Diocese of Oakland Endorses Neo-Pagan "Catholic" Heresy
Yet another shining moment for one of our esteemed bishops

From the California Catholic Daily:

“For women and men engaged in ministry in the Diocese of Oakland”

Summer institute features “eco-feminists,” others who teach an odd theology

The June 18 issue of Oakland’s diocesan newspaper, the Catholic Voice, featured an article about an upcoming Summer Institute at the Sophia Center at Oakland’s Holy Names University. The July 19-22 institute -- “Cosmology of Fulfillment” -- will feature anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, as well as other speakers -- including, said the Voice, Gregory Baum, Diarmuid O’Murchu, Rosemary Radford Ruether, Stephen Scharper, and Brian Swimme.

A Sophia Center summer institute advertisement calls these speakers “mindful scholars of the new cosmology.” This “new cosmology” rejects any notion of human superiority over beasts, plants, and inanimate creatures. Further, promoters of the new cosmology, including Ruether, blur the Creator and creation to make the universe the body of God.

A well-known theologian in progressive circles, Ruether, has said in an undated essay that “all racist, sexist, classist, and anthropocentric assumptions of the superiority of whites over blacks, males over females, managers over workers, humans over animals and plants must be culturally discarded.” Ruether also wants to discard patriarchal and hierarchical notions of God; she and other “eco-feminists” have said that God can be called Gaia, the name of the Roman mother earth goddess.

Thus, it is perhaps no surprise that the Sophia Summer Institute will feature something called “Missa Gaia -- A Mass for the World,” presented by Sophia’s director, Jim Conlon.

The article went on with;

Brian Swimme, who teaches at San Francisco’s California Institute of Integral Studies, is billed by Sophia as a cosmologist. Last January, he and Fr. Brian Joyce of Christ the King parish in Pleasant Hill took “a fresh look at our faith, Jesus, the Church, death and the afterlife,” at a retreat in Danville. Swimme’s view of the afterlife is eccentric. In 2002, he told U.S. Catholic, “in death we don’t leave the universe. We become part of it again -- this is the traditional doctrine of the communion of saints.” The resurrected body, he said, “is coextensive with the cosmos... similarly, the presence of the resurrected Jesus in a certain sense is everywhere.”

The Voice noted that the institute “can be taken for HNU credit.” The Oakland diocese shares a “joint, three-stage program” with Holy Names University -- the “Pastoral Formation Program.” The program “is designed for women and men engaged in ministry in the Diocese of Oakland,” said the June 19 diocesan “Administrative Weekly.”

And one of the noted speakers is "Sister" Helen Prejean of "Dead Man Walking" fame. Don't think for a moment that simply because she's anti-death penalty, that automatically makes her pro-life. The good "sister" is also pro-abortion. In her own words;

(Interview by Robert Holton in Our Sunday Visitor for April 14, 1996): “Abortion is much more complex than a mere choice, because the crosshairs of this decision are in the woman’s body, and the woman decides this. I think for us to really answer the abortion question so that women don’t have them, we really have to look seriously at the whole thing of birth control, family planning, and not having unwanted pregnancies.”

The reader comments at the end of this article had this particular gem;

What could be clearer! The Oakland diocese is NOT Catholic. It is run by heretical apostates, clergy and laity alike, who have long since lost the faith. These types need to be fled from and prayed for in that order for the sake of the souls of all concerned.

I couldn't agree more.