The Center For Action and Contemplation
The Center for Action and Contemplation (CAC) is situated on the parish
property of Holy Family Church in Albuquerque. From this site, retreats
and workshops are made available to the city's progressive Catholics.
The center is New Mexico's Call to Action hub, and well-known CTA personalities,
such as radical feminist Rosemary Radford Ruether and '60s war protester
Daniel Berrigan, have been speakers at the center in the last several
years; also offered are alternative spirituality programs, such as Dr.
Ruben Habito's annual retreat weekend at the center that includes "instruction
in the elements of Zen practice."
CAC's founder, Fr. Richard Rohr, is a prolific writer
and retreat master. He has done as much as anyone to spread the study
of the enneagram around the United States. He has been a prominent leader
of the "men's movement" (see accompanying article, "Coloring
Outside the Lines," elsewhere in this issue). And he has been a
recent speaker at the Los Angeles Religious Education Congress (February,
1997), the New Ways Ministry Symposium in Pittsburgh (March, 1997), and
the Call to Action Conference (November, 1996).
It is not surprising to discover, therefore, that much of Albuquerque's
Call to Action activity emanates from the Center for Action and Contemplation
(CAC) and from Holy Family Parish. The center describes its "vision" as
providing "a faith alternative to the dominant consciousness." It
is faithful to its vision.
CAC's bimonthly publication, Radical Grace, features articles of significance
to the center. January, 1997's issue contains the story "Bridge
Building" by Thomas Williams, which describes the Bridge Building
Community, a community inspired by the New Ways Ministry and operating
out of CAC. The community's gatherings "have addressed the homosexual's
role in the Church: celebration of the gift of homosexuality, coming
out, and spirituality; and relationships, commitment, and roles."
February-March, 1996's issue of Radical Grace contains an article by
Clarence Thomson on "The Parables and the Enneagram" in which
Thomson informs the reader that "sin is trying too hard, doing the
few things we know how to do." The same issue announces that the
Education Summit for the Industrial Areas Foundation local, Albuquerque
Interfaith, promotes a men's retreat with Fr. Rohr called "A Rite
of Passage," and advertises the center's Seventh Annual Justice
and Peace Conference.
To better appreciate the radical nature of this periodical and the center
which produces it, it is necessary to examine some of the ideas and issues
which define them.
- Are the center's responses to those issues Christian,
or
- Are they modernist deviations which no longer bear any but the most
superficial resemblance to the spiritual life of the Church?
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