{"id":322,"date":"2025-01-19T20:35:47","date_gmt":"2025-01-19T20:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ideas.design-preview.link\/?p=322"},"modified":"2025-01-19T20:54:03","modified_gmt":"2025-01-19T20:54:03","slug":"the-anti-assimilationist-retreathow-to-become-spiritually-inoculated-against-americanism","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/2025\/01\/19\/the-anti-assimilationist-retreathow-to-become-spiritually-inoculated-against-americanism\/","title":{"rendered":"The Anti-assimilationist Retreat:How to Become Spiritually Inoculated Against Americanism"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Published in\u00a0Culture Wars October 2004<\/em>
By Rosemary Fielding<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1978, Rosemary (Hugo) Fielding, reared and (somewhat) educated as a Roman Catholic, was initiated into an Indian mystical sect called Ruhani Satsang or Sant Mat and became a disciple of Master Darshan Singh.  She was living at an ashram in Delhi at the time.  Master Darshan Singh claimed to be the \u201cLiving Master,\u201d essentially \u201cGod.\u201d  In 1980, after living in the United States for two years, she made a retreat under the direction of her uncle, Father John J. Hugo, a diocesan priest in Pittsburgh, whose retreat figured largely in the autobiography of Dorothy Day, The Long Loneliness<\/u>, and in many of her other tracts and books.  The retreat caused Fielding to return to the Faith. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fielding writes, \u201cThis retreat, phenomenally overlooked in the Church, could be a powerful tool to help resolve the crisis in the Church today. The retreat\u2014now called An Encounter With Silence\u2014united its attendees both around the Truth and also against the enemies of Truth, which would also be the enemies of the Church. It united its attendees around the conviction that Christianity had to be practiced in the real world.  It united its attendees around acknowledging that two of the main seducers of Catholics today in the industrial world\u2014affluence and consumerism\u2014must be resisted if their faith was to survive.  <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat was given by the late Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, of Canada, and, of the Pittsburgh Diocese, Fr. Jerome Dixon, and the late Frs. John J. Hugo, Louis Farina, Joseph Meenan, and Francis Ott. Currently, Fr. Frank Erderljac of Pittsburgh gives it.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This account of the retreat is part of a chapter in Fielding\u2019s book-in-process.. The quotes from Fr. Hugo\u2019s writings are taken from his books Your Ways Are Not My Ways, Volumes 1 and 2<\/u> (1986) and A Sign of Contradiction<\/u> (1947).<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On a hot, sunny January day in 1979 on the plains of the Punjab in India, I sat in a large, hangar like building, watching the dust motes dance in the air, and was initiated into the eastern mystic sect of Sant Mat.  <\/em>I chanted with hundreds of Indians the \u201cfive holy names\u201d on which we were told to meditate every day for the rest of our lives.  I sat crossed leg chanting and waiting for hours for Master Darshan Singh, the Living Master, to come to me and touch me on the forehead so as to open my \u201cthird eye\u201d and give me the preternatural ability to embark on astral travel through the astral planes.  I waited in expectation and trepidation, for the gurus of Ruhani Satsang promised that upon initiation the Master would give each initiate an outer body experience. We would hear the sounds and see the lights that were the essence of the Sant Mat spiritual experience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was deeply disappointed.  When Master Darshan Singh touched me on the third eye, nothing happened.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had traveled to India from Afghanistan two months previous to the day of initiation.   In both countries, I was working for Seven Seas Trading Co. exporting clothing.  Upon the recommendation of a Peace Corps volunteer I had met in Kabul, I had decided to visit the ashram of Master Darshan Singh while in Delhi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although in retrospect it seems amazing to me that I had just wandered into this ashram and this strange, foreign mystical religion without giving a thought to researching it before hand, at the time, I was simply doing what I had always done:  Experience.  For Boomers, experience was the teacher.  We learned it in our childhood with television;  our youth with drugs\u2014especially the psychedelics\u2014reinforced this attitude.  To think or to reason or to judge was to be \u201cuptight;\u201d  just experience life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so I went to a religion that promised, guaranteed <\/em>a religious experience.  Master Kirpal Singh, the founder of Ruhani<\/em> Satsang<\/em> and the \u201cLiving Master\u201d who preceded Master Darshan Singh, claimed that he could give direct, personal experiences of inner light and the sound current to his followers during their very first meditation sitting.  So the selling point of the particular tradition I had latched onto was that it provided the experience of higher states of consciousness. No need for faith or reason\u2014the experience of enlightenment was guaranteed through the power of the Master.   I was sold on that particular point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I spent a great deal of my time at the ashram reading the Masters\u2019 books.  These instructed us in the philosophy and theology of Sant Mat. In a nutshell, this was the art of slavishly following a guru. The books I read were full of stories of out-of-body experiences, sounds, lights and beautiful, other-worldly visions, psychic knowledge, mind-reading etc., paeans to the Master, and instructions in living a moral life (Indian-style) and how to be dutiful to the Master.  One relinquished a great deal of psychic control to the guru. “If one is coerced to begin this journey physically and mentally unprepared,” writes David Christopher Lane, a former satsangi<\/em>, and author of a book on the Sant Mat<\/em> tradition, “one can get into deep trouble, even losing what is left of one’s mind.”  The first step in this journey was to jettison one’s reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following gurus appealed to massive numbers of spiritually-minded Boomers.  Somehow, we had grown up and decided that our religion was spiritually bankrupt.  Perhaps it was because we had never seen the supernatural aspects of it\u2014they had all been drained out when it was taught to us and when we saw it practiced.  Guru-following, like the later false Marian vision-cult of Medjugorje and other sites, promised lots of spiritual fireworks\u2014signs and wonders. This was the supernatural aspect of religion that we were longing for. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The writings of the Masters also promised us the gnostic delights of finding a godhead in ourselves, and told us we were right in being profoundly alienated from an evil world.  It offered us a promise that we could escape from the constraints of the social control we sensed was growing to gigantic proportions in our culture.  The escape that we sought in drugs and other ecstasies to our detriment was now promised to us through the simple process of self-transcendence: get a guru and look within ourselves.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Master was also a very good father-substitute for the absent G.I. father so many Boomers had experienced in their homes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We drank up what these sects offered us.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

But I also had my doubts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Basically, I doubted that this small, bearded, twinkly-eyed, turbaned man was God. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

First of all, he did not seem all-knowing.  “What is uppermost in your mind, Sister? Are you a student of Urdu?  Are you a student of mysticism?” he asked me upon meeting me, even though Sant Mat<\/em> taught us the Master chose each of his disciples,  not vice-versa, and even though if he is omniscient, he should know why I was there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Secondly, there were often times when Master was explaining some esoteric point of alleged great spiritual value, and I had no idea what he was talking about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thirdly, I had no experience of sound and light when I was finally initiated. Since this was the guaranteed promise of having a Master, and the guarantee that the Master was indeed God, I thought it was important that I have some<\/em> experience. I asked Master Darshan to initiate me again, and then with a great deal of concentrated effort, I thought<\/em> I saw some lights and heard some sounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fourthly, some of the other Boomers at the ashram seemed have completely given up any critical reasoning.  Anetta told us that the Master had organized everything in her life.  “The Master knows,” she said constantly.  Katy told me her attitude was against goal setting.  “I’ve avoided ten years of guilt and depression by letting the Master take care of everything.” I saw quite a bit intellectual zombie-ism, and also a lot of Uriah-Heep-type “humility,” which is, of course, false humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Finally, I couldn’t help but notice that something was wrong with the way things were explained.  David Lane calls this method of explanation “the write up,” which is a spin on behalf of the Master.  “If the Master gets sick, it is ‘written up’ that this is because he, although perfect, graciously took on the ‘karma’ of his students and therefore is not feeling well.  If a student gets sick, it is written up that he is a bad person or has bad karma<\/em> and is a sinner etc.”  He concludes that “as a master you can do whatever you want and it is fine.  You can seduce women, molest the children, kill the unborn, break any rules you made up for the students to follow and essentially anything else your little heart desires and the role model write-up will justify your action.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only later did I find out that the so-called Living Masters of the Sant Mat<\/em> tradition were simply the members of a family business who received the highest promotion.  They were the CEO\u2019s of a spiritual enterprise.  Master Darshan Singh was the son of Master Kirpal Singh.  When his father died, he became the Living Master. When he died, his son became the Living Master. If I sniffed out at all something ludicrous about the whole Ruhani Satsang<\/em> enterprise at the time, this was probably the rotten core that I smelled. As David Lane documents in his book, the whole procedure of becoming \u201cGod\u201d is tied up in the politics of \u201cguru succession.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though I never saw Master Darshan Singh act with any impropriety, information about the coercive cults was beginning to trickle into the public’s consciousness, especially after Jim Jones’ cult committed mass suicide. Given that awareness, I couldn’t shake my suspicions about the above, no matter how much I wanted to experience the sensational out-of-body experiences and the soothing divine love of the Master that the ashram visitors were constantly talking about.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Returning to the United States did not help my faith in Sant Mat<\/em> to grow.
