Dear Jeanne:

I agree with you completely. It is totally inappropriate, unethical, and manipulative for the CHRP to instruct him participants to lie. In some ways this is perpetrating a fraud in the sense that the participants are not getting genuine information for which they were promised.

Even in a secular Encounter Groups participants are asked to be honest.

Any group that is taking that type of approach I would highly not recommend. But, the question now is whether this practice is performed and sanctioned by the CRHP national leadership? The reason that I ask that is because the problem may only be with the local leader. Since I do not know, I have to give the benefit of the doubt to the national organization.

As for the other symptoms of our modern age you described, it is truly sad. The actress Julie Andrews many years ago said that, "Some people regard discipline as a chore. For me, it is a kind of order that sets me free to fly." She is precisely correct. We cannot achieve God's will in our life unless we are obedient and discipled.

St. Timothy reminds us, "...for God did not give us a spirit of timidity but a spirit of power and love and self-control" (2 Tim 1:7).

St Timothy also reminds us of the slippery slop when ignore the truth, humility, and self-discipline:

...the law is not laid down for the just but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for murderers of fathers and murderers of mothers, for manslayers, immoral persons, sodomites, kidnapers, liars, perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound doctrine, in accordance with the glorious gospel of the blessed God with which I have been entrusted (1 Timothy 1:9-11) 

Jesus taught us that, "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."

I wish people would understand this basic principle. They run around in disobedience and sin because they think that's what brings them freedom, but it does not, it gives them the opposite — slavery, they become slaves to their passions.

The only way we can truly be free is to be obedient to our Lord and his Church. The people would rather do it their own way, which is a symptom of pride, arrogance, selfishness, and idolatry. Yes, idolatry. It is idolatry because it is putting itself above God, which is a violation of the First Commandment.

St. Teresa of Ávila said once, "The more we see failure in obedience, the stronger should be our suspicion of temptation."

 I suppose it is theoretically possible for someone to be disobedient to God and his Church and not fall onto a slippery slope of sin. In the vast majority of cases disobedience is only the tip of the iceberg of sin.

God Bless,
Bro. Ignatius Mary