(Article changed on February 20, 2013 at 19:43)
(Article changed on February 18, 2013 at 19:31)
Duluth, Minnesota (OpEdNews) February 18, 2013: On March 1, 2013, Orbis Book is scheduled to release the American edition of the book titled ANTHONY DE MELLO: THE HAPPY WANDERER: A TRIBUTE TO MY BROTHER, written by Bill de Mello, who now lives in Australia, and edited by Clifford W. DeSilva, a former Jesuit in India. The book was originally published in
The Roman Catholic spiritual writer Thomas Merton (1915-1968) died in
But the death of Anthony ("Tony") de Mello (1931-1987), the popular Jesuit spiritual director from
At the time of his sudden death, Tony was a rising star in Roman Catholic spirituality. Jesuit priests and other Catholics in religious orders, including a certain number of Catholic women religious, flocked to Tony's spirituality center in Poona, India, to take part in his experimental group-counseling retreats, which were conducted something like encounter groups, but only for Catholics in religious orders.
In addition to conducting his famous experimental group-counseling retreats that attracted Catholics from different countries, Tony was popular on the lecture circuit in Catholic circles, giving spirituality conferences in different countries, including the
In 1964, Tony had received his Master's degree in pastoral counseling from Loyola University Chicago. Carl Rogers and Fritz Perls were major figures influencing Tony's thought. However, in such posthumously published books as AWARENESS (Image, 1992, the edited transcription of one of his spirituality conferences), REDISCOVERING LIFE (Image, 2012, the edited transcription of another one of his spirituality conferences), and THE WAY TO LOVE (reissued Image, 2012, a coherent and cogent series of meditations that he wrote but did not publish in his lifetime), Tony sounds like Albert Ellis on steroids.
But Tony's thought that sounds like Albert Ellis on steroids was probably most deeply influenced by the thought of the spiritual guide from India, Jiddu Krishnamurti and the kind of meditation that Krishnamurti advocated -- which resembles Buddhist meditation, even though Krishnamurti himself was not a Buddhist. In any event, like Krishnamurti, Tony also sounds like a Buddhist, even though he was not a Buddhist.
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