I found upon my return that the currents of my old life continued to exert considerable influence upon me, and “the path” was having considerable difficulty holding me to it.  This was not surprising considering one prime fact: the claims of my utterly-unspiritual friends seemed much more powerful than the claims of this mystical religion that just didn’t grip my mind or my emotions.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sant Mat<\/em> advises its disciples to find a satsang<\/em> to meet with in the United States.  I returned to Pittsburgh, where there was no satsang<\/em>.  It advises you to be around other ascetically-minded persons.  But I was ultimately far too insecure to be able to say to my friends\u2014still smoking pot, boozing, sleeping around, and thoroughly uninterested in spiritual matters\u2014\u201cI can\u2019t associate with you anymore.\u201d   To whom would I go?\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026Meanwhile and slowly, in the materialistic and hedonistic world of the United States, the spiritual focus blurred in my life.  I could sense that I would soon be totally outside the path of Sant Mat <\/em>if I didn\u2019t do something. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then, I did a strange thing.  I signed up for a seven-day silent retreat to be given at a Catholic convent by a Catholic priest.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The expressed purpose was to renew my devotion to the Master and to revitalized my following of \u201cthe path.\u201d   But certainly a more reasonable and mature way to do so, as I said earlier, was to move to an area in which I could find a vigorous satsang<\/em> and make a life there. But to do this would mean I would have to contend with an exogenous factor that thus far defeated me: supporting myself while living alone.  So in a diversionary tactic that Adler says is the hallmark of the neurotic\u2014avoiding pressures to mature\u2014I decided to practice Indian gnostic mysticism at an orthodox Catholic retreat.  Once again my emotional immaturity contributed to following an indirect and ineffective path to a stated goal solely because it was an \u201ceasier and softer way\u201d emotionally.  What seemed like an illogical decision to others made perfect sense in the context of what I was trying to avoid, i.e., the requisite separation from my parents\u2019 home that all adults must undergo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But something else inspired me to make this retreat.  I simply had not, and could not, accept that kindly, gentle Darshan Singh was God.  At times during the two years, when I struggled to follow \u201cthe path,\u201d when I really needed divine guidance, I would pick up the Bible, and usually turn to the Psalms.  (Writings which certain \u201cLiving Masters\u201d often quoted to illustrate their gnostic \u201cscience of spirituality\u201d for Westerns.)  When I petitioned God, I could not pray to \u201cthe Master,\u201d\u2014I prayed to God the Father of my childhood Catholicism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One night at dinner with my mother and father, I talked about the ascetic path that Master Darshan taught, and how I wished I could follow it better, and my father said, \u201cYou should make your uncle\u2019s retreat.\u201d (Fr. John J. Hugo was the retreat master.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My father had come through again.  Something about living alone with him and my mother gave him an opportunity to hear me and to be a father to me.  He was taking an interest in my life, talking to me about things, helping me with my tasks, showing love and affection and respect.  And it made a profound difference in my life.  The retreat would be a turning point.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And so God used all elements of my life to bring me to Him.  He used my weakness\u2014the fact that I could not face leaving the security of my parents\u2019 home in order to follow the path of Sant Mat<\/em>\u2014and he used my strength\u2014the fact that I could see through the fraudulent teachings of Sant Mat<\/em> enough to make me somewhat skeptical about the whole thing. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mostly, I think, He used the grace that I received in the sacraments of initiation to attune my inner ear to the voice of the Holy Spirit, for once my father made the suggestion, I determined to make the retreat.  I felt drawn to it strongly.  I had to take a week off work without pay.  I had to endure the friendly teasing that my spiritual quest drew from the largely agnostic newspaper staff.  But I was determined to make the retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I had read about the retreat in 1978 when I was 23 in The Long Loneliness. <\/em>I had found the book one weekend at my parents\u2019 house, and knowing of my uncle and aunt\u2019s friendship with Day, and remembering my own childhood meeting with her in my grandparents\u2019 garden, I picked up the book out of curiosity. It caused me a moment of an intense examination of conscience\u2014but not about my relationship to my religion or to God.  Day\u2019s life of poverty and her dedication to the most destitute poor is what struck me at the time.  I was very much a hedonist, and her life of self-sacrifice made me afraid that God might call me to the very same life.  I thought I had escaped my Catholic childhood, but Day\u2019s book brought back some of the moral obligation I had once felt.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, in 1981 I was firmly back in the saddle as being opposed to any type of formal Christianity, especially Catholicism.  My lifestyle for the past 12 years\u2014including my initiation into Sant Mat<\/em>\u2014had created an internal electric field that resisted Catholicism.  And so my determination to make a Catholic retreat remains somewhat mysterious.  Someone\u2019s prayers, perhaps Dorothy Day\u2019s herself, helped to get me there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My situation was somewhat analogous to my uncle\u2019s when he first made the Retreat in 1938 as a newly ordained priest.  Even though, he, unlike me, was a devout Catholic at the time, he writes that \u201cI was then what I would now describe as a \u2018pagan\u2019\u2026I was prone to regard this world as a pleasant place and thanked God for the capacity to enjoy it\u2026I now believe the Providence of God had been leading me along all the time. I was under a sort of spell.  Only thus was I drawn\u2014perhaps kidnapped or shanghaied would be better words\u2014into going where, had I been fully aware of what I was doing, I would almost certainly have refused to go.  And I would have refused in spite of my spiritual needs.  For I did not yet appreciate the gravity of those needs nor did I even realize that they were spiritual.\u201d  I could have said the same about not realizing my needs, except my need was to hear Truth, and not the various lies to which I had been listening the last 12 years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Retreat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

On the evening of April 25, 1981, I drove my old Toyota to Mount Nazareth, the convent of the Sisters of the Holy Family, in the North Hills of Pittsburgh.  My uncle, Fr. John J. Hugo, was a chaplain there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mt. Nazareth was surrounded by woods.  This was a couple years before the Interstate 270 would destroy those surrounding woods and the silence that enveloped the convent.  The hills and valleys were filled with blossoming trees, and the forest grounds were blanketed with flowers, especially long-stemmed violets.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was a beautiful, quiet setting for a silent retreat in 1981, before the Interstate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The little pamphlet that came with the retreat instructed us to bring an alarm clock, a notebook and a Bible.  It specifically requested that we bring no other reading material.  My uncle had sent me a little note telling me that he had paid the cost of the retreat.  I was the only one of his 16 nieces and nephews to thus far have made the retreat he had been giving for some forty years.  He was quietly overjoyed that I was doing so.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Practicing the Boomer \u201cI am a law unto myself\u201d mentality, I disregarded the instructions and brought a suitcase full of Sant Mat<\/em> books that I planned to read instead of the Bible.  I was going to use the retreat time to rediscover the wisdom of Indian Eastern mysticism and get back on \u201cthe path.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As was often the case for me, I had the haziest idea of what I could actually expect to happen on this retreat. I knew I would have silence and solitude. Therefore, I could meditate and read.  \u201cSeven days of silence and no work is a long time,\u201d I thought.  So I packed some embroidery projects as well, a box of stationery and a list of people I had to write.  I also packed a Bible.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This was the retreat that Dorothy Day had written about in The Long Loneliness<\/em>.  Dorothy wrote that she made the retreat every year because \u201cI too am hungry and thirsty for the bread of the strong.\u201d According to her biographer William Miller, one of her handwritten notes from the retreat says, \u201cI think to myself with a touch of bitterness, the ordinary man does not hear the word of God.  The poor do not have the Gospel preached to them. Never have I heard it as I hear it now, each year in retreat, and with the sureness that it is indeed the Gospel.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was, in fact, walking into a presentation of the Gospel that was rather quietly earthshaking.  It would affect some as the Good News had affected the \u201crich young man,\u201d and some as the Good News had affected St. Mathew, but nobody who made the retreat would forget the tremors it sent through their understanding of life and particularly, of Christian life.  The retreat was a powerful call to conversion.  Except this time, the Gospel was preached not to the Jews and the Gentiles, but to the already Christianized.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My uncle was part of the reason for the retreat\u2019s power.  