*The Perverting Of Catholic Religious (Part 2)*

There was another psychologist of high acclaim at the time Rogers and Coulson were pumping philosophies of relativism into the minds of a large number of American Catholic nuns and priests. His name was Dr. Abraham Maslow. Coulson said Dr. Maslow warned both of them (He and Rogers) that their problem was their "total confusion with evil". However, the documented research on innate evil by Maslow, a humanist himself, and the father of "Hierarchy Of Needs", was not published in journals until 1979. By then the damage had already be done.

Among other activities, Rogers and Coulson had distributed a teaching tape promulgating that "when people do what they deeply want to do, it isn't immoral." About this Dr. Coulson later stated that it became obvious to both he and Rogers that they had not waited long enough for the results of their pilot testing. "The lesbian nuns' book, for example, hadn't come out yet; and we hadn't gotten the reports of seductions in psychotherapy, which became virtually routine in California."

Regarding the intervention teams of therapists that were intitiated under his direct supervision, that eventually dotted parts of the nation, Coulson replied in an interview, "We had trained people who didn't have Rogers' innate discipline from his own fundamentalist Protestant background, people who thought that being themselves meant unleashing libido." ... "Maslow saw that we failed to understand the reality of evil in human life. When we implied to people that they could trust their impulses, they also understood us to mean that they could trust their evil impulses, that they weren't really evil." ... "But they were really evil."

"We did similar programs for the Jesuits, for the Franciscans, for the Sisters of Providence, Sisters of Charity, and the Mercy Sisters. We did dozens of Catholic religious organizations, because as you recall, in the excitement following Vatican II, everybody wanted to update, everybody wanted to renew; and we offered a way for people to renew, without having to bother to study. We said, we'll help you look within. After all, is not God in your heart? Is it not sufficient to be yourself, and wouldn't that make you a good Catholic? And if it doesn't, then perhaps you shouldn't have been a Catholic in the first place. Well, after a while there weren't many Catholics left."

One example of the negative effect of this "Therapy For Normals" presented as Truth to Catholic Religious, was in the Summer of 1965 when Dr. Rogers and Dr. Coulson did a workshop at a Jesuit University. One young Jesuit, about to be ordained, wrote a letter. Here are the words of that letter in verbatim:

"It seemed like a beautiful birth to a new existence. It was as if so many of the things that I valued in word, were now becoming true for me in fact. It is extremely difficult to describe the experience. I had not known how unaware I was of my deepest feelings, nor how valuable they might be to other people. Only when I began to express what was rising somewhere deep within the center of me, and saw the tears in the eyes of the other group members because I was saying something so true for them, too - only then did I begin to really feel that I was deeply a part of the human race. Never in my life before that group experience, had I experienced me so intently; ..."

Dr. Coulson, again I remind you, the supervisor of the entire Rogerian encounter group program at the time, said later the following in response to this letter by the soon to be ordained Jesuit priest: "The proof of authenticity on the humanistic psychology model is to go against what you were trained to be, to call all of that phoniness, and to say what is deepest within you. What's deepest within you, however, are certain unrequited longings, including sexual longings. ... We provoked an epidemic of sexual misconduct among clergy and therapists."

He went further, "... I'll tell you what Rogers came to see, and he came to see it pretty quickly, because he really loved those women (the nuns of "The Immaculate Heart of Mary"). They were a wonderful order, unconventional in the best sense, for example going around in their old habits playing Mozart for Catholic school kids; and that doesn't exist any more. Rogers came to call it, "this damned thing." I'm going to quote him in a tape that he and I made in '76:" ... (Thus the words of Dr. Carl Rogers himself:) ... "I left there feeling, well, I started this damned thing, and look where it's taking us; I don't even know where it's taking me. I don't have any idea what's going to happen next. And I woke up the next morning feeling so depressed, that I could hardly stand it. And then I realized what was wrong." ... "did I start something that is in some fundamental way mistaken, and will lead us off into paths that we will regret?"

Regarding more history in the movement of relative psychology into American leadership of the Catholic Church, Dr. Coulson stated: "Well, actually we started with the Jesuits before we started with the nuns. We did our first Jesuit workshop in '65. Rogers got two honorary doctorates from Jesuit universities. They thought we were saviors." ... "I don't know whether you remember, but in '67 the Jesuits had a big conference at Santa Clara, and there was a lot of talk about the"Third Way" among the Jesuits." ... "The first two ways are faithful marriage and faithful celibacy. But now there was this more humane way, a more human way - all too human as I see it today. The idea was that priests could date. One priest, for example, defined his celibacy for me as, "It means I don't have to marry the girl." (This was not a Jesuit priest. Dr. Coulson believed that at least the Jesuits could rebound from the teaching of relativism, because at list their history was immersed in strong Catholic tradition.) ... [Note: A "Father Becker" wrote a book on "the collapse of Jesuit training" between 1965 and 1975, documenting what he referred to as influences of Rogerian teaching.]

To conclude this post on "The Perverting of Catholic Religious", read the following two excepts as short recent examples of where the aforementioned Rogerian humanist relativism has taken some IHM's:

From "Turning Chapters" ... "The IHM Sisters began in 1845 steeped in Christianity within the Catholic Church. Now, we know we are rooted also in a much older story - that of the universe itself. Integrating the older universe story into our familiar IHM history and faith will play an important part of our next six years. Using the UN Earth Charter as a resource will inform our conversations, decisions and actions."

From "The Universe Story" ... "the universe story reveals that we carry within us the very energy that fashioned the stars, that we are related to all creation, that our ancestry is a family tree inclusive of all life forms, a family much larger than we have ever imagined possible." ... "We know now what was unknown to all the preceding caravan of generations: that we are only fellow voyagers with other creatures in the odyssey of evolution. This new knowledge should have given us, by this time, a sense of kinship with fellow creatures; a wish to live and let live..." ... "The IHM Sisters and many religious have begun to study the universe story through the lens of the Gospel." ... "The Body of Christ, rather than simply being a group of like-minded human beings, includes all of life" ... "The revelation in and through Jesus was not intended to be an end in itself, but instead was meant to usher in a new age of connectedness that Jesus called the "Kingdom of God," ... "This reign of God would unfold as the human species embraced a new way of living. The keeping of the memory and mission of Jesus is not about making him the object of our worship, but about making ourselves the locus of the reign of God."

All I will say now as the writer of this post, when I was a child, I attended a traditional Catholic school." The nuns there were Godly and they did me good. The above quotes "do not" represent those nuns, neither the Catholic Church governed by the Vatican in worship of Christ as He revealed Himself! ... I understand not all nuns of the Church, not even all IHM's, believe what is quoted above. However, I say for the increasing numbers of Religious who believe this is our mission, those who promote this gross distortion of our Lord's very words, they truly do not represent, nor do they deserve the title, the "Immaculate Heart of Mary"!