Embraced by Compassion: On Human Longing and Divine Response

Rating:
Summary: A rhythmic series of movements spiraling inward
Review: In "Embraced By Compassion" Sr. Barbara Fiand denigrates orthodox Catholic theology as obsessed with statements of the Creed (e.g., "I believe in God, the Father Almighty"), and proposes to replace this "misguided" and "boring" conceptual framework with one based on psychological conjecture.

Fiand proposes instead searching for a "dancing God" who can be found only by "immersing oneself in one's own inner core through a rhythmic series of movements spiraling inward." According to Fiand, when one "marinates in the enigma of one's inner core," something like a primitive awareness of God can emerge." The result is what she calls a mystical sense of at-oneness withthe cosmos."

She also regards the Church's seven sacraments as superfluous because she believes salvation is attainable within oneself. "To be changed," she writes, "I need to see the self that I hate as other, as a man abandoned on the cross. That is my sacrament. That is my baptism. That is my bread and wine. That is my love."

These sorts of assertions are a preview of the spirituality she proposes.

Rating:
Summary: A rhythmic series of movements spiraling inward
Review: In "Embraced By Compassion" Sr. Barbara Fiand denigrates orthodox Catholic theology as obsessed with statements of the Creed (e.g., "I believe in God, the Father Almighty"), and proposes to replace this "misguided" and "boring" conceptual framework with one based on psychological conjecture.

Fiand proposes instead searching for a "dancing God" who can be found only by "immersing oneself in one's own inner core through a rhythmic series of movements spiraling inward." According to Fiand, when one "marinates in the enigma of one's inner core," something like a primitive awareness of God can emerge." The result is what she calls a mystical sense of at-oneness withthe cosmos."

She also regards the Church's seven sacraments as superfluous because she believes salvation is attainable within oneself. "To be changed," she writes, "I need to see the self that I hate as other, as a man abandoned on the cross. That is my sacrament. That is my baptism. That is my bread and wine. That is my love."

These sorts of assertions are a preview of the spirituality she proposes.