I knew as soon as I heard him that I was listening to one \u201cwho spoke with authority.\u201d  In the quiet spring Sunday evening as we sat in the convent library and he instructed us in the demands of silence, I thought I had never heard anyone speak so clearly, simply and more powerfully about the spiritual life.  My plans to read Sant Mat<\/em> and do embroidery withered in my mind as I sat there.  His words inspired in me a great desire follow the path he traced before us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe are to share in the divinity of Christ,\u201d he said.  \u201cThis is the Incarnational Mystery of our Christian faith\u2026God has sought us first, but he wants us to find him.  We have to put other things aside to encounter God\u2026Silence builds a wall around us. I ask you to observe outward silence. Refrain from talking to each other. No conversation, don\u2019t walk in pairs, and avoid eye contact. No talking at meals. Use the telephone as little as possible. We are to form a community this week. But we form it by moving towards the center together, towards Jesus Christ.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Simply put, one knew immediately that this retreat was serious\u2014far more serious than other lay retreats–because of the demands of total silence for seven days.  No priest could make such a demand of ordinary lay persons over and over again for forty years without the sure knowledge that he would deliver something into that silence, something wondrous and new.  And Fr. Hugo did just that.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A little historical background: The retreat was a recasting of the Ignatian Exercises<\/em>, and it had been originally recast by a French-Canadian Jesuit.  The intensity, the silence and the life-changing conversion it wrought flowed from the original shoot on which it was grafted, which was the Exercises<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo had first made the retreat in 1938 under the direction of the French-Canadian Jesuit, Fr. Onesimus Lacouture, who had been giving the retreats to fellow priests since 1931.  Fr. Hugo traced back the theology of the silent retreat to the theology of the Exercises<\/em> as it was understood by the Jesuits before their suppression and Reconstruction.  In doing so, he eliminates the influence of modern commentators on the Exercises<\/em> for this reason: the modern Jesuit preaches truth as \u201ca natural theology and a natural religion, that is to say, \u2026a natural philosophy.\u201d   Fr. Lacouture alone recognized that a \u201csupernatural goal [i.e. heaven] demands the use of a supernatural means.\u201d Fr. Lacouture, whose powerful conversion in the wilds of Alaska led to the retreat, \u201calone among [the Jesuit \u201cPhilosophers\u201d] offers a theology instead of a philosophy, explaining the reductionism of his colleagues by the spirit of naturalism which arose with the Renaissance and reached its climax in the Enlightenment of the 18th century, when the Jesuits were suppressed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Before the French Revolution, the Jesuit\u2019s \u201cspirit\u201d had been \u201cthoroughly supernatural.\u201d After the Reconstruction, however, the Jesuits compromised with the Enlightenment \u201cspirit\u201d so as to avoid further troubles, persecution or suppression.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Lacouture did not compromise with the spirit of Enlightenment, which is naturalism, which is the negation of the supernatural.  Because of this,  Fr. Lacouture  departed not from the Exercises of St. Ignatius, but from their \u201cmisunderstanding and misinterpretation, as he maintained, by practically all the modern commentators and their followers.\u201d  Unlike these Jesuit philosophers, Fr. Lacouture \u201ccatapult[ed]\u201d his retreatants \u201cinto the supernatural.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I did not know this history when I made the retreat, nor did I need to.  Neither Fr. Lacouture nor his successor, Fr. Hugo, ever pretended to teach any new doctrine or new way.  They set out to give a \u201cpanorama\u201d of the Christian life as it had always been understood by the Church.  They simply presented \u201capplied Christianity\u201d\u2014Christianity as it is to be practically lived to its deepest implications\u2014in such a way that modern Catholics could grasp the reason Christianity is truly a radical way of life.  \u201cFr. Lacouture\u2019s unique contribution to the Church at this time was his breaking out of the shrunken universe of a merely humanistic philosophy and entering with his retreatants in tow, the \u2018new creation\u2019 opened up by the New Testament, to live and think and love God freely and all else in God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contrasted to the heresy\u2014Americanism\u2014that was active in the Catholic Church contemporaneously with the retreat, the retreat was a theological nuclear weapon against the policy of \u201cassimilation.\u201d It charged Catholics with following the very teachings of Christ that would spell doom for many things in their 20th century \u201cAmerican\u201d way of life. The Gospel has no room for consumerism, upward mobility and the relentless pursuit of amusement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, it was not surprising that both Fr. Lacouture and Fr. Hugo suffered for preaching to lay Catholics that they are called to holiness.  The hierarchy of the American Catholic Church may have wanted, at times, to nurture and protect the Catholic ethnic ghettos struggling to survive in American cities where Catholic life centered around the parish, but many of them saw no need to nurture and protect a corresponding Catholic theological \u201cghetto-of-the-mind\u201d struggling to survive in the midst of a dominant American Enlightenment philosophy. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Short History of the Opposition Against the Retreat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

A discussion of the retreat is incomplete without some explanation of the opposition to it.  That opposition signals both the power of the retreat\u2014and the Gospel\u2014to challenge lukewarm Christian faith and the way in which some in the institutional Church responded to that challenge.  When Fr. Hugo rebounded from the retreat in 1938 (two years out of seminary), he joyfully offered an apostolate to his Church\u2014to evangelize the laity.  Instead, he found that many colleagues and superiors rebuked him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He and the other priests who gave the retreat were called \u2018Hugonuts\u2019 or \u201cLacouturmites.\u2019 At times they were called \u2018Holy Rollers\u2019 because of their insistence on the scriptures\u2019 daily application to the Christian life.  \u201cIt was a painful time,\u201d recalled one of the fellow retreat priests.  \u201cSuddenly you realize you are a member of a small minority; you\u2019re isolated and friends distance themselves.  We were looked at as kind of extreme.  There was witch-hunting in the hierarchy; our careers were damaged.\u201d  The extremism charge centered on their teaching the laity \u201choliness.\u201d Many objected not so much to the worthy goal of holiness, but to the way the retreat did not simply mouth the word, but taught very concretely the practice of holiness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Because Fr. Lacouture had not published any material on the retreat, the charges and suspicions were often based on a retreatant\u2019s misinterpretation of it, either in word or action.  Though a few of the retreatants may have overreacted to the teaching of holiness\u2014saying ludicrous things like \u201ceating gravy on ice cream is a form of recommended mortification\u201d\u2014most likely any<\/em> signs of zealousness among Catholics in the area of mortification and contempt for the world probably alarmed the clergy at this time.  For many clergy, this was the time for American Catholics to \u201cfit in,\u201d and that meant, in practice, to be \u201cregular guys,\u201d not zealous.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Many, if not most, American clergy were certainly giving more and more of an example to the faithful in \u201cfitting in.\u201d They enjoyed the better things of life, in keeping with the rising standard of living all around.  For that reason, what often most upset clerical critics of the retreat were the concrete and discomfiting actions of fellow clergy who had made it.  Priests began to throw away their cigarettes, to stop drinking, to give away their golf clubs, in a word, to practice Christian detachment, and to teach it as the normal outlook of the Christian.  When religious live a rather worldly life, they rebuff these and other challenges to live simply and the charge to teach laity to do the same.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cFather Lacouture\u2019s undoing was his condemnation of worldliness, especially the worldliness of the clergy,\u201d wrote Fr. Hugo.  \u201cThey had to silence him at all costs, this traitor to the fellowship, and they did so with a barrage of irresponsible accusations published only in the name of an anonymous \u2018Censor.\u2019 That \u2018crazy Jesuit\u2019 had to be stopped, at once, and by any means available.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My uncle wrote that Fr. Lacouture was \u201ca teacher and spiritual guide of the most outstanding ability, a man unique in his day\u2014in short, a spiritual genius\u2014a master of spiritual doctrine, perhaps the first such master on this continent\u2026I have never heard of any teacher of spirituality in American to compare with him in excellence of doctrine, clarity and vigor of presentation, and extent of influence.\u201dHe noted that some Canadian clergy reported that one of their cardinals told them: \u2018Never since St. Paul has any priest had such influence over other priests!\u2019\u201d Msgr. Philippe Desranleau, Bishop of Sherbrooke, Quebec, described the retreats at the time as \u201c\u2019The most supernatural and most efficacious awakening of Christian and priestly life ever recorded in the history of Canada.\u2019\u201d (From a history of the retreats written by Abbe Anselme Longpre, Un mouvement spirtuel au Quebec<\/em> (Monreal: Fides, 1976)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The problem with Father Lacouture, from his Society\u2019s point of view, was that his retreat was gaining popularity every year.  