You can read it in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

We reproduce excerpts of conversations between Catholics and Evangelicals from the book “Talking with my evangelical friends”, very useful in helping our fellow Christians understand the Catholic faith.

Michael: I see the reason why you believe that the Pope is the successor of the apostle Peter, but what about the titles that are given to him, that in some case correspond only to God?

Joseph: Like what?

Michael: For example, the one of the “Holy Father”, Doesn’t Jesus clearly say in the gospel “Call none your father upon earth; for one is your father, who is in heaven.” (Matt 23,9)

Pauline: They really don’t do that only with the Pope, but with every priest, whom they call “Father”.

Joseph: Ok, let’s take one step at a time. In the first place, I imagine that you agree with giving the name of “saint” to him, because this is the way in which the Bible calls all members of the Church that is the body of Christ[1]. Therefore, if the Christians can be called “saints”, I see no reason why the Pope doesn’t have this right.

Michael: Ok, but you also call him “father”.

Joseph: We’ll get there, but first let me ask: Do you think that this text can be interpreted in an absolutely literal way? After all, it says “CallNONE your father upon earth”. Does it apply in every sense?

Pauline: We know that it doesn’t, because if this was right, we couldn’t call father to our biological parents. In my opinion, Jesus wasn’t forbidding that, but he was using that term in a spiritual sense”, just like the Catholics use it to refer to their priest.

Joseph: On the other hand, we Catholics don’t believe that this interpretation is viable or consistent with the rest of the New Testament.

Michael: Why?

Joseph: Because if it was in that way, even the apostles violated that command, because they call so many times “father” to other men with a spiritual meaning, and they did even with themselves. Remember, for example, how Jesus calls Abraham “our father”. (Luke 16,24.30; John 8,56, etc.), or remember…

Pauline: Heee… wait… in the New Testament, he calls Abraham “father” not in a spiritual sense, but in a carnal sense, as an ancestor of the Jews according to the flesh, in a similar way to which we call the biological fathers. St. Paul clarifies this when he says: “What shall we say then that Abraham hath found, who is our father according to the flesh?” (Rom 4,1)

Joseph: But he doesn’t do that only in that sense, but also in a spiritual sense, as the father of the believers of the faith. Because of that, St. Paul also says: “And he received the sign of circumcision, a seal of the justice of the faith which he had, being uncircumcised: that he might beTHE FATHER OF ALL THEM THAT BELEIVE, being uncircumcised: that unto them also it may be reputed to justice: And he might be the father of circumcision; not to them only that are of the circumcision, but to them also that follow the steps of the faith that is in the uncircumcision of our father.” (Rom 4,11-12)

St. Paul even calls himself “spiritual father” when he says: “For if you have ten thousand instructors in Christ, yet not many fathers. For in Christ Jesus, by the gospel, I have begotten you.” (1 Cor 4,15) or when he says: “I beseech thee for my son, whom I have begotten in my bands, Onesimus.” (Phlm 1,10)[2]

Let’s see the following text where St. John writes to the faithful and believers of the Church:

“I write unto you, babes, because you have known the Father. I write unto you, young men, because you are strong, and the word of God abideth in you, and you have overcome the wicked one.” (1 John 2,14)

So we can ask, who was St. John referring to when he greeted the “fathers”? It doesn’t make sense that he was referring to the biological fathers because he had begun by greeting his not biological “children”, so, it’s very likely that when he said the “fathers”, he was referring to the ones who, like him, were spiritual fathers of the faithful (bishops and presbyters of the Church).

Michael: Joseph, but then who forbids Jesus to be called father, if they’re not the leaders of the Church?

Joseph: The thing is that Jesus was using a literary figure known as “hyperbole”, which is an intentional exaggeration with the aim of putting an idea or an image that the listener couldn’t forget. In the gospel, we find so many hyperboles in the preaching: “And if thy right eye scandalize thee, pluck it out and cast it from thee. For it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than thy whole body be cast into hell. And if thy right hand scandalize thee, cut it off, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body go into hell.” (Matt 5,29-30); “If any man come to me, and hate not his father and mother and wife and children and brethren and sisters, yea and his own life also, he cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14,26). Using this hyperbole, he was trying to teach the disciples a lesson. In the Church, those who take positions of authority must do it for service, unlike the Pharisees that were searching the positions of authority to receive honors and praises. If we read the full text, we’ll see how the context confirms it: 

“Then Jesus spoke to the multitudes and to his disciples, saying: The scribes and the Pharisees have sitten on the chair of Moses. All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you, observe and do: but according to their works do ye not. For they say, and do not. For they bind heavy and insupportable burdens and lay them on men’s shoulders: but with a finger of their own they will not move them. And all their works they do for to be seen of men. For they make their phylacteries broad and enlarge their fringes. And they love the first places at feasts and the first chairs in the synagogues, and salutations in the market place, and to be called by men, Rabbi. But be not you called Rabbi. For one is your master: and all you are brethren. And call none your father upon earth; for one is your father, who is in heaven. Neither be ye called masters: for one is your master, Christ. He that is the greatest among you shall be your servant. And whosoever shall exalt himself shall be humbled: and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted.” (Matt 23,1-12)

Note that he doesn’t prohibit only calling “father” but also “rabbi” or “teacher”, even when being a “teacher” is one of the ministries of the Church (1 Cor 12,28-29). If we think about it in this way, they don’t have to call their pastor “shepherd”, because there is just one that is the shepherd of our souls: Jesus Christ. In particular, I’m pretty sure, like the early Christians, that it wasn’t a literal prohibition to use this word, but he wanted us to avoid the temptation of wanting to exercise the authority for personal glory and not for the glory of God.NOTES

[1] The Bible calls “saints” to every member of the Church (Matt 27,52; Acts 9,13.32.41; 26,10; Rom 1,7; 8,27; 12;13; 15;25.26.31; 16,2.15; 1 Cor 1,2; 6,1.2; 7,14; 14,33; etc.), even to the prophets (Acts 3,21) and the angels (Matt 25,31; Mark 8,38).In the Catholic Church, the term “saint” is used sometimes with this meaning, and in other times it is used to refer to the canonized saints.The evangelical brothers generally believe that when the Catholic uses the word saint, they mean the canonized saints.

[2] There are so many texts of the gospel where the apostles take the role of spiritual father (1 Pet 5,13;  1 John 2,1.12.18.28; 3,7; etc.)

You can read it in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

“You will be able to tell them by their fruits. Can people pick grapes from thorns, or figs from thistles? In the same way, a sound tree produces good fruit but a rotten tree bad fruit. A sound tree cannot bear bad fruit, nor a rotten tree bear good fruit”. Mathew 7, 16-18

Attached an updated summary of the social work of the Catholic Church in the world, taken from the statistical information of the church in 2012 published by Agenzia Fidez.

The Catholic Church has in the world:

71.482 Nursery Schools with 6.720.543 attendants.

94.411 primary schools with 31.939.415 students.

47.777 secondary institutes with 18.952.976 students.

College educate 2.494.111 students and Catholic Universities 3.039.684 students.

5.435 HOSPITALS with a major presence in America (1701) and Africa (1.284).

17.524 HEALTH CLINICS, with major presence in Africa (5.398), America (5.211) and Asia (3.828).

567 LEPROSARIUM distributed mainly in Asia (281) and Africa (211).

15.784 LONG TERM AND ELDERLY HOUSE CARE HOMES for the elders, chronic – sick people and disabled people, distributed majorly in Europe (8.271) and America (3.913);

10.534 ORPHANAGES (+652), from this, almost one third are in Asia (3.911);

11.592 Nursery

15.008 MARRIAGE COUNSELING distributed in most part of America (6.230) and Europe (5.819)

40.671 EDUCATION CENTERS, or social re-education and 4 institutions of other kinds.

According to FIAMC (the “international” of Catholic medical doctor, with 30.000 professionals in 54 countries), one out of 4 HIV patients of the world is attended by Catholic Church. (25%). The 9.4% of people serviced, visit ecclesial organizations and 15.1% visit Catholic NGO. According to PONTIFICIUM CONSILIUM PRO VALETUDINIS ADMINISTRIS, the Catholic Church provides attention to 25% of suffering using only the 20% of the resources destined to this illness in the whole world. Besides, these resources are collected in the Church mostly from private and charity organizations, not governments. In poor countries, where medicine is not a business, the Catholic Church service 60% of HIV patients.

The Catholic Church represents the greatest resistance, in respect to laws that are against life and family, such as abortion, homosexual marriage, and euthanasia. Besides, the pro-life Catholic movements save thousands of lives annually, by convincing women to correct when visiting abortion facilities to abort.

From catholicapologetics.info

“It must be confessed that these latter days have witnessed a notable increase in the number of the enemies of the cross of Christ, who by acts entirely new and full of deceit, are striving to destroy the vital energy of the Church, and as far as in then lies, utterly to subvert the very Kingdom of Christ.”
(Pope Pius X, Pascendi 1907).

Modernism is the most dangerous of all heresies because it destroys any basis for belief in a supernatural world, whereas previous heresies had restricted themselves to denying one or more teachings of the Catholic faith.

St. Pius X described Modernism as “the synthesis of all heresies” as it seeks to “lay the axe not to the branches and shoots (of the Catholic Church) but to the very root”, that is, to the faith and “its deepest fibbers, and once they have struck the axe “they (modernists) proceed to diffuse poison throughout the whole tree, so that there is no part of the Catholic truth which they leave untouched” (Pascendi). Modernism poses a threat to our faith, and hence to our hope of salvation.

It would not be false to call the Modernists the worst enemies of the Church for it is not from without but from within that they plot the destruction of the Church; by mingling in themselves rationalism and Catholicism, which is used to subtly seduce the ignorant in the name of “progress”.

Ever since the days of Pope Pius X, we have witnessed this struggle between two camps, that of Tradition, in which the deposit of the faith is preserved and handed over to future generations and that of the Modernists, which marches in the name of progress to destroy all that the Church holds to be sacred, while destroying not only the deposit of the faith but even its very foundations, that is the notion of faith itself.

This heresy of Modernism has not changed its nature and approach till the present day but has only become more bold and daring as it has now affected the whole Catholic Church to so large an extent that it has been embraced by almost the entire Catholic hierarchy;  thus  it is important that we learn to recognise it for what it really is.

The History of Modernism

The Church first took note of the heresy of Modernism and defined it on September 26, 1835 when condemning the approach of certain priests and professors in German universities, who were using the Modern Philosophy of Descartes, Kant and Hegel to reinterpret the Articles of Faith. It was said that “They are profaning their teaching office and are adulterating the sacred Deposit of Faith.”

Nevertheless in its early days Modernism began as and ideology which was taken up by a number of rationalists, spreading itself into the bosom of the Church at around the end of the 19th Century. It’s aim was a revolutionary transmutation of Catholic dogma through the application of historical criticism, by subtly influencing the ignorant to their cause by means of vague well sounding terms (i.e. “progress”, “Modern”, “New insight”, “liberty” etc.). 

Although from the very outset of its introduction into the faith it was condemned by the Church in the Holy Office’s decree of Lamentabili, and various other condemnation which followed it, nevertheless it continue to flourish because of its vague and ambiguous nature.

It was during the pontificate of St. Pius X that a lay intellectual and politician, Antonio Fogazzaro, described the road to reform the Church and Papacy in his novel Il Santo. Speaking about the Modernist groups who continued their work despite the condemnations, Fogazzaro affirmed: “We are a good number of Catholics both inside and outside of Italy, ecclesiastics and laymen, who desire a reform in the Church. We want a reform without rebellion, carried out by the legitimate authority. We want reforms in religious instruction, reforms in the liturgy . . . and reforms also in the supreme government of the Church. In order to achieve that, we need to create a public opinion that will induce the authorities to act according to our opinions, even if this takes 20, 30, or 50 years.” – Antonio Fogazzaro, II santo (Milan, 1907), p. 38.

Many of the forerunners of Modernism were rationalists, who made their reason to be the ultimate standard by which they will or will not believe regardless of the facts presented. This itself stemmed from Protestantism which sought to liberate man from God and make him independent to such a degree that his salvation was self determined by simply believing in ones own justification or by making himself the arbiter of what the bible does or does not mean.

In the nineteenth century rationalist and liberal Protestant historians had also began to exert their influence in the hope of eliminating what was known as orthodox (traditional) Christianity.

Sometime in the 1930s, Progressivism came to light. This was but an artful name to designate a type of Modernism that was more prudent, subtler, and a more sophistic movement that dodged those strong condemnations of Modernism. It was more complete and encompassing in some aspects as it set forth a more extensive vision of man, the universe, and the Church.

Thus during the short span of twenty years (1890 – 1910) the Church suffered a convulsion, which she has never really emerged from. However to determine the precise origin of Modernism is not as such possible in such a minor study, yet nevertheless we may say for the sake of brevity that it was the fruits of a union between an erroneous philosophy and a rationalistic and Liberal theology.

In 1958 the election of John XXIII was the landmark for the reform of the Church and the Papacy so long desired by the modernists. Vatican II, which was announced on January 25, 1959, would take this reform much further.

The Modernist dream of changing the ecclesiastical institution and eventually obtaining a Pope favourable to a revolution in the Mystical Body of Christ accords with the previously announced aims of Freemasonry in relation to the Church (cf. The Permanent Instruction of the Alta Vendita (Rockford: TAN, 1999), pp. 6-10). This dream was to be realised in the pontificate of Pope John XXIII (“the transitional Pope”) and his immediate successors. 

Some Well Known Modernists

 Joseph Renan (1823 – 1892) was one such character. He had been a Catholic seminarian but came to doubt the truth of Christianity after studying the writings of the German critics. He did as much as anyone to destroy belief in Christ’s divinity with his book “the life of Christ”. He had a considerable influence upon Abbe Alfred Loisy a prominent leader among the Modernists.

Abbey Loisy was born in 1857 and died in 1940. His express ambition was to become a Father of the church; but he ended up as the Father of Modernism, one of the most dangerous adversaries the Church has ever seen.

Loisy formed the opinion that in order to retain her credibility in the approaching 20th Century, the Church must make a radical revision of her traditional teaching in order to accommodate this teaching to the findings of modern scholarship. What is interesting about loisy’s views as that like those of George Tyrrell (whom I shall shortly explain) they were to become the cornerstones from which modernism would emerge into the modern world and eventually into the Church . Loisy in his book “The Gospel and the Church” made a distinction between faith and history, and between the Christ of faith and the Christ of History. St. Pius X had no doubts about the implications of this Modernist thesis in which “we have a twofold Christ . . a Christ who has lived at a given time and place , and a Christ who has never lived outside the pious meditations of the believer” (Pascendi). 

Finally in 1906 Loisy abandoned his priestly function and was formally excommunicated in 1908 after having five of his books placed on the index. He devoted the remained of his life (from 1909 -1930)to justifying Modernism.

Another among the names of influential Modernists is that of George Tyrrell who was born to a Protestant family in Ireland in 1861. He eventually moved to England and became a Catholic in 1879. After Joining the Jesuits he was ordained in 1891. He was led into Modernism under the influence of Baron von Hugel in 1897. Tyrrell spent much of his effort in writing works in defence and explanation of the modernist thesis although he often did this under pseudonyms to save himself from being condemned. Yet in 1906 he was expelled from the Society of Jesus and was excommunicated in the following year.

Before his death, Tyrell realised that the battle had been lost, yet he was still hopeful. In a letter dated 24 August 1908 he wrote to a friend of his “thanks to a silent and secret preparation we shall have won a much greater proportion of the army of the Church to the cause of liberty”. Today it seems these were have indeed come true!

With such persons working for the destruction of the Church by means of a positive revolution which wound set into effect the promotion and eventual expectation of the modernist doctrine, it is not hard to see why another well Known Modernist such as Maurice Blondel could write (in 1903) already at the beginning of the 20th Century ” With every day that passes, the conflict between tendencies which set Catholic against Catholic in ever order -Social, political, philosophical – is revealed as sharper and more general. One could almost say that there are now two quite incompatible “Catholic mentalities”.

Thus by the end of the 20th Century Modernism will have succeeded in claiming a great victory with the (at least implicit) approval of its doctrine at the Second Vatican Council at already by this time (1960’s) a great number of the Catholic hierarchy had been well imbued with the Modernist  spirit and mindset which would help set into effect the almost unstoppable chain reaction of deception that we now see among the Catholic hierarchy who no longer espouse the principles of Catholic doctrine but rather the  principles of the French revolution “Liberty, equality, and fraternity” which is especially made evident in the Declarations Dignitatis Humanae, Lumen Gentium , Gaudium et Spes and Religious Liberty of the Second Vatican Council.

Such persons were followed by well know Catholic figures such as Henri de Lubac, Telhard de Chardin, Karl Rahner who lead the devastation of Modernism into the theological field which has devastated the Catholic faith ever since.

Pope Pius X reduces the cause of Modernism to Pride, Curiosity and Ignorance for “these very Modernists who seek to be esteemed as Doctors of the Church, who speak so loftily of modern philosophy and show such contempt for scholasticism, have embraced the one with all its false glamour, precisely because of their ignorance” -8th, Sept. 1907

This is, in brief, the philosophical & theological background of Modernism. Agnosticism represents its negative aspect, while its positive aspect is the principle of vital immanence.  The errors of Modernism thus stem from their erroneous principles as St. Thomas well put it “A small error in principles leads to a grave error in ones conclusion”.

      “Let no one lead you astray with empty words; for because of these things the wrath of God comes upon the children of disobedience. Do not, then, become partakers with them. For you were once darkness, but now you are the light in the lord. Walk, then, as children of light, testing what is well pleasing to God; and have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather expose them”. – Ephesians 5:6-11

The Principles of Modernism 

Modernists place the foundation of religious philosophy in that doctrine which is commonly called agnosticism. According to this teaching human reason is confined entirely within the field of phenomena, that is to say to things that appear, and it has no power to overstep these limits. Hence for the Modernist the intellect is incapable of recognising Gods existence. 

The core of the Modernist Principles is found in a triple thesis; the denial of the supernatural as an object of certain knowledge; an exclusive immanence of the Divine and of revelation reducing the Church to a simple, social, civilising, phenomenon; and a total emancipation of scientific research from Church dogma which would allow the continued assertion of faith in dogma, with its contradiction on the historical level.

Modernism and Pantheism

Modernism holds to some views that subscribe to the pantheistic notion of God.  That is just as pantheism identifies God with the universe (material creation). This is like the immanent God of the Modernists who has no existence independent of the material universe, as St. Pius X affirms in his Encyclical Pascendi (8 Sept. 1907) ” the doctrine of immanence in the Modernist acceptation holds and professes that every phenomenon of conscience proceeds from man as man. The rigorous conclusion from this is the identity of man with God, which means pantheism”.

St. Pius X further warned, “By how many roads Modernism leads to atheism and to the annihilation of all religion. The error of Protestantism made the first step on this path; that of Modernism makes the second; Atheism makes the next”.

Modernists and ambiguity

Modernists have a great distaste for clarity and so they often make use of orthodox Catholic terminology to distort the truth of things and to bolster their cause of deception in which it seems at times they have even deceived the greatest of intellectuals and the most devout of Catholics. It would thus be wrong to imagine that everything in the writing of the Modernists was unorthodox. Much of what they often write often sounds perfectly sound, with much ambiguity. A statement like “Our faith is based upon the Resurrection of Jesus Christ” could mean His physical (Historical) Resurrection as the Church teaches, or simply a symbolic story which was invented by the first Christians to promote faith in Christ who rose only in the mind of his believers. For this reason Pope Pius X warned ” In their books one finds some things which might well be approved by a Catholic but on turning over the page one is confronted by other things which might well have been dictated by a rationalist.  When they write history they make no mention of the divinity of Christ, but when they are in the pulpit they profess it clearly; again, when they are dealing with history they take no account of the Fathers and the Councils, but when they catechise the people, they cite them respectfully” – Pascendi

Although I have previously asserted that this Heresy of Modernism has gained a footing in the Catholic Church, I do not affirm on this account that they (the Modernist hierarchy) have made a clear list of propositions that they have explicitly affirmed. Modernism does not operate in this way; it’s technique is infiltration “without order and systematic arrangement, in a scattered and disjointed manner” wrote Pope Pius X (Pascendi).

On this same score Fr. Amerio Romano in his book “Iota Unum”, points out the various changes in the language used by the Modernist (Neo-Modernist) theologians since the second Vatican Council which had opened the door to the modernist revolution in the Church.

A modernist will often recite the articles of the Creed using the same words as the Church prescribes but interprets them with his own lights or according to the current progressive understanding thus giving a new meaning the ancient terms.

Modernism – Dogma, faith, Revelation & God

Modernists hold Catholic dogma (teaching) to be nothing but a common consciousness of the believers or as their “collective conscience”. Thus prompted by this “common consciousness” the believers came together in a society to formulate and systematise its beliefs. This according to Modernism this is how the Magisterium of the Church originated. Its function is to interpret and formulate whatever is found by the collective conscience to be helpful to the life of the Church at any given period. Thus the faith and the Magisterium originated in the people. Their collective conscience is the ultimate authority for what Christians should believe. Thus the Magisterium is made subservient to the people and is made to bow down to the popular ideas of the day. Thus for the Modernist God is not transcendent; He is not “out there” but “totally within”. As St. Pius X explained in Pascendi, the Modernist God was no more than a symbol and that “the personality of God will become a matter of doubt and the gate will be opened to pantheism”.

The modernist philosophers who challenge all rational proof of the existence of God as the First Cause of everything in existence, both material and spiritual fall victims to a scientific atheism. For these, God is something emanating from man’s subconscious. This false “faith” of theirs, based as it is on mere sentiment or feelings, is expressed in ever-changing formulae, since these have no other objective than that of maintaining or of warming up over and over again a sentimental life, a life of the heart which is, by definition, irrational. For these people, religion is a form of life and, as such, cannot constitute an adherence to an exterior object. Their “faith” proceeds from man; known as religious immanence, vital immanence. Such a system of “belief” cannot possibly be viewed as an unmistakably clear knowledge above all scientific knowledge; on the contrary, science (which modernists have reduced to the level of measurable things, to impose its control on all human judgement) affirms the objectivity of reality.

The Modernists regard revelation as a purely natural emergence of religious knowledge from a natural sense known as the “religious sense”. Thus it affirms the erroneous principle of naturalism. For this reason do Modernists place the Catholic faith on the same footing as other religions as all organised religions are valid expressions (more or less perfect) of the same emerging consciousness. Thus for the Modernist the Catholic Church is not the one authentic mediator of revealed truth.

As St. Pius X says “The Sacred Books may be described (by the Modernists) as a summary of experiences, not indeed of the kind that may now and again come to anybody, but those extraordinary and striking experiences which are the possession of every religion” and thus no place is left for Christ or His Church for grace or for anything that is above and beyond nature.

The modernist sees the objective content of the faith to which Catholics have always held to as mere mythology with the distinction between nature and grace being a mere scholastic invention, like the term transubstantiation. Thus in such a system doctrine has no permanent value in a changing world where people will express their experience of faith in different ways.

Modernism and Evolution

St. Pius X stated that the principle doctrine of the Modernists was that of evolution “to the laws of evolution everything is subject under penalty of death – dogma, Church worship, the books we revere as sacred, even the faithitself” (Pascendi). The modernist maintain that there is ever in the Church a constant struggle between the conservative and the progressive elements which serve to bring about the a new synthesis from which comes a new dogma. Hence writes St. Pius X “those who study more closely the ideas of Modernists, evolution is described as a resultant from the conflict of two forces, one of them  tending towards progress, the other towards conservation”.

Christianity taken as a whole to the modernists is merely the culmination of the evolutionary process as it could be observed at work in religion.

It might be said that By means of these false and groundless principles, Dogma, the Sacraments, the Holy Scriptures, the Church and ecclesiastical authority can be done away with. 

Modernism and Miracles

Since the Catholic Church has a well documented history of Miracles and other unexplainable occurrences that have served to confirm its divine origin the modernists confronted with this will seek to explain it away by denying the historical, physical and objective facts of reality which  they reject by mere prejudice. This is because modernists are agnostic and maintain that what ever goes beyond the capacities of human reason or experience is not knowable. And so they reduce miracles to mere expressions of interior feelings that serve to intensify the internal feelings of the claimant. This reduces miracles to a mere subjective belief (feeling or idea) of an individual.

Renan States “It is evident that the Gospels are in part, legendary because they are interlarded with miracles and the supernatural.” – The life of Jesus

Any historical evidence in defence of miracles is automatically judged as useless (before examination!) because it testifies to the supernatural. With this same prejudice they affirm miracles to be impossible without giving any such proof. 

