the youth and introducing them to that very New Age practice that She claims is dangerous to their faith?
Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us!
