Panentheism: The Second of Many Reasons Why I Could Never Be Roman Catholic

by Stephanie A Potts | Feb 22, 2024 | Idols, mysticism, Occult, Occultism, Paganism, Panentheism, Perennialism, Richard Rohr | 8 comments

Photo by Simon Hurry on Unsplash

This is the second in a series I will be writing regarding my concerns with official teachings of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC). In this article, I will be looking at teachings and practices the leadership of the Roman Catholic Church (RCC) is tolerating.¹ Someone very close to me recently converted to Catholicism and has become an avid apologist for the RCC and teaches catechism at their local parish. While we have very amicable conversations about the differences between Catholicism and Protestantism, there are just too many serious theological issues within the RCC for me even to consider changing my faith. My first article covered the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, and this article will discuss the problems with the RCC’s open Papal toleration of panentheism. Deacon Nick Donnelly provides an example of Pope Francis’ toleration of panentheism and occult practices in Is Pope Francis Really “Not Against” the Enneagram? on his blogsite, OnePeterFive.

Introduction

The Apostle Paul instructs us in Ephesians 5:7-9 and 2 Corinthians 6:14-18 to have nothing to do with evil doers or idolaters. It isn’t simply my view as an evangelical that there is a great deal false teaching within in the RCC. Even the more conservative leaning Catholics like Deacon Nick Donnelly (cited above) and Todd Aglialoro (Idol Threats) publicly admit there is a growing presence of paganism within the RCC. Aglialoro points out the ways pagan worship practices continue to be used by indigenous Catholics all the time.

An example of these pagan worship practices include some priests, who are serving in indigenous communities, taking peyote and ayahuasca as a sacrament and participating in sweatlodge ceremonies.² These are “sacraments” panentheist Father Richard Rohr promoted at the 2023 Parliament of the World’s Religions. As it happens Rohr is also the one who brought the occultism of the Enneagram into the RCC and some he mentored delivered to the evangelical church.

At the 2019 St. Kateri Tekawitha Conference in Sharonville, Ohio I personally witnessed daily masses open with pagan pow wows and smudging. Did the Second Vatican Council (V2) reverse the church’s doctrine regarding pagan worship practices within the mass or is the Pope and Teaching Magisterium simply looking the other way? Pope Francis, the first Jesuit pope seems to have legitimized much of the panentheistic mysticism of Ignatius Loyola. This gives way to what Aglialoro describes in Idol Threats:

Syncretism is a kind of mock-inculturation, since it doesn’t transform the old and false with the light of the new and true, but seeks to split the difference between them, creating a third thing.

Before V2 Native Americans were told by parishioners and nuns that they were going to hell if they continued to embrace their native ways. Pope Pius XI ’s 1928 encyclical Mortalium Animos (On Religious Unity) flatly forbade any Catholic participation in interchurch or inter-religious meetings and activities.³ But since V2 the RCC appears to have completely reversed this encyclical. However, Unitatis Redintegratio, V2’s Decree on Ecumenism, appears to affirm traditional RCC teaching regarding salvation⁴. This raises the question, why do so many Catholics not know the path to heaven despite twelve years of catechism classes?⁵

The Paganization of the RCC

Why are more and more Catholics contextualizing scripture so that the Gospel appears more pagan than Christian? (Sadly this is also an increasingly common practice in evangelical churches as well.) Why would any discerning Christian want to be associated with this kind of false teaching? While both Catholics and Protestants affirm the Nicene Creed and thus, we both “believe in one, holy, catholic, and apostolic Church,” Protestants see Christ’s message of unity (Matthew 28:19 and Mark 16:15), as doctrinal and spiritual, not organizational. The RCC, however, sees it as a visible church and thus all Christians, regardless of how orthodox they are, should be part of the RCC.⁶ I’m thankful for the Reformation because it has saved discerning Christians from being forced to associate with or embrace such false beliefs and practices.