Further Modernist seek to down play the historical value of any miracle discrediting them often as “exaggeration” “Legends” “old stories” “fables” “vermont expressions of desire” etc.

 A Catholic Refutation of the Modernist Principles

For more than a century the Church has firmly and consistently fought against the erroneous philosophical principles of Modernism which now pervades the  theological thought of the post conciliar Church to a greater extent.

There can be no doubt that religious indifferentism is the spirit which now pervades the ecumenical movement of the post-conciliar Church which was long ago condemned by Pope Pius XI in Encyclical Mortalium Animos and by the Syllabus of Errors (Dz 2918).

Cardinal Newman writing against the Liberals of his day put it well say” What is the worlds religion now? . . . it includes no true fear of  God, no fervent zeal for His honour, no deep hatred of sin, no horror  at the sight of sinners, no indignation and compassion  at the blasphemies  of heretics, no jealous adherence to doctrinal truth . . . and therefore  is neither hot nor cold but lukewarm (Newman Against the Liberals, pp. 110)  

True Development of Catholic dogma

While for the Modernist revelation is a continuing process destined to go on until the end of time with earlier statements of the faith being modified or even contradicted if it is more suited to the spirit of the age. The Catholic notion is quite the contrary. The Churches teaching is that public revelation was given once and for all (completed with the death of the last apostle) to be more and more fully understood as time goes on, but to be passed on in its entirety, undiminished and uncorrupted. For the Modernist,dogmas have no absolute truth and are valid for the time in which they are made, but not necessarily at other periods.

In contrast to this false notion of Catholic teaching the First Latern Council declared that ” If anyone does not profess, in accordance with the Holy Fathers, properly and truthfully all that has been handed down and taught publicly to the Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church of God, both by the same Holy Fathers and by approved universal Councils, to the last detail and intention: let him be anathema!”

Our Lord, warns us at the ‘Sermon on the Mount’ – “Beware of false prophets, who come to you in the clothing of sheep, but inwardly are ravening wolves.” (Matt. 7:15) These words echo across the centuries to us Catholics at the present day, who are just as much, and even more, in need of such a warning. What should motivate us to heed this warning most carefully in our daily lives? Because the purity and integrity of the Faith is a serious matter.

Certainly we don’t expect to find men dressed in sheepskin. No. What we are told to “beware” of is that which on the surface   sounds pleasing to the ear; that which seems “positive” or “beneficial” at first glance. But behind it all is a subtle error that destroys Faith. What is one of the best ways that an error against the Faith can be taught to a Catholic and have him easily accept it as true even if at first they question the novelty of it. The way it was done at the turn of the century was to say that “doctrine evolves”, or that “truth evolves with man”. Today however, being that evolution is not generally looked upon favourably by Catholics, they will instead say that you must realise that there is “doctrinal development” – this is the “sheep’s clothing” of which Our Lord speaks. What better way to have false doctrines accepted by the faithful than to claim that the doctrine only “seems different” because they are the truths of old which have “developed” and progressed, or advanced! This is one of the most insidious and treacherous methods of corrupting the faith of a Catholic. The word “development” sounds beneficial or very “theological” to the ear, and may very well catch people off-guard.

The First Vatican Council condemned the Modernists notion of Doctrinal development in the following words: “If anyone says: it may happen that to doctrines put forward by the Church, sometimes, as knowledge advances, a meaning should be given different from what the Church has understood and understands, let him be anathema.”

The term “doctrinal development” is a very general term that has more than one meaning. It must be properly understood.

When for example an oak tree grows, it matures and develops as anything in nature. The oak tree has in perfection what the acorn had in germ. The acorn does not later become an apple tree. When it comes to the supernatural truths of Divine Revelation we see that this is true. The Church cannot at one time condemn something as a sin or error and latter teach that it is true or a virtue. Let us look at a young boy who lived generations ago. At age 10 the boy learns his catechism, receives the sacraments and professes his Faith. He is a Catholic pure and simple, and knows the truths of his faith. As he matures, so does his faith and understanding of the truths, which he always knows are true. Later in life he studies philosophy and theology and becomes a theologian. He is still just as much of a Catholic as he was when he was 10 but now instead of simply excepting things to be true, he now knows the reason for these truths. He has attained a BETTER understanding as he grew. This is nothing less than a “development of doctrine” in its TRUE SENSE. At age 10 he was Catholic with a GOOD understanding of the Truths of the Faith. As an elderly theologian he believes and professes the very SAME doctrines with the SAME MEANINGS but with a BETTER understanding.

The Church was given the Truths of the Faith from Our Lord. This “Deposit of Faith” has been preserved and taught infallibly from the beginning. When the Church was young, Christians had a GOOD understanding of the Faith. As the Church grew we developed a BETTER understanding of what was contained in that sacred deposit.

The First Vatican Council affirms the same thing, namely that “The doctrine of the Faith revealed by God has not been proposed to men as a philosophical invention to be perfected, but entrusted to the bride of Christ as a divine deposit, for her to guard faithfully and to infallibly teach. Further it is necessary to guard the sacred dogmas in the sense that the Church has    once and for all time exposed, and it is never permitted, under the pretext of a more profound understanding, to distance oneself from them. It is thus important that intelligence, knowledge and wisdom grow and progress vigorously, in each as in all, for each individual man as for the Church as a whole, in the course of ages and centuries; but only in its kind, that is to say, in the same dogma, the same sense, and the same thought” – Dz 3020

A Catholic in the 1st Century is just as much a Catholic as an orthodox theologian of the 20th century, believing the same doctrines. Truth is immutable. A true development of doctrine “increases” the understanding of the fine points and its relation to other truths. Never can a BETTER understanding means that what was previously understood was defective. It was understood in less detail, but was NOT an error, or anything to the contrary. A theologian believes the same truths as the school-boy, only he knows them in better detail. This fuller detail cannot be contrary to what the school-boy knows. So, we see Our Lord warns us of men who would seek to corrupt our Faith.

The Church has had to deal with such heretics in the past, and has dealt with them severely. Heretics who hold high office in the Church can easily fool the average Catholic simply by standing on his office of dignity. Bishop Arius is a good example of this as by his heresy (the Arian heresy) he caused about 80% of the clergy in the east to fall away from the Faith. And many went along, not because they understood the heresy, but because they followed their clergy into it.

St. Paul gives us a principle to remember: “brethren, stand fast; and hold the traditions which you have learned, whether by word, or by our epistle.” (2 Thess. 2:14) Immutable truth is found in tradition.

So we are able to see not only how prevalent error is today, but also how easily one can fall into error and cease to be        Catholic, which shows us how serious adherence to tradition and the true meaning of Doctrinal development really is.

A Refutation of the Modernist notion of Revelation

Contrary to the modernist notion or revelation the Church has constantly insisted on the external character of divine revelation.

The whole concept of an interior emergence of revealed truth is clearly condemned by the Oath against Modernism which states: “I hold with certainty and I sincerely confess that faith is NOT a blind impulse of religion welling up from the depth of the subconscious . . . but a genuine assent of the intellect to truth which is received from outside, by hearing”.

In fact, faith, which is the beginning of salvation, was defined by the First Vatican Council (Session 3, Chapter 3) as being a supernatural virtue that operates in the order of knowledge, because, by it, we adhere to the Truth revealed by God, moved by the authority of God, and not by evidence. The Council further declared that as Faith is a rational gift, together with internal Grace, God provided external signs, accommodated to human intelligence, in order that men would know really that God revealed such and such Truths. Finally, it condemned those who affirm that Faith is a blind adherence, or based only on our internal experience.

Therefore, no conversion or adherence to the Church is made without an intellectual knowledge that accepts a Truth.

Further if it were merely some interior sense how is it that not all men acknowledge this sense? For there are indeed a number of men who assert themselves to be atheists, yet accordingly if the modernist system were true there would be no atheists as it would not be possible to deny that which is evidently from within!

The Modernist argument that God can not be known by reasons is refuted by Pope St. Pius X who affirms that “To say a thing cannot be known does not authorise us to deny it.” Indeed this is simply a clear fault in logical reasoning.

St. Paul affirms that those who deny the intellect the ability to know God’s existence are inexcusable (Romans 1:20).

Further in response to this the Church declares with the First Vatican Council that  “If anyone says that the One True God, our Creator and Lord, cannot be known by means of things created, let him be anathema.”

The Modernists view of Sacred scripture is best summaries in the words of Fr. George Tyrrell who wrote that “The Evangelists, full of His (Christ’s) Spirit and mind, might conceivably have been inspired to reveal Him to us, not in a strictly historical narrative, but in such fact founded fictions as would best characterise and portray His personality to those who knew it not”. – Lex Orandi, Chapter 23

The modernists thus conceive the scriptures not as historical Facts, but mere fictitious stories told to conduce people to believe based on the testimony they give without logically (and openly) asserting that the sacred writers to be liars and deceivers.

The modernist in the Church today rejoice at this since it is precisely in the field of exegesis (scriptural interpretation) that they have succeeded in wreaking havoc and destroying any real biblical scholarship by their erroneous and heretical interpretations to the sacred text.

However such a reckoning has been condemned constantly by the Church as Pope Leo XIII in his encyclical Providentissimus Deus (1893) clearly affirmed that “It is absolutely wrong and forbidden, either to narrow inspiration to certain parts only of Holy Scripture, or to admit that the Sacred writer has erred”.

The writings of the Fathers must be used as a basis for the interpretation of sacred scripture and to reject such a teaching would be to come under the papal condemnations of the Holy Council of Trent (Session IV) and both Popes Leo XIII (Providentissimus Deus) and Pope Pius XII in Divino Afflante spiritu, Sep. 30 , 1943 

Pope St. Pius X condemned in his Syllabus of Errors, (July 3, 1907) the false notion that modernists attach to the scriptures, their interpretation and purpose. The following are just a few:

“The Church’s interpretation of the Scriptures is to be subject to the corrections of exegetes” (Proposition No. 2) or   that “the evangelists wrote what they thought was more profitable for their readers, and not necessarily the truth” (Proposition No. 14) or that “revelation could have been the consciousness acquired by man in his relationship with God” (Proposition No. 21).

“That the Divinity of Christ is not proven by the Gospels but comes from Christian communities looking back on the life of Jesus” (proposition 27)

“That the Christ of history is inferior to the Christ of faith” (Proposition 29).

“that the Knowledge of Jesus in the Gospel is not the same as the Church teaches us” (Proposition 32).

It is of interest to note that four months after Pope St. Pius X published this syllabus he prescribed the penalty of excommunication for all those who held or defended the positions condemned in the Syllabus of Errors.

If Modernists hold to such audacious views of the Gospels, it may be justly asked who is the Christ of Modernism? He is simply Anti-Christ, the clever creation of Satan making a supreme effort to revoke mankind of its belief in the divine incarnation of the Son of God (cf. 1 John 2). I will conclude on this point with the words of Pope St. Stephen I as they seem most apt to refute modernist false notion of revelation, that is “Let them innovate in nothing, but keep the traditions”!.

A Refutation on the Modernist notion of the Magisterium.

Since modernists are not concerned with true knowledge but rather with feelings [sentiments] and immanence – [i.e., the teaching that the foundation of faith must be sought in an internal sense which arises from man’s need of God], and since they no longer have any external object to adhere to, the modern theologians have simply become begetters of symbols, designed to represent the divine emanating from human subconscious. They also consider that the Magisterium’s sole function is that of transmitting or passing on common opinions. Their cult thus ends up being a humanistic expression of religious feelings. The modernist Church, for its part, is now seen as the collective conscience in the same way that popular regimes constitute the public conscience: and only the democratic form is considered suitable to their ends. Thus we end up with the error of separation of the Church and the State. In fact, since modernists hold faith to be subject to human knowledge [science] and reason, to the total advantage of [human] reasoning and to the vanishing point of faith, the Church is seen to be subject to the collective conscience which constitutes what may be essentially called an all-encompassing Christian democracy, that is to say, the State. Understood in this way, authority becomes nothing more than a service whose mission is limited to the taking of the “universal pulse” in order to explain it in a formula comprehensible to everyone.

However the Catholic teaching on the Magisterium and its teaching authority is clear.Namely that although the Pope is limited by the deposit of the faith, (Dz 3070) it is he who is the lawful expounder of Catholic doctrine and not every private individual (Dz 3055). This fact is well affirmed by all the fathers and doctors of the Church without question. It was finally defined by the First Vatican Council. St. Thomas Aquinas makes it clear that “neither Jerome nor Augustine nor any other of the sacred doctors upheld his own opinion” (Secunda Secundae Q.XI, Art. II.) unlike today’s Modernists self appointed “popes”.

Pope St. Pius X condemned the Modernist notion of the Magisterium in Lamenentabili sane in proposition No. 6 which declares the following as condemned “The learning Church (ecclesia dicens) and the Teaching Church (ecclesia docencs) collaborate in such a way in defining truths that it only remains for the teaching Church to sanction the opinions of the learning Church.

It is well to note that if a Catholic wants to remain a Catholic, he cannot attribute error to the Church’s infallible teaching. What the Modernist does on the other hand is that he simply keeps the label (the same words with minor distortion for a while atleast) while substituting the content . Yet such a deceptive notion of the faith and the role of the Magisterium was clearly condemned by the First Vatican Council when it declared that “If anyone shall say that, because of scientific progress, it may be possible at some time to interpret the Church’s dogmas in a different sense from that which the Church understood and understands, let him be anathema” (Dz. 1800).

The same Council also teaches that Papal definitions are irreformable “of themselves, and not from the consent of the Church”.

Further for many years, in the wake of the first wave of modernism, priests and Catholic professors had to affirm on Oath “I sincerely receive the doctrine of faith which the orthodox Fathers have transmitted to us from the Apostles, always in the same sense and meaning. And therefore I reject absolutely the false and heretical view of the evolution of dogmas, according to which they may change meaning so as to receive a different sense.”

Contrary to what might be decided by today’s Episcopal meetings (which are done in the name of collegiality) the faith must remain intact and any attempts to render it obsolete contradicts the vary purpose of the power given to them which can only work for the edification of the Church and not for the destruction thereof (2 Cor 13:10).

A prominent tool used by the Modernists since the Second Vatican Council has been the false innovation of collegiality which itself was so bitterly debated at the Council as Fr. Ralph Wiltgen points out in his book “The Rhine flows into the Tiber”. By means of Collegiality the Modernist element within the hierarchy have worked to give greater power to the bishops in order to muffle the voice of the Pope along with that of other bishops who might want to take a different course of action. The First Vatican Council condemned this collegial orientation in Church (Dz 3055).

Yet in may be useful to see what the thoughts of St. Gregory Nazianzen (382 AD) was regarding this false notion of collegiality which has been so readily taken up by the post conciliar hierarchy, he thus writes” If I must speak the truth, I fell disposed to shun every conference of bishops; for never did I see a synod brought to a happy issue, and remedying, and not rather aggravating, existing evils”

A Refutation on principle of Ambiguity

” I hate arrogance and pride, and every wicked way, and a mouth with a double tongue.” – Proverbs 8:13

Modernists have a great hatred for clarity as it confines them to confess exactly what they mean in a way that they will be understood by all but for them this would be disastrous as they know to well that the simple and faithful Catholics would reject them as absurd and rash men without a faith or an integrity worth upholding.

Cardinal Newman stressed well in his day the importance of the use of clear terminology saying “I must not be supposed to be forgetful of the sacred and imperative duty of preserving with religious exactness all those theological terms which are ecclesiastically recognised as portions of dogmatic statements, such as Trinity, Person, Consubstantial, Nature, Transubstantiation, Sacrament . . . such sensitiveness is the only human means by which the treasure of faith can be Kept inviolate” – On Consulting the Faithful

Modernists avoid well using such terms as mentioned above, or when they do use them it is done in such a vague context as to render the meaning two fold as a subtle means of undermining the faith without explicitly appearing to do so. Yet with the same breath we might add that today the Modernists have become more bold and often coming out with clearly heretical and erroneous statements since today there is little or nothing to stop them, since their views are almost unanimously held by those who ought to safeguard the deposit of faith. Indeed we may say with St. Thomas More, that “the forte has been brayed by those who ought to have defended it”. 

This mark of ambiguity of the Modernists is clearly evident in the writings of the post conciliar Popes and that of numerous like minded theologians who’s works for the greater part are vague and even difficult to interpret and understand.

This why the media often makes use of the current Popes works to favour the false maxims of the world since the Pope himself gives them this liberty by the vagueness in his writings. Unlike the previous popes of the past who were despised for their clear wording and affirmation of Catholic teaching as they wrote with clearness and simplicity and all thoroughly understood what they were writing about, and above all they had a firm conviction of the faith, unlike the post conciliar Popes who seem to cast a negative out look on the Churches past and ask for a forgiveness from Her enemies who seek to violate Her and Her laws.

We may affirm with the scriptures that such ambiguity has helped to bring on the confusion which now reigns in the Church  – “the double tongue is accursed: for he hath troubled many that were at peace.” Ecclesiasticus 28:15

In order to instill in our minds the great destruction that has resulted by the ambiguous terminology used by the Modernists since Second Vatican Council we simply need parallel it will a great event in History, namely the Arian crisis of the fourth Century where the Council of Nicea (325) defined that the Son is consubstantial (homoousion) with the Father. This meant that, while distinct as a person, the Son shared the same divine and eternal nature with the Father. The term homoousion thus became the touchstone of orthodoxy. No other word could be found to express the essential union between the Father and the Son, for every other word the Arians accepted, but in an equivocal sense. They would deny that the Son was a creature as other creatures – or in the number of creatures – or made in time, for they considered him a special creation made before time. They would call Him “Only-begotten,” meaning “Only directly created” Son of God etc., However this word (homoousion) alone they could not say without renouncing their heresy (cf.  M. L. Cozens, A Handbook of Heresies (London, 1960) p. 34).

Many bishops and the faithful complained that too much fuss was being made about the distinction between homoousion and homoiousion. They considered that more harm than good was done by tearing apart the unity of the Church over a single letter, over an iota (the Greek letter “i”). They condemned those who did this. Yet St. Athanasius, the Bishop of Alexandria refused to modify in any way his attitude and remained steadfast in refusing to accept any statement not containing the homoousion or to communicate with those who rejected it. The fact is (as history has confirmed) that St. Athanasius and his supporters were right. That one letter, that iota, spelled the difference between Christianity as the faith founded and guided by God incarnate, and a faith founded by just another creature. Indeed, if Christ is not God, it would be blasphemous to call ourselves Christians.

A great number of Catholics died at the hands of the blood thirsty Arains simply because they refused to accept one iota of change in the same word! What might we thus say of the volumes of ambiguity which were approved in the name of the Second Vatican Council?

Our Lord Jesus Christ teaches us to avoid ambiguity when he affirms “Let your yes bet yes and your no be no”. It may be affirmed that regardless of the modernist ambiguity (according to Canon 1325) such persons must be held as heretics (if not formal at least material) if they perniciously reject or doubt any of those truths, which must be held with a divine and Catholic faith. Modernists simply use this vague terminology in order to reconstruct theology to suit their own views. 

The Baltimore Catechism states that: “A person who denies even one article of our faith could not be a Catholic; for truth is one and we must accept it whole and entire or not at all.”

This merely repeats the teaching of Our Lord as written by St. James: “whosoever shall keep the whole law, but offend in one point, is become guilty of all.” (St. James 2:10)

St. Thomas Aquinas concurs: “To reject but one article of faith taught by the Church is enough to destroy faith as one mortal sin is enough to destroy charity…”

Pope Leo XIII, in his encyclical “Satis Cognitum”, teaches this in so many words: “Nothing is more dangerous than the heretics who, while conserving almost all the remainder of the Church’s teaching intact, corrupt with a single word, like a drop of poison, the purity and the simplicity of the faith which we have received through tradition from God and through the Apostles.”

For this reason Pope Pius XII did not hesitate to affirm that “Catholic doctrine must e set forth and taught completely and entirely. One cannot allow that anything should be omitted or veiled in ambiguous terms.” – Address to the Bishops of the Sacred Congregation, 1949.

In dealing at length with this issue, Pope Pius VI, in his Apostolic Constitution: Auctorem Fidei, wrote the following:

“[The Ancient Doctors] knew the capacity of innovators in the art of deception. In order not to shock the ears of Catholics, they sought to hide the subtleties of their tortuous maneuvers by the use of seemingly innocuous words such as would allow them to insinuate error into souls in the most gentle manner. Once the truth had been compromised, they could, by means of slight changes or additions in phraseology, distort the confession of the faith which is necessary for our salvation, and lead the faithful by subtle errors to their eternal damnation. This manner of dissimulating and lying is vicious, regardless of the circumstances under which it is used. For very good reasons it can never be tolerated in a synod of which the principal glory consists above all in teaching the truth with clarity and excluding all danger of error. 

“Morever, if all this is sinful, it cannot be excused in the way that one sees it being done, under the erroneous pretext that the seemingly shocking affirmations in one place are further developed along orthodox lines in other places, and even in yet other places corrected; as if allowing for the possibility of either affirming or denying the statement, or of leaving it up the personal inclinations of the individual – such has always been the fraudulent and daring method used by innovators to establish error. It allows for both the possibility of promoting error and of excusing it. 

“It is as if the innovators pretended that they always intended to present the alternative passages, especially to those of simple faith who eventually come to know only some part of the conclusions of such discussions which are published in the common language for everyone’s use. Or again, as if the same faithful had the ability on examining such documents to judge such matters for themselves without getting confused and avoiding all risk of error. It is a most reprehensible technique for the insinuation of doctrinal errors and one condemned long ago by our predecessor Saint Celestine who found it used in the writings of Nestorius, Bishop of Constantinople, and which he exposed in order to condemn it with the greatest possible severity. Once these texts were examined carefully, the impostor was exposed and confounded, for he expressed himself in a plethora of words, mixing true things with others that were obscure; mixing at times one with the other in such a way that he was also able to confess those things which were denied while at the same time possessing a basis for denying those very sentences which he confessed. 

“In order to expose such snares, something which becomes necessary with a certain frequency in every century, no other method is required than the following: Whenever it becomes necessary to expose statements which disguise some suspected error or danger under the veil of ambiguity, one must denounce the perverse meaning under which the error opposed to Catholic truth is camouflaged”

Thus a person’s Faith can be easily corrupted by this false and ambiguous language of the modernist as so we should find motivation in the fact that this the danger is more prevalent today than it was at the turn of the century.

A Refutation of the Principle of Evolution

Maurice Blondel (1861-1949), the well known modernist, (who is mentioned above) is often seen as one of the Fathers of Modernism (cf. “They Think They’ve Won!” SiSiNoNo, No.4). He taught a new definition of truth which is directly contrary to the Church’s perennial definition (in order to bolster the modernist evolutionary principle in which all is subject to change). He said truth is not the agreement of our intellect and objective reality. Let me give an example of why this is wrong and why truth is the conformity of our intellect with reality. If I hold a bird and tell you this is a bird, you will test the truth of my statement by comparing what I have said, what is supposed to be in my mind, and the objective reality. If these correspond, then my word is true and you must submit your intelligence to the reality of the bird. If these do not correspond, then my word is false. But modern thinkers say truth is the agreement between our intellect and life. Now, how do we recognise life? The first question we ask when we find someone lying in the road is, “Is he alive?” To see if he is, you will see if there is movement of his eyes, if his heart is beating, etc. Life means movement. If you say that truth is the conformity of our intellect with life, that is, of our intellect and movement, then truth must move! If truth must move, then we must keep changing it. If it stands still, then it’s not truth. So, we have been ordered to change to show that the Church has life!

Thus we can now understand why someone like Pope John Paul II would define Tradition as “That which can Change!”

Yet Pope St. Pius X in virtue of his Apostolic Authority, condemned the modernist thesis which holds that “Christ did not teach a fixed body of doctrine applicable to all times and all men; he rather inaugurated a certain religious movement which adapts itself, or should adapt itself, to different times and places” – The decree Lamentabili

likewise in his proposition of Errors he condemns the notion that “the organic constitution of the Church is not    unchangeable, like human society, the Christian society is subject to perpetual evolution” – Error 53 (Lamentabili Sane)

And again he condemns as false the notion that “Truth is no more immutable than man himself, since it evolved with him, in him and through him” – Error 58 (cf. Error 62).

The same modernist philosophers also deny that our intelligence can understand the essence of things (the deepest part of things) which can’t change. You may have a boy who will change in height, weight, and age, but his essence as man will always be the same. He will always be a man, always possess a human nature, and this will not change. The modern philosophers say you can’t go that deep and that you are obliged to stay at the level of changing. This limits discussion to only the changing part of things and our personal opinions about them, which are no more or less important than anyone else’s opinions. This is a world of total subjectivism, of opinions, which is clearly evident at the level of religions. All religions are equally good! But the essence of God is His existence. There is still only one God and this one God has to be worshipped as He commands. There can be no change here! But the modernists say we can no longer say that Our Lord has to reign on this earth; there are Buddhists, Muslims, this and that, and it is impossible to require them to worship a Jesus they don’t know. But, don’t try to convert them because their opinion is as good or bad as yours!

For this reason do we see the post conciliar hierarchy embracing the false notion of religious liberty as presented in the texts of Vatican II which has nevertheless been condemned by Pope Pius IX in Quanta Cura and by Pope Leo XIII in Libertas Praestantissimum.

Yet regardless of what is asserted the fact remains that truth doesn’t change.

Refutation of Modernists notion of Miracles

The Miracles for which the Catholic Church often claims authentication are beyond doubt true and authentic since a great number of them have even been subjected to scientific examination and have showed themselves to be beyond the explanation or powers of nature.

Although we acknowledge the existence of both the physical laws and metaphysical laws we must say that both are deduced from the free will of God and not from the necessary being of God. Although metaphysical and mathematical laws  are always absolutely necessary and are not subject to exception by miracles. However physical laws have only a contingent necessity as they depend on God’s free will. For example, there is nothing in the nature of things (themselves) and in the concept of matter which requires bodies to attract to one another but there is something in the nature of a square and that of a circle which makes it impossible even to God’s Omnipotence to create a “square circle”. In the latter case there is an antecedent impossibility which is founded on the eternal Truth, while in the case of all physical laws, their necessity is subsequent to and arising from the decree of the God’s free Will. 

Miracles are interruptions of nature’s effects and not violations of its laws. St. Thomas states that “Although God may produce an effect outside the working of its natural cause, He in no way abolishes the regular relation of this to effect”.

Rather than violate the laws of nature miracles only serve as a confirmation to them, as according to the axiom “the exception confirms the rule”, sine if there were no rule (laws of Nature) there could be no exception!

Thus we may say that the miracles of Scripture are irregularities in the economy of nature, but with a moral end, and although they are exceptions to the laws of one system (laws of nature), they coincide with those of another.

In response to the modernist rejection of Miracles we may ask with St. Paul “Why should it be thought a thing incredible with you that God should raise the dead?” – Acts 26:8

Anyone who reads the Gospels without prejudice sees in every page of them that miracles were one of the most effective means employed by Christ to prove to His hearers that He was their Messiah performing His divine works and giving the “signs” that Isaias had foretold, – “If I do not the works of My Father, believe me Not. But if I do them and ye will not believe Me, believe the works themselves that ye may and believe that the Father is in Me, and I in the Father” – John 10:26 (See also Matt 11, John 25:24). Now if Christ really performed those works (miracles) of healing, if He did actually raise the daugher of Jairus, and Lasarus, and the son of the widow of Naim from the dead, then the objections of the Modernists fall to the ground. But if He did not raise them from the dead, then since He claimed to do these deeds as proofs of His divinity, He was in truth the blasphemous impostor that the chief priests said He was. Anyone who, though really only human, induces men to worship him as God is both a conscienceless liar and a promoter of idolatry.

In considering the credibility of Christ’s miracles, we should also not forget that they were often wrought in the presence of hostile and sceptical observers. The whole ninth chapter of St. John’s Gospel is an illustration of this fact.

Miracles cannot be regarded as something accidental that is they cannot be regarded as something that can be omitted without doing essential damage to revelation. They not only authenticate the message, but are part of that message.

The same modernist have sort to eliminate miracles from the Gospel, have ended up by denying the Godhead of Christ, giving to His perfect Humanity a personality of its own and denying to Him anything more than a metaphorical “divinity” one shared with all men, the same in kind though less in degree. “Christ is divine, but so are we all, at least potentially” is the message of the Modernists.

To deny God the power to perform a physical miracle is to deny Him Omnipotence.If the Creator of life is cannot for a wise and loving moral purpose restore life to the dead, He would not be God.

Just as the Protestants deny the deny the efficacy of good works so to the modernists deny the efficacy of Miracles. Yet Pope Pius IX in his well known Syllabus of Errors (Dec. 8, 1864) condemned this : – Error No. 7 ” the prophecies and miracles described and related in sacred Scripture are the invention of poets . . . and in the books of both Testaments are contained mythical inventions”

Truly Modernists are like those in St. Paul’s warning to Timothy “Having an appearance of godliness, but denying the power thereof. Now these avoid” – 2 Tim 3:5

The Christ of Modernism (stripped of His Godhead and His divine power of miracles) can never have been the “God -Man” Victim who was needed to make full atonement to God for the sins of Mankind.

Conclusion:

The logic of Modernism is that man has no God outside himself and hence if accepted would certainly result in the destruction of all religion and ultimately in the destruction of all civilisation itself. This is precisely what we are seeing in contemporary society, above all in man’s arrogation to himself of the divine prerogatives of life and death (i.e. Contraception, abortion, suicide, murder etc.).

The few courageous Priests and bishops who have zealously fought against this heresy have no doubt received a great amount of persecution from there fellow priests and bishops who have themselves accepted whole heartily these false principles which work for the destruction of the Church and true civil order. St. Pius X saw this in his day and noted that” There is little reason to wonder that the Modernists vent all their bitterness and hatred on Catholics who zealously fight the battles of the Church. There is no species of insult which they do not heap upon them .. . they seek to make a conspiracy of silence around him (who speaks against them) to nullify the effects of his attack”.

We have clearly seen these methods (and many others which St. Pius X mentions) used against such well known and staunch defenders of the Faith such as Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre , founder of the Society of St. Pius X in 1970. As Mgr. Rudolf Graber (Bishop of Regensburg, Germany) put it “What happened over 1600 years ago is repeating itself today, but with two or three differences: Alexandria is the whole Universal Church, the stability of which is being shaken, and what was under taken at that time by means of physical force and cruelty is now being transferred to a different level. Exile is replaced by banishment into the silence of being ignored; killing, by assassination of character.” – Athanasius and the Church of Our Times, p. 23.

Nevertheless as Pope Pius X put it “Persecution is for us Catholics our daily bread, it is the surest sign that we are the disciples of Christ.” – (In an Audience given to a Roman college, Venantius Buessing, OFM, Cap. Dearly Beloved, pp. 42-23).

Pope St. Pius X in his day warned us against the modernist infiltration into the Church saying that: “we should act without delay in this matter [to condemn Modernism] is made imperative especially by the fact that the partisans of error are to be sought not only among the Church’s open enemies; but what is to be most dreaded and deplored, in her very bosom,? We allude…to many who belong…to the priesthood itself, who, animated by a false zeal for the Church, lacking the solid safeguards of philosophy and theology, nay more, thoroughly imbued with the poisonous doctrines taught by the enemies of the Church, and lost to all sense of modesty, put themselves forward as reformers of the Church; and, forming more boldly into line of attack ….Enemies of the Church they certainly are, nor indeed would he be wrong in regarding them as the most pernicious of all the adversaries of the Church. For, as We have said, they put into operation their designs for her undoing, not from without but from within. Hence, the danger is present almost in the very veins and heart of the Church, whose injury is the more certain from the very fact that their knowledge of her is more intimate”. – Pascendi

The same Pope warns us that “the gravity of the evil [of Modernism] is daily growing and must be checked at any cost. We are no longer dealing, as at the beginning, with opponents “in sheep’s clothing,” but with open and bare-faced enemies in our very household, who, having made a pact with the chief foes of the Church are bent on overthrowing the Faith. These are men whose haughtiness in the face of heavenly wisdom is daily renewed, claiming the right to correct it as if it were corrupted. They want to renovate it as if it were consumed by old age, increase it and adapt it to worldly tastes, progress and comforts, as if it were opposed not just to the frivolity of a few, but to the good of society.There will never be enough vigilance and firmness on the part of those entrusted with the faithful safe-keeping of the sacred deposit of evangelical doctrine and ecclesiastical tradition, in order to oppose these onslaughts against it. –Pope St. Pius X, Motu Proprio Sacrorum Antistitum, 1910

That was in the early 1900’s. Today those Churchmen, deformed by Neo-Modernism in the seminaries and religious institutions and by the false ideas of the last Council, are in power in the Church and occupy the key positions in the Catholic hierarchy, putting to work their “counsels of destruction” to unify the human race “in a common ruin.” – St.Pius X

Despite Modernism’s remarkable expansion and conquest of important and eminent positions in the Catholic Church, a      great number of the Catholic clergy and laymen persevere in believing, that it is the duty of all Catholics to continue to follow St. Pius X’s advance to combat this insidious heresy. Many Catholics today have to be extra vigilant because these heretics are not being condemned, and can be found in many parishes. Some of these vigilant Catholics call themselves “traditional Catholics” to distinguish themselves from those who are not standing fast to the traditions.

All Catholics have a duty to help root out the Modernist ambition to revolutionise the Church and destroy to the true       harmony that God had ordained for civil society for as Pope Felix III affirmed “To not resist error is to approve it, to not defend truth is to suffocate it . . . Whoever fails to oppose a manifest prevarication, can be considered a secret   accomplice” (cited by Pope Leo XIII in his letter to the Italian bishops, Aug. 12, 1892).

The IV Lateran Council tells us the same thing in the following words : “We decree that those who give credence to the teachings of heretics, as well as those who receive, defend, or patronize them, are excommunicated.”

No one is above tradition. We read the strong words of St. Paul – “though we, or an angel from heaven etc.”. These are words which include the warning that the office even of a Pope, could be used to spread heresy. So effective is the Sheep’s Clothing of “ecclesiastical office” in promoting error that St. Bernard, Cardinal Newman, and others, logically believed that the only way the Anti-Christ could possibly be so effective in creating a “great apostasy” among Catholics is by becoming an “anti-pope” whom the Catholic world at large would think is a valid Pope. (cf. THE ANTICHRIST in “Catholic Encyclopaedia”).

Thus it’s a matter of choosing between an erroneous human judgements and the infallible judgement of the Church, which for 2000 years has taught that nothing which pertains to the perennial and certain doctrine of the Church and which, in any way whatsoever, direct or indirect, relates to the truths of faith or morals, nothing of the constitution of the Church, nothing of that which has been fixed by Christ and, through His mandate, by the holy Apostles is subject to change.

The following words of St. Athanasius may help to give us conviction in the ongoing battle against modernism in the Church; that is ” Catholics who remain faithful to Tradition, even if they are reduced to a handful, are the true Church of Jesus Christ.” (ca. 296-373) Apud Caillau and Guillou, Coll. Selecta Ss. Eccl. Patrum, vol. 32, pp. 411-412

In the words of the Jesus we may summaries the Modernists and the post Conciliar hierarchy who have embraced this error by saying “they are blind, and leaders of the blind. And if the blind lead the blind, both fall into the pit. ” Matt 15:14)

As a solution to this modernist crisis we propose simply the solution of Pope Pius X as he mentioned in is his famous consistorial speech, Primum Vos (Nov. 9, 1903), that is” Our task, consists in defending both Christian Truth as well as the Law of Christ.”

It seems clear that we must conclude with Pope Pius X that “the domineering overbearance of those who teach the errors, and the thoughtless compliance of the more shallow minds who assent to them, create a corrupted atmosphere which penetrates everywhere, and carries its infection with it. (Pascendi, 34).

Thus it is clear that despite the war being waged by Modernists in the name of progress and liberty its poisonous errors which we have above expounded must be unmasked and refuted for restoration of the faith and civil society to take effect.

Sources used:

1. Partisans of Error by Michael Davies,

2. Pius X, by Rene Bazin,

3. Pius X, By Fr. hieronymo Dal-Gal

4. Three Modernists by John Ratte, 5. Enemy within the Gate by John Mckee

6. In the Murky Waters of Vatican II by Atila Sinke Guimaraes,

7. The Second Wave by W. J. Hayes

8.  The Modernist Crisis by Von Hugel,

9. Modernism and the Christian Church by Fr. F. Woodlook, S.J.

10. Catholic, Apostolic and Roman by the Priest of Campos Brazil

11. The Mouth of the Lion by Dr. David Allen White

12. Various Works of Pius X

You can read it in Spanish, English and Portuguese.

We reproduce excerpts of conversations between Catholics and Evangelicals from the book “Talking with my evangelical friends”, very useful in helping our fellow Christians understand the Catholic faith.

Michael: Joseph, there is a topic that I would like to discuss with you, so I can hear your opinion.

Joseph: Tell me about it.

Michael: It is about the identity of the famous “Whore of Babylon” that is described in the book of Revelation. We have several brothers that think that it is the Catholic Church and I would like us to analyze their arguments.

Joseph: Of course, but what do you think about this?

Michael: I don’t really agree with them[1], but I don’t know the identity of the “Whore” either so I would like to know your opinion.

What do you think if we review what the Bible says about the Harlot and then you give me your opinion about this?

Joseph: Sure. Let’s do it. 

Michael: So let’s read what the Bible says[2]:

(Rev 17,1) “And there came one of the seven angels who had the seven vials and spoke with me, saying: Come, I will shew thee the condemnation of the great harlot, who sitteth upon many waters, (v.2) With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. And they who inhabit the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom.

(v.3) And he took me away in spirit into the desert. And I saw a woman sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns. (v.4) And the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls, having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication, (v.5) And on her forehead a name was written: A mystery: Babylon the great, the mother of the fornications and the abominations of the earth. (v.6) And I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. And I wondered, when I had seen her, with great admiration. 

(v.7) And the angel said to me: Why dost thou wonder? I will tell thee the mystery of the woman and of the beast which carrieth her, which hath the seven heads and ten horns.  (v.8) The beast which thou sawest, was, and is not, and shall come up out of the bottomless pit and go into destruction. And the inhabitants on the earth (whose names are not written in the book of life from the foundation of the world) shall wonder, seeing the beast that was and is not. 

(v.9) And here is the understanding that hath wisdom. The seven heads are seven mountains, upon which the woman sitteth: and they are seven kings.  (v.10) Five are fallen, one is, and the other is not yet come: and when he is come, he must remain a short time. (v.11) And the beast which was and is not: the same also is the eighth, and is of the seven, and goeth into destruction. (v.12) And the ten horns which thou sawest are ten kings, who have not yet received a kingdom: but shall receive power as kings, one hour after the beast. (v.13) These have one design: and their strength and power they shall deliver to the beast. (v.14) These shall fight with the Lamb. And the Lamb shall overcome them because he is Lord of lords and King of kings: and they that are with him are called and elect and faithful.

(v.15) And he said to me: The waters which thou sawest, where the harlot sitteth, are peoples and nations and tongues.  (v.16) And the ten horns which thou sawest in the beast: These shall hate the harlot and shall make her desolate and naked and shall eat her flesh and shall burn her with fire. (v.17) For God hath given into their hearts to do that which pleaseth him: that they give their kingdom to the beast, till the words of God be fulfilled.  (v.18) And the woman which thou sawest is the great city which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth. 

(Rev 18,1)And after these things, I saw another angel come down from heaven, having great power: and the earth was enlightened with his glory.  (v.2) And he cried out with a strong voice, saying: Babylon the great is fallen, is fallen: and is become the habitation of devils and the hold of every unclean spirit and the hold of every unclean and hateful bird.  (v.3) Because all nations have drunk of the wine of the wrath of her fornication: and the kings of the earth have committed fornication with her; And the merchants of the earth have been made rich by the power of her delicacies.

(v.4) And I heard another voice from heaven, saying: Go out from her, my people; that you be not partakers of her sins and that you receive not of her plagues. (v.5) For her sins have reached unto heaven: and the Lord hath remembered her iniquities. (v.6) Render to her as she also hath rendered to you: and double unto her double, according to her works. In the cup wherein she hath mingled, mingle ye double unto her. (v.7) As much as she hath glorified herself and lived in delicacies, so much torment and sorrow give ye to her. Because she saith in her heart: I sit a queen and am no widow: and sorrow I shall not see. (v.8) Therefore, shall her plagues come in one day, death and mourning and famine. And she shall be burnt with the fire: because God is strong, who shall judge her. (v.9) And the kings of the earth, who have committed fornication and lived in delicacies with her, shall weep and bewail themselves over her, when they shall see the smoke of her burning; (v.10) Standing afar off for fear of her torments, saying: Alas! alas! that great city, Babylon, that mighty city: for in one hour is thy judgment come. (v.11) And the merchants of the earth shall weep and mourn over her: for no man shall buy their merchandise any more.  (v.12) Merchandise of gold and silver and precious stones: and of pearls and fine linen and purple and silk and scarlet: and all thyine wood: and all manner of vessels of ivory: and all manner of vessels of precious stone and of brass and of iron and of marble; (v.13) And cinnamon and odours and ointment and frankincense and wine and oil and fine flour and wheat and beasts and sheep and horses and chariots: and slaves and souls of men. (v.14) And the fruits of the desire of thy soul are departed from thee: and all fat and goodly things are perished from thee. And they shall find them no more at all. (v.15) The merchants of these things, who were made rich, shall stand afar off from her, for fear of her torments, weeping and mourning, (v.16) And saying: Alas! alas! that great city, which was clothed with fine linen and purple and scarlet and was gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls. (v.17) For in one hour are so great riches come to nought. And every shipmaster and all that sail into the lake, and mariners, and as many as work in the sea, stood afar off, (v.18) And cried, seeing the place of her burning, saying: What city is like to this great city? (v.19) And they cast dust upon their heads and cried, weeping and mourning, saying: Alas! alas! that great city, wherein all were made rich, that had ships at sea, by reason of her prices. For, in one hour she is made desolate. 

(v.20) Rejoice over her, thou heaven and ye holy apostles and prophets. For God hath judged your judgment on her. (v.21) And a mighty angel took up a stone, as it were a great millstone, and cast it into the sea, saying: With such violence as this, shall Babylon, that great city, be thrown down and shall be found no more at all. (v.22) And the voice of harpers and of musicians and of them that play on the pipe and on the trumpet shall no more be heard at all in thee: and no craftsman of any art whatsoever shall be found any more at all in thee: and the sound of the mill shall be heard no more at all in thee: (v.23) And the light of the lamp shall shine no more at all in thee: and the voice of the bridegroom and the bride shall be heard no more at all in thee. For thy merchants were the great men of the earth: for all nations have been deceived by thy enchantments. (v.24) And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth.

(Rev 19,1)After these things, I heard as it were the voice of much people in heaven, saying: Alleluia. Salvation and glory and power is to our God.  (v.2) For true and just are his judgments, who hath judged the great harlot which corrupted the earth with her fornication and hath revenged the blood of his servants, at her hands. (v.3) And again they said: Alleluia. And her smoke ascendeth for ever and ever.”

Michael: Let’s now do a summary of the characteristics of the “Whore” according to what we just read:

FIRST: “She fornicates” with the kings of the earth and has sovereignty over them.

Because we just saw that it says: “With whom the kings of the earth have committed fornication. And they who inhabit the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her whoredom” (Rev 17,2) by “which hath kingdom over the kings of the earth” (Rev 17,18)

SECOND: She is dressed in “purple” and “scarlet”.

About this it says: “the woman was clothed round about with purple and scarlet, and gilt with gold and precious stones and pearls” (Rev 17,4; and it says it again in Rev 18,16)

THIRD: She murders the saints and the prophets.

It says: “I saw the woman drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus” (Rev 17,6) and then it also says: “And in her was found the blood of prophets and of saints and of all that were slain upon the earth.” (Rev 18,24)

FOURTH: She sits upon “seven mountains”.

It says: “The seven heads are seven mountains, upon which the woman sitteth” (Rev 17,9)

FIFTH: She holds in her hand a chalice.

It also says: “having a golden cup in her hand, full of the abomination and filthiness of her fornication” (Rev 17,4)

Based on these characteristics, my brothers in the Church say that it refers to the Catholic Church. In the first place, because the whore is described as a powerful city that fornicates spiritually and rules over the kings of earth. The Vatican has had so much power throughout the years over the nations and governments, and now even helps them to maintain good diplomatic relations. Moreover, The Vatican is located in Rome, a city that rests on seven mountains[3]. On the other hand, the Whore is dressed in purple and scarlet, and these are the colors with which the Catholic clergy dresses. There is a reason why the phrase “cardinal purple” is used to refer to the cardinals. When it says that she murders martyrs and prophets, my friends tell me that it refers to the inquisition. Finally, as the chalice full of abominations, they see the great amount of gold chalices that the Catholic Church have, which are a main element in the mass.

What would you tell to my friends?

Joseph: First of all, we must have in mind that the people who hold these positions have great anti-catholic prejudices. Any argument, even if it is not so important, will serve to confirm anything to them that they have already decided to believe. Overcoming these prejudices is very difficult because they don’t think objectively and you can’t make it without the help of grace. Therefore, don’t be discouraged if the best arguments don’t make them come to reason.

Now, throughout history, the Christians have seen that this term can refer mainly to the pagan (non-Christian) Rome or to the apostate Jerusalem. There are arguments that support these interpretations, let’s see:

The Seven Mountains

Jerusalem, just like the pagan and ancient Rome, was a big city that settled on seven mountains[4]. Paradoxically, the same argument that your friends use to point the Vatican City as the “Harlot” is the same that works for discarding it, because it doesn’t rest on any of the mountains of Rome. We must remember that The Vatican is located to the west of the Tiber River, while the seven mountains of Rome are located to the east. Both Jerusalem and the pagan Rome were large cities, unlike The Vatican, which is the smallest country in the world (The Vatican City has an extension of 0.439 km. It is so small that the St. Peter’s Basilica is a 7% of its surface, the basilica and the square of St. Peter occupy a 20% of the territory)[5]. And I say all this assuming that the term of the seven mountains has to be interpreted literally, because so many exegetes think that it doesn’t have to be interpreted in this way.

She is dressed in purple and scarlet

Regarding the colors with which she appears literally dressed, we also have multiple interpretations, because the exegetes also think that this doesn’t refer to literal colors, but has a symbolic meaning.Red represents the blood of the persecutions of the first Christians by the pagan Rome, or of the saints and prophets murdered by apostate Jerusalem, and in the case of the purple, the magnificence of the triumphant Empire upon which the Harlot would ride.

But if we see the colors literally, we have to again discard the Catholic Church, because the predominant color of the Catholic Clergy is white and it only uses other colors in different periods of liturgical time (the green is used in ordinary time, the white at Christmas and Easter, the purple at Easter and during the four Sundays of Advent and red during the celebrations of the Passion, including Good Friday, and in the days that commemorate the deaths of the martyrs, the apostles and the evangelists). Paradoxically, the Catholic clergy never used the purple and scarlet colors in any liturgical period at the same time, unlike the Levites priests in Jerusalem, whose attire was purple and scarlet, as the Old Testament points out (Exod 28,4-8.15.33; 39,9). So, if the author of the Revelation wants to identify the Catholic Church with these colors, he wouldn’t have mentioned just the two colors that they use only in very particular moments of the liturgical cycle, especially when the Jewish priests were more suited to the color description I indicated.[6].

She shed the blood of the saints and prophets

About the fact that she shed the blood of the saints and prophets, it seems to point to pagan Rome for its persecutions of Christians, or to the apostate Jerusalem to which the gospel identifies as the one who kills the prophets: “Jerusalem, Jerusalem, that killest the prophets; and stonest them that are sent to thee, how often would I have gathered thy children as the bird doth her brood under her wings, and thou wouldest not?” (Luke 13,34).

To consider the different heretics persecuted by the Inquisition as saints and prophets is something difficult to sustain even for them, because most of the people who were persecuted by the Inquisition don’t share the doctrines that they currently hold, and it is pretty likely that they would have been persecuted also in the Protestant countries, as is the case of Michael Servetus, who after he had escaped from the Catholic Inquisitions, was caught in Genève by John Calvin and was condemned to the bonfire.  We must not forget that in times of inquisition, Catholics and Protestants acted in the same way against those who were considered heretics.

She prostitutes with the kings of the earth and she has sovereignty over them.

And if we study the, obviously not literal, but spiritual prostitution of the “Whore” it is clear that it doesn’t mention that the States have diplomatic relations with other corrupt states, but it does talk about the participation and the complicity in their idolatrous religions and their abominations. This description fits perfectly with pagan Rome or even with the apostate Jerusalem, as it is described by the prophet Ezekiel: “Son of man, make known to Jerusalem her abominations.” (Ezek 16,2); “Therefore, O harlot, hear the word of the Lord. Thus saith the Lord God: Because thy money hath been poured out, and thy shame discovered through thy fornications with thy lovers, and with the idols of thy abominations, by the blood of thy children whom thou gavest them:  Behold, I will gather together all thy lovers with whom thou hast taken pleasure, and all whom thou hast loved, with all whom thou hast hated: and I will gather them together against thee on every side, and will discover thy shame in their sight, and they shall see all thy nakedness.  And I will judge thee as adulteresses, and they that shed blood are judged: and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy.  And I will deliver thee into their hands, and they shall destroy thy brothel house, and throw down thy stews: and they shall strip thee of thy garments, and shall take away the vessels of thy beauty: and leave thee naked, and full of disgrace.” (Ezek 16,35-39), and throughout the book of Ezekiel the same idea is repeated in many other texts.

Another element that identifies the “Harlot” or “Whore” with Jerusalem is that it is designated as the great city where the Lord was crucified: “And their bodies shall lie in the streets of the great city which is called spiritually, Sodom and Egypt: where their Lord also was crucified.” (Rev 11,8).

Michael: Very interesting, Joseph, thank you very much!

Joseph: Always at your service, brother.NOTES

[1] So far none of my closest evangelical friends, including the family, has told me that they think that the Catholic Church is the “Whore of Babylon”. In fact, I have asked them directly and they have answered that they don’t believe that. However, it is a common belief among the most anti-catholic evangelical denominations and especially among the sects, like the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the Adventist and the Mormons, which are not considered evangelical ecclesial communities.

As an example, we have Ralph Woodrow, an evangelical minister who gained great notoriety with his book “Babylon, Religious Mystery”, where he tried to prove that the “Whore of Babylon” was the Catholic Church. The book was a best-seller translated into a number of languages. However, after a long time of historical investigation, he also found that his sources were inaccurate and fraudulent, and he retracted with a new book entitled “The Babylon Connection?” where he analyzes and refutes his previous book and the book from which he took some of his sources, entitled “The Two Babylonians” by Alexander Hislop.

Woodrow is a protestant, but he has changed his point of view in this respect and he no longer claims that the Catholic Church is “The Whore”.

[2] I have decided to put the biblical text of the book of the Revelation that refers to the Harlot, according to the translation of the Douay-Rheims Bible, so it becomes easier to the reader’s reading in case they don’t have a Bible at hand.

[3]The seven mountains on which the ancient Rome rests are: Palatino, Capitoline, Quirinal, Viminal, Esquilino, Celio y Aventino

[4] These hills are: Scopus, Nob, Solomon’s Temple, Mount Zion, the southwestern hill also called Mount Zion, Mount Ofel and The Rock.

[5] Woodrow in his book “The Babylon Connection?” also realizes that his argument is fallacious, and he explains:

 “«The Mystery of Babylon» is described as the one that locates in the middle of the seven hills, (Ap. 17,9). Hislop says: «To call Rome the city of the seven hills, its own citizens gave it this description, so it should be called by its own name» and in this way, «the Church, which have its seat in the headquarters of the seven hills of Rome, would be the most appropriate to be called “Babylon”». ……..In another part of the book, Hislop describes the Pope as «the one who sits on the seat of the seven hill of Rome».

But it is on the Vatican hill where the seat of the Pope is located, and its headquarters is on the Roman Catholic Church, and this is not a mountain of the Seven Hills of Rome! This district didn’t belong to the ancient Rome, and it wasn’t included in the boundaries within the wall of the city, built by the Emperor Aurelian.Harper’s Bible Dictionary includes a map that confirms this point. The seven hills where Rome was built are: The Palatine, Capitoline, Quirinal, Aventine, Caelian, Esquiline, and Viminal. The hill of the Vatican City across the Tiber to the west, is not one of this seven.

It’s important to mention that the term that is currently used by this prophecy is: “seven mountains”. The seven hills would hardly qualify as mountains, because they all have a slight elevation. The highest is the Quirinal hill with 226 feet above the sea level. The St. Peter Church –just the building, is almost twice as much as this. I can testify about his height, because I climbed the stairs between the interior and the roof of the dome in 1978. This is 434 feet from the first floor to the top cross…”

[6] Ralph Woodrow also recognizes this in “Babylon Connection?”:

“The called «Mystery of Babylon» whore is «dressed in purple and scarlet»(Ap. 17,4). Some people think that there is a connection between these color and the bright and highly decorated vestments of the Pope, and other characters of the hierarchy of the Roman Catholic Church. But again these colors don’t indicate a unique identification…

The purple and the scarlet were the colors used in the curtains of the tabernacle (Exodus 26,1, the veil of the Temple (2 Chronicles 3,14), and they were also used in garments that the priests of the Old Testament used (Exodus 28,6.8.15). Lidia, a woman who turns into the Christianity, was a seller in purple (Acts 16,14). Proverbs mentions the family of a “Virtuous Woman” who wore purple (Proverbs 31:22). Daniel – certainly not compromising in worldly ways – was honored and clothed in purple (Daniel 5,19).

In the article about the beatification of Father Damien, I read that his “relics” were given to the bishop of Honolulu. Could you please explain this and give some history behind it?—A reader in Leesburg.

Relics include the physical remains of a saint (or of a person who is considered holy but not yet officially canonized) as well as other objects which have been “sanctified” by being touched to his body.

These relics are divided into two classes. First class or real relics include the physical body parts, clothing and instruments connected with a martyr’s imprisonment, torture and execution. Second class or representative relics are those which the faithful have touched to the physical body parts or grave of the saint.

The use of relics has some, although limited, basis in sacred Scripture. In 2 Kings 2,9-14, the prophet Elisha picked up the mantle of Elijah after Elijah had been taken up to heaven in a whirlwind. With is, Elisha struck the water of the Jordan, which then parted so that he could cross. In another passage (13,20-21), some people hurriedly bury a dead man in the grave of Elisha, “but when the man came in contact with the bones of Elisha, he came back to life and rose to his feet.” In the Acts of the Apostles we read, “Meanwhile, God worked extraordinary miracles at the hands of Paul. When handkerchiefs or cloths which had touched his skin were applied to the sick, their diseases were cured and evil spirits departed from them” (19,11-12). In these three passages, a reverence was given to the actual body or clothing of these very holy people who were indeed God’s chosen instruments—Elijah, Elisha and St. Paul. Indeed, miracles were connected with these “relics”—not that some magical power existed in them, but just as God’s work was done through the lives of these holy men, so did His work continue after their deaths. Likewise, just as people were drawn closer to God through the lives of these holy men, so did they (even if through their remains) inspire others to draw closer even after their deaths. This perspective provides the Church’s understanding of relics.

The veneration of relics of the saints is found in the early history of the Church. A letter written by the faithful of the Church in Smyrna in the year 156 provides an account of the death of St. Polycarp, their bishop, who was burned at the stake. The letter reads, “We took up the bones, which are more valuable than precious stones and finer than refined gold, and laid them in a suitable place, where the Lord will permit us to gather ourselves together as we are able, in gladness and joy, and celebrate the birthday of his martyrdom.” Essentially, the relics—the bones and other remains of St. Polycarp—were buried and the tomb itself was the “reliquary.” Other accounts attest that the faithful visited the burial places of the saints and miracles occurred. Moreover, at this time we see the development of “feast days” marking the death of the saint, the celebration of Mass at the burial place and a veneration of the remains.

After the legalization of the Church in 312, the tombs of saints were opened and the actual relics were venerated by the faithful. A bone or other bodily part was placed in a reliquary—a box, locket and later a glass case—for veneration. This practice especially grew in the Eastern Church, while the practice of touching cloth to the remains of the saint was more common in the west. By the time of the Merovingian and Carolingian periods of the Middle Ages, the use of reliquaries was common throughout the whole Church.

The Church strived to keep the use of relics in perspective. In his Letter to Riparius, St. Jerome (d. 420) wrote in defense of relics: “We do not worship, we do not adore, for fear that we should bow down to the creature rather than to the Creator, but we venerate the relics of the martyrs in order the better to adore Him whose martyrs they are.”

Here we need to pause for a moment. Perhaps in our technological age, the whole idea of relics may seem strange. Remember, all of us treasure things that have belonged to someone we love—a piece of clothing, another personal item, a lock of hair. Those “relics” remind us of the love we share with that person while he was still living and even after death. Our hearts are torn when we think about disposing of the very personal things of a deceased loved one. Even from an historical sense, at Ford’s Theater Museum for instance, we can see things that belonged to President Lincoln, including the blood-stained pillow on which he died. More importantly, we treasure the relics of saints, the holy instruments of God.

During the Middle Ages, the “translation of relics,” meaning the removal of relics from the tombs, their placement in reliquaries and their dispersal, grew. Sadly, abuses grew also. With various barbarian invasions, the conquests of the Crusades, the lack of means for verifying all relics and less than reputable individuals who in their greed preyed on the ignorant and the superstitious, abuses did occur. Even St. Augustine (d. 430) denounced impostors who dressed as monks selling spurious relics of saints. Pope St. Gregory (d. 604) forbade the selling of relics and the disruption of tombs in the catacombs. Unfortunately, the popes or other religious authorities were powerless in trying to control the translation of relics or prevent forgeries. Eventually, these abuses prompted the Protestant leaders to attack the idea of relics totally. Unfortunately, the abuses and the negative reaction surrounding relics has led many people to this day to be skeptical about relics.

In response, the Council of Trent (1563) defended invoking the prayers of the saints and venerating their relics and burial places. “The sacred bodies of the holy martyrs and of the other saints living with Christ, which have been living members of Christ and the temple of the Holy Spirit and which are destined to be raised and glorified by Him unto life eternal, should also be venerated by the faithful. Through them, many benefits are granted to men by God.” Since that time, the Church has taken stringent measures to ensure the proper preservation and veneration of relics. The <Code of Canon Law> (No. 1190) absolutely forbids the selling of sacred relics and they cannot be “validly alienated or perpetually transferred” without permission of the Holy See. Moreover, any relic today would have proper documentation attesting to its authenticity.

The Code also supports the proper place for relics in our Catholic practice. Canon 1237 states, “The ancient tradition of keeping the relics of martyrs and other saints under a fixed altar is to be preserved according to the norms given in the liturgical books” (a practice widespread since the fourth century). Many churches also have relics of their patron saints which the faithful venerate upon appropriate occasions. And yes, reports of the Lord’s miracles and favors continue to be connected with the intercession of a saint and the veneration of his relics.

In all, relics remind us of the holiness of a saint and his cooperation in God’s work. At the same time, relics inspire us to ask for the prayers of that saint and to beg the grace of God to live the same kind of faith-filled live.

Fr. Saunders is president of Notre Dame Institute and pastor of Queen of Apostles Parish, both in Alexandria.

This article appeared in the July 13, 1995 issue of “The Arlington Catholic Herald.” Courtesy of the “Arlington Catholic Herald” diocesan newspaper of the Arlington (VA) diocese. For subscription information, call 1-800-377-0511 or write 200 North Glebe Road, Suite 607 Arlington, VA 22203.

FOREWORD

The present study is concerned with the complex phenomenon of “New Age” which is influencing many aspects of contemporary culture.

The study is a provisional report. It is the fruit of the common reflection of the Working Group on New Religious Movements, composed of staff members of different dicasteries of the Holy See: the Pontifical Councils for Culture and for Interreligious Dialogue (which are the principal redactors for this project), the Congregation for the Evangelization of Peoples and the Pontifical Council for Promoting Christian Unity.

These reflections are offered primarily to those engaged in pastoral work so that they might be able to explain how the New Age movement differs from the Christian faith. This study invites readers to take account of the way that New Age religiosity addresses the spiritual hunger of contemporary men and women. It should be recognized that the attraction that New Age religiosity has for some Christians may be due in part to the lack of serious attention in their own communities for themes which are actually part of the Catholic synthesis such as the importance of man’ spiritual dimension and its integration with the whole of life, the search for life’s meaning, the link between human beings and the rest of creation, the desire for personal and social transformation, and the rejection of a rationalistic and materialistic view of humanity.

The present publication calls attention to the need to know and understand New Age as a cultural current, as well as the need for Catholics to have an understanding of authentic Catholic doctrine and spirituality in order to properly assess New Age themes. The first two chapters present New Age as a multifaceted cultural tendency, proposing an analysis of the basic foundations of the thought conveyed in this context. From Chapter Three onwards some indications are offered for an investigation of New Age in comparison with the Christian message. Some suggestions of a pastoral nature are also made.

Those who wish to go deeper into the study of New Age will find useful references in the appendices. It is hoped that this work will in fact provide a stimulus for further studies adapted to different cultural contexts. Its purpose is also to encourage discernment by those who are looking for sound reference points for a life of greater fulness. It is indeed our conviction that through many of our contemporaries who are searching, we can discover a true thirst for God. As Pope John Paul II said to a group of bishops from the United States: “Pastors must honestly ask whether they have paid sufficient attention to the thirst of the human heart for the true ‘living water’ which only Christ our Redeemer can give (cf. Jn 4:7-13)”. Like him, we want to rely “on the perennial freshness of the Gospel message and its capacity to transform and renew those who accept it” (AAS 86/4, 330).

1. WHAT SORT OF REFLECTION?

The following reflections are meant as a guide for Catholics involved in preaching the Gospel and teaching the faith at any level within the Church. This document does not aim at providing a set of complete answers to the many questions raised by the New Age or other contemporary signs of the perennial human search for happiness, meaning and salvation. It is an invitation to understand the New Age and to engage in a genuine dialogue with those who are influenced by New Age thought. The document guides those involved in pastoral work in their understanding and response to New Age spirituality, both illustrating the points where this spirituality contrasts with the Catholic faith and refuting the positions espoused by New Age thinkers in opposition to Christian faith. What is indeed required of Christians is, first and foremost, a solid grounding in their faith. On this sound base, they can build a life which responds positively to the invitation in the first letter of Saint Peter: “always have your answer ready for people who ask you the reason for the hope that you all have. But give it with courtesy and respect and a clear conscience” (1 P 3, 15 f.).

1.1. Why now?

The beginning of the Third Millennium comes not only two thousand years after the birth of Christ, but also at a time when astrologers believe that the Age of Pisces – known to them as the Christian age – is drawing to a close. These reflections are about the New Age, which takes its name from the imminent astrological Age of Aquarius. The New Age is one of many explanations of the significance of this moment in history which are bombarding contemporary (particularly western) culture, and it is hard to see clearly what is and what is not consistent with the Christian message. So this seems to be the right moment to offer a Christian assessment of New Age thinking and the New Age movement as a whole.

It has been said, quite correctly, that many people hover between certainty and uncertainty these days, particularly in questions relating to their identity[1]. Some say that the Christian religion is patriarchal and authoritarian, that political institutions are unable to improve the world, and that formal (allopathic) medicine simply fails to heal people effectively. The fact that what were once central elements in society are now perceived as untrustworthy or lacking in genuine authority has created a climate where people look inwards, into themselves, for meaning and strength. There is also a search for alternative institutions, which people hope will respond to their deepest needs. The unstructured or chaotic life of alternative communities of the 1970s has given way to a search for discipline and structures, which are clearly key elements in the immensely popular “mystical” movements. New Age is attractive mainly because so much of what it offers meets hungers often left unsatisfied by the established institutions.

While much of New Age is a reaction to contemporary culture, there are many ways in which it is that culture’s child. The Renaissance and the Reformation have shaped the modern western individual, who is not weighed down by external burdens like merely extrinsic authority and tradition; people feel the need to “belong” to institutions less and less (and yet loneliness is very much a scourge of modern life), and are not inclined to rank “official” judgements above their own. With this cult of humanity, religion is internalised in a way which prepares the ground for a celebration of the sacredness of the self. This is why New Age shares many of the values espoused by enterprise culture and the “prosperity Gospel” (of which more will be said later: section 2.4), and also by the consumer culture, whose influence is clear from the rapidly-growing numbers of people who claim that it is possible to blend Christianity and New Age, by taking what strikes them as the best of both[2]. It is worth remembering that deviations within Christianity have also gone beyond traditional theism in accepting a unilateral turn to self, and this would encourage such a blending of approaches. The important thing to note is that God is reduced in certain New Age practices so as furthering the advancement of the individual.

New Age appeals to people imbued with the values of modern culture. Freedom, authenticity, self-reliance and the like are all held to be sacred. It appeals to those who have problems with patriarchy. It “does not demand any more faith or belief than going to the cinema”[3], and yet it claims to satisfy people’s spiritual appetites. But here is a central question: just what is meant by spirituality in a New Age context? The answer is the key to unlocking some of the differences between the Christian tradition and much of what can be called New Age. Some versions of New Age harness the powers of nature and seek to communicate with another world to discover the fate of individuals, to help individuals tune in to the right frequency to make the most of themselves and their circumstances. In most cases, it is completely fatalistic. Christianity, on the other hand, is an invitation to look outwards and beyond, to the “new Advent”

of the God who calls us to live the dialogue of love[4].

1.2. Communications

The technological revolution in communications over the last few years has brought about a completely new situation. The ease and speed with which people can now communicate is one of the reasons why New Age has come to the attention of people of all ages and backgrounds, and many who follow Christ are not sure what it is all about. The Internet, in particular, has become enormously influential, especially with younger people, who find it a congenial and fascinating way of acquiring information. But it is a volatile vehicle of misinformation on so many aspects of religion: not all that is labelled “Christian” or “Catholic” can be trusted to reflect the teachings of the Catholic Church and, at the same time, there is a remarkable expansion of New Age sources ranging from the serious to the ridiculous. People need, and have a right to, reliable information on the differences between Christianity and New Age.

1.3. Cultural background

When one examines many New Age traditions, it soon becomes clear that there is, in fact, little in the New Age that is new. The name seems to have gained currency through Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry, at the time of the French and American Revolutions, but the reality it denotes is a contemporary variant of Western esotericism. This dates back to Gnostic groups which grew up in the early days of Christianity, and gained momentum at the time of the Reformation in Europe. It has grown in parallel with scientific world-views, and acquired a rational justification through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. It has involved a progressive rejection of a personal God and a focus on other entities which would often figure as intermediaries between God and humanity in traditional Christianity, with more and more original adaptations of these or additional ones. A powerful trend in modern Western culture which has given space to New Age ideas is the general acceptance of Darwinist evolutionary theory; this, alongside a focus on hidden spiritual powers or forces in nature, has been the backbone of much of what is now recognised as New Age theory.

Basically, New Age has found a remarkable level of acceptance because the world-view on which it was based was already widely accepted. The ground was well prepared by the growth and spread of relativism, along with an antipathy or indifference towards the Christian faith.

Furthermore, there has been a lively discussion about whether and in what sense New Age can be described as a postmodern phenomenon. The existence and fervor of New Age thinking and practice bear witness to the unquenchable longing of the human spirit for transcendence and religious meaning, which is not only a contemporary cultural phenomenon, but was evident in the ancient world, both Christian and pagan.

1.4. The New Age and Catholic Faith

Even if it can be admitted that New Age religiosity in some way responds to the legitimate spiritual longing of human nature, it must be acknowledged that its attempts to do so run counter to Christian revelation. In Western culture in particular, the appeal of “alternative” approaches to spirituality is very strong. On the one hand, new forms of psychological affirmation of the individual have be come very popular among Catholics, even in retreat-houses, seminaries and institutes of formation for religious. At the same time there is increasing nostalgia and curiosity for the wisdom and ritual of long ago, which is one of the reasons for the remarkable growth in the popularity of esotericism and gnosticism. Many people are particularly attracted to what is known – correctly or otherwise – as “Celtic” spirituality[5], or to the religions of ancient peoples. Books and courses on spirituality and ancient or Eastern religions are a booming business, and they are frequently labelled “New Age” for commercial purposes. But the links with those religions are not always clear. In fact, they are often denied.

An adequate Christian discernment of New Age thought and practice cannot fail to recognize that, like second and third century gnosticism, it represents something of a compendium of positions that the Church has identified as heterodox. John Paul II warns with regard to the “return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age: We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practising gnosticism – that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words. Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of Christianity. Instead, it has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or a para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian”[6]. An example of this can be seen in the enneagram, the nine-type tool for character analysis, which when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith.

1.5. A positive challenge

The appeal of New Age religiosity cannot be underestimated. When the understanding of the content of Christian faith is weak, some mistakenly hold that the Christian religion does not inspire a profound spirituality and so they seek elsewhere. As a matter of fact, some say the New Age is already passing us by, and refer to the “next” age[7]. They speak of a crisis that began to manifest itself in the United States of America in the early 1990s, but admit that, especially beyond the English-speaking world, such a “crisis” may come later. But bookshops and radio stations, and the plethora of self-help groups in so many Western towns and cities, all seem to tell a different story. It seems that, at least for the moment, the New Age is still very much alive and part of the current cultural scene.

The success of New Age offers the Church a challenge. People feel the Christian religion no longer offers them – or perhaps never gave them – something they really need. The search which often leads people to the New Age is a genuine yearning: for a deeper spirituality, for something which will touch their hearts, and for a way of making sense of a confusing and often alienating world. There is a positive tone in New Age criticisms of “the materialism of daily life, of philosophy and even of medicine and psychiatry; reductionism, which refuses to take into consideration religious and supernatural experiences; the industrial culture of unrestrained individualism, which teaches egoism and pays no attention to other people, the future and the environment”[8]. Any problems there are with New Age are to be found in what it proposes as alternative answers to life’s questions. If the Church is not to be accused of being deaf to people’s longings, her members need to do two things: to root themselves ever more firmly in the fundamentals of their faith, and to understand the often-silent cry in people’s hearts, which leads them elsewhere if they are not satisfied by the Church. There is also a call in all of this to come closer to Jesus Christ and to be ready to follow Him, since He is the real way to happiness, the truth about God and the fulness of life for every man and woman who is prepared to respond to his love.

2. NEW AGE SPIRITUALITY: AN OVERVIEW

Christians in many Western societies, and increasingly also in other parts of the world, frequently come into contact with different aspects of the phenomenon known as New Age. Many of them feel the need to understand how they can best approach something which is at once so alluring, complex, elusive and, at times, disturbing. These reflections are an attempt to help Christians do two things:

—to identify elements of the developing New Age tradition;

—to indicate those elements which are inconsistent with the Christian revelation.

This is a pastoral response to a current challenge, which does not even attempt to provide an exhaustive list of New Age phenomena, since that would result in a very bulky tome, and such information is readily available elsewhere. It is essential to try to understand New Age correctly, in order to evaluate it fairly, and avoid creating a caricature. It would be unwise and untrue to say that everything connected with the New Age movement is good, or that everything about it is bad. Nevertheless, given the underlying vision of New Age religiosity, it is on the whole difficult to reconcile it with Christian doctrine and spirituality.

New Age is not a movement in the sense normally intended in the term “New Religious Movement”, and it is not what is normally meant by the terms “cult” and “sect”. Because it is spread across cultures, in phenomena as varied as music, films, seminars, workshops, retreats, therapies, and many more activities and events, it is much more diffuse and informal, though some religious or para-religious groups consciously incorporate New Age elements, and it has been suggested that New Age has been a source of ideas for various religious and para-religious sects[9]. New Age is not a single, uniform movement, but rather a loose network of practitioners whose approach is to think globally but act locally. People who are part of the network do not necessarily know each other and rarely, if ever, meet. In an attempt to avoid the confusion which can arise from using the term “movement”, some refer to New Age as a “milieu”[10], or an “audience cult”[11]. However, it has also been pointed out that “it is a very coherent current of thought”[12], a deliberate challenge to modern culture. It is a syncretistic structure incorporating many diverse elements, allowing people to share interests or connections to very different degrees and on varying levels of commitment. Many trends, practices and attitudes which are in some way part of New Age are, indeed, part of a broad and readily identifiable reaction to mainstream culture, so the word “movement” is not entirely out of place. It can be applied to New Age in the same sense as it is to other broad social movements, like the Civil Rights movement or the Peace Movement; like them, it includes a bewildering array of people linked to the movement’s main aims, but very diverse in the way they are involved and in their understanding of particular issues.

The expression “New Age religion” is more controversial, so it seems best to avoid it, although New Age is often a response to people’s religious questions and needs, and its appeal is to people who are trying to discover or rediscover a spiritual dimension in their life. Avoidance of the term “New Age religion” is not meant in any way to question the genuine character of people’s search for meaning and sense in life; it respects the fact that many within the New Age Movement themselves distinguish carefully between “religion” and “spirituality”. Many have rejected organised religion, because in their judgement it has failed to answer their needs, and for precisely this reason they have looked elsewhere to find “spirituality”. Furthermore, at the heart of New Age is the belief that the time for particular religions is over, so to refer to it as a religion would run counter to its own self-understanding. However, it is quite accurate to place New Age in the broader context of esoteric religiousness, whose appeal continues to grow[13].

There is a problem built into the current text. It is an attempt to understand and evaluate something which is basically an exaltation of the richness of human experience. It is bound to draw the criticism that it can never do justice to a cultural movement whose essence is precisely to break out of what are seen as the constricting limits of rational discourse. But it is meant as an invitation to Christians to take the New Age seriously, and as such asks its readers to enter into a critical dialogue with people approaching the same world from very different perspectives.

The pastoral effectiveness of the Church in the Third Millennium depends to a great extent on the preparation of effective communicators of the Gospel message. What follows is a response to the difficulties expressed by many in dealing with the very complex and elusive phenomenon known as New Age. It is an attempt to understand what New Age is and to recognise the questions to which it claims to offer answers and solutions. There are some excellent books and other resources which survey the whole phenomenon or explain particular aspects in great detail, and reference will be made to some of these in the appendix. However they do not always undertake the necessary discernment in the light of Christian faith. The purpose of this contribution is to help Catholics find a key to understanding the basic principles behind New Age thinking, so that they can then make a Christian evaluation of the elements of New Age they encounter. It is worth saying that many people dislike the term New Age, and some suggest that “alternative spirituality” may be more correct and less limiting. It is also true that many of the phenomena mentioned in this document will probably not bear any particular label, but it is presumed, for the sake of brevity, that readers will recognise a phenomenon or set of phenomena that can justifiably at least be linked with the general cultural movement that is often known as New Age.

2.1. What is new about New Age?

For many people, the term New Age clearly refers to a momentous turning-point in history. According to astrologers, we live in the Age of Pisces, which has been dominated by Christianity. But the current age of Pisces is due to be replaced by the New Age of Aquarius early in the third Millennium[14]. The Age of Aquarius has such a high profile in the New Age movement largely because of the influence of theosophy, spiritualism and anthroposophy, and their esoteric antecedents. People who stress the imminent change in the world are often expressing a wish for such a change, not so much in the world itself as in our culture, in the way we relate to the world; this is particularly clear in those who stress the idea of a New Paradigm for living. It is an attractive approach since, in some of its expressions, people do not watch passively, but have an active role in changing culture and bringing about a new spiritual awareness. In other expressions, more power is ascribed to the inevitable progression of natural cycles. In any case, the Age of Aquarius is a vision, not a theory. But New Age is a broad tradition, which incorporates many ideas which have no explicit link with the change from the Age of Pisces to the Age of Aquarius. There are moderate, but quite generalised, visions of a future where there will be a planetary spirituality alongside separate religions, similar planetary political institutions to complement more local ones, global economic entities which are more participatory and democratic, greater emphasis on communication and education, a mixed approach to health combining professional medicine and self-healing, a more androgynous self-understanding and ways of integrating science, mysticism, technology and ecology. Again, this is evidence of a deep desire for a fulfilling and healthy existence for the human race and for the planet. Some of the traditions which flow into New Age are: ancient Egyptian occult practices, Cabbalism, early Christian gnosticism, Sufism, the lore of the Druids, Celtic Christianity, mediaeval alchemy, Renaissance hermeticism, Zen Buddhism, Yoga and so on[15].

Here is what is “new” about New Age. It is a “syncretism of esoteric and secular elements”[16]. They link into a widely-held perception that the time is ripe for a fundamental change in individuals, in society and in the world. There are various expressions of the need for a shift:

– from Newtonian mechanistic physics to quantum physics;

– from modernity’s exaltation of reason to an appreciation of feeling, emotion and experience (often described as a switch from ‘left brain’ rational thinking to ‘right brain’ intuitive thinking);

– from a dominance of masculinity and patriarchy to a celebration of femininity, in individuals and in society.

In these contexts the term “paradigm shift” is often used. In some cases it is clearly supposed that this shift is not simply desirable, but inevitable. The rejection of modernity underlying this desire for change is not new, but can be described as “a modern revival of pagan religions with a mixture of influences from both eastern religions and also from modern psychology, philosophy, science, and the counterculture that developed in the 1950s and 1960s”[17]. New Age is a witness to nothing less than a cultural revolution, a complex reaction to the dominant ideas and values in western culture, and yet its idealistic criticism is itself ironically typical of the culture it criticizes.

A word needs to be said on the notion of paradigm shift. It was made popular by Thomas Kuhn, an American historian of science, who saw a paradigm as “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community”[18]. When there is a shift from one paradigm to another, it is a question of wholesale transformation of perspective rather than one of gradual development. It really is a revolution, and Kuhn emphasised that competing paradigms are incommensurable and cannot co-exist. So the idea that a paradigm shift in the area of religion and spirituality is simply a new way of stating traditional beliefs misses the point. What is actually going on is a radical change in world- view, which puts into question not only the content but also the fundamental interpretation of the former vision. Perhaps the clearest example of this, in terms of the relationship between New Age and Christianity, is the total recasting of the life and significance of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to reconcile these two visions[19].

Science and technology have clearly failed to deliver all they once seemed to promise, so in their search for meaning and liberation people have turned to the spiritual realm. New Age as we now know it came from a search for something more humane and beautiful than the oppressive, alienating experience of life in Western society. Its early exponents were prepared to look far afield in their search, so it has become a very eclectic approach. It may well be one of the signs of a “return to religion”, but it is most certainly not a return to orthodox Christian doctrines and creeds. The first symbols of this “movement” to penetrate Western culture were the remarkable festival at Woodstock in New York State in 1969 and the musical Hair, which set forth the main themes of New Age in the emblematic song “Aquarius”[20]. But these were merely the tip of an iceberg whose dimensions have become clearer only relatively recently. The idealism of the 1960s and 1970s still survives in some quarters; but now, it is no longer predominantly adolescents who are involved. Links with left-wing political ideology have faded, and psychedelic drugs are by no means as prominent as they once were. So much has happened since then that all this no longer seems revolutionary; “spiritual” and “mystical” tendencies formerly restricted to the counterculture are now an established part of mainstream culture, affecting such diverse facets of life as medicine, science, art and religion. Western culture is now imbued with a more general political and ecological awareness, and this whole cultural shift has had an enormous impact on people’s life-styles. It is suggested by some that the New Age “movement” is precisely this major change to what is reckoned to be “a significantly better way of life”[21].

2.2. What does the New Age claim to offer?

2.2.1. Enchantment: There Must be an Angel

One of the most common elements in New Age “spirituality” is a fascination with extraordinary manifestations, and in particular with paranormal entities. People recognised as “mediums” claim that their personality is taken over by another entity during trances in a New Age phenomenon known as “channeling”, during which the medium may lose control over his or her body and faculties. Some people who have witnessed these events would willingly acknowledge that the manifestations are indeed spiritual, but are not from God, despite the language of love and light which is almost always used…. It is probably more correct to refer to this as a contemporary form of spiritualism, rather than spirituality in a strict sense. Other friends and counsellors from the spirit world are angels (which have become the centre of a new industry of books and paintings). Those who refer to angels in the New Age do so in an unsystematic way; in fact, distinctions in this area are sometimes described as unhelpful if they are too precise, since “there are many levels of guides, entities, energies, and beings in every octave of the universe… They are all there to pick and choose from in relation to your own attraction/repulsion mechanisms”[22]. These spiritual entities are often invoked ‘non-religiously’ to help in relaxation aimed at better decision-making and control of one’s life and career. Fusion with some spirits who teach through particular people is another New Age experience claimed by people who refer to themselves as ‘mystics’. Some nature spirits are described as powerful energies existing in the natural world and also on the “inner planes”: i.e. those which are accessible by the use of rituals, drugs and other techniques for reaching altered states of consciousness. It is clear that, in theory at least, the New Age often recognizes no spiritual authority higher than personal inner experience.

2.2.2. Harmony and Understanding: Good Vibrations

Phenomena as diverse as the Findhorn garden and Feng Shui[23] represent a variety of ways which illustrate the importance of being in tune with nature or the cosmos. In New Age there is no distinction between good and evil. Human actions are the fruit of either illumination or ignorance. Hence we cannot condemn anyone, and nobody needs forgiveness. Believing in the existence of evil can create only negativity and fear. The answer to negativity is love. But it is not the sort which has to be translated into deeds; it is more a question of attitudes of mind. Love is energy, a high-frequency vibration, and the secret to happiness and health and success is being able to tune in, to find one’s place in the great chain of being. New Age teachers and therapies claim to offer the key to finding the correspondences between all the elements of the universe, so that people may modulate the tone of their lives and be in absolute harmony with each other and with everything around them, although there are different theoretical backgrounds[24].

2.2.3. Health: Golden living

Formal (allopathic) medicine today tends to limit itself to curing particular, isolated ailments, and fails to look at the broader picture of a person’s health: this has given rise to a fair amount of understandable dissatisfaction. Alternative therapies have gained enormously in popularity because they claim to look at the whole person and are about healing rather than curing. Holistic health, as it is known, concentrates on the important role that the mind plays in physical healing. The connection between the spiritual and the physical aspects of the person is said to be in the immune system or the Indian chakra system. In a New Age perspective, illness and suffering come from working against nature; when one is in tune with nature, one can expect a much healthier life, and even material prosperity; for some New Age healers, there should actually be no need for us to die. Developing our human potential will put us in touch with our inner divinity, and with those parts of our selves which have been alienated and suppressed. This is revealed above all in Altered States of Consciousness (ASCs), which are induced either by drugs or by various mind-expanding techniques, particularly in the context of “transpersonal psychology”. The shaman is often seen as the specialist of altered states of consciousness, one who is able to mediate between the transpersonal realms of spirits and gods and the world of humans.

There is a remarkable variety of approaches for promoting holistic health, some derived from ancient cultural traditions, whether religious or esoteric, others connected with the psychological theories developed in Esalen during the years 1960-1970. Advertising connected with New Age covers a wide range of practices as acupuncture, biofeedback, chiropractic, kinesiology, homeopathy, iridology, massage and various kinds of “bodywork” (such as orgonomy, Feldenkrais, reflexology, Rolfing, polarity massage, therapeutic touch etc.), meditation and visualisation, nutritional therapies, psychic healing, various kinds of herbal medicine, healing by crystals, metals, music or colours, reincarnation therapies and, finally, twelve-step programmes and self-help groups[25]. The source of healing is said to be within ourselves, something we reach when we are in touch with our inner energy or cosmic energy.

Inasmuch as health includes a prolongation of life, New Age offers an Eastern formula in Western terms. Originally, reincarnation was a part of Hindu cyclical thought, based on the atman or divine kernel of personality (later the concept of jiva), which moved from body to body in a cycle of suffering (samsara), determined by the law of karma, linked to behaviour in past lives. Hope lies in the possibility of being born into a better state, or ultimately in liberation from the need to be reborn. What is different in most Buddhist traditions is that what wanders from body to body is not a soul, but a continuum of consciousness. Present life is embedded in a potentially endless cosmic process which includes even the gods. In the West, since the time of Lessing, reincarnation has been understood far more optimistically as a process of learning and progressive individual fulfilment. Spiritualism, theosophy, anthroposophy and New Age all see reincarnation as participation in cosmic evolution. This post-Christian approach to eschatology is said to answer the unresolved questions of theodicy and dispenses with the notion of hell. When the soul is separated from the body individuals can look back on their whole life up to that point, and when the soul is united to its new body there is a preview of its coming phase of life. People have access to their former lives through dreams and meditation techniques[26].

2.2.4. Wholeness: A Magical Mystery Tour

One of the central concerns of the New Age movement is the search for “wholeness”. There is encouragement to overcome all forms of “dualism”, as such divisions are an unhealthy product of a less enlightened past. Divisions which New Age proponents claim need to be overcome include the real difference between Creator and creation, the real distinction between man and nature, or spirit and matter, which are all considered wrongly as forms of dualism. These dualistic tendencies are often assumed to be ultimately based on the Judaeo-Christian roots of western civilisation, while it would be more accurate to link them to gnosticism, in particular to Manichaeism. The scientific revolution and the spirit of modern rationalism are blamed particularly for the tendency to fragmentation, which treats organic wholes as mechanisms that can be reduced to their smallest components and then explained in terms of the latter, and the tendency to reduce spirit to matter, so that spiritual reality – including the soul – becomes merely a contingent “epiphenomenon” of essentially material processes. In all of these areas, the New Age alternatives are called “holistic”. Holism pervades the New Age movement, from its concern with holistic health to its quest for unitive consciousness, and from ecological awareness to the idea of global “networking”.

2.3. The fundamental principles of New Age thinking

2.3.1. A global response in a time of crisis

“Both the Christian tradition and the secular faith in an unlimited process of science had to face a severe break first manifested in the student revolutions around the year 1968”[27].) The wisdom of older generations was suddenly robbed of significance and respect, while the omnipotence of science evaporated, so that the Church now “has to face a serious breakdown in the transmission of her faith to the younger generation”[28]. A general loss of faith in these former pillars of consciousness and social cohesion has been accompanied by the unexpected return of cosmic religiosity, rituals and beliefs which many believed to have been supplanted by Christianity; but this perennial esoteric undercurrent never really went away. The surge in popularity of Asian religion at this point was something new in the Western context, established late in the nineteenth century in the theosophical movement, and it “reflects the growing awareness of a global spirituality, incorporating all existing religious traditions”[29].

The perennial philosophical question of the one and the many has its modern and contemporary form in the temptation to overcome not only undue division, but even real difference and distinction, and the most common expression of this is holism, an essential ingredient in New Age and one of the principal signs of the times in the last quarter of the twentieth century. An extraordinary amount of energy has gone into the effort to overcome the division into compartments characteristic of mechanistic ideology, but this has led to the sense of obligation to submit to a global network which assumes quasi-transcendental authority. Its clearest implications are a process of conscious transformation and the development of ecology[30]. The new vision which is the goal of conscious transformation has taken time to formulate, and its enactment is resisted by older forms of thought judged to be entrenched in the status quo. What has been successful is the generalisation of ecology as a fascination with nature and resacralisation of the earth, Mother Earth or Gaia, with the missionary zeal characteristic of Green politics. The Earth’s executive agent is the human race as a whole, and the harmony and understanding required for responsible governance is increasingly understood to be a global government, with a global ethical framework. The warmth of Mother Earth, whose divinity pervades the whole of creation, is held to bridge the gap between creation and the transcendent Father-God of Judaism and Christianity, and removes the prospect of being judged by such a Being.

In such a vision of a closed universe that contains “God” and other spiritual beings along with ourselves, we recognize here an implicit pantheism. This is a fundamental point which pervades all New Age thought and practice, and conditions in advance any otherwise positive assessment where we might be in favor of one or another aspect of its spirituality. As Christians, we believe on the contrary that “man is essentially a creature and remains so for all eternity, so that an absorption of the human I in the divine I will never be possible”[31].

2.3.2. The essential matrix of New Age thinking

The essential matrix of New Age thinking is to be found in the esoteric-theosophical tradition which was fairly widely accepted in European intellectual circles in the 18th and 19th centuries. It was particularly strong in freemasonry, spiritualism, occultism and theosophy, which shared a kind of esoteric culture. In this world-view, the visible and invisible universes are linked by a series of correspondences, analogies and influences between microcosm and macrocosm, between metals and planets, between planets and the various parts of the human body, between the visible cosmos and the invisible realms of reality. Nature is a living being, shot through with networks of sympathy and antipathy, animated by a light and a secret fire which human beings seek to control. People can contact the upper or lower worlds by means of their imagination (an organ of the soul or spirit), or by using mediators (angels, spirits, devils) or rituals.

People can be initiated into the mysteries of the cosmos, God and the self by means of a spiritual itinerary of transformation. The eventual goal is gnosis, the highest form of knowledge, the equivalent of salvation. It involves a search for the oldest and highest tradition in philosophy (what is inappropriately called philosophia perennis) and religion (primordial theology), a secret (esoteric) doctrine which is the key to all the “exoteric” traditions which are accessible to everyone. Esoteric teachings are handed down from master to disciple in a gradual program of initiation.

19th century esotericism is seen by some as completely secularised. Alchemy, magic, astrology and other elements of traditional esotericism had been thoroughly integrated with aspects of modern culture, including the search for causal laws, evolutionism, psychology and the study of religions. It reached its clearest form in the ideas of Helena Blavatsky, a Russian medium who founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Olcott in New York in 1875. The Society aimed to fuse elements of Eastern and Western traditions in an evolutionary type of spiritualism. It had three main aims:

1. “To form a nucleus of the Universal Brotherhood of Humanity, without distinction of race, creed, caste or colour.

2. “To encourage the study of comparative religion, philosophy and science.

3. “To investigate unexplained laws of Nature and the powers latent in man.

“The significance of these objectives… should be clear. The first objective implicitly rejects the ‘irrational bigotry’ and ‘sectarianism’ of traditional Christianity as perceived by spiritualists and theosophists… It is not immediately obvious from the objectives themselves that, for theosophists, ‘science’ meant the occult sciences and philosophy the occulta philosophia, that the laws of nature were of an occult or psychic nature, and that comparative religion was expected to unveil a ‘primordial tradition’ ultimately modelled on a Hermeticist philosophia perennis”[32].

A prominent component of Mrs. Blavatsky’s writings was the emancipation of women, which involved an attack on the “male” God of Judaism, of Christianity and of Islam. She urged people to return to the mother-goddess of Hinduism and to the practice of feminine virtues. This continued under the guidance of Annie Besant, who was in the vanguard of the feminist movement. Wicca and “women’s spirituality” carry on this struggle against “patriarchal” Christianity today.

Marilyn Ferguson devoted a chapter of The Aquarian Conspiracy to the precursors of the Age of Aquarius, those who had woven the threads of a transforming vision based on the expansion of consciousness and the experience of self-transcendence. Two of those she mentioned were the American psychologist William James and the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Gustav Jung. James defined religion as experience, not dogma, and he taught that human beings can change their mental attitudes in such a way that they are able to become architects of their own destiny. Jung emphasized the transcendent character of consciousness and introduced the idea of the collective unconscious, a kind of store for symbols and memories shared with people from various different ages and cultures. According to Wouter Hanegraaff, both of these men contributed to a “sacralisation of psychology”, something that has become an important element of New Age thought and practice. Jung, indeed, “not only psychologized esotericism but he also sacralized psychology, by filling it with the contents of esoteric speculation. The result was a body of theories which enabled people to talk about God while really meaning their own psyche, and about their own psyche while really meaning the divine. If the psyche is ‘mind’, and God is ‘mind’ as well, then to discuss one must mean to discuss the other”[33].) His response to the accusation that he had “psychologised” Christianity was that “psychology is the modern myth and only in terms of the current myth can we understand the faith”[34]. It is certainly true that Jung’s psychology sheds light on many aspects of the Christian faith, particularly on the need to face the reality of evil, but his religious convictions are so different at different stages of his life that one is left with a confused image of God. A central element in his thought is the cult of the sun, where God is the vital energy (libido) within a person[35]. As he himself said, “this comparison is no mere play of words”[36]. This is “the god within” to which Jung refers, the essential divinity he believed to be in every human being. The path to the inner universe is through the unconscious. The inner world’s correspondence to the outer one is in the collective unconscious.

The tendency to interchange psychology and spirituality was firmly embedded in the Human Potential Movement as it developed towards the end of the 1960s at the Esalen Institute in California. Transpersonal psychology, strongly influenced by Eastern religions and by Jung, offers a contemplative journey where science meets mysticism. The stress laid on bodiliness, the search for ways of expanding consciousness and the cultivation of the myths of the collective unconscious were all encouragements to search for “the God within” oneself. To realise one’s potential, one had to go beyond one’s ego in order to become the god that one is, deep down. This could be done by choosing the appropriate therapy – meditation, parapsychological experiences, the use of hallucinogenic drugs. These were all ways of achieving “peak experiences”, “mystical” experiences of fusion with God and with the cosmos.

The symbol of Aquarius was borrowed from astrological mythology, but later came to signify the desire for a radically new world. The two centres which were the initial power-houses of the New Age, and to a certain extent still are, were the Garden community at Findhorn in North-East Scotland, and the Centre for the development of human potential at Esalen in Big Sur, California, in the United States of America. What feeds New Age consistently is a growing global consciousness and increasing awareness of a looming ecological crisis.

2.3.3. Central themes of the New Age

New Age is not, properly speaking, a religion, but it is interested in what is called “divine”. The essence of New Age is the loose association of the various activities, ideas and people who might validly attract the term. So there is no single articulation of anything like the doctrines of mainstream religions. Despite this, and despite the immense variety within New Age, there are some common points:

– the cosmos is seen as an organic whole

– it is animated by an Energy, which is also identified as the divine Soul or Spirit

– much credence is given to the mediation of various spiritual entities

– humans are capable of ascending to invisible higher spheres, and of controlling their own lives beyond death

– there is held to be a “perennial knowledge” which pre-dates and is superior to all religions and cultures

– people follow enlightened masters…

2.3.4. What does New Age say about…

2.3.4.1. …the human person?

New Age involves a fundamental belief in the perfectibility of the human person by means of a wide variety of techniques and therapies (as opposed to the Christian view of co-operation with divine grace). There is a general accord with Nietzsche’s idea that Christianity has prevented the full manifestation of genuine humanity. Perfection, in this context, means achieving self-fulfilment, according to an order of values which we ourselves create and which we achieve by our own strength: hence one can speak of a self- creating self. On this view, there is more difference between humans as they now are and as they will be when they have fully realised their potential, than there is between humans and anthropoids.

It is useful to distinguish between esotericism, a search for knowledge, and magic, or the occult: the latter is a means of obtaining power. Some groups are both esoteric and occult. At the centre of occultism is a will to power based on the dream of becoming divine.

Mind-expanding techniques are meant to reveal to people their divine power; by using this power, people prepare the way for the Age of Enlightenment. This exaltation of humanity overturns the correct relationship between Creator and creature, and one of its extreme forms is Satanism. Satan becomes the symbol of a rebellion against conventions and rules, a symbol that often takes aggressive, selfish and violent forms. Some evangelical groups have expressed concern at the subliminal presence of what they claim is Satanic symbolism in some varieties of rock music, which have a powerful influence on young people. This is all far removed from the message of peace and harmony which is to be found in the New Testament; it is often one of the consequences of the exaltation of humanity when that involves the negation of a transcendent God.

But it is not only something which affects young people; the basic themes of esoteric culture are also present in the realms of politics, education and legislation[37]. It is especially the case with ecology. Deep ecology’s emphasis on bio-centrism denies the anthropological vision of the Bible, in which human beings are at the centre of the world, since they are considered to be qualitatively superior to other natural forms. It is very prominent in legislation and education today, despite the fact that it underrates humanity in this way.. The same esoteric cultural matrix can be found in the ideological theory underlying population control policies and experiments in genetic engineering, which seem to express a dream human beings have of creating themselves afresh. How do people hope to do this? By deciphering the genetic code, altering the natural rules of sexuality, defying the limits of death.

In what might be termed a classical New Age account, people are born with a divine spark, in a sense which is reminiscent of ancient gnosticism; this links them into the unity of the Whole. So they are seen as essentially divine, although they participate in this cosmic divinity at different levels of consciousness. We are co- creators, and we create our own reality. Many New Age authors maintain that we choose the circumstances of our lives (even our own illness and health), in a vision where every individual is considered the creative source of the universe. But we need to make a journey in order fully to understand where we fit into the unity of the cosmos. The journey is psychotherapy, and the recognition of universal consciousness is salvation. There is no sin; there is only imperfect knowledge. The identity of every human being is diluted in the universal being and in the process of successive incarnations. People are subject to the determining influences of the stars, but can be opened to the divinity which lives within them, in their continual search (by means of appropriate techniques) for an ever greater harmony between the self and divine cosmic energy. There is no need for Revelation or Salvation which would come to people from outside themselves, but simply a need to experience the salvation hidden within themselves (self-salvation), by mastering psycho- physical techniques which lead to definitive enlightenment.

Some stages on the way to self-redemption are preparatory (meditation, body harmony, releasing self-healing energies). They are the starting-point for processes of spiritualisation, perfection and enlightenment which help people to acquire further self-control and psychic concentration on “transformation” of the individual self into “cosmic consciousness”. The destiny of the human person is a series of successive reincarnations of the soul in different bodies. This is understood not as the cycle of samsara, in the sense of purification as punishment, but as a gradual ascent towards the perfect development of one’s potential.

Psychology is used to explain mind expansion as “mystical” experiences. Yoga, zen, transcendental meditation and tantric exercises lead to an experience of self-fulfilment or enlightenment. Peak-experiences (reliving one’s birth, travelling to the gates of death, biofeedback, dance and even drugs – anything which can provoke an altered state of consciousness) are believed to lead to unity and enlightenment. Since there is only one Mind, some people can be channels for higher beings. Every part of this single universal being has contact with every other part. The classic approach in New Age is transpersonal psychology, whose main concepts are the Universal Mind, the Higher Self, the collective and personal unconscious and the individual ego. The Higher Self is our real identity, a bridge between God as divine Mind and humanity. Spiritual development is contact with the Higher Self, which overcomes all forms of dualism between subject and object, life and death, psyche and soma, the self and the fragmentary aspects of the self. Our limited personality is like a shadow or a dream created by the real self. The Higher Self contains the memories of earlier (re-)incarnations.

2.3.4.2. …God?

New Age has a marked preference for Eastern or pre-Christian religions, which are reckoned to be uncontaminated by Judaeo-Christian distorsions. Hence great respect is given to ancient agricultural rites and to fertility cults. “Gaia”, Mother Earth, is offered as an alternative to God the Father, whose image is seen to be linked to a patriarchal conception of male domination of women. There is talk of God, but it is not a personal God; the God of which New Age speaks is neither personal nor transcendent. Nor is it the Creator and sustainer of the universe, but an “impersonal energy” immanent in the world, with which it forms a “cosmic unity”: “All is one”. This unity is monistic, pantheistic or, more precisely, panentheistic. God is the “life-principle”, the “spirit or soul of the world”, the sum total of consciousness existing in the world. In a sense, everything is God. God’s presence is clearest in the spiritual aspects of reality, so every mind/spirit is, in some sense, God.

When it is consciously received by men and women, “divine energy” is often described as “Christic energy”. There is also talk of Christ, but this does not mean Jesus of Nazareth. “Christ” is a title applied to someone who has arrived at a state of consciousness where he or she perceives him- or herself to be divine and can thus claim to be a “universal Master”. Jesus of Nazareth was not the Christ, but simply one among many historical figures in whom this “Christic” nature is revealed, as is the case with Buddha and others. Every historical realisation of the Christ shows clearly that all human beings are heavenly and divine, and leads them towards this realisation.

The innermost and most personal (“psychic”) level on which this “divine cosmic energy” is “heard” by human beings is also called “Holy Spirit”.

2.3.4.3. …the world?

The move from a mechanistic model of classical physics to the “holistic” one of modern atomic and sub-atomic physics, based on the concept of matter as waves or energy rather than particles, is central to much New Age thinking. The universe is an ocean of energy, which is a single whole or a network of links. The energy animating the single organism which is the universe is “spirit”. There is no alterity between God and the world. The world itself is divine and it undergoes an evolutionary process which leads from inert matter to “higher and perfect consciousness”. The world is uncreated, eternal and self-sufficient The future of the world is based on an inner dynamism which is necessarily positive and leads to the reconciled (divine) unity of all that exists. God and the world, soul and body, intelligence and feeling, heaven and earth are one immense vibration of energy.

James Lovelock’s book on the Gaia Hypothesis claims that “the entire range of living matter on earth, from whales to viruses, and from oaks to algae, could be regarded as constituting a single living entity, capable of manipulating the Earth’s atmosphere to suit its overall needs and endowed with faculties and powers far beyond those of its constituent parts”[38]. To some, the Gaia hypothesis is “a strange synthesis of individualism and collectivism. It all happens as if New Age, having plucked people out of fragmentary politics, cannot wait to throw them into the great cauldron of the global mind”. The global brain needs institutions with which to rule, in other words, a world government. “To deal with today’s problems New Age dreams of a spiritual aristocracy in the style of Plato’s Republic, run by secret societies…”[39]. This may be an exaggerated way of stating the case, but there is much evidence that gnostic élitism and global governance coincide on many issues in international politics.

Everything in the universe is interelated; in fact every part is in itself an image of the totality; the whole is in every thing and every thing is in the whole. In the “great chain of being”, all beings are intimately linked and form one family with different grades of evolution. Every human person is a hologram, an image of the whole of creation, in which every thing vibrates on its own frequency. Every human being is a neurone in earth’s central nervous system, and all individual entities are in a relationship of complementarity with others. In fact, there is an inner complementarity or androgyny in the whole of creation[40].

One of the recurring themes in New Age writings and thought is the “new paradigm” which contemporary science has opened up. “Science has given us insights into wholes and systems, stress and transformation. We are learning to read tendencies, to recognise the early signs of another, more promising, paradigm. We create alternative scenarios of the future. We communicate about the failures of old systems, forcing new frameworks for problem-solving in every area”[41]. Thus far, the “paradigm shift” is a radical change of perspective, but nothing more. The question is whether thought and real change are commensurate, and how effective in the external world an inner transformation can be proved to be. One is forced to ask, even without expressing a negative judgement, how scientific a thought-process can be when it involves affirmations like this: “War is unthinkable in a society of autonomous people who have discovered the connectedness of all humanity, who are unafraid of alien ideas and alien cultures, who know that all revolutions begin within and that you cannot impose your brand of enlightenment on anyone else”[42]. It is illogical to conclude from the fact that something is unthinkable that it cannot happen. Such reasoning is really gnostic, in the sense of giving too much power to knowledge and consciousness. This is not to deny the fundamental and crucial role of developing consciousness in scientific discovery and creative development, but simply to caution against imposing upon external reality what is as yet still only in the mind.

2.4. “Inhabitants of myth rather than history”[43]?: New Age and culture

“Basically, the appeal of the New Age has to do with the culturally stimulated interest in the self, its value, capacities and problems. Whereas traditionalised religiosity, with its hierarchical organization, is well-suited for the community, detraditionalized spirituality is well-suited for the individual. The New Age is ‘of’ the self in that it facilitates celebration of what it is to be and to become; and ‘for’ the self in that by differing from much of the mainstream, it is positioned to handle identity problems generated by conventional forms of life”[44].

The rejection of tradition in the form of patriarchal, hierarchical social or ecclesial organisation implies the search for an alternative form of society, one that is clearly inspired by the modern notion of the self. Many New Age writings argue that one can do nothing (directly) to change the world, but everything to change oneself; changing individual consciousness is understood to be the (indirect) way to change the world. The most important instrument for social change is personal example. Worldwide recognition of these personal examples will steadily lead to the transformation of the collective mind and such a transformation will be the major achievement of our time. This is clearly part of the holistic paradigm, and a re-statement of the classical philosophical question of the one and the many. It is also linked to Jung’s espousal of the theory of correspondence and his rejection of causality. Individuals are fragmentary representations of the planetary hologram; by looking within one not only knows the universe, but also changes it. But the more one looks within, the smaller the political arena becomes. Does this really fit in with the rhetoric of democratic participation in a new planetary order, or is it an unconscious and subtle disempowerment of people, which could leave them open to manipulation? Does the current preoccupation with planetary problems (ecological issues, depletion of resources, over-population, the economic gap between north and south, the huge nuclear arsenal and political instability) enable or disable engagement in other, equally real, political and social questions? The old adage that “charity begins at home” can give a healthy balance to one’s approach to these issues. Some observers of New Age detect a sinister authoritarianism behind apparent indifference to politics. David Spangler himself points out that one of the shadows of the New Age is “a subtle surrender to powerlessness and irresponsibility in the name of waiting for the New Age to come rather than being an active creator of wholeness in one’s own life”[45].

Even though it would hardly be correct to suggest that quietism is universal in New Age attitudes, one of the chief criticisms of the New Age Movement is that its privatistic quest for self-fulfilment may actually work against the possibility of a sound religious culture. Three points bring this into focus:

– it is questionable whether New Age demonstrates the intellectual cogency to provide a complete picture of the cosmos in a world view which claims to integrate nature and spiritual reality. The Western universe is seen as a divided one based on monotheism, transcendence, alterity and separateness. A fundamental dualism is detected in such divisions as those between real and ideal, relative and absolute, finite and infinite, human and divine, sacred and profane, past and present, all redolent of Hegel’s “unhappy consciousness”. This is portrayed as something tragic. The response from New Age is unity through fusion: it claims to reconcile soul and body, female and male, spirit and matter, human and divine, earth and cosmos, transcendent and immanent, religion and science, differences between religions, Yin and Yang. There is, thus, no more alterity; what is left in human terms is transpersonality. The New Age world is unproblematic: there is nothing left to achieve. But the metaphysical question of the one and the many remains unanswered, perhaps even unasked, in that there is a great deal of regret at the effects of disunity and division, but the response is a description of how things would appear in another vision.

– New Age imports Eastern religious practices piecemeal and re- interprets them to suit Westerners; this involves a rejection of the language of sin and salvation, replacing it with the morally neutral language of addiction and recovery. References to extra-European influences are sometimes merely a “pseudo-Orientalisation” of Western culture. Furthermore, it is hardly a genuine dialogue; in a context where Graeco-Roman and Judaeo-Christian influences are suspect, oriental influences are used precisely because they are alternatives to Western culture. Traditional science and medicine are felt to be inferior to holistic approaches, as are patriarchal and particular structures in politics and religion. All of these will be obstacles to the coming of the Age of Aquarius; once again, it is clear that what is implied when people opt for New Age alternatives is a complete break with the tradition that formed them. Is this as mature and liberated as it is often thought or presumed to be?

– Authentic religious traditions encourage discipline with the eventual goal of acquiring wisdom, equanimity and compassion. New Age echoes society’s deep, ineradicable yearning for an integral religious culture, and for something more generic and enlightened than what politicians generally offer, but it is not clear whether the benefits of a vision based on the ever-expanding self are for individuals or for societies. New Age training courses (what used to be known as “Erhard seminar trainings” [EST] etc.) marry counter-cultural values with the mainstream need to succeed, inner satisfaction with outer success; Findhorn’s “Spirit of Business” retreat transforms the experience of work while increasing productivity; some New Age devotees are involved not only to become more authentic and spontaneous, but also in order to become more prosperous (through magic etc.). “What makes things even more appealing to the enterprise-minded businessperson is that New Age trainings also resonate with somewhat more humanistic ideas abroad in the world of business. The ideas have to do with the workplace as a ‘learning environment’, ‘bringing life back to work’, ‘humanizing work’, ‘fulfilling the manager’, ‘people come first’ or ‘unlocking potential’. Presented by New Age trainers, they are likely to appeal to those businesspeople who have already been involved with more (secular) humanistic trainings and who want to take things further: at one and the same time for the sake of personal growth, happiness and enthusiasm, as well as for commercial productivity”[46]. So it is clear that people involved do seek wisdom and equanimity for their own benefit, but how much do the activities in which they are involved enable them to work for the common good? Apart from the question of motivation, all of these phenomena need to be judged by their fruits, and the question to ask is whether they promote self or solidarity, not only with whales, trees or like-minded people, but with the whole of creation – including the whole of humanity. The most pernicious consequences of any philosophy of egoism which is embraced by institutions or by large numbers of people are identified by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger as a set of “strategies to reduce the number of those who will eat at humanity’s table”[47]. This is a key standard by which to evaluate the impact of any philosophy or theory. Christianity always seeks to measure human endeavours by their openness to the Creator and to all other creatures, a respect based firmly on love.

2.5. Why has New Age grown so rapidly and spread so effectively?

Whatever questions and criticisms it may attract, New Age is an attempt by people who experience the world as harsh and heartless to bring warmth to that world. As a reaction to modernity, it operates more often than not on the level of feelings, instincts and emotions. Anxiety about an apocalyptic future of economic instability, political uncertainty and climatic change plays a large part in causing people to look for an alternative, resolutely optimistic relationship to the cosmos. There is a search for wholeness and happiness, often on an explicitly spiritual level. But it is significant that New Age has enjoyed enormous success in an era which can be characterised by the almost universal exaltation of diversity. Western culture has taken a step beyond tolerance – in the sense of grudging acceptance or putting up with the idiosyncrasies of a person or a minority group – to a conscious erosion of respect for normality. Normality is presented as a morally loaded concept, linked necessarily with absolute norms. For a growing number of people, absolute beliefs or norms indicate nothing but an inability to tolerate other people’s views and convictions. In this atmosphere alternative life-styles and theories have really taken off: it is not only acceptable but positively good to be diverse[48].

It is essential to bear in mind that people are involved with New Age in very different ways and on many levels. In most cases it is not really a question of “belonging” to a group or movement; nor is there much conscious awareness of the principles on which New Age is built. It seems that, for the most part, people are attracted to particular therapies or practices, without going into their background, and others are simply occasional consumers of products which are labelled “New Age”. People who use aromatherapy or listen to “New Age” music, for example, are usually interested in the effect they have on their health or well-being; it is only a minority who go further into the subject, and try to understand its theoretical (or “mystical”) significance. This fits perfectly into the patterns of consumption in societies where amusement and leisure play such an important part. The “movement” has adapted well to the laws of the market, and it is partly because it is such an attractive economic proposition that New Age has become so widespread. New Age has been seen, in some cultures at least, as the label for a product created by the application of marketing principles to a religious phenomenon[49]. There is always going to be a way of profiting from people’s perceived spiritual needs. Like many other things in contemporary economics, New Age is a global phenomenon held together and fed with information by the mass media. It is arguable that this global community was created by means of the mass media, and it is quite clear that popular literature and mass communications ensure that the common notions held by “believers” and sympathisers spread almost everywhere very rapidly. However, there is no way of proving that such a rapid spread of ideas is either by chance or by design, since this is a very loose form of “community”. Like the cybercommunities created by the Internet, it is a domain where relationships between people can be either very impersonal or interpersonal in only a very selective sense.

New Age has become immensely popular as a loose set of beliefs, therapies and practices, which are often selected and combined at will, irrespective of the incompatibilities and inconsistencies this may imply. But this is obviously to be expected in a world- view self-consciously based on “right-brain” intuitive thinking. And that is precisely why it is important to discover and recognise the fundamental characteristics of New Age ideas. What is offered is often described as simply “spiritual”, rather than belonging to any religion, but there are much closer links to particular Eastern religions than many “consumers” realise. This is obviously important in “prayer”-groups to which people choose to belong, but it is also a real question for management in a growing number of companies, whose employees are required to practise meditation and adopt mind-expanding techniques as part of their life at work[50].

It is worth saying a brief word about concerted promotion of New Age as an ideology, but this is a very complex issue. Some groups have reacted to New Age with sweeping accusations about conspiracies, but the answer would generally be that we are witnessing a spontaneous cultural change whose course is fairly determined by influences beyond human control. However, it is enough to point out that New Age shares with a number of internationally influential groups the goal of superseding or transcending particular religions in order to create space for a universal religion which could unite humanity. Closely related to this is a very concerted effort on the part of many institutions to invent a Global Ethic, an ethical framework which would reflect the global nature of contemporary culture, economics and politics. Further, the politicisation of ecological questions certainly colours the whole question of the Gaia hypothesis or worship of mother earth.

3 NEW AGE AND CHRISTIAN SPIRITUALITY

3.1. New Age as spirituality

New Age is often referred to by those who promote it as a “new spirituality”. It seems ironic to call it “new” when so many of its ideas have been taken from ancient religions and cultures. But what really is new is that New Age is a conscious search for an alternative to Western culture and its Judaeo-Christian religious roots. “Spirituality” in this way refers to the inner experience of harmony and unity with the whole of reality, which heals each human person’s feelings of imperfection and finiteness. People discover their profound connectedness with the sacred universal force or energy which is the nucleus of all life. When they have made this discovery, men and women can set out on a path to perfection, which will enable them to sort out their personal lives and their relationship to the world, and to take their place in the universal process of becoming and in the New Genesis of a world in constant evolution. The result is a cosmic mysticism[51] based on people’s awareness of a universe burgeoning with dynamic energies. Thus cosmic energy, vibration, light, God, love – even the supreme Self – all refer to one and the same reality, the primal source present in every being.

This spirituality consists of two distinct elements, one metaphysical, the other psychological. The metaphysical component comes from New Age’s esoteric and theosophical roots, and is basically a new form of gnosis. Access to the divine is by knowledge of hidden mysteries, in each individual’s search for “the real behind what is only apparent, the origin beyond time, the transcendent beyond what is merely fleeting, the primordial tradition behind merely ephemeral tradition, the other behind the self, the cosmic divinity beyond the incarnate individual”. Esoteric spirituality “is an investigation of Being beyond the separateness of beings, a sort of nostalgia for lost unity”[52].

“Here one can see the gnostic matrix of esoteric spirituality. It is evident when the children of Aquarius search for the Transcendent Unity of religions. They tend to pick out of the historical religions only the esoteric nucleus, whose guardians they claim to be. They somehow deny history and will not accept that spirituality can be rooted in time or in any institution. Jesus of Nazareth is not God, but one of the many historical manifestations of the cosmic and universal Christ”[53].

The psychological component of this kind of spirituality comes from the encounter between esoteric culture and psychology (cf. 2.32). New Age thus becomes an experience of personal psycho- spiritual transformation, seen as analogous to religious experience. For some people this transformation takes the form of a deep mystical experience, after a personal crisis or a lengthy spiritual search. For others it comes from the use of meditation or some sort of therapy, or from paranormal experiences which alter states of consciousness and provide insight into the unity of reality[54].

3.2. Spiritual narcissism?

Several authors see New Age spirituality as a kind of spiritual narcissism or pseudo-mysticism. It is interesting to note that this criticism was put forward even by an important exponent of New Age, David Spangler, who, in his later works, distanced himself from the more esoteric aspects of this current of thought.

He wrote that, in the more popular forms of New Age, “individuals and groups are living out their own fantasies of adventure and power, usually of an occult or millenarian form…. The principal characteristic of this level is attachment to a private world of ego-fulfilment and a consequent (though not always apparent) withdrawal from the world. On this level, the New Age has become populated with strange and exotic beings, masters, adepts, extraterrestrials; it is a place of psychic powers and occult mysteries, of conspiracies and hidden teachings”[55].

In a later work, David Spangler lists what he sees as the negative elements or “shadows” of the New Age: “alienation from the past in the name of the future; attachment to novelty for its own sake…; indiscriminateness and lack of discernment in the name of wholeness and communion, hence the failure to understand or respect the role of boundaries…; confusion of psychic phenomena with wisdom, of channeling with spirituality, of the New Age perspective with ultimate truth”[56]. But, in the end, Spangler is convinced that selfish, irrational narcissism is limited to just a few new-agers. The positive aspects he stresses are the function of New Age as an image of change and as an incarnation of the sacred, a movement in which most people are “very serious seekers after truth”, working in the interest of life and inner growth.

The commercial aspect of many products and therapies which bear the New Age label is brought out by David Toolan, an American Jesuit who spent several years in the New Age milieu. He observes that new-agers have discovered the inner life and are fascinated by the prospect of being responsible for the world, but that they are also easily overcome by a tendency to individualism and to viewing everything as an object of consumption. In this sense, while it is not Christian, New Age spirituality is not Buddhist either, inasmuch as it does not involve self-denial. The dream of mystical union seems to lead, in practice, to a merely virtual union, which, in the end, leaves people more alone and unsatisfied.

3.3. The Cosmic Christ

In the early days of Christianity, believers in Jesus Christ were forced to face up to the gnostic religions. They did not ignore them, but took the challenge positively and applied the terms used of cosmic deities to Christ himself. The clearest example of this is in the famous hymn to Christ in Saint Paul’s letter to the Christians at Colossae:

“He is the image of the unseen God and the first-born of all creation,

for in him were created all things in heaven and on earth:

everything visible and everything invisible,

Thrones, Dominations, Sovereignties, Powers–

all things were created through him and for him.

Before anything was created, he existed, and he holds all things in unity.

Now the Church is his body, he is its head.

As he is the Beginning, he was first to be born from the dead,

so that he should be first in every way;

because God wanted all perfection to be found in him

and all things to be reconciled through him and for him,

everything in heaven and everything on earth,

when he made peace by his death on the cross” (Col 1: 15-20).

For these early Christians, there was no new cosmic age to come; what they were celebrating with this hymn was the Fulfilment of all things which had begun in Christ. “Time is indeed fulfilled by the very fact that God, in the Incarnation, came down into human history. Eternity entered into time: what ‘fulfilment’ could be greater than this? What other ‘fulfilment’ would be possible?”[57] Gnostic belief in cosmic powers and some obscure kind of destiny withdraws the possibility of a relationship to a personal God revealed in Christ. For Christians, the real cosmic Christ is the one who is present actively in the various members of his body, which is the Church. They do not look to impersonal cosmic powers, but to the loving care of a personal God; for them cosmic bio-centrism has to be transposed into a set of social relationships (in the Church); and they are not locked into a cyclical pattern of cosmic events, but focus on the historical Jesus, in particular on his crucifixion and resurrection. We find in the Letter to the Colossians and in the New Testament a doctrine of God different from that implicit in New Age thought: the Christian conception of God is one of a Trinity of Persons who has created the human race out of a desire to share the communion of Trinitarian life with creaturely persons. Properly understood, this means that authentic spirituality is not so much our search for God but God’s search for us.

Another, completely different, view of the cosmic significance of Christ has become current in New Age circles. “The Cosmic Christ is the divine pattern that connects in the person of Jesus Christ (but by no means is limited to that person). The divine pattern of connectivity was made flesh and set up its tent among us (John 1:14)…. The Cosmic Christ… leads a new exodus from the bondage and pessimistic views of a Newtonian, mechanistic universe so ripe with competition, winners and losers, dualisms, anthropocentrism, and the boredom that comes when our exciting universe is pictured as a machine bereft of mystery and mysticism. The Cosmic Christ is local and historical, indeed intimate to human history. The Cosmic Christ might be living next door or even inside one’s deepest and truest self”[58]. Although this statement may not satisfy everyone involved in New Age, it does catch the tone very well, and it shows with absolute clarity where the differences between these two views of Christ lie. For New Age the Cosmic Christ is seen as a pattern which can be repeated in many people, places and times; it is the bearer of an enormous paradigm shift; it is ultimately a potential within us.

According to Christian belief, Jesus Christ is not a pattern, but a divine person whose human-divine figure reveals the mystery of the Father’s love for every person throughout history (Jn 3:16); he lives in us because he shares his life with us, but it is neither imposed nor automatic. All men and women are invited to share his life, to live “in Christ”.

3.4. Christian mysticism and New Age mysticism

For Christians, the spiritual life is a relationship with God which gradually through his grace becomes deeper, and in the process also sheds light on our relationship with our fellow men and women, and with the universe. Spirituality in New Age terms means experiencing states of consciousness dominated by a sense of harmony and fusion with the Whole. So “mysticism” refers not to meeting the transcendent God in the fullness of love, but to the experience engendered by turning in on oneself, an exhilarating sense of being at one with the universe, a sense of letting one’s individuality sink into the great ocean of Being[59].

This fundamental distinction is evident at all levels of comparison between Christian mysticism and New Age mysticism. The New Age way of purification is based on awareness of unease or alienation, which is to be overcome by immersion into the Whole. In order to be converted, a person needs to make use of techniques which lead to the experience of illumination. This transforms a person’s consciousness and opens him or her to contact with the divinity, which is understood as the deepest essence of reality.

The techniques and methods offered in this immanentist religious system, which has no concept of God as person, proceed ‘from below’. Although they involve a descent into the depths of one’s own heart or soul, they constitute an essentially human enterprise on the part of a person who seeks to rise towards divinity by his or her own efforts. It is often an “ascent” on the level of consciousness to what is understood to be a liberating awareness of “the god within”. Not everyone has access to these techniques, whose benefits are restricted to a privileged spiritual ‘aristocracy’.

The essential element in Christian faith, however, is God’s descent towards his creatures, particularly towards the humblest, those who are weakest and least gifted according to the values of the “world”. There are spiritual techniques which it is useful to learn, but God is able to by-pass them or do without them. A Christian’s “method of getting closer to God is not based on any technique in the strict sense of the word. That would contradict the spirit of childhood called for by the Gospel. The heart of genuine Christian mysticism is not technique: it is always a gift of God; and the one who benefits from it knows himself to be unworthy”[60].

For Christians, conversion is turning back to the Father, through the Son, in docility to the power of the Holy Spirit. The more people progress in their relationship with God – which is always and in every way a free gift – the more acute is the need to be converted from sin, spiritual myopia and self-infatuation, all of which obstruct a trusting self-abandonment to God and openness to other men and women.

All meditation techniques need to be purged of presumption and pretentiousness. Christian prayer is not an exercise in self-contemplation, stillness and self-emptying, but a dialogue of love, one which “implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘You’ of God”[61]. It leads to an increasingly complete surrender to God’s will, whereby we are invited to a deep, genuine solidarity with our brothers and sisters[62].

3.5. The “god within“ and “theosis”

Here is a key point of contrast between New Age and Christianity. So much New Age literature is shot through with the conviction that there is no divine being “out there”, or in any real way distinct from the rest of reality. From Jung’s time onwards there has been a stream of people professing belief in “the god within”. Our problem, in a New Age perspective, is our inability to recognise our own divinity, an inability which can be overcome with the help of guidance and the use of a whole variety of techniques for unlocking our hidden (divine) potential. The fundamental idea is that ‘God’ is deep within ourselves. We are gods, and we discover the unlimited power within us by peeling off layers of inauthenticity[63]. The more this potential is recognised, the more it is realised, and in this sense the New Age has its own idea of theosis, becoming divine or, more precisely, recognising and accepting that we are divine. We are said by some to be living in “an age in which our understanding of God has to be interiorised: from the Almighty God out there to God the dynamic, creative power within the very centre of all being: God as Spirit”[64].

In the Preface to Book V of Adversus Haereses, Saint Irenaeus refers to “Jesus Christ, who did, through His transcendent love, become what we are, that He might bring us to be even what He is Himself”. Here theosis, the Christian understanding of divinisation, comes about not through our own efforts alone, but with the assistance of God’s grace working in and through us. It inevitably involves an initial awareness of incompleteness and even sinfulness, in no way an exaltation of the self. Furthermore, it unfolds as an introduction into the life of the Trinity, a perfect case of distinction at the heart of unity; it is synergy rather than fusion. This all comes about as the result of a personal encounter, an offer of a new kind of life. Life in Christ is not something so personal and private that it is restricted to the realm of consciousness. Nor is it merely a new level of awareness. It involves being transformed in our soul and in our body by participation in the sacramental life of the Church.

4 NEW AGE AND CHRISTIAN FAITH IN CONTRAST

It is difficult to separate the individual elements of New Age religiosity – innocent though they may appear – from the overarching framework which permeates the whole thought-world on the New Age movement. The gnostic nature of this movement calls us to judge it in its entirety. From the point of view of Christian faith, it is not possible to isolate some elements of New Age religiosity as acceptable to Christians, while rejecting others. Since the New Age movement makes much of a communication with nature, of cosmic knowledge of a universal good – thereby negating the revealed contents of Christian faith – it cannot be viewed as positive or innocuous. In a cultural environment, marked by religious relativism, it is necessary to signal a warning against the attempt to place New Age religiosity on the same level as Christian faith, making the difference between faith and belief seem relative, thus creating greater confusion for the unwary. In this regard, it is useful to remember the exhortation of St. Paul “to instruct certain people not to teach false doctrine or to concern themselves with myths and endless genealogies, which promote speculations rather than the plan of God that is to be received by faith” (1 Tim 1:3-4). Some practices are incorrectly labeled as New Age simply as a marketing strategy to make them sell better, but are not truly associated with its worldview. This only adds to the confusion. It is therefore necessary to accurately identify those elements which belong to the New Age movement, and which cannot be accepted by those who are faithful to Christ and his Church.

The following questions may be the easiest key to evaluating some of the central elements of New Age thought and practice from a Christian standpoint. “New Age” refers to the ideas which circulate about God, the human being and the world, the people with whom Christians may have conversations on religious matters, the publicity material for meditation groups, therapies and the like, explicit statements on religion and so on. Some of these questions applied to people and ideas not explicitly labelled New Age would reveal further unnamed or unacknowledged links with the whole New Age atmosphere.

* Is God a being with whom we have a relationship or something to be used or a force to be harnessed?

The New Age concept of God is rather diffuse, whereas the Christian concept is a very clear one. The New Age god is an impersonal energy, really a particular extension or component of the cosmos; god in this sense is the life-force or soul of the world. Divinity is to be found in every being, in a gradation “from the lowest crystal of the mineral world up to and beyond the Galactic God himself, about Whom we can say nothing at all. This is not a man but a Great Consciousness”.[65] In some “classic” New Age writings, it is clear that human beings are meant to think of themselves as gods: this is more fully developed in some people than in others. God is no longer to be sought beyond the world, but deep within myself.[66] Even when “God” is something outside myself, it is there to be manipulated.

This is very different from the Christian understanding of God as the maker of heaven and earth and the source of all personal life. God is in himself personal, the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, who created the universe in order to share the communion of his life with creaturely persons. “God, who ‘dwells in unapprochable light’, wants to communicate his own divine life to the men he freely created, in order to adopt them as his sons in his only-begotten Son. By revealing himself God wishes to make them capable of responding to him, and of knowing him, and of loving him far beyond their own natural capacity”[67]. God is not identified with the Life-principle understood as the “Spirit” or “basic energy” of the cosmos, but is that love which is absolutely different from the world, and yet creatively present in everything, and leading human beings to salvation.

* Is there just one Jesus Christ, or are there thousands of Christs?

Jesus Christ is often presented in New Age literature as one among many wise men, or initiates, or avatars, whereas in Christian tradition He is the Son of God. Here are some common points in New Age approaches:

– the personal and individual historical Jesus is distinct from the eternal, impersonal universal Christ;

– Jesus is not considered to be the only Christ;

– the death of Jesus on the cross is either denied or re-interpreted to exclude the idea that He, as Christ, could have suffered;

– extra-biblical documents (like the neo-gnostic gospels) are considered authentic sources for the knowledge of aspects of the life of Jesus which are not to be found in the canon of Scripture. Other revelations about Jesus, made available by entities, spirit guides and ascended masters, or even through the Akasha Chronicles, are basic for New Age christology;

– a kind of esoteric exegesis is applied to biblical texts to purify Christianity of the formal religion which inhibits access to its esoteric essence[68].

In the Christian Tradition Jesus Christ is the Jesus of Nazareth about which the gospels speak, the son of Mary and the only Son of God, true man and true God, the full revelation of divine truth, unique Saviour of the world: “for our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate; he suffered, died and was buried. On the third day he rose again in fulfillment of the Scriptures; he ascended into heaven and is seated at the right hand of the Father”[69].

* The human being: is there one universal being or are there many individuals?

“The point of New Age techniques is to reproduce mystical states at will, as if it were a matter of laboratory material. Rebirth, biofeedback, sensory isolation, holotropic breathing, hypnosis, mantras, fasting, sleep deprivation and transcendental meditation are attempts to control these states and to experience them continuously”[70]. These practices all create an atmosphere of psychic weakness (and vulnerability). When the object of the exercise is that we should re-invent our selves, there is a real question of who “I” am. “God within us” and holistic union with the whole cosmos underline this question. Isolated individual personalities would be pathological in terms of New Age (in particular transpersonal psychology). But “the real danger is the holistic paradigm. New Age is thinking based on totalitarian unity and that is why it is a danger…”[71]. More moderately: “We are authentic when we ‘take charge of’ ourselves, when our choice and reactions flow spontaneously from our deepest needs, when our behaviour and expressed feelings reflect our personal wholeness”[72]. The Human Potential Movement is the clearest example of the conviction that humans are divine, or contain a divine spark within themselves.

The Christian approach grows out of the Scriptural teachings about human nature; men and women are created in God’s image and likeness (Gen 1.27) and God takes great consideration of them, much to the relieved surprise of the Psalmist (cf. Ps 8). The human person is a mystery fully revealed only in Jesus Christ (cf. GS 22),and in fact becomes authentically human properly in his relationship with Christ through the gift of the Spirit[73].This is far from the caricature of anthropocentrism ascribed to Christianity and rejected by many New Age authors and practitioners.

* Do we save ourselves or is salvation a free gift from God?

The key is to discover by what or by whom we believe we are saved. Do we save ourselves by our own actions, as is often the case in New Age explanations, or are we saved by God’s love? Key words are self-fulfilment and self-realisation, self-redemption. New Age is essentially Pelagian in its understanding of about human nature[74].

For Christians, salvation depends on a participation in the passion, death and resurrection of Christ, and on a direct personal relationship with God rather than on any technique. The human situation, affected as it is by original sin and by personal sin, can only be rectified by God’s action: sin is an offense against God, and only God can reconcile us to himself. In the divine plan of salvation, human beings have been saved by Jesus Christ who, as God and man, is the one mediator of redemption. In Christianity salvation is not an experience of self, a meditative and intuitive dwelling within oneself, but much more the forgiveness of sin, being lifted out of profound ambivalences in oneself and the calming of nature by the gift of communion with a loving God. The way to salvation is not found simply in a self-induced transformation of consciousness, but in a liberation from sin and its consequences which then leads us to struggle against sin in ourselves and in the society around us. It necessarily moves us toward loving solidarity with our neighbour in need.

* Do we invent truth or do we embrace it?

New Age truth is about good vibrations, cosmic correspondences, harmony and ecstasy, in general pleasant experiences. It is a matter of finding one’s own truth in accordance with the feel- good factor. Evaluating religion and ethical questions is obviously relative to one’s own feelings and experiences.

Jesus Christ is presented in Christian teaching as “The Way, the Truth and the Life” (Jn 14.6). His followers are asked to open their whole lives to him and to his values, in other words to an objective set of requirements which are part of an objective reality ultimately knowable by all.

* Prayer and meditation: are we talking to ourselves or to God?

The tendency to confuse psychology and spirituality makes it hard not to insist that many of the meditation techniques now used are not prayer. They are often a good preparation for prayer, but no more, even if they lead to a more pleasant state of mind or bodily comfort. The experiences involved are genuinely intense, but to remain at this level is to remain alone, not yet in the presence of the other. The achievement of silence can confront us with emptiness, rather than the silence of contemplating the beloved. It is also true that techniques for going deeper into one’s own soul are ultimately an appeal to one’s own ability to reach the divine, or even to become divine: if they forget God’s search for the human heart they are still not Christian prayer. Even when it is seen as a link with the Universal Energy, “such an easy ‘relationship’ with God, where God’s function is seen as supplying all our needs, shows the selfishness at the heart of this New Age”[75].

New Age practices are not really prayer, in that they are generally a question of introspection or fusion with cosmic energy, as opposed to the double orientation of Christian prayer, which involves introspection but is essentially also a meeting with God. Far from being a merely human effort, Christian mysticism is essentially a dialogue which “implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from ‘self’ to the ‘you’ of God”.[76] “The Christian, even when he is alone and prays in secret, he is conscious that he always prays for the good of the Church in union with Christ, in the Holy Spirit and together with all the saints”[77].

* Are we tempted to deny sin or do we accept that there is such a thing?

In New Age there is no real concept of sin, but rather one of imperfect knowledge; what is needed is enlightenment, which can be reached through particular psycho-physical techniques. Those who take part in New Age activities will not be told what to believe, what to do or what not to do, but: “There are a thousand ways of exploring inner reality. Go where your intelligence and intuition lead you. Trust yourself”[78]. Authority has shifted from a theistic location to within the self. The most serious problem perceived in New Age thinking is alienation from the whole cosmos, rather than personal failure or sin. The remedy is to become more and more immersed in the whole of being. In some New Age writings and practices, it is clear that one life is not enough, so there have to be reincarnations to allow people to realise their full potential.

In the Christian perspective “only the light of divine Revelation clarifies the reality of sin and particularly of the sin committed at mankind’s origins. Without the knowledge Revelation gives of God we cannot recognize sin clearly and are tempted to explain it as merely a development flaw, a psychological weakness, a mistake, or the necessary consequence of an inadequate social structure, etc. Only in the knowledge of God’s plan for man can we grasp that sin is an abuse of freedom that God gives to created persons so that they are capable of loving him and loving one another”[79]. Sin is an offense against reason, truth and right conscience; it is a failure in genuine love for God and neighbor caused by a perverse attachment to certain goods. It wounds the nature of man and injures human solidarity…[80] Sin is an offense against God… sin sets itself against God’s love for us and turns our hearts away from it… Sin is thus ‘love of oneself even to contempt of God’”[81].

* Are we encouraged to reject or accept suffering and death?

Some New Age writers view suffering as self-imposed, or as bad karma, or at least as a failure to harness one’s own resources. Others concentrate on methods of achieving success and wealth (e.g. Deepak Chopra, José Silva et al.). In New Age, reincarnation is often seen as a necessary element in spiritual growth, a stage in progressive spiritual evolution which began before we were born and will continue after we die. In our present lives the experience of the death of other people provokes a healthy crisis.

Both cosmic unity and reincarnation are irreconcilable with the Christian belief that a human person is a distinct being, who lives one life, for which he or she is fully responsible: this understanding of the person puts into question both responsibility and freedom. Christians know that “in the cross of Christ not only is the redemption accomplished through suffering, but also human suffering itself has been redeemed. Christ – without any fault of his own – took on himself ‘the total evil of sin’. The experience of this evil determined the incomparable extent of Christ’s suffering, which became the price of the redemption… The Redeemer suffered in place of man and for man. Every man has his own share in the redemption, Each one is also called to share in that suffering through which the redemption was accomplished. He is called to share in that suffering through which all human suffering has also been redeemed. In bringing about the redemption through suffering, Christ has also raised human suffering to the level of the redemption. Thus each man in his suffering can also become a sharer in the redemptive suffering of Christ”[82].

* Is social commitment something shirked or positively sought after?

Much in New Age is unashamedly self-promotion, but some leading figures in the movement claim that it is unfair to judge the whole movement by a minority of selfish, irrational and narcissistic people, or to allow oneself to be dazzled by some of their more bizarre practices, which are a block to seeing in New Age a genuine spiritual search and spirituality[83]. The fusion of individuals into the cosmic self, the relativisation or abolition of difference and opposition in a cosmic harmony, is unacceptable to Christianity.

Where there is true love, there has to be a different other (person). A genuine Christian searches for unity in the capacity and freedom of the other to say “yes” or “no” to the gift of love. Union is seen in Christianity as communion, unity as community.

* Is our future in the stars or do we help to construct it?

The New Age which is dawning will be peopled by perfect, androgynous beings who are totally in command of the cosmic laws of nature. In this scenario, Christianity has to be eliminated and give way to a global religion and a new world order.

Christians are in a constant state of vigilance, ready for the last days when Christ will come again; their New Age began 2000 years ago, with Christ, who is none other than “Jesus of Nazareth; he is the Word of God made man for the salvation of all”. His Holy Spirit is present and active in the hearts of individuals, in “society and history, peoples, cultures and religions”. In fact, “the Spirit of the Father, bestowed abundantly by the Son, is the animator of all”[84]. We live in the last times.

On the one hand, it is clear that many New Age practices seem to those involved in them not to raise doctrinal questions; but, at the same time, it is undeniable that these practices themselves communicate, even if only indirectly, a mentality which can influence thinking and inspire a very particular vision of reality. Certainly New Age creates its own atmosphere, and it can be hard to distinguish between things which are innocuous and those which really need to be questioned. However, it is well to be aware that the doctrine of the Christ spread in New Age circles is inspired by the theosophical teachings of Helena Blavatsky, Rudolf Steiner’s anthroposophy and Alice Bailey’s “Arcane School”. Their contemporary followers are not only promoting their ideas now, but also working with New Agers to develop a completely new understanding of reality, a doctrine known by some observers as “New Age truth”[85].

5 JESUS CHRIST OFFERS US THE WATER OF LIFE

The Church’s one foundation is Jesus Christ, her Lord. He is at the heart of every Christian action, and every Christian message. So the Church constantly returns to meet her Lord. The Gospels tell of many meetings with Jesus, from the shepherds in Bethlehem to the two thieves crucified with him, from the wise elders who listened to him in the Temple to the disciples walking miserably towards Emmaus. But one episode that speaks really clearly about what he offers us is the story of his encounter with the Samaritan woman by Jacob’s well in the fourth chapter of John’s Gospel; it has even been described as “a paradigm for our engagement with truth”[86]. The experience of meeting the stranger who offers us the water of life is a key to the way Christians can and should engage in dialogue with anyone who does not know Jesus.

One of the attractive elements of John’s account of this meeting is that it takes the woman a while even to glimpse what Jesus means by the water ‘of life’, or ‘living’ water (verse 11). Even so, she is fascinated – not only by the stranger himself, but also by his message – and this makes her listen. After her initial shock at realising what Jesus knew about her (“You are right in saying ‘I have no husband’: for you have had five husbands, and he whom you now have is not your husband; this you said truly”, verses 17- 18), she was quite open to his word: “I see you are a prophet, Sir” (verse 19). The dialogue about the adoration of God begins: “You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews” (verse 22). Jesus touched her heart and so prepared her to listen to what He had to say about Himself as the Messiah: “I who am speaking to you – I am he” (verse 26), prepared her to open her heart to the true adoration in Spirit and the self-revelation of Jesus as God’s Anointed.

The woman “put down her water jar and hurried back to the town to tell the people” all about the man (verse 28). The remarkable effect on the woman of her encounter with the stranger made them so curious that they, too, “started walking towards him” (verse 30). They soon accepted the truth of his identity: “Now we no longer believe because of what you told us; we have heard him ourselves and we know that he really is the saviour of the world” (verse 42). They move from hearing about Jesus to knowing him personally, then understanding the universal significance of his identity. This all happens because their minds, their hearts and more are engaged.

The fact that the story takes place by a well is significant. Jesus offers the woman “a spring… welling up to eternal life” (verse 14). The gracious way in which Jesus deals with the woman is a model for pastoral effectiveness, helping others to be truthful without suffering in the challenging process of self-recognition (“he told me every thing I have done“, verse 39). This approach could yield a rich harvest in terms of people who may have been attracted to the water-carrier (Aquarius) but who are genuinely still seeking the truth. They should be invited to listen to Jesus, who offers us not simply something that will quench our thirst today, but the hidden spiritual depths of “living water”. It is important to acknowledge the sincerity of people searching for the truth; there is no question of deceit or of self-deception. It is also important to be patient, as any good educator knows. A person embraced by the truth is suddenly energised by a completely new sense of freedom, especially from past failures and fears, and “the one who strives for self-knowledge, like the woman at the well, will affect others with a desire to know the truth that can free them too”[87].

An invitation to meet Jesus Christ, the bearer of the water of life, will carry more weight if it is made by someone who has clearly been profoundly affected by his or her own encounter with Jesus, because it is made not by someone who has simply heard about him, but by someone who can be sure “that he really is the saviour of the world” (verse 42). It is a matter of letting people react in their own way, at their own pace, and letting God do the rest.

6 POINTS TO NOTE

6.1. Guidance and sound formation are needed

Christ or Aquarius? New Age is almost always linked with “alternatives”, either an alternative vision of reality or an alternative way of improving one’s current situation (magic)[88]. Alternatives offer people not two possibilities, but only the possibility of choosing one thing in preference to another: in terms of religion, New Age offers an alternative to the Judaeo-Christian heritage. The Age of Aquarius is conceived as one which will replace the predominantly Christian Age of Pisces. New Age thinkers are acutely aware of this; some of them are convinced that the coming change is inevitable, while others are actively committed to assisting its arrival. People who wonder if it is possible to believe in both Christ and Aquarius can only benefit from knowing that this is very much an “either-or” situation. “No servant can be the slave of two masters: he will either hate the first and love the second, or treat the first with respect and the second with scorn” (Lk 16.13). Christians have only to think of the difference between the wise men from the East and King Herod to recognise the powerful effects of choice for or against Christ. It must never be forgotten that many of the movements which have fed the New Age are explicitly anti-Christian. Their stance towards Christianity is not neutral, but neutralising: despite what is often said about openness to all religious standpoints, traditional Christianity is not sincerely regarded as an acceptable alternative. In fact, it is occasionally made abundantly clear that “there is no tolerable place for true Christianity”, and there are even arguments justifying anti-Christian behaviour[89]. This opposition initially was confined to the rarefied realms of those who go beyond a superficial attachment to New Age, but has begun more recently to permeate all levels of the “alternative” culture which has an extraordinarily powerful appeal, above all in sophisticated Western societies.

Fusion or confusion? New Age traditions consciously and deliberately blur real differences: between creator and creation, between humanity and nature, between religion and psychology, between subjective and objective reality. The idealistic intention is always to overcome the scandal of division, but in New Age theory it is a question of the systematic fusion of elements which have generally been clearly distinguished in Western culture. Is it, perhaps, fair to call it “confusion”? It is not playing with words to say that New Age thrives on confusion. The Christian tradition has always valued the role of reason in justifying faith and in understanding God, the world and the human person[90]. New Age has caught the mood of many in rejecting cold, calculating, inhuman reason. While this is a positive insight, recalling the need for a balance involving all our faculties, it does not justify sidelining a faculty which is essential for a fully human life. Rationality has the advantage of universality: it is freely available to everyone, quite unlike the mysterious and fascinating character of esoteric or gnostic “mystical” religion. Anything which promotes conceptual confusion or secrecy needs to be very carefully scrutinised. It hides rather than reveals the ultimate nature of reality. It corresponds to the post-modern loss of confidence in the bold certainties of former times, which often involves taking refuge in irrationality. The challenge is to show how a healthy partnership between faith and reason enhances human life and encourages respect for creation.

Create your own reality. The widespread New Age conviction that one creates one’s own reality is appealing, but illusory. It is crystallised in Jung’s theory that the human being is a gateway from the outer world into an inner world of infinite dimensions, where each person is Abraxas, who gives birth to his own world or devours it. The star that shines in this infinite inner world is man’s God and goal. The most poignant and problematic consequence of the acceptance of the idea that people create their own reality is the question of suffering and death: people with severe handicaps or incurable diseases feel cheated and demeaned when confronted by the suggestion that they have brought their misfortune upon themselves, or that their inability to change things points to a weakness in their approach to life. This is far from being a purely academic issue: it has profound implications in the Church’s pastoral approach to the difficult existential questions everyone faces. Our limitations are a fact of life, and part of being a creature. Death and bereavement present a challenge and an opportunity, because the temptation to take refuge in a westernised reworking of the notion of reincarnation is clear proof of people’s fear of death and their desire to live forever. Do we make the most of our opportunities to recall what is promised by God in the resurrection of Jesus Christ? How real is the faith in the resurrection of the body, which Christians proclaim every Sunday in the creed? The New Age idea that we are in some sense also gods is one which is very much in question here. The whole question depends, of course, on one’s definition of reality. A sound approach to epistemology and psychology needs to be reinforced – in the appropriate way – at every level of Catholic education, formation and preaching. It is important constantly to focus on effective ways of speaking of transcendence. The fundamental difficulty of all New Age thought is that this transcendence is strictly a self-transcendeence to be achieved within a closed universe.

Pastoral resources. In Chapter 8 an indication is given regarding the principal documents of the Catholic Church in which can be found an evaluation of the ideas of New Age. In the first place comes the address of Pope John Paul II which was quoted in the Foreword. The Pope recognizes in this cultural trend some positive aspects, such as “the search for new meaning in life, a new ecological sensivity and the desire to go beyond a cold, rationalistic religiosity”. But he also calls the attention of the faithful to certain ambiguous elements which are incompatible with the Christian faith: these movements “pay little heed to Revelation”, “they tend to relativize religious doctrine in favor of a vague worldview”, “they often propose a pantheistic concept of God”, “they replace personal responsibility to God for our actions with a sense of duty to the cosmos, thus overturning the true concept of sin and the need for redemption through Christ”[91].

6.2. Practical steps

First of all, it is worth saying once again that not everyone or everything in the broad sweep of New Age is linked to the theories of the movement in the same ways. Likewise, the label itself is often misapplied or extended to phenomena which can be categorised in other ways. The term New Age has even been abused to demonise people and practices. It is essential to see whether phenomena linked to this movement, however loosely, reflect or conflict with a Christian vision of God, the human person and the world. The mere use of the term New Age in itself means little, if anything. The relationship of the person, group, practice or commodity to the central tenets of Christianity is what counts.

*The Catholic Church has its own very effective networks, which could be better used. For example, there is a large number of pastoral centres, cultural centres and centres of spirituality. Ideally, these could also be used to address the confusion about New Age religiosity in a variety of creative ways, such as providing a forum for discussion and study. It must unfortunately be admitted that there are too many cases where Catholic centres of spirituality are actively involved in diffusing New Age religiosity in the Church. This would of course have to be corrected, not only to stop the spread of confusion and error, but also so that they might be effective in promoting true Christian spirituality. Catholic cultural centres, in particular, are not only teaching institutions but spaces for honest dialogue[92]. Some excellent specialist institutions deal with all these questions. These are precious resources, which ought to be shared generously in areas that are less well provided for.  

*Quite a few New Age groups welcome every opportunity to explain their philosophy and activities to others. Encounters with these groups should be approached with care, and should always involve persons who are capable of both explaining Catholic faith and spirituality, and of reflecting critically on New Age thought and practice. It is extremely important to check the credentials of people, groups and institutions claiming to offer guidance and information on New Age. In some cases what has started out as impartial investigation has later become active promotion of, or advocacy on behalf of, “alternative religions”. Some international institutions are actively pursuing campaigns which promote respect for “religious diversity”, and claim religious status for some questionable organisations. This fits in with the New Age vision of moving into an age where the limited character of particular religions gives way to the universality of a new religion or spirituality. Genuine dialogue, on the other hand, will always respect diversity from the outset, and will never seek to blur distinctions in a fusion of all religious traditions.

*Some local New Age groups refer to their meetings as “prayer groups”. Those people who are invited to such groups need to look for the marks of genuine Christian spirituality, and to be wary if there is any sort of initiation ceremony. Such groups take advantage of a person’s lack of theological or spiritual formation to lure them gradually into what may in fact be a form of false worship. Christians must be taught about the true object and content of prayer – in the Holy Spirit, through Jesus Christ, to the Father – in order to judge rightly the intention of a “prayer group”. Christian prayer and the God of Jesus Christ will easily be recognised[93]. Many people are convinced that there is no harm in ‘borrowing’ from the wisdom of the East, but the example of Transcendental Meditation (TM) should make Christians cautious about the prospect of committing themselves unknowingly to another religion (in this case, Hinduism), despite what TM’s promoters claim about its religious neutrality. There is no problem with learning how to meditate, but the object or content of the exercise clearly determines whether it relates to the God revealed by Jesus Christ, to some other revelation, or simply to the hidden depths of the self.

*Christian groups which promote care for the earth as God’s creation also need to be given due recognition. The question of respect for creation is one which could also be approached creatively in Catholic schools. A great deal of what is proposed by the more radical elements of the ecological movement is difficult to reconcile with Catholic faith. Care for the environment in general terms is a timely sign of a fresh concern for what God has given us, perhaps a necessary mark of Christian stewardship of creation, but “deep ecology” is often based on pantheistic and occasionally gnostic principles[94].

*The beginning of the Third Millennium offers a real kairos for evangelisation. People’s minds and hearts are already unusually open to reliable information on the Christian understanding of time and salvation history. Emphasising what is lacking in other approaches should not be the main priority. It is more a question of constantly revisiting the sources of our own faith, so that we can offer a good, sound presentation of the Christian message. We can be proud of what we have been given on trust, so we need to resist the pressures of the dominant culture to bury these gifts (cf. Mt 25.24-30). One of the most useful tools available is the Catechism of the Catholic Church. There is also an immense heritage of ways to holiness in the lives of Christian men and women past and present. Where Christianity’s rich symbolism, and its artistic, aesthetical and musical traditions are unknown or have been forgotten, there is much work to be done for Christians themselves, and ultimately also for anyone searching for an experience or a greater awareness of God’s presence. Dialogue between Christians and people attracted to the New Age will be more successful if it takes into account the appeal of what touches the emotions and symbolic language. If our task is to know, love and serve Jesus Christ, it is of paramount importance to start with a good knowledge of the Scriptures. But, most of all, coming to meet the Lord Jesus in prayer and in the sacraments, which are precisely the moments when our ordinary life is hallowed, is the surest way of making sense of the whole Christian message.

*Perhaps the simplest, the most obvious and the most urgent measure to be taken, which might also be the most effective, would be to make the most of the riches of the Christian spiritual heritage. The great religious orders have strong traditions of meditation and spirituality, which could be made more available through courses or periods in which their houses might welcome genuine seekers. This is already being done, but more is needed. Helping people in their spiritual search by offering them proven techniques and experiences of real prayer could open a dialogue with them which would reveal the riches of Christian tradition, and perhaps clarify a great deal about New Age in the process.

In a vivid and useful image, one of the New Age movement’s own exponents has compared traditional religions to cathedrals, and New Age to a worldwide fair. The New Age Movement is seen as an invitation to Christians to bring the message of the cathedrals to the fair which now covers the whole world. This image offers Christians a positive challenge, since it is always time to take the message of the cathedrals to the people in the fair. Christians need not, indeed, must not wait for an invitation to bring the message of the Good News of Jesus Christ to those who are looking for the answers to their questions, for spiritual food that satisfies, for living water. Following the image proposed, Christians must issue forth from the cathedral, nourished by word and sacrament, to bring the Gospel into every aspect of everyday life – “Go! The Mass is ended!” In Apostolic Letter Novo Millennio Ineunte the Holy Father remarks on the great interest in spirituality found in the secular world of today, and how other religions are responding to this demand in appealing ways. He goes on to issue a challenge to Christians in this regard: “But we who have received the grace of believing in Christ, the revealer of the Father and the Savior of the world, have a duty to show to what depths the relationship with Christ can lead” (n. 33). To those shopping around in the world’s fair of religious proposals, the appeal of Christianity will be felt first of all in the witness of the members of the Church, in their trust, calm, patience and cheerfulness, and in their concrete love of neighbour, all the fruit of their faith nourished in authentic personal prayer.

7 APPENDIX

7.1. Some brief formulations of New Age ideas

William Bloom’s 1992 formulation of New Age quoted in Heelas, p. 225f.:

*All life – all existence – is the manifestation of Spirit, of the Unknowable, of that supreme consciousness known by many different names in many different cultures.

*The purpose and dynamic of all existence is to bring Love, Wisdom, Enlightenment… into full manifestation.

*All religions are the expression of this same inner reality.

*All life, as we perceive it with the five human senses or with scientific instruments, is only the outer veil of an invisible, inner and causal reality.

*Similarly, human beings are twofold creatures – with: (i) an outer temporary personality; and (ii) a multi-dimensional inner being (soul or higher self).

*The outer personality is limited and tends towards love.

*The purpose of the incarnation of the inner being is to bring the vibrations of the outer personality into a resonance of love.

*All souls in incarnation are free to choose their own spiritual path.

*Our spiritual teachers are those whose souls are liberated from the need to incarnate and who express unconditional love, wisdom and enlightenment. Some of these great beings are well- known and have inspired the world religions. Some are unknown and work invisibly.

*All life, in its different forms and states, is interconnected energy – and this includes our deeds, feelings and thoughts. We, therefore, work with Spirit and these energies in co-creating our reality.

*Although held in the dynamic of cosmic love, we are jointly responsible for the state of our selves, of our environment and of all life.

*During this period of time, the evolution of the planet and of humanity has reached a point when we are undergoing a fundamental spiritual change in our individual and mass consciousness. This is why we talk of a New Age. This new consciousness is the result of the increasingly successful incarnation of what some people call the energies of cosmic love. This new consciousness demonstrates itself in an instinctive understanding of the sacredness and, in particular, the interconnectedness of all existence.

*This new consciousness and this new understanding of the dynamic interdependence of all life mean that we are currently in the process of volving a completely new planetary culture.

1. The world, including the human race, constitutes an expression of a higher, more comprehensive divine nature.

2. Hidden within each human being is a higher divine self, which is a manifestation of the higher, more comprehensive divine nature.

3. This higher nature can be awakened and can become the center of the individual’s everyday life.

4. This awakening is the reason for the existence of each individual life.

David Spangler is quoted in Actualité des religions nº 8, septembre 1999, p. 43, on the principal characteristics of the New Age vision, which is:

*holistic (globalising, because there is one single reality-energy);

*ecological (earth-Gaia is our mother; each of us is a neurone of earth’s central nervous system);

*androgynous (rainbow and Yin/Yang are both NA symbols, to do with the complementarity of contraries, esp. masculine and feminine);

*mystical (finding the sacred in every thing, the most ordinary things);

*planetary (people must be at one and the same time anchored in their own culture and open to a universal dimension, capable of promoting love, compassion, peace and even the establishment of world government).

7.2. A Select Glossary

Age of Aquarius: each astrological age of about 2146 years is named according to one of the signs of the zodiac, but the “great days” go in reverse order, so the current Age of Pisces is about to end, and the Age of Aquarius will be ushered in. Each Age has its own cosmic energies; the energy in Pisces has made it an era of wars and conflicts. But Aquarius is set to be an era of harmony, justice, peace, unity etc. In this aspect, New Age accepts historical inevitability. Some reckon the age of Aries was the time of the Jewish religion, the age of Pisces that of Christianity, Aquarius the age of a universal religion.

Androgyny: is not hermaphroditism, i.e. existence with the physical characteristics of both sexes, but an awareness of the presence in every person of male and female elements; it is said to be a state of balanced inner harmony of the animus and anima. In New Age, it is a state resulting from a new awareness of this double mode of being and existing that is characteristic of every man and every woman. The more it spreads, the more it will assist in the transformation of interpersonal conduct.

Anthroposophy: a theosophical doctrine originally popularised by the Croat Rudolf Steiner (1861-1925), who left the Theosophical Society after being leader of its German branch from 1902 to 1913. It is an esoteric doctrine meant to initiate people into “objective knowledge” in the spiritual-divine sphere. Steiner believed it had helped him explore the laws of evolution of the cosmos and of humanity. Every physical being has a corresponding spiritual being, and earthly life is influenced by astral energies and spiritual essences. The Akasha Chronicle is said to be a “cosmic memory” available to initiates[95].

Channeling: psychic mediums claim to act as channels for information from other selves, usually disembodied entities living on a higher plane. It links beings as diverse as ascended masters, angels, gods, group entities, nature spirits and the Higher Self.

Christ: in New Age the historical figure of Jesus is but one incarnation of an idea or an energy or set of vibrations. For Alice Bailey, a great day of supplication is needed, when all believers will create such a concentration of spiritual energy that there will be a further incarnation, which will reveal how people can save themselves…. For many people, Jesus is nothing more than a spiritual master who, like Buddha, Moses and Mohammed, amongst others, has been penetrated by the cosmic Christ. The cosmic Christ is also known as christic energy at the basis of each being and the whole of being. Individuals need to be initiated gradually into awareness of this christic characteristic they are all said to have. Christ – in New Age terms – represents the highest state of perfection of the self[96].

Crystals: are reckoned to vibrate at significant frequencies. Hence they are useful in self-transformation. They are used in various therapies and in meditation, visualisation, ‘astral travel’ or as lucky charms. From the outside looking in, they have no intrinsic power, but are simply beautiful.

Depth Psychology: the school of psychology founded by C.G. Jung, a former disciple of Freud. Jung recognised that religion and spiritual matters were important for wholeness and health. The interpretation of dreams and the analysis of archetypes were key elements in his method. Archetypes are forms which belong to the inherited structure of the human psyche; they appear in the recurrent motifs or images in dreams, fantasies, myths and fairy tales.

Enneagram: (from the Greek ennéa = nine + gramma = sign) the name refers to a diagram composed of a circle with nine points on its circumference, connected within the circle by a triangle and a hexangle. It was originally used for divination, but has become known as the symbol for a system of personality typology consisting of nine standard character types. It became popular after the publication of Helen Palmer’s book The Enneagram[97], but she recognises her indebtedness to the Russian esoteric thinker and practitioner G.I. Gurdjieff, the Chilean psychologist Claudio Naranjo and author Oscar Ichazo, founder of Arica. The origin of the enneagram remains shrouded in mystery, but some maintain that it comes from Sufi mysticism.

Esotericism: (from the Greek esotéros = that which is within) it generally refers to an ancient and hidden body of knowledge available only to initiated groups, who portray themselves as guardians of the truths hidden from the majority of humankind. The initiation process takes people from a merely external, superficial, knowledge of reality to the inner truth and, in the process, awakens their consciousness at a deeper level. People are invited to undertake this “inner journey” to discover the “divine spark” within them. Salvation, in this context, coincides with a discovery of the Self.

Evolution: in New Age it is much more than a question of living beings evolving towards superior life forms; the physical model is projected on to the spiritual realm, so that an immanent power within human beings would propel them towards superior spiritual life forms. Human beings are said not to have full control over this power, but their good or bad actions can accelerate or retard their progress. The whole of creation, including humanity, is seen to be moving inexorably towards a fusion with the divine. Reincarnation clearly has an important place in this view of a progressive spiritual evolution which is said to begin before birth and continue after death[98].

Expansion of consciousness: if the cosmos is seen as one continuous chain of being, all levels of existence – mineral, vegetable, animal, human, cosmic and divine beings – are interdependent. Human beings are said to become aware of their place in this holistic vision of global reality by expanding their consciousness well beyond its normal limits. The New Age offers a huge variety of techniques to help people reach a higher level of perceiving reality, a way of overcoming the separation between subjects and between subjects and objects in the knowing process, concluding in total fusion of what normal, inferior, awareness sees as separate or distinct realities.

Feng-shui: a form of geomancy, in this case an occult Chinese method of deciphering the hidden presence of positive and negative currents in buildings and other places, on the basis of a knowledge of earthly and atmospheric forces. “Just like the human body or the cosmos, sites are places criss-crossed by influxes whose correct balance is the source of health and life”[99].

Gnosis: in a generic sense, it is a form of knowledge that is not intellectual, but visionary or mystical, thought to be revealed and capable of joining the human being to the divine mystery. In the first centuries of Christianity, the Fathers of the Church struggled against gnosticism, inasmuch as it was at odds with faith. Some see a reborth of gnostic ideas in much New Age thinking, and some authors connected with New Age actually quote early gnosticism. However, the greater emphasis in New Age on monism and even pantheism or panentheism encourages some to use the term neo-gnosticism to distinguish New Age gnosis from ancient gnosticism.

Great White Brotherhood: Mrs. Blavatsky claimed to have contact with the mahatmas, or masters, exalted beings who together constitute the Great White Brotherhood. She saw them as guiding the evolution of the human race and directing the work of the Theosophical Society.

Hermeticism: philosophical and religious practices and speculations linked to the writings in the Corpus Hermeticum, and the Alexandrian texts attributed to the mythical Hermes Trismegistos. When they first became known during the Renaissance, they were thought to reveal pre-Christian doctrines, but later studies showed they dated from the first century of the christian era[100]. Alexandrian hermeticism is a major resource for modern esotericism, and the two have much in common: eclecticism, a refutation of ontological dualism, an affirmation of the positive and symbolic character of the universe, the idea of the fall and later restoration of mankind. Hermetic speculation has strengthened belief in an ancient fundamental tradition or a so-called philosophia perennis falsely considered as common to all religious traditions. The high and ceremonial forms of magic developed from Renaissance Hermeticism.

Holism: a key concept in the “new paradigm”, claiming to provide a theoretical frame integrating the entire worldview of modern man. In contrast with an experience of increasing fragmentation in science and everyday life, “wholeness” is put forward as a central methodological and ontological concept. Humanity fits into the universe as part of a single living organism, a harmonious network of dynamic relationships. The classic distinction between subject and object, for which Descartes and Newton are typically blamed, is challenged by various scientists who offer a bridge between science and religion. Humanity is part of a universal network (eco-system, family) of nature and world, and must seek harmony with every element of this quasi-transcendent authority. When one understands one’s place in nature, in the cosmos which is also divine, one also understands that “wholeness” and “holiness” are one and the same thing. The clearest articulation of the concept of holism is in the “Gaia” hypothesis[101].

Human Potential Movement: since its beginnings (Esalen, California, in the 1960s), this has grown into a network of groups promoting the release of the innate human capacity for creativity through self-realisation. Various techniques of personal transformation are used more and more by companies in management training programmes, ultimately for very normal economic reasons. Transpersonal Technologies, the Movement for Inner Spiritual Awareness, Organisational Development and Organisational Transformation are all put forward as non-religious, but in reality company employees can find themselves being submitted to an alien ‘spirituality’ in a situation which raises questions about personal freedom. There are clear links between Eastern spirituality and psychotherapy, while Jungian psychology and the Human Potential Movement have been very influential on Shamanism and “reconstructed” forms of Paganism like Druidry and Wicca. In a general sense, “personal growth” can be understood as the shape “religious salvation” takes in the New Age movement: it is affirmed that deliverance from human suffering and weakness will be reached by developing our human potential, which results in our increasingly getting in touch with our inner divinity[102].

Initiation: in religious ethnology it is the cognitive and/or experiential journey whereby a person is admitted, either alone or as part of a group, by means of particular rituals to membership of a religious community, a secret society (e.g. Freemasonry) or a mystery association (magical, esoteric-occult, gnostic, theosophical etc.).

Karma: (from the Sanskrit root Kri = action, deed) a key notion in Hinduism, Jainism and Buddhism, but one whose meaning has not always been the same. In the ancient Vedic period it referred to the ritual action, especially sacrifice, by means of which a person gained access to the happiness or blessedness of the afterlife. When Jainism and Buddhism appeared (about 6 centuries before Christ), Karma lost its salvific meaning: the way to liberation was knowledge of the Atman or “self”. In the doctrine of samsara, it was understood as the incessant cycle of human birth and death (Huinduism) or of rebirth (Buddhism)[103]. In New Age contexts, the “law of karma” is often seen as the moral equivalent of cosmic evolution. It is no longer to do with evil or suffering – illusions to be experienced as part of a “cosmic game” – but is the universal law of cause and effect, part of the tendency of the interconnected universe towards moral balance[104].

Monism: the metaphysical belief that differences between beings are illusory. There is only one universal being, of which every thing and every person is a part. Inasmuch as New Age monism includes the idea that reality is fundamentally spiritual, it is a contemporary form of pantheism (sometimes explicitly a rejection of materialism, particularly Marxism). Its claim to resolve all dualism leaves no room for a transcendent God, so everything is God. A further problem arises for Christianity when the question of the origin of evil is raised. C.G. Jung saw evil as the “shadow side” of the God who, in classical theism, is all goodness.

Mysticism: New Age mysticism is turning inwards on oneself rather than communion with God who is “totally other”. It is fusion with the universe, an ultimate annihilation of the individual in the unity of the whole. Experience of Self is taken to be experience of divinity, so one looks within to discover authentic wisdom, creativity and power.

Neopaganism: a title often rejected by many to whom it is applied, it refers to a current that runs parallel to New Age and often interacts with it. In the great wave of reaction against traditional religions, specifically the Judaeo-Christian heritage of the West, many have revisited ancient indigenous, traditional, pagan religions. Whatever preceded Christianity is reckoned to be more genuine to the spirit of the land or the nation, an uncontaminated form of natural religion, in touch with the powers of nature, often matriarchal, magical or Shamanic. Humanity will, it is said, be healthier if it returns to the natural cycle of (agricultural) festivals and to a general affirmation of life. Some “neo-pagan” religions are recent reconstructions whose authentic relationship to original forms can be questioned, particularly in cases where they are dominated by modern ideological components like ecology, feminism or, in a few cases, myths of racial purity[105].

New Age Music: this is a booming industry. The music concerned is very often packaged as a means of achieving harmony with oneself or the world, and some of it is “Celtic” or druidic. Some New Age composers claim their music is meant to build bridges between the conscious and the unconscious, but this is probably more so when, besides melodies, there is meditative and rhythmic repetition of key phrases. As with many elements of the New Age phenomenon, some music is meant to bring people further into the New Age Movement, but most is simply commercial or artistic.

New Thought: a 19th century religious movement founded in the United States of America. Its origins were in idealism, of which it was a popularised form. God was said to be totally good, and evil merely an illusion; the basic reality was the mind. Since one’s mind is what causes the events in one’s life, one has to take ultimate responsibility for every aspect of one’s situation.

Occultism: occult (hidden) knowledge, and the hidden forces of the mind and of nature, are at the basis of beliefs and practices linked to a presumed secret “perennial philosophy” derived from ancient Greek magic and alchemy, on the one hand, and Jewish mysticism, on the other. They are kept hidden by a code of secrecy imposed on those initiated into the groups and societies that guard the knowledge and techniques involved. In the 19th century, spiritualism and the Theosophical Society introduced new forms of occultism which have, in turn, influenced various currents in the New Age.

Pantheism: (Greek pan = everything and theos = God) the belief that everything is God or, sometimes, that everything is in God and God is in everything (panentheism). Every element of the universe is divine, and the divinity is equally present in everything. There is no space in this view for God as a distinct being in the sense of classical theism.

Parapsychology: treats of such things as extrasensory perception, mental telepathy, telekinesis, psychic healing and communication with spirits via mediums or channeling. Despite fierce criticism from scientists, parapsychology has gone from strength to strength, and fits neatly into the view popular in some areas of the New Age that human beings have extraordinary psychic abilities, but often only in an undeveloped state.

Planetary Consciousness: this world-view developed in the 1980s to foster loyalty to the community of humanity rather than to nations, tribes or other established social groups. It can be seen as the heir to movements in the early 20th century that promoted a world government. The consciousness of the unity of humanity sits well with the Gaia hypothesis.

Positive Thinking: the conviction that people can change physical reality or external circumstances by altering their mental attitude, by thinking positively and constructively. Sometimes it is a matter of becoming consciously aware of unconsciously held beliefs that determine our life-situation. Positive thinkers are promised health and wholeness, often prosperity and even immortality.

Rebirthing: In the early 1970s Leonard Orr described rebirthing as a process by which a person can identify and isolate aoreas in his or her consciousness that are unresolved and at the source of present problems.

Reincarnation: in a New Age context, reincarnation is linked to the concept of ascendant evolution towards becoming divine. As opposed to Indian religions or those derived from them, New Age views reincarnation as progression of the individual soul towards a more perfect state. What is reincarnated is essentially something immaterial or spiritual; more precisely, it is consciousness, that spark of energy in the person that shares in cosmic or “christic” energy. Death is nothing but the passage of the soul from one body to another.

Rosicrucians: these are Western occult groups involved in alchemy, astrology, Theosophy and kabbalistic interpretations of scripture. The Rosicrucian Fellowship contributed to the revival of astrology in the 20th century, and the Ancient and Mystical Order of the Rosae Crucis (AMORC) linked success with a presumed ability to materialise mental images of health, riches and happiness.

Shamanism: practices and beliefs linked to communication with the spirits of nature and the spirits of dead people through ritualised possession (by the spirits) of a shaman, who serves as a medium. It has been attractive in New Age circles because it stresses harmony with the forces of nature and healing. There is also a romanticised image of indigenous religions and their closeness to the earth and to nature.

Spiritualism: While there have always been attempts to contact the spirits of the dead, 19th century spiritualism is reckoned to be one of the currents that flow into the New Age. It developed against the background of the ideas of Swedenborg and Mesmer, and became a new kind of religion. Madame Blavatsky was a medium, and so spiritualism had a great influence on the Theosophical Society, although there the emphasis was on contact with entities from the distant past rather than people who had died only recently. Allan Kardec was influential in the spread of spiritualism in Afro-Brasilian religions. There are also spiritualist elements in some New Religious Movements in Japan.

Theosophy: an ancient term, which originally referred to a kind of mysticism. It has been linked to Greek Gnostics and Neoplatonists, to Meister Eckhart, Nicholas of Cusa and Jakob Boehme. The name was given new emphasis by the Theosophical Society, founded by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky and others in 1875. Theosophical mysticism tends to be monistic, stressing the essential unity of the spiritual and material components of the universe. It also looks for the hidden forces that cause matter and spirit to interact, in such a way that human and divine minds eventually meet. Here is where theosophy offers mystical redemption or enlightenment.

Transcendentalism: This was a 19th century movement of writers and thinkers in New England, who shared an idealistic set of beliefs in the essential unity of creation, the innate goodness of the human person, and the superiority of insight over logic and experience for the revelation of the deepest truths. The chief figure is Ralph Waldo Emerson, who moved away from orthodox Christianity, through Unitarianism to a new natural mysticism which integrated concepts from Hinduism with popular American ones like individualism, personal responsibility and the need to succeed.

Wicca: an old English term for witches that has been given to a neo-pagan revival of some elements of ritual magic. It was invented in England in 1939 by Gerald Gardner, who based it on some scholarly texts, according to which medieval European witchcraft was an ancient nature religion persecuted by Christians. Called “the Craft”, it grew rapidly in the 1960s in the United States, where it encountered “women’s spirituality”.

7.3. Key New Age places

Esalen: a community founded in Big Sur, California, in 1962 by Michael Murphy and Richard Price, whose main aim was to arrive at a self-realisation of being through nudism and visions, as well as “bland medicines”. It has become one of the most important centres of the Human Potential Movement, and has spread ideas about holistic medicine in the worlds of education, politics and economics. This has been done through courses in comparative religion, mythology, mysticism, meditation, psychotherapy, expansion of consciousness and so on. Along with Findhorn, it is seen as a key place in the growth of Aquarian consciousness. The Esalen Soviet-American Institute co-operