Priest helps people ‘open their minds’
I feel I must diverge from Miss Hutton’s column (“Father Keating diverges”) in the Jan. 10 ETC.

She fails to mention a very important passage in the “Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation”: “The majority of the ‘great religions’ which have sought union with God in prayer have also pointed out ways to achieve it. Just as ‘the Catholic Church rejects nothing of what is true and holy in these religions,’ neither should these ways be rejected out of hand simply because they are not Christian. On the contrary, one can take from them what is useful so long as the Christian conception of prayer, its logic, and requirements are never obscured.”

Father Thomas Keating, Father William Menninger, and the late Father Basil Pendleton have done exactly what the letter suggests: they have revived the prayer tradition of the early Catholic Church and the Fathers and Mothers of the Desert, reconnecting it to similar forms used by other Eastern religions. This was done for the benefit of all Christians who are searching for more depth in their spiritual life.

I have met Father Keating personally and have seen firsthand the fruits of his work: through his teaching on centering prayer and lectio divina, people are discovering the interior life, learning to balance their need for action with their need for silence and contemplation, learning to open their minds to brothers and sisters of different denominations, and to respect other religious traditions, without losing their own faith and traditions but perceiving new beautiful aspects in them.

Pope John Paul II, in his apostolic letter Orientale Lumen, says: “Today we can cooperate in proclaiming the Kingdom or we can become the upholders of new divisions. May the Lord open our hearts, convert our minds, and inspire in us concrete, courageous steps, capable if necessary of breaking through clichés, easy resignation, or stalemate.”

This is my hope for Miss Hutton and for your readers.

—Ghislaine Miller Knoxville

St. Dominic parishioners must ‘go forward’
The emotional energy level in St. Dominic Parish is the highest I have seen in the 20 years we have lived here. The reason for it is that our diocese has announced the closing of St. Dominic School after more than 60 years of operation.

As one might guess, much of this emotional energy is negative. I would like to offer a couple of comments. The decision has been made. We cannot go back in time and change it. We can only go forward. The people of St. Dominic need to take this surge of emotional energy and move forward with a good plan for what to do next to aid our children in their religious and educational growth.

Maybe we should or maybe we should not have a Catholic school in Kingsport. There obviously are reasons the school is being closed. Each of those reasons should be examined and logically addressed. This needs to done positively, with an eye to the future, without casting any aspersions of guilt or blame.

A plan would need to be developed that would include the size of the school, how it would be funded, who would be the leaders and teachers, and a well-thought-out mission statement prior to presentation to the diocese. The diocese needs to be made aware of the planning, however, and its assistance should be requested when needed.

Since it seems we do not have an adequate number of St. Dominic Parish children available to sustain a viable school, we need to look at an outreach program for non-Catholic children. If in the end it appears our school is an impossible dream, even if there were a year off to renovate the physical plant and create a proper Catholic school environment, we should use our energy to create strong Catholic religious-education and faith-based youth programs that will endure.

I pray that we can all pull together, with proper dialogue, to build a dynamic Catholic religious-education program in whatever direction the Lord leads us.

—Duke Taraschke Kingsport

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