All the materials (video and print) are available online free of charge at /catholic-faith-course. We do not have to know where all the rocks are we just have to know where the deep water is.įather Hawkswell is again teaching The Catholic Faith in Plain English. We are engaged in “dire combat with the powers of evil,” says the Catechism. Congregations are once again reciting it after Mass in many parishes. New Age claims to be “spiritual.” However, Catholics know that not all spirits are good: there exist “evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls,” as the Church has said for over a century in the Prayer to St. In a 2009 statement, the US bishops’ Committee on Doctrine warned that trusting Reiki means accepting, at least implicitly, “central elements of the worldview that undergirds” it, which “belong neither to Christian faith nor to natural science.” His experience, he says, shows that Christians who practise Buddhist meditation “are flirting with heresy” and that “all too often, preferring their own opinion to orthodoxy, they leave the Christian faith.”įor another example, take “holistic” healing practices, such as Reiki. There are the Rosary, the Stations of the Cross, the Divine Office, daily Mass,” and the Catholic Eastern-rite ‘Jesus Prayer.’” Francis de Sales’ Introduction to the Devout Life – two of my favourites. “There is a long tradition of advice for Christian meditation, such as Thomas … Kempis’ Imitation of Christ and St. “Why should a Christian even consider Buddhist meditation?” Williams asks. (The Vatican’s 1989 document on Christian meditation contains similar warnings.) Second, its principles and presuppositions, assumed and expressed in “meditation circles,” can come to replace the truth of Christianity. First, its techniques, called “life-strategies,” can come to replace true Christian prayer. Paul Williams, who became a Catholic in 2000 after 20 years of practising and teaching Tibetan Buddhism, warns of two dangers. “It’s as simple as that.”Ī Catholic who seeks “spirituality” outside the Catholic Church is like the unfaithful wife in the Book of Hosea, who seeks what other men can offer.įor example, take Buddhist meditation. “When you start dabbling in the New Age, you break the First Commandment,” says Moira Noonan, a serious New Age teacher and practitioner for over 20 years before she returned to the Church. “Idolatry remains a constant temptation.” People whose understanding of the Catholic faith is weak “mistakenly hold” that Catholicism “does not inspire a profound spirituality, and so they seek elsewhere,” says the Vatican’s 2003 document on New Age. Therefore, anyone “desiring some vision or revelation would be guilty not only of foolish behaviour, but also of offending, by not fixing his eyes entirely upon Christ and by living with the desire for some other novelty.” He commanded that Israelites who practised them be put to death.Ĭhrist is God’s “one, perfect, and unsurpassable Word,” says the Catechism, and “it is through Catholic Church alone, which is the universal help toward salvation, that the fullness of the means of salvation can be obtained.” In the Book of Deuteronomy, God explicitly forbade such “abominations.” Because of them, he drove the original inhabitants out of the Promised Land. The First Commandment, therefore, forbids superstition (attributing magical importance to rituals or things, even sacramentals, like rosaries or candles) magic or sorcery (attempting to harness occult powers and gain supernatural power over others, for either good or evil) divination (having recourse to Satan or demons or conjuring up the dead) and any practice falsely supposed to “unveil” the future (astrology, horoscopes, Ouija boards, tarot cards, omens, lots, charms, mediums, clairvoyance, fortune-telling, palm-reading, psychic reading, etc.). It also includes rejecting or denying God’s “unique lordship” by “divinizing” something else: attributing to another thing or person powers that are God’s alone. Idolatry is not just “false pagan worship,” says the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The last seven, which most people accept, dictate our behaviour toward our neighbours the first three, which many people ignore, dictate our behaviour toward God.įirst, we must worship not idols, but God alone, having “no other gods” than him. This Sunday’s First Reading lists the Ten Commandments.
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