1 February 1984

Your Excellency:

We are writing to you this month with regard to some of the delinquent teachings of Brother Gabriel Moran, F.S.C. For the last two decades Brother Moran has been in the forefront of a revolutionary movement within the Mystical Body of Christ to found a new Church that is without classes, orders and offices.

As a vehicle for the realization of a classless, non-authoritative Church, Brother Moran has focussed his assault on the Catholic Church's teachings on revelation. According to Moran, revelation is not a deposit of truths which Christ entrusted to His Church to protect, interpret and teach. On the contrary, revelation is man's personal awareness of God's activity or presence; it is "experience-centered," to use Moran's words. God's revelation is reduced to a subjective experience of an "encounter" between God and man.

Your Excellency, the following statements of Moran on revelation are taken from his book, Theology of Revelation (New York: Herder and Herder, 1966):

* What I wish to oppose here ... is the supposition that revelation can be something outside man, something which can be passed down over the centuries, something which can be delivered to man by other men ... For the individual believer revelation must happen in the present experience of the community ... (p. 92).

* To think that revelation is encased in doctrines taught by the apostles and not changed since that time would be to deny that God gave himself to man. Not first in books or institutions, doctrines or rituals, in God's revelation to be met, but in people. Man is for man the way to God (p. 129).

* Revelation is not a thing, an object that can be placed somewhere and kept intact. Revelation is what happens between persons and exists only as a personal reality. If there is revelation anywhere in the Church today, it can only be in the conscious experience of people (p. 120).

* ... all revelation is a communion of intersubjectivity (p. 81).

* ... God takes hold of man by his indwelling Spirit and this results in the ontological reaction we call sanctifying grace and the beginning of a conscious presence to self of God's activity which we call revelation (p. 149).

It goes without saying, Your Excellency, that Brother Moran's Modernist view of revelation is at odds with the Magisterium's role vis-a-vis the Deposit of Faith. Since revelation is a subjective experience of God's presence in our souls, the Church neither possesses nor dispenses God's revelation. Again, here are statements of Brother Moran in Theology of Revelation:

* If ... revelation is the communion of the God-man and the cognitive aspect of man's life in Christ, neither the most primitive recording of events and words in Jesus' life, nor the formulas of holy Scripture, nor later Church teachings, are in themselves the revelation of God (p. 137).

* Despite some appearances to the contrary, the function of the hierarchy in the Church is not to possess and hand down the revelation, but to listen to, to guide, and to protect the faith of the whole Church in the living of revelation. The whole Church has from the beginning a human understanding of God's self-revelation. There is no need for the introduction of an external authority to provide understanding or add to the apostolic testimony. Within the believing Church and within the mystery of revelation, God's guidance has been promised to the entire people of God (p. 140).

* ... nor is the Church part of the formal motive of faith (p. 142).

* Almost all heresies have had this trait in common: the reduction of the mystery of revelation to the system of human logic. Against these heretical formalizations, the Church directs her dogmatic definitions not in order to give the "correct explanation" of the mystery, but to protect the mystery from the prying rationalism of men (p. 144).

Your Excellency, Brother Moran's assault on the teaching authority of the Church continues in his book, Design for Religion (New York: Herder and Herder, 1970):

* But because of the limited framework in which Christianity has grown up, it has always been exposed to the error of presuming that it had a Christian revelation, that is, a set of revealed truths which was the Church's possession (p. 40).

* The assumption that there is a collection of truths revealed by God that are dispensed by the Church is slowly disappearing. The corollary to that belief, namely, that within the Church the bishops are the dispensers of such truths, goes on unchecked. The power that is attributed to the Church "magisterium" is, to say the least, problematic. In any case, it bears little connection to what is today called teaching. Making the bishops the Church's teachers on the basis of Christ's commands to the apostles is little short of equivocation (p. 148).

* The supposition that the bishop is the teacher of his diocese and that religion teachers in the schools are an extension of the bishop is simply a fallacy that must be put to rest. This would be true even were the work of these teachers a catechizing of Christian faith (p. 149).

* The most obvious thing that a leader [bishop] must not do is to claim to have a special source of knowledge that can be used unilaterally to end questions. He would also be advised not to assume titles, dress and living style which establish differences from the community on the basis of external insignia rather than by competence, dedication and courage in carrying a common burden (p. 149).

Your Excellency, Moran hurls maledictions at the bishops and yet insists, "There is no personal attack here upon bishops nor attack upon the office of the episcopacy" (p. 148). This is akin to spitting in a person's face and then insisting that it's raining!

Brother Moran's rejection of revealed truths paves the way for what he calls the "ecumenical era of religion/Christianity" (Ibid., p. 38); the third stage of an Hegelian evolutionary process which synthesizes the previous two stages ("primitive religious" and "narrowly Christian," respectively) and culminates in an "adult," "up-to-date," and "true" Christianity. As its name implies, Moran's new "Christianity" amalgamates different religions without "ceasing" to be Christian. Moran writes:

It would be misleading to call this stage post-Christian since I am not positing that Christianity disappears or that one must cease to be a Christian in order to be ecumenically religious. On the contrary, I am suggesting that not only does Christianity continue but that the religious elements which Christianity helped to undercut and discredit re-emerge in a new synthesis (Ibid., p. 38).

Moreover, Moran thinks he can discard revealed truth and Christian revelation and retain truth and Christianity. He writes:

In the third stage revealed truths and Christian revelation no longer make sense but truth and Christianity by no means disappear. Most of all, the notion of revelation becomes richer and broader than ever before. Revelation is a concept that must be filled in from the phenomenology of human relationship and the comparison of religions. Both of these tasks have hardly been begun because neither can be taken seriously until the prior position of revealed truths is relinguished (Ibid., p. 41).

Your Grace, the criterion of truth is, according to Moran, human experience:

In the stage of ecumenical religion/Christianity the final norm of truth is human experience ...

People who demand that there be a higher norm of truth than human experience are asking for an idol ... His only other alternative is to follow his own human experience and to pursue it wherever it takes him (Ibid., pp. 44-45).

In his book, The New Community (Herder and Herder, 1970), Moran stresses that in order to become fully human and religious, one must be open to all experiences: one's experiences must be unbridled:

There is simply no framework into which people must be fitted. They have to discover their own sense of humanness and religiousness out of their own experience ...

Any category which seems to close off some area of human experience must be approached skeptically. People eventually do settle for one part of life rather than another but there is no reason why they should prematurely accept categories to define their life which exclude part of life (pp. 12,14-15).

When truth and falsehood, good and evil, are determined by the subjective, fickle desires of individuals, Pandora's box is opened. For example, let us take a look at some changes in the religious life which Moran calls for in his book The New Community:

* Poverty, chastity and obedience are "out-dated" and therefore to be done away with: "Whatever be the feelings of most religious, I think that a discussion within the framework of the three vows is no longer viable" (p. 13).

* Perfect religious communities consist of both men and women: "If a community has only men or only women, it is obviously lacking in the diversity needed to make it a perfect demonstration community" (pp. 71-72).

* A religious community consisting of both sexes has a homey atmosphere; a unisex community is, on the other hand, like a hotel. Moran explains: "As most religious communities now exist, the entrance of the 'other sex' is a problem. The fact that a girl bringing her date to dinner at a convent would be awkward only points up the need for changes in the structure of religious community. A person ought to be able to bring home his or her friends. This is not possible, of course, when the religious community is not a home but a hotel. In a hotel, one tries to control sex or at least to keep it out of sight. In a home sex is not considered a 'problem' but the normal texture of life" (p. 127).

A person should be able to marry his date and the religious community should sanction the marriage! Moran writes:

* One cannot deny that steady dating between young unmarried people tends toward marriage. If someone who is temporarily with the community is courting before marriage, the others in the community ought to be able to rejoice with the person. Even if someone who is supposedly in the order is considering marriage, the other community members ought to be able to accept and support this development. Why cannot a religious community support a variety of relationships and courtship instead of immediately putting a person out? (Moran's emphasis.)

What about the children? They do not pose a problem for Moran as long as the number of offspring is small; for "it is doubtful that a federation of communities can include many children without a breakup of the groups," comments a worried Moran (p. 131). He gives advice on how to avoid large families:

The number of children may decrease with people reproducing the same number as themselves rather than adding to the total population. This development seems likely in the so-called advanced countries where information and techniques of birth control are readily available (p.131).

Moran wants unbridled sexual experiences to be a part of religious life:

There is a long tradition which relates religion, community and sexuality. Those who would try to contribute to the religious life of the future must be ready to explore a new world of sexuality. What this will mean for the future is impossible to say at this time, but it does mean that no possible option should be prematurely closed (p.74).

Moran will settle for nothing less than a new Church: "The main issue before us, therefore, is no longer the reforming of the religious order but the refounding of the Catholic Church" (p. 2). Again Moran:

Roman Catholicism is somewhat precariously held together today with a belief in the necessity of a hierarchy and ordained priesthood. If that belief should all of a sudden crumple, a period of chaos could follow. The fact remains that no one is going to stand still, and advocates of change do not bear all the responsibility for the chaos which may come. Catholicism cannot operate as a closed system any more with the leaders enjoining the members to be obedient to holy mother church (pp. 133-134).

Your Excellency, Moran's program to found a new Church, for all practical purposes, is flourishing. One is struck by the fact that many of his ideas have taken root and are flowering in the Catholic Church. Ideas have consequences; rotten ideas, like rotten seeds, reap poisonous fruit if they are not rooted up. Since Moran was allowed to spread his plan for a new Church unimpeded by Church authorities, his two decades of assault on the Church has left its marks. Consider:

* His conception of revelation as the experience of God's presence in one's soul is widely accepted in the Church.

* Most Catholics agree with Moran that the Church does not possess and therefore cannot dispense God's revelation.

* Moran's criterion of truth, namely human experience, is a form of epistemological relativism. Relativism is the theory that truth varies from person to person; what is "true for me" is not necessarily "true for you." There is no objective truth, that is, propositions which correspond to reality and are true in themselves, regardless of how many people hold them.

Relativism is incompatible with belief in God Who is Truth Itself. If truth is dependent on irrational factors such as upbringing, economic conditions, psychological outlook, and other human experiences, and therefore varies from person to person, then there can be no Person Who is "the Way, the Truth, and the Life."

Although relativism cannot be squared with the Catholic Faith, many Catholics essay a reconciliation.

But one cannot be a true Catholic and a true relativist. If a person prefers relativism to Catholicism, he ends up like Moran: scoffing at the Catholic belief that the Catholic Church is the "pillar and ground of the truth" (I Tim. 3:15), and the possessor of God's revelation.

Moran's fellow revolutionaries have introduced various forms of sexual experience into the Church: seminarians date both men and women; homosexuals are everywhere; girls dance during Mass; women "co-celebrate" Mass with Catholic priests—and so on ad nauseam.

Your Excellency, we have quoted at length from three of Gabriel Moran's books to prove beyond a doubt that he is both a heretic and a schismatic. Although he has separated himself from the Church by his very words, Church officials should recall the words of Saint Paul to the bishop of Ephesus, Timothy, urging him to act relentlessly against false teachers who preach separation from the Church:

I charge thee, in the sight of God and Christ Jesus, Who will judge the living and the dead by His coming, by His kingdom: preach the word: be urgent in season, out of season; reprove, entreat, rebuke with all patience and teaching. For there will come a time when they will not endure the sound doctrine; but having itching ears will heap up to themselves teachers according to their own lusts, and they will turn away their hearing from the truth and turn aside rather to fables (II Tim. 4:1-4).

We remain your obedient servants,

Emanuel Valenza,
on behalf of The Editors

The Most Reverend Pio Laghi
The Apostolic Delegation
3339 Massachusetts Avenue, N.W.
Washington, D.C. 20008