If he had not been successful, they would have let the retreat \u201cdie the death.\u201d  But since it was not dying naturally, someone better do something to stop it.  The Jesuits saw their brother priest\u2019s phenomenal and growing success and the \u201cedifying lives that the priests lived\u201d after the retreat as \u201ca reproach to many of the clergy.\u201d In addition, two Canadian prelates in particular also were applying pressure to have Fr. Lacouture \u201csilenced\u201d\u2014Cardinal Villeneuve and Archbishop Antoniutti, Apostolic Delegate to Canada. On the other hand, several other bishops defended him and his retreats.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After allowing the retreats for ten years, his Jesuit superiors forbid Fr. Lacouture to give the retreat. \u201cYet once more,\u201d wrote Fr. Hugo, \u201cthe powers of darkness prevailed and one of the most wonderful spiritual enterprises this continent has ever witnessed came to a stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ultimately, the Superior of the Society in America took away Fr. Lacouture\u2019s faculties, and he lived out his last years on a Canadian Indian reservation, where he was procurator. This was the \u201cthanks\u201d he received from the Society for giving the retreat. \u201cWithout any canonical or moral<\/em> justification, the superior sent Father Lacouture into exile,\u201d wrote Father Hugo.  \u201cNo doubt he was under heavy pressure; so was Pilate.  And another character from the New Testament, Caiaphas, provided a model for resolving matters: it is better that one man should perish rather than that worldly clergy should be embarrassed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The reservation was, my uncle noted, \u201can excellent place for exile.\u201d It was extremely difficult to get to, and Fr. Lacouture was forbidden, under pain of sin, to communicate with any of his former retreatants by letter. While there, he had befriended Bishop Alfred Langlois of Quebec, under whose jurisdiction he lived out his last days.  \u201cBishop Langlois loved and admired Father Lacouture, desiring, but vainly, in the circumstances of the time, that all his priests and seminarians would make the retreat,\u201d wrote my uncle, who had visited with the bishop.  Bishop Langlois had said, \u201c\u2019The spiritual movement inaugurated by Father Lacouture, a Jesuit, has been the greatest spiritual movement of our century.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Though, originally, Fr. Lacouture and most who knew of the opposition against the retreat assumed the \u201cexile\u201d would be temporary so that misunderstandings could be laid to rest, the controversy could \u201ccool down,\u201d and World War II resolved, Fr. Lacouture was never allowed to give the retreat again.  He died, virtually abandoned by his Order, in 1951. \u201cBishop Langlois, \u2018his best friend and dauntless defender\u2019 celebrated the solemn requiem liturgy. Dorothy Day\u2026was also there, the only mourner from the States.  She noted the small crowd and reported the comment of another: \u2018It was a small funeral, considering how great a man Fr. Lacouture was. Just a few years ago he was famous. Now he is anonymous.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIf the Jesuits had given ear to their brother Onesimus,\u201d wrote Father Hugo, \u201cthey might well have averted the disasters and scandals that have sullied and plagued them, as well as other religious communities and the diocesan clergy, for the last twenty or more years.  In fact, as Abbe Longpre reports verbatim, Father Lacouture, who died in 1951, prophesied clearly that just such disasters would occur if Catholic preachers would not preach a practical theology and an authentic spirituality.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo differed from Fr. Lacouture in that in 1944 he wrote and published a book on the retreat, Applied Christianity<\/em>. (It received the imprimatur<\/em> of Archbishop Francis J. Spellman.)  Therefore, the attack on him was carried out in print.  Condemnation of the retreat came from high up, e.g., from theologians at the Catholic University of America.  Clerical and lay academics focused on the retreat teachings on the \u201ctwo ways\u201d (natural and supernatural) and detachment from God\u2019s creation.  They compared these retreat teachings to Jansenism and Manicheanism.  These are serious allegations, indeed.  Father Hugo wrote extensively to show the error of these charges and to prove that the teachings on the \u201ctwo ways\u201d and detachment from the world are at the heart of Catholic doctrine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, the Catholic \u201celite\u201d had learned from their WASP elite counterparts, in that they used devious means to \u201cblacklist\u201d the retreat and the priests.  They never issued formal charges of the heresies, thus, they were never required to prove the charges.  They repeated the charge as though it had been proved.  In short, they simply created in a print a dark cloud of suspicion that settled over the retreat, Fr. Lacouture and Fr. Hugo.   It was, in common vernacular, a \u201csmear job,\u201d and a very effective use of \u201cspin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo called the murmurs and writings against the retreat a \u201cphantom heresy.\u201d  \u201cI was stunned by the false and unjust charges made by scholars who (whether they would acknowledge it or not) were older brother priests and teachers to whom I looked for encouragement in what I had considered a common apostolate,\u201d Fr. Hugo wrote of this period. His opponent\u2019s tactics, of course, effectively prevented him and his fellow retreat priests from formally rebutting the criticism. \u201cFrom 1940 to the mid-fifities, five major attacks, with others less notable, were launched against me by high-placed scholars, theologians, ecclesiastics, and popular devotional writers.  Only in one case\u2026was allowance made for a reply of proportionate length; one influential journal, under pressure, magnanimously permitted a reply of three hundred words in the correspondence column.\u201d So severe did the blacklisting become that at one point Fr. Hugo and Fr. Louis Farina traveled to Rome to plead their case, but were denied an audience with the Cardinal Prefect.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For some 15 years Fr. Hugo, like Fr. Lacouture before him, was, in his words, \u201cexiled.\u201d  Forbidden by Bishop Boyle of the Pittsburgh Diocese to give the retreat without express permission, he was abruptly reassigned in 1944 from teaching at a Catholic college\u2014\u201cdiverted from my original hopes\u201d\u2014to begin a series of short-term, small-church assignments as an assistant to the pastor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo practiced patient obedience to his superiors throughout.  In 1947 he wrote and printed himself a book on the history of the retreat that was critical of the clergy who quashed it and of worldly clergy in general (including his younger self).  He circulated it among the clergy until his bishop told him to destroy the book.  \u201cWe drove out to the dump,\u201d my aunt, Cecilia M. Hugo, recalled. \u201cAnd he threw away all the books\u2014hundreds of them.  When I asked him how he could do that, he said, \u2018Cecilia, when I became a priest, I put my hands in the bishop\u2019s hands and promised my obedience.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That period of \u201cexile\u201d ended in 1957 when Bishop John Deardon assigned Fr. Hugo his own pastorate in a large suburban parish south of Pittsburgh.  (\u201cIt was even rumored\u201d wrote Father Hugo, that Bishop \u201cIron John\u201d Deardon had been sent to Pittsburgh by the Apostolic Delegate to the United States, Archbishop Amletto Cicognani, to \u201cquash \u2018Lacouturmism.\u2019\u201d)  At St. Germaine\u2019s, Fr. Hugo put into practice his oft-stated principle that a church should be built and supported on the preaching of the Gospel.  He proceeded to construct the new church without running the gambling games that he believed had no place in the Church.  (This conviction didn\u2019t help his popularity among fellow priests.)  He was a beloved pastor there, mostly for his preaching the Gospel with the same fire and brilliance he had preached it at the retreats and for his practice of charity to the families that he came to love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cphantom heresy\u201d was banished when Bishop John Wright of Pittsburgh began to quote from Fr. Hugo\u2019s writings and then nominated him to collaborate on the writing of a new adult catechism (The Teaching of Christ)<\/em>.  Later, he commissioned him to write a book on St. Augustine in defense of Humanae Vitae<\/em> (St. Augustine on Nature, Sex and Marriage<\/em>) and praised his scholarship in a preface to that book.   He wrote homily keys for his brother priests, and served as chairman of both the Worship and Theology committees of the Pittsburgh Diocese.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The doctrines of the Second Vatican Council gave further support to the retreat when the Council affirmed that the laity and not just religious were called to holiness.  Vatican II emphasized that the liturgy is \u201ccentered and rooted in the paschal mystery of the Lord\u2019s death and resurrection.\u201d Fr. Hugo had contributed precisely that emphasis to Fr. Lacouture\u2019s original retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Renowned Jesuit scripture scholar, the late John L. McKenzie, who made the retreat in 1987, said this about the controversy: \u201cI affirm flatly that the criticisms leveled against Lacouture and Hugo arose from an incredibly vast ignorance of the New Testament, the classic spiritual writers, ancient, medieval and modern, an ignorance which is frightening when it is manifested by bishops, higher level Jesuit superiors and professors of theology at the Catholic University.\u201d (From manuscript sent to Cecilia M. Hugo)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

(Fr. McKenzie also wrote of Fr. Hugo\u2019s books on the retreat, Your Ways Are Not My Ways, Volume I and II<\/em>, \u201cBy chance I recently came across a book  [and its companion volume] which you will never see reviewed in a journal. You will not see the review because respectable journals as a matter of policy do not review books which are privately printed.  In general I agree with this policy; but in this case I think an exception should be made.\u201d  Unfortunately, respectable journals never did review the books.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All of which begs the question: as Fr. Hugo himself asked, \u201c[W]hy were so many Howitzers trained on one country curate?\u201d  Why did the Catholic \u201celite\u201d work so hard to silence through the treacherous practice of \u201cblacklisting\u201d this fervent and obedient priest?  Fr. Hugo answers, \u201cCould it be\u2026that the one whom Jesus called \u2018the prince of this world\u2019 was still active on our planet and fiercely determined to crush even the tiniest uprising against his enslaving power?\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In this case, the prince of this world was fighting in defense of  \u201cpious naturalism.\u201d  Pious naturalism, wrote Fr. Hugo, was \u201ca term that Frederick William Faber, a disciple of Newman described unforgettably as \u2018a supernatural formalism outside, perfectly natural principles of action inside, and a quackery of spiritual direction to keep everything safe and comfortable.\u2019\u201d  Pious naturalism, in other words, was a substitute for supernaturalism.   As such, the \u201cprince of the world\u201d had called upon it many times in his battle against true faith.  It is the \u201creligion of the natural man in every age and place;–often very beautiful on the surface<\/em>, but worthless in God\u2019s sight,\u201d wrote Cardinal Newman. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Pharisaism was its form in the time of Christ.  In twentieth century America, pious naturalism took the form of the \u201cassimilationist.\u201d This was the Catholic\u2014lay or clerical\u2014who drove the Church to assimilate into the American culture.  In its most-often evoked use, what it meant was that no Catholic principle must stand in the way of the Church\u2019s financial gain, whether in money or property, at the hands of a benefactor who desired a less rigorous, more moderate Catholic Church.  \u201cThe philosopher E.I. Watkin,\u201d wrote Fr. Hugo, \u201cwrote of what he called \u2018ecclesiastical materialism,\u2019 a spiritual malaise endemic to the clergy of institutional religion whereby, neglecting still the weightier matters of the law\u2014peace and justice and faith\u2014they spend whatever zeal they can muster on institutional building and management\u2026[and] even devoting themselves to \u2018liturgy for its own sake,\u2019 as Dom Aelred Graham observed.\u201d  With pious naturalism, Catholics could be friends of the world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat\u2019s most powerful weapon against pious naturalism and therefore against assimilation into the American culture was the teaching of detachment from worldly goods.  \u201cI was a priest for two years before I ever heard of the Catholic teaching of detachment,\u201d my uncle said in one of the retreat conferences.  \u201cIt was never taught to us in any of my thirty years of Catholic education.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat inoculated individual Catholics against mindlessly assimilating into a consumerist and comfortable culture.  In retrospect, it was for that reason that it had to be stopped.  Since many of the Catholic intelligentsia were striving mightily for assimilation, they in particular waged a war against the retreat. And the bishops listened to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Catholic Worker<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Within the Catholic Worker, the retreat has always had its supporters and detractors.  Sister Peter Claver and my aunt, Cecilia Hugo, both friends of Dorothy Day, told me of Day\u2019s consistent requests that the Catholic Worker members make the retreat, and her sometimes meeting resistance from them.  In The Long Loneliness<\/em> Dorothy Day chides one group of Catholic Workers \u201cwho did not want to make the retreat because they lived a retreat\u2014they were superior.\u201d  She continued that though they came to the treat \u201cafter imbibing at a few taverns along the way\u2026the important thing is that they came.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As Day goes on to note, the Catholic Worker has always had its share of members who practice a \u201cBohemianism of the religious life\u201d which was to live so much like the \u201cguest from the street\u201d that the religious Bohemian ends up \u201cparticipating in his sin from prideful humility\u2026it smacks of sentimentality,\u201d she writes, and \u201cthis is self-deception indeed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Father Hugo was not Bohemian, and since his retreat would have thrown cold water on any Bohemianism, it is not surprising he was avoided and criticized by the Bohemian strand within the Catholic Worker.  In the same way, the Catholic Worker today is divided between those who dissent against Church teachings and those who do not. In 1994, Ann O\u2019Connor, a Catholic Worker, wrote in the New Oxford Review<\/em> an article entitled \u201cThe Catholic Worker: Is It Still Catholic?\u201d about \u201cDorothy Day\u2019s Crumbling Legacy.\u201d  O\u2019Connor gives plenty of instances of the rejection of Catholic teaching among Catholic Workers\u2014for example, Catholic Workers serving as pro-abortion escorts, escorting women to an abortion clinic\u2014and writes: \u201cThe Church in America has, for some time, been in de facto schism.  There is WomenChurch, gay church, married priests, New Age church, etc.  Many Catholic workers reflect these schismatic directions.\u201d  In 1989, I struck up a friendly acquaintance with members of a Catholic Worker house in eastern U.S. that was certainly prone to these kind of \u201cschismatic directions,\u201d and especially those associated with radical feminism.  Those Catholic Workers heading in the \u201cschismatic direction\u201d would not like Father Hugo or the retreat, although that is not to say that all those who have problems with them necessarily do so for that reason.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1997 Patrick Jordan, a former editor of the Catholic Worker<\/em>, wrote an article on Dorothy Day for Commonweal<\/em> that prompted some protests from those associated with both the Catholic Worker and Father Hugo.  \u201cReading Hugo in the collection cited above [Weapons of the Spirit<\/em>, an collection of Hugo\u2019s selected writings edited by David Scott and Mike Aquilina], I felt I had fallen into a time warp. What comes through is certain rigidity and literalness,\u201d Jordan writes, and also characterizes Father Hugo\u2019s writing as \u201csteeped in the formalism of post-Tridentine spiritual theology\u201d and \u201clacking in the expansive catholicity of Dorothy Day.\u201d   He also writes that Nina Polcyn Moore, an old friend of Dorothy Day,  \u201crecalls [that] the retreat was \u2018harsh\u2019 and \u2018wooden,\u2019 and that it was Day herself who made it \u2018more livable and lovable.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a letter-to-editor of Commonweal, <\/em>Mark and Louise Zwick, members of the Houston Catholic Worker house, Casa Juan Diego, criticized Jordan\u2019s article for his comments on Father Hugo and his relationship to Day.  \u201c[I]t puzzles us,\u201d they write, \u201chow he could write so well on Dorothy and so poorly on Father John Hugo.\u201d   Jordan\u2019s article \u201ctrivialized\u201d Father Hugo, the Zwicks write, and, contra Nina Polcyn Moore, they assert that Father Hugo and \u201cthe Hugo priests\u201d were \u201cprofoundly spiritual, full of wisdom, holy and holistic, totally unwooden and unrigid; we have not seen the likes of them since.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since Commonweal <\/em>is well-known as a \u201cliberal\u201d Catholic magazine, and Father Hugo, though holding some views in line with liberals, also upheld many doctrines against which liberals dissent, it seemed reasonable to me that perhaps Jordan was put-off by Father Hugo\u2019s orthodoxy (i.e. he did not dissent from Church teaching) or his defense of certain Church doctrine, and, in a letter, asked Jordan if this were the case.  However, Jordan wrote back to me that, \u201cas far as I know,\u201d he did not disagree with Fr. Hugo \u201con some unspecified doctrinal matters,\u201d but that the book \u201cdid not \u2018speak to my condition.\u2019\u201d  Since he never explained it in his article or in his letter to me, I never did get clear what things Jordan found to be so \u201crigid,\u201d \u201cliteral\u201d etc., if these things were not related to doctrine. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2003 a friend attended a university-sponsored conference on the Catholic Worker. After one of the talks, my friend approached a \u201cCatholic Worker priest\u201d to talk about Fr. Hugo.  The priest told him that no one was giving the retreat, that Dorothy Day had changed her mind about the retreat later on, and that my uncle had changed his mind about his own retreats.  None of this is true.  Dorothy Day went to Pittsburgh to make her last retreat with Father Hugo in 1976, four years before she died.  At that time, she asked him to give the homily at her funeral. (A priest at the Catholic Worker house actually ended up giving the homily.) When her friend Sister Peter Claver visited Dorothy Day three weeks before Day\u2019s death, the two of them reminisced about the retreat as Day sat with the retreat conference notes on her lap.  In 1985, Father Hugo was killed in a car accident. He had concluded one of his regularly scheduled retreats only two days earlier. He had completed his two-volume book on the retreat Your Ways Are Not My Ways <\/em>on the very day he was killed. And at least one priest is still giving the retreat. So all this talk about \u201cchange\u201d was transmitted to my friend in complete contradiction to the facts. But as my friend said after attending the conference, \u201cNo one seemed to address the idea that the CW might have changed.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It would seem that, along with several points of Church doctrine, Father Hugo and the retreat continue to be a point of contention within the Catholic Worker movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The First Lesson of the Retreat: Natural and Supernatural<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat worked to dislodge that \u201ccomfy\u201d feeling that Christians have with the world.  The retreat, wrote Dorothy Day, was like \u201ca shock treatment\u2026putting the \u2018old man\u2019 to death, bringing us to new life.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first lesson of the retreat was that of the \u201ctwo ways.\u201d  In keeping with orthodox Catholic doctrine, Fr. Hugo emphasized that God created two planes of existence, the natural and the supernatural\u2014each part of His plan, but radically different from each other, and leading to different destinations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The natural existence is good and virtuous, and is lived by pagan and Christian alike. It consists of the seen world, known through the five senses and human reason. Pleasure is its goal, and reason is its guide.  It seeks happiness only in this present life, and is thus leads to a \u201cdead end\u201d at the end of this life.  For this reason, though the natural existence is necessary for Christians, it is not sufficient for them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The supernatural is divine and holy, and only those who follow Christ receive the grace to live on this plane.  It consists of the unseen world, known to us through divine revelation.  Love is its goal, and faith its guide. Unlike the natural plane, the supernatural has an ultimate destination beyond this life\u2014heaven.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sin was never part of God\u2019s plan, and it operates in the level below both the natural and the supernatural, a constant pull to \u201csink\u201d us below both our human and divine destinies.  Sin leads to a destination\u2014hell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The \u201cfront line\u201d battle for the Christian, Fr. Hugo said, is not against sin, but against the natural inclinations that neutralize our supernatural motives. If we loose this front line battle, we will inevitably loose the rear guard battle that we must wage against sin.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

This simple presentation, which Fr. Hugo illustrated with an equally simple chart, resounded profoundly and powerfully in the hearts and minds of those that heard it.  For many of us, it was the first time we had learned that the \u201ctwo ways\u201d were not as we had always thought, i.e., the choice between the forbidden and the permitted.  For many of us, it was the first time we understood the true challenge of Christianity, ie., that it asks us to choose between pagan goodness and Christian holiness. For the first time, we saw Our Lord as beckoning us to the supernatural path set high above the natural way. And for many of us, the presentation of the \u201ctwo ways\u201d was the first theology in many years\u2014perhaps ever\u2014that ignited a burning desire to follow Him. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Only through the power of grace\u2014a grace for which we must constantly petition and to which we must always respond\u2014can we live the supernatural life.  This is because our natural inclinations are constantly demanding that we deny the claims of supernatural inspirations; and the natural inclinations were, well, natural. They were as close to us as our own skin.  \u201cScratch a Christian,\u201d Fr. Hugo said, \u201cand there\u2019s a pagan underneath.\u201d  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat made clear that God\u2019s plan confronted us where we felt most comfortable in this life\u2014in our good, virtuous lives.  Moderate, law-abiding, middle class respectability looks like Christianity, but Fr. Hugo called it something different\u2014\u201cgood paganism.\u201d  It is not sinful, but it is insufficient for eternal life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Herein lay the punch\u2014or, in Biblical terms, the \u201cscandal of the Cross\u201d\u2014in the retreat\u2019s teaching\u2014what provoked the unease and outrage in his opponents.  In following Jesus Christ, we give up not only our sin, but more importantly our love affair with worldly goods. Simply put, we must turn from the love of the goods of this world, which are so familiar and comfortable to us, in order to love and receive the goods of the supernatural world, which are often initially strange and even distasteful.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The comfortable and worldly Christianity that is so acceptable to modern culture, and so entrenched in our parishes and charitable associations\u2014though not evil\u2014was not enough.  It was the reduced Gospel that proclaimed a merely natural philosophy, that of the \u201cgood pagan\u201d: \u201cEat, drink and be merry\u2014as long as you avoid mortal sin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn proving their love by the fact that they have not committed a grave sin,\u201d Fr. Hugo said, Christians \u201cresemble a man who proves his love for his wife by the fact that he does not murder her.\u201d  Or, \u201cTelling God you love Him more than sin is like telling a beautiful woman you love her more than toads,\u201d was another of his memorable analogies. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo went on to develop the \u201ctwo ways\u201d presentation throughout the retreat.  The Bible was his ready source of supporting evidence, but he used other sources such as Rosalind Murray\u2019s The Good Pagan\u2019s Failure<\/em>; the sermons of John Henry Newman, and the writings of many of the saints, and in particular, those of St. John of the Cross.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He turned to the Sermon on the Mount to show that supernatural goods were often the reversal of natural goods.  Man naturally<\/em> rejoices in prosperity, power, dignity, erudition, fame, mirth and honor.  But Christ teaches us to rejoice in poverty, meekness, humiliation, simplicity, obscurity, mourning and persecution.  \u201cThe Beatitudes are the values of God,\u201d Fr. Hugo said.  \u201cWe say, \u2018Blessed are the rich.  Blessed are the strong.\u2019\u201d To the world, he said, the Beatitudes are either hogwash\u2014\u201cBlessed are the poor? Are you kidding?\u201d\u2014or beautiful, poetic sayings never to be applied to our practical, workaday world. \u201cBut Jesus says this is the way to live,\u201d Fr. Hugo reminded us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sermon illustrates \u201cGod\u2019s reversal of purely human values,\u201d he said.  It is, he wrote in a pamphlet, \u201cthe Manifesto of the Christian life; it outlines the practical program of Christianity.  And we never attempt to imagine what would happen if we really lived according to these truths\u2014the sudden and sensational change would make us dizzy; our lives would certainly be transformed\u2026Behold. All things would become new.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God\u2019s Love for Us<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo inspired us to hunger for the supernatural life in the same way that Jesus Christ inspired his disciples to do so\u2014by showing us the love of God.  By giving retreatants the full meaning of the Passion, Death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ, the retreat endeavored to help Christians rediscover the depth and breadth of God\u2019s love for them.  The supernatural destiny\u2014yes, hard to follow\u2014was, in fact, given to us because of God\u2019s great love for us.  In baptism we are made His sons and daughters.  The gift of supernatural life cost the life of His beloved Son.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The insight\u2014both emotional and intellectual\u2014into God\u2019s love became the moment of real conversion at the retreat.  The corresponding insight was just as powerfully offered: that we must respond to this love with the same kind of love.  Fr. Hugo made it clear that Jesus did not invite his disciples to live on the supernatural plane, he required them to do so.  Love demands it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Love is demanding.  All Christians are called to holiness.  His retreatants could no longer ignore the personal implications of this call.  Nor could they fail to acknowledge that the natural<\/em> comforts of the natural<\/em> world were often much more important to them than the supernatural<\/em> rewards of the supernatural<\/em> world.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For the Love of Jesus Christ<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The first night of the retreat I made a choice: to commit fully to it.  It was my first lesson in detachment.  After the introductory conference on Sunday evening, I stood in my echoing convent cell, and, sweating in the early warmth of the April evening, I packed all my books, magazines and stationery in my suitcase and shoved it under the bed.  Wooed from my security blanket, I entered the wilderness, alone, silent, unencumbered.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

During the rest of that week, as the air conditioner hummed in the library, I listened with a budding sense of destiny while Fr. Hugo spoke of the \u201ctwo ways,\u201d God\u2019s way and mankind\u2019s way.  These were the very roads through life that I had been trying to find as I had stumbled about. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I underwent a profound mental adjustment and hungered to hear more about this purpose in life.  How do I live a supernatural life and do what is impossible in the natural: pray deeply, love my enemy, turn the other cheek, be joyful in all circumstances, including, if need be, poverty?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Throughout the retreat I was reading the Gospels.  After each conference, I would take my Bible outside into the warm April air and sit and read the life and words of Jesus Christ.  Here, in Matthew, Luke, Mark and John, was the heart of the retreat\u2014the beloved, yet commanding, person of our Lord.  We were to come to know our Lord, and in coming to know him, we would love him. The retreat\u2019s purpose\u2014that of allowing us to move toward Christ\u2014was working in my life. As I read the Gospels, I felt an intense, interior excitement.  This was the truth.  \u201cWhy didn\u2019t I know you before, Jesus?\u201d I asked many times in the silence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One night I wrote in my journal, \u201cMy love for Christ our Savior grows.  I feel his love for me.  And I truly love him.  My heart knows I love him; it feels at home.  He is the Crown of Creation, and my heart knows this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The struggle to follow Christ was, I wrote, \u201cthe only struggle that ever struck me as worthwhile.  For money or fame is attractive, yes, but not the worth the trouble, is how I\u2019ve always felt.  And now I know why. Because my Creator and my Brother is calling me to my Home.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Later in the week, I wrote, \u201cSuddenly I know why God gave me an imagination and a love of literature.  He was preparing me for the understanding and love of Jesus\u2019 life and words.  To picture them, to see his suffering, to see him surrounded by the poor, the ugly, the diseased, the dirty, the foolish. To see his majesty, his heroism, his strength, his goodness. So often in my life I would read a story and I would become so enthralled that I would never want it to end. So entranced and caught up in the people, the plot, the clean, beauty of a good story, I would populate my own world with the characters and thoughts in the book.  And soon I would find myself wishing to \u201cclimb into\u201d the story, to be there.  How strange, I would think, to want to leave my life.  But now it isn\u2019t.  For here is a book which asks me to leave my life and \u201cclimb in,\u201d to \u201ctake on\u201d the character of the hero.  A book which pleads for involvement, and which will open its door to eternal involvement.  Such is the New Testament, the words of Christ, the Good News.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

On Wednesday afternoon, half way through the retreat, I knelt in silence before the Blessed Sacrament.  My Catholic identity awakened, I believed Jesus Christ was truly present there, Body, Blood, Soul and Divinity.  In a whisper, I said, \u201cI believe you are God.  I will follow you for the rest of my life.  My life is yours.\u201d  His Real Presence in the Blessed Sacrament was an embrace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Brilliance of the Retreat<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The brilliance of the retreat began with the conditions it set that allowed a retreatant to feel the love of God, and to realize and deepen his love for God. These conditions included both the silence and the teaching conferences. It followed up on this quietly profound spiritual and emotional experience with a further exposition of the divine mentality of Christianity; the divine reasoning, so to speak, behind Christianity.  Thus the retreat appealed to the mind, the spirit and the will; it evangelized fully.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The gnostic teachings of Sant Mat seemed utterly unsubstantial, irrational, and fraudulent compared to the heart and mind of Christianity that was presented to me in the retreat.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A brilliant presentation followed on the practical life of the Christian; Fr. Hugo termed this part of the retreat \u201capplied Christianity.\u201d Building on the love that we experienced in the meditative silence of the retreat, Fr. Hugo moved to the crux of Christianity\u2014the \u201cfolly of the Cross.\u201d  \u201cThe cross is thought to be one of the less pleasing parts of Christianity,\u201d Fr. Hugo said, \u201c But the cross is the most positive part of Christianity.  Because Jesus died out of love.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Two images that Jesus used became the focal point of the practicable way to follow Jesus.  These were \u201csowing\u201d and \u201cpruning.\u201d  Sowing is rooted in the idea of detachment from the love of worldly goods: the decision to let loose the goods of this world in order to clasp the love of God.  The retreat treated Jesus\u2019s parable of the farmer to show this.  We are like the farmer sowing wheat. The wheat is good, just as many of our possessions and activities are good. But the farmer must still throw away the wheat in order to gain a harvest, and the seed must die to bear fruit.  Just like Jesus, we must \u201cthrow away\u201d or \u201clay down\u201d the good things of our lives in order to gain something better: divine life.  \u201cIt is the law of life,\u201d Fr. Hugo said.  \u201cTo gain life, you must first lose it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

If sowing is our work, then pruning is God\u2019s work.  But its principal is the same: life lost, good things trimmed away, in order that new life can grow.  The concept of pruning illustrates the problem of the apparently unjust suffering that God\u2019s children undergo.  \u201cI am the vine, and my Father is the vine dresser,\u201d Jesus says.  \u201cEvery branch in me that bears no fruit, He takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit, He prunes it that it may bear more fruit.\u201d  The righteous are pruned. Though the shears hurt, the \u201cvine dresser\u201d acts out of perfect love.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our losses and afflictions become the very portal through which God\u2019s life enters the world, just as our Lord\u2019s passion and death became the portal for redemption.   For us to live according to these beliefs would bring about the death of the natural man just as the crucifixion did.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In sowing the good and in accepting the Vinedresser\u2019s pruning, we orient our every action to God. But only if<\/em> we do so, not because we think the goods <\/em>of the natural life are bad<\/em>, but because we love God enough to let go of even the good things of creation in order to have the highest good, God Himself.  <\/em>Thus, the retreat focused on the crucial element of the motive in every action.  God looks at the motive as well as the action. Love is the motive for Christian action, \u201cand all natural good words can be elevated to the divine order by doing them for the love of God,\u201d said Fr. Hugo.  \u201cEverything, no matter how small, everything except sin, can be consecrated to God.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Christian action performed without the supernatural motive of love is pharisaism. It is done in order to appear good or for some other ulterior natural gain. Without the motive of love\u2014a sacrificial love<\/em>–our religion falls into pious naturalism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Recognizing that we are still in the world, the Church has always taught her children the proper use of the necessary goods of the world. In this tradition, Fr. Hugo taught that if we use creation with the proper motive, it could become a ladder leading to God. The goods of creation are not ends in themselves, but are only to help us appreciate the attributes of our Divine Lover, God, who gave us creation out of love. The goods of creation are merely \u201csamples<\/em>\u201d of the eternal Good that awaits us in the Beatific Vision. \u201cWe learn who God is through these natural samples,\u201d said Fr. Hugo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

God wants us to use these \u201csamples\u201d and enjoy them.  But He wants us always to see beyond the pleasure to the Giver\u2014God Himself.  \u201cGod doesn\u2019t want the pleasure, He wants the love.\u201d   Though God\u2019s creatures give a taste of the Creator, like samples, they leave us unsatisfied. Only God satisfies.  If we get stuck in the samples, we will miss God.  \u201cAnd therefore,\u201d writes the author of The Imitation of Christ, <\/em>\u201call is too little and insufficient, whatever Thou bestows upon me, that is not Thyself; and whatever Thou reveals to me concerning Thyself, or promises, as long as I see Thee not, nor fully possess Thee: because indeed my heart cannot truly rest, nor be entirely contented till it rest in Thee, and transcend every gift and every creature.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At this point, Fr. Hugo drew on the teachings of St. John of the Cross, the Spanish mystical doctor of the Church.   St. John of the Cross taught detachment toward the samples of the world; St. Ignatius called the same mentality \u201cindifference.\u201d  Both stressed that it was essential for Christians to develop this attitude toward creation, as they battle, not against sin, but against their natural inclinations. Christians win the battle by practicing abstemiousness and mortification\u2014with each act thereof done for the sole purpose of disposing oneself to love God more.   \u201c[I]t is true that God is exalted by fixing the soul\u2019s rejoicing upon detachment from all things,\u201d writes St. John of the Cross. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Social Justice<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo always extended the Gospel message to its social implications.  In particular, the retreat emphasized the need for simplicity in Christian living.  It took seriously that most practical of Gospel truths: \u201cThe love of money is the root of all evil.\u201d  The comforts of life, Fr. Hugo taught, can stifle divine grace, deafening us to God\u2019s call.  He read from John Cardinal Newman\u2019s sermons, \u201cThe consciousness of wealth, if we are not careful, chokes up all the avenues of the soul through which the life and breath of heaven may come to us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In fact more Christians than not depend more on their possessions, incomes, and status than on the Lord\u2014and many would sit in the silence of the \u201cfamous retreat\u201d and, like the rich, young man, finally weigh the cost of following Jesus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fr. Hugo examined the way our possessions seduce us from a truly faith-filled, counter-cultural Christian life.  He would always extend the Gospel message to its social implications.  In this case, he denounced the way our un-Christian consumerism strains the world resources and destroys the lives of the poor.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like many of my Boomer peers, I had been drawn to the ideal of simplicity and been repelled by the consumerism of the G.I.\u2019s.  But Boomers, over time, had simply metamorphosed into another version of self-justified Babbitry, beginning with the Yuppie and moving onward into more complex realms of ostentatious self-indulgence.  In the end it was just too hard to turn away from affluence. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat showed why the Boomers failed so miserably in their pursuit of simplicity.  They had relied on natural abilities only, when, in fact, it is only with grace that one can persevere in detachment from wealth while living in a culture that is obsessed with acquisition.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat convinced me that \u201cprogressive\u201d concerns like working for social justice, opposing war and violence, and voluntarily choosing simplicity in the midst of a materialistic society are grounded in the Gospels and the teachings of the Church. But Father Hugo also spoke out against such liberal issues as abortion, contraception, radical feminism, disobedient religious, experimental liturgies and inclusive language.  He often paraphrased an observation of Dom Aelred Graham:  \u201cChristianity is neither liberal nor conservative; it is either superficial or radical.\u201d Considering the muddying of the waters caused among Catholics by the new American ideology of \u201cneo-conservative\/neo-liberalism\u201d that supports the idea of an American empire, this aphorism about Christian social morality was somewhat prophetic of the way Roman Catholicism would be the casualty in the hardcore partisan battles among Catholic thinkers at the turn of the millenium.  The Retreat took arms against the reductionism that is forced upon Roman Catholicism by Americanism, the Procrustean bed on which American ideologists, liberal and conservative, repeatedly dismember the Church. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Return to the World<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The retreat ended with Mass followed by a Sunday breakfast at which all the retreatants could once again return to the world of conversation.  After the meal, the retreatants would all be invited to make some comment about what they had experienced or learned at the retreat.  There were many tears of joy, many persons who could not finish their sentence because they were overwhelmed with the feeling of God\u2019s love that had penetrated into their lives during the retreat. I was one of them. (In four retreats\u2014and this was after seven days of silence, not seven days of Pentecostal revivalism\u2014I often saw these powerful emotions of gratitude and exultation\u2014very different from one arising from a \u201cwooden\u201d and \u201charsh\u201d retreat.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with my uncle some fifty years earlier at the close of his first retreat, I left the retreat joyful and changed.  Through the retreat, he wrote, and \u201cthrough the mercy of God, the mists were raised, and I stood amazed and breathless before a splendor that had been there all the time, but unsuspected by me, looking ahead into the long beautiful vista of the Christian life.  Now at last I could see.\u201d  I, too, returned home with a new vision of my life.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As with him, the unthinkable had happened to me.  In 1947 he had written about his turning from \u201cgood paganism\u201d that a \u201cfriend said of me, \u2018I can imagine it happening to anyone else in the world except to him.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friends\u2014heretofore, the center of gravity in my life\u2014also would be astonished. In addition, they would be put out that I had become a \u201cChristian.\u201d  In high school, we made fun of \u201cJesus freaks.\u201d  They could accept that I had \u201cexperienced\u201d the exotic and fashionable Indian mystical\/yoga religion, but Christianity was so \u201cright wing,\u201d conservative, and completely out-of-step.  And Catholicism? Forget it.  A reactionary, laughable religion. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

 As I walked into my parents\u2019 home that hot April weekend, I had the curious sensation of knowing I was profoundly changed inwardly, but not knowing how or what to change outwardly.  Here I was back in the pagan comfort of my parents\u2019 home.  We were just about to open the swimming pool for the summer.  I was surrounded by the usual ebb and flow of the house\u2014concern for good food, work, clothing, current opinion on any number of matters, fashions and fads, fun and pleasures, and all the rest of the material world.  The distractions and sensual allurements of this world piled high in this household as in most households in which the spiritual had long been relegated to the lowest priority.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So how would I fit into my old life with this new love and conviction?  On the other hand, how could I just walk away from it?  I couldn\u2019t see my way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt takes time,\u201d Fr. Hugo had forewarned us. \u201cGod gives us our lifetime\u2014and much grace to bring our conduct perfectly into line with our spiritual ideas.\u201d  He warned us not to overthrow our old life in one dramatic heave, but to change things slowly and prayerfully.   And so I went back to work at the paper and continued in my daily routine.  Only in my prayer life did I make major changes.  Out went the Sant Mat<\/em> books.  Forget the \u201cfive holy names.\u201d  I arose early, as always, and sat in mental prayer<\/em>, (a term I would use instead of meditation<\/em> that had come to imply transcendental meditation)<\/em>, but this time I used Scripture as my \u201cprayer word.\u201d  I continued to read the Bible.  And I began to go to Sunday Mass. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

As for the rest of the many and dramatic changes that the Lord required of me, if I could have seen five, ten, fifteen years into the future, I would have seen that He would lead me through them for many years to come. As John Cardinal Newman wrote, my heart would be prepared to change when it was \u201cploughed by\u2026keen grief and deep anxiety.\u201d  Then the word of God would begin to bear fruit.  The Lord would teach me using his favorite teaching program, sowing and pruning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Retreat and the Church<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Retreat addressed the main problem of the Catholic Church today.  That is, how can the Catholic faith survive in a prosperous culture.  Money has ever been the great corrupter of faith.  In the modern world, its corruption is massively pervasive. Ireland would cling fiercely to its Catholicism under the threat of persecution; but it would begin to give it up after receiving the financial benevolence of the European Union.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Church in the United States has shown that prosperity will corrupt the Church with a speed and thoroughness that persecution will not.  When the Church faced similar corruption in the 13th century, the two men who saved it, St. Francis and St. Dominic, were both mendicants.  The Retreat offers the essence of their teaching as it could be lived by the secular clergy and the regular laity.  It offers a remedy to save the Church from the corruption that affluence and consumerism bring, a remedy that is past due in the Church in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Furthermore, wrote Father Hugo, the Retreat \u201cunveiled a Catholic model for evangelization, which Pope Paul VI in 1975 would inaugurate as a world-wide program.  That program, however, has failed sadly and, although it should be an unceasing effort in the Church, is already all but forgotten, without doubt the major spiritual casualty of the post-Vatican II period.  Yet the failure was inevitable for want of the needed model. Evangelization, abandoned to others, had indeed become strange, shadowed by heresy, and therefore suspicious to Catholics\u2026Catholic evangelization starts rather from the intense and joyous realization that, \u2018from the foundation of the world\u2019 (Mt. 25:34), God\u2019s human creatures have been destined to be \u2018like Him,\u2019 to share in His nature by grace, to grow in holiness, to become His children in Christ, and to extend the Incarnation and multiply its fruits.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Retreat is a model for Catholic evangelization that has proved itself to be an extraordinarily effective tool of \u201cself-evangelization\u201d for thousands of priests and laity over 50 years. Why has it not been used by the Shepherds of the Church?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Father Hugo died in a car accident in 1985.  Until that time, he gave the retreats in Pittsburgh.  Two other priests who most recently gave the retreat have also died.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u00a9 Rosemary Hugo Fielding 2011<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Published in\u00a0Culture Wars October 2004By Rosemary Fielding In 1978, Rosemary (Hugo) Fielding, reared and (somewhat) educated as a Roman Catholic, was initiated into an Indian mystical sect called Ruhani Satsang or Sant Mat and became a disciple of Master Darshan Singh.  She was living at an ashram in Delhi at the time.  Master Darshan Singh… Read More »The Anti-assimilationist Retreat:How to Become Spiritually Inoculated Against Americanism<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"neve_meta_sidebar":"","neve_meta_container":"","neve_meta_enable_content_width":"","neve_meta_content_width":0,"neve_meta_title_alignment":"","neve_meta_author_avatar":"","neve_post_elements_order":"","neve_meta_disable_header":"","neve_meta_disable_footer":"","neve_meta_disable_title":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-322","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=322"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":323,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/322\/revisions\/323"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=322"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=322"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.ideasrealized.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=322"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}