According to the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers:

interreligious dialogue, like all interpersonal communication or exchange, is an encounter between two or more persons that requires an authentic desire, broadly speaking, for the disclosure of truth, i.e., the truth, yes, about one another’s personal and corporate history and experience but also, and perhaps above all, about the source and goal of truth, namely, God and how God is manifested in all religious traditions.⁷

While the Apostle Paul did write, “I have become all things to all men, that I may by all means save some. And I do all things for the sake of the gospel, that I may become a fellow partaker of it” (1 Cor 9:22-23), this was not a mandate for contextualization. God makes it plainly clear in Scripture that “salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to mankind by which we must be saved” (Acts 4:12). Contextualizing the Bible and equating Yahweh with pagan gods puts indigenous groups at risk of never hearing the true gospel of Jesus Christ.

The RCC is being overtaken by Christianized panentheism. In this view God is bigger than the cosmos, transcends nature and is ontologically unique but He indwells or is in and through all of creation. In this view everything is God and thus all things, including paganism itself, are ontologically linked to the Godhead.⁸ According to John W. Cooper, Professor of Philosophical Theology at Calvin Theological Seminary, to be ontologically linked suggests that God is as dependent upon His creation as His creation is upon Him. Thus, God inevitably creates because His love of creation is to some extent need-satisfying.⁹ However, Cooper argues that. . .

God is self-sufficient. He does not need or depend on anything other than himself. He exists absolutely, eternally, and necessarily, whether or not he creates the world. The panentheist tradition is inadequate on God’s aseity and sovereignty. God does not depend on any cause other than himself for his existence. Because God is not created or dependent on anything outside himself, he is not composed of principles, properties, or constituents more basic than himself¹⁰

Earlier Cooper wrote:

Scripture clearly states that God is transcendent (2 Chr 2:6, 1 Kgs 8:27), self-sufficient, eternal, and immutable (Mal 3:6; Psl 33:11; Heb 6:17, 13:8) in relation to the world; thus he does not change through time and is not affected by his relation to his creatures.”¹¹

Yet, Catholic priests like Rohr continue to embrace the panentheistic teachings of Jürgen Moltmann, Professor Emeritus of Systematic Theology at the University of Tübingen, Germany.

According to Cooper:

Moltmann proposes that God and evil must go together and that the problem of evil is only resolved eschatologically in the kingdom.¹²

To be “resolved eschatologically” means that “God is completely One only in the fulfillment of the kingdom [of God].”¹³

God is three but not yet fully One. The more history progresses, the more God becomes One. Since divine unification involves not only the three persons but also creation, Moltmann’s trinitarianism is panentheistic as well as eschatological. God’s full self-unity depends upon his complete communion with creation”¹⁴

Jürgen Moltmann is teaching the eventual deity of man and all of creation by suggesting that God cannot be fully complete until He is in full communion with His creation –– paganism and all.

. . .created beings participate in the divine attributes of eternity and omnipresence, just as the indwelling God has participated in their limited time and their restricted space.¹⁵

This is in direct violation of the one divine nature or substance as recorded in Scripture and taught by Augustine. So why are Catholics turning to Perennialism, embracing pagan worship practices and equating Yahweh with pagan gods like the Great Spirit of Native American religions when this is clearly unbiblical?

A More Relational God: Classical Theism vs. Panentheism

According to Cooper:

classical theism asserts that God is transcendent, self-sufficient, eternal, and immutable in relation to the world; thus he does not change through time and is not affected by his relation to his creatures.¹⁶

As he points out:

While classical theism is not intrinsically Christian or un-Christian, it is the most adequate philosophy of religion to explain Biblical Christianity to non-believers.¹⁷

Where has this taken root and growth among philosophers and theologians?

an increasing number of thinkers have challenged classical theism’s eternal, immutable God, including philosophers Hegel, Schelling, James, Bergson, and Whitehead.¹⁸

Roman Catholic and Jewish theologians were also infected:

These men, along with the Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and the Jewish rabbi Martin Buber, developed theologies of divine development in nature and history.¹⁹

What is the appeal?:

Catholic mysticism and contemplative practices always look for new revelation outside of scripture, including indigenous worship practices like taking psychedelics (i.e. peyote and ayahuasca) and participating in sweatlodge ceremonies. Theologians like Teilhard and Rohr (a disciple of Teilhard’s) are not satisfied with how scripture interprets God’s nature and thus they have created a God who learns, has his feelings aroused, and revises his plans by observing us or obtaining our input.²⁰

This heretical view of God isn’t Biblical but, in their mind, He is more relational.

Moltmann has developed a form of liberation theology predicated on the view that God suffers with humanity, while also promising humanity a better future through the hope of the Resurrection, which he has labelled a “theology of hope”.²¹ “Moltmann explores divine pathos, God’s feeling our feelings and suffering our pain.”²²

However, as Cooper goes on to point out:

God’s pleasure and anger are not passions or emotions caused in him by hearing my comment, the way humans acquire these feelings. Classical theism denies that God’s feelings are the effects of creaturely causes just as his knowledge is not learned by observing. Instead God’s feelings are affections—intentional affective attitudes that he eternally chooses to take toward his creatures.

Teilhard and Rohr are more interested in a “relational God” who is involved in time, interacts with creatures, and is affected by them.”²³

“Many panentheists propose that, analogically, the world is part of God, or that God is the World-Soul and the universe is his body, or that the best way to model the God-world relation is the mind-body relation.”²⁴

But Cooper points out that. . .

. . . such claims have no basis in Scripture. . . .Scripture does speak of Christ as “the head over everything for the church, which is his body” (Eph. 1:22–23 and elsewhere). Here we have head-body language that Teilhard and others construe panentheistically: the world is in Christ, who is God, and so the world is God’s body and Christ is its head. But this reading mixes biblical metaphors.²⁵

The False Gospel of the Divinity of Man

According to Rohr:

the purpose of such a relational spirituality is to bring [what Teilhard called] the noosphere to its highest level of convergence, eventually operating as a single consciousness. Only in this collective way may we create an adequate infrastructure for the full emergence of Christ as a Cosmic Christ [i.e., the single consciousness of man with God] (1 Corinthians 6:15, 17, 19).”²⁶

There is a substantial problem with this:

“being in Christ is a communal redemptive relationship—belonging to the new people of God, the church—that is regenerated and sustained by the Holy Spirit. It is not a metaphor for the sort of ontological ‘in-ness’ claimed by panentheism.”²⁷

Teilhard and Rohr’s cosmic evolution teaches that:

everything is biologically and spiritually spiraling up to a condition of perfection that will allow mankind to usher in a New Age—a New World Order or God’s Kingdom on earth.²⁸

“To the new age one ascends to Godhood while the Christian message from the true Christ is that God descended to be man.”²⁹ Furthermore, it teaches that mankind can save himself as he discovers and embraces his own divine nature and the common ground in all religions.³⁰ Thus, this is why Teilhard is often considered the father of the New Age movement.

Conclusion

Sadly, although the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office) issued a warning about Teilhard’s teaching in 1962, many prominent leaders within the RCC like Cardinal Henri de Lubac SJ and Pope Benedict XVI still embrace his panentheistic teachings.³¹ This leads to more confusion about the path to salvation. Christian Panentheists charge

“that traditional theology, following Greek philosophy, is too supernaturalistic, spiritualized, and otherworldly in its view of salvation and the Christian life.”³²

To Rohr

the true and essential work of all religion is to help us recognize and recover the divine image in everything. It is to mirror things correctly, deeply, and fully until all things know who they are. . . . But this picture was complicated when the concept of original sin entered the Christian mind. . . . Instead of embracing God’s master plan for humanity and creation—what we Franciscans still call the “Primacy of Christ”—Christians shrunk our image of both Jesus and Christ, and our “Savior” became a mere Johnny-come-lately “answer” to the problem of sin, a problem that we had largely created ourselves.³³

For theologians like Rohr, multiculturalism, including paganism, is linked with God ontologically, not just morally and spiritually. The message of the Catholic Association of Diocesan Ecumenical and Interreligious Officers that “God is manifested in all religious traditions” suggests that interreligious dialogue is not just about ecumenism and inclusivity, but that all religions are part of God.

God has left certain elements in every culture that are redeemable qualities [perennialism], pathways to Himself [universalism]. . . that He revealed Himself to nearly all indigenous people groups prior to the Gospel being brought to them [and that] in every culture “God has left treasures and worthy traditions within the indigenous cultures” [and that] we can bring Jesus Christ to people and then leave them to worship God in their own cultural and religious ways. . . .”³⁴

However, every culture out there, except for the Jewish culture, is man-made and thus is not of God and is often in conflict with God. Deuteronomy 12 tells us. . .

be careful that you are not ensnared to follow them, after they are destroyed from your presence, and that you do not inquire about their gods, saying, ‘How do these nations serve their gods, that I also may do likewise?’ You shall not behave this way toward the LORD your God, because every abominable act which the LORD hates, they have done for their gods; for they even burn their sons and daughters in the fire for their gods. (Deuteronomy 12:30-31)Ω

Stephanie Potts and her husband, Jim live in Dayton, Ohio, and have been married for 21 years. She worked with the federal government for 15 years as an intelligence analyst and then entered full-time Christian service in 2015. She first joined Haven Ministries in Denver, Colorado, in 2015 and then transferred to Midwest Christian Outreach, Inc in 2021. She received her Bachelor’s degree from Florida State University in Political Science and International Relations and received her Master’s degree in Geographic Information Systems from Penn State University. She is currently working towards her master’s degree in Christian Apologetics through Southern Evangelical Seminary. She specializes in evangelizing to people involved in the New Age, to Muslims, and Native Americans. Stephanie’s personal website: rainbowapologetics.com

8 Comments

Whitchurch Joe B on February 22, 2024 at 9:32 am

What is a sweat lodge ceremony and how is it practiced in some quarters of RCC? I see a footnote to a book, but I wonder if I could get a more shorthand answer… Thanks for this article.
Reply
- Don Veinot on February 22, 2024 at 11:39 am
  
  A great question Joe. I will hop on this one for Steph. At Learn Religions there is a relatively short article, Recounts of the Healing Benefits of Sweat Lodge Ceremonies, that gives a good explanation of this spiritual practice,
  
  Healing Benefits of Sweat Lodge Ceremonies
  
  The sweat ceremony is intended as a spiritual reunion with the creator and a respectful connection to the earth itself as much as it is meant for purging toxins out of the physical body.
  
  – Mental Healing – it frees the mind of distractions, offering clarity.
  – Spiritual Healing – it allows for introspection and connection to the planet and the spirit world.
  – Physical Healing – it can potentially provide antibacterial and wound-healing benefits.
  
  It is a sort of animistic version of Contemplative prayer
  Reply
Arlene Wellbank on February 22, 2024 at 11:57 am

I am a Roman Catholic, and while I agree that some have “infiltrated” the Church and led people astray, I can assure you that most Catholics have never heard of people like Rohr or any new age practices. I have gone to retreats and have read things online that seem a little “new agey” a nd have gone so far as to ask them to remove them from literature or I would report to the Bishop. These days many churches are off the track with their theology, i.e., marrying gays, promoting trans, women preachers, etc., and we have to work to keep that out of our churches and to help people understand repentance and conversion. But, your article makes it sound like most Catholics are going crazy with this which is not true. Most in the pews are still very traditional. And not everyone agrees with some of the Pope’s decisions. We respect the office of the papacy, but are not bound to agree with every decision. Just as you may not agree with every declaration out of the mouth of your pastor or hierarchy. Thank you for listening.
Reply
- Stephanie on February 22, 2024 at 2:04 pm
  
  Hi Arlene. Thanks for your comments. First off let me make it clear that panentheism is not unique to Catholicism. It’s prevalent in Protestant churches too. The problem with the RCC, as I stated in my article, is it’s insistence that all Christians be members of the RCC. I won’t have association with any Christian leader, Catholic or Protestant, that teaches these things.
  
  When Pope Francis and Pope Benedict openly embrace panentheism then it is infecting all of the RCC. I appreciate the work of Catholic Answers to try to raise awareness to these problems but unless people are discerning like yourself then they are more likely to embrace panentheism without realizing what the underlying message is teaching.
  
  And don’t forget that American Catholics are only a small percentage of the overall RCC. I think if you went to Central and South America or even a Native American Catholic Church you will see panentheism as a staple in much of RCC teaching.
  
  According to Cooper, RCC adherents of Liberation Theology— especially in Central and South America — link social justice to God ontologically. Gustavo Gutierrez ( the father of Liberation Theology) appeals to Vatican II when he endorses Teilhard’s correlation of human development and divine salvation, the culmination of the humanized cosmos in Christ. Gutierrez even says in his book Theology of Liberation “The fullness of liberation—a free gift from Christ—is communion with God and with other men.” Since Gutierrez is teaching Teilhard’s theology he is teaching panentheism. Communion with God in his mind is the eventual deity of man.
  Reply
Joe Whitchurch on February 23, 2024 at 1:54 pm

Thanks MCO, Don, Stephanie, and other respondents. Helpful, discerning, useful.
Reply
M. David Johnson on February 23, 2024 at 2:23 pm

Although I certainly don’t even come close to agreeing with everything Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) writes, I nevertheless find a very deep and wide chasm between his theology and that of Francis I. Does Ratzinger actually support and advocate panentheism. Could you point me to a document where he does openly avow that?
Reply
- Stephanie on February 23, 2024 at 5:16 pm
  
  Here are some articles to read about Ratzinger and his promotion of Chardin’s panentheism.
  
  This is the article I source in my article:
  
  Will Pope Francis remove the Vatican’s ‘warning’ from Teilhard de Chardin’s writings?
  
  Here are a couple more that I’m reading through now:
  
  Article 12: The Quintessential Evolutionist
  
  Article 17: A Living Host: Liturgy, and Cosmic Evolution in the Thought of Benedict XVI and Teilhard de Chardin
  Reply
- Don Veinot on February 23, 2024 at 5:24 pm
  
  I will respond and Steph can follow up as well since it is her article. One of the source document’s end notes is “Will Pope Francis remove the Vatican’s ‘warning’ from Teilhard de Chardin’s writings?”
  
  “Benedict XVI did so, too, in a homily during Evening Prayer in the cathedral in Aosta, in northern Italy, on July 24, 2009. He
  commended an aspect of the French Jesuit’s vision when he said: “The role of the priesthood is to consecrate the world so that
  it may become a living host, a liturgy: so that the liturgy may not be something alongside the reality of the world, but that
  the world itself shall become a living host, a liturgy. This is also the great vision of Teilhard de Chardin: in the end, we shall
  achieve a true cosmic liturgy, where the cosmos becomes a living host.”
  
  The Cosmos becoming the living host is panentheism. God is bigger than the cosmos; the cosmos is God’s body and is the first incarnation of the Christ.
  
  I suspect Joseph Ratzinger had a bit of doublethink (holding two opposing views at the same time) without realizing it. It happens more often than we may realize. So, if asked directly about monotheism vs. panentheism, he would defend monotheism. At the same time, he and others tolerate, perhaps unwittingly, heresy like this.
  Reply