In new book, Richard Rohr says the 'universal Christ' changes everything

Along a quiet stretch of Five Points Road in the oldest neighborhood in New Mexico's largest city, just down the block from the methadone clinic and a house Catholic Workers share with homeless folks, lives one of the world's most famous modern mystics — an infectiously jovial, flannel-plaid-wearing Franciscan friar, with a childlike joy for telling the world that Jesus Christ loves everyone and is in everything.

It's a simple, if radical, idea. And one that some critics of Richard Rohr, the 76-year-old Franciscan who founded the Center for Action and Contemplation in Albuquerque 32 years ago, have described as "dangerous" and even "heretical."

Rohr, one of the most influential Christian contemplatives of the last century, is unfazed by such critiques of what he believes is the theological foundation for a "reformation of the Christian faith." He unpacks this idea, defending it theologically, historically and scripturally, in his new book, "The Universal Christ: How a Forgotten Reality Can Change Everything We See, Hope For, and Believe."

"This is not heresy, universalism, or a cheap version of Unitarianism," Rohr writes. "This is the Cosmic Christ, who always was, who became incarnate in time, and who is still being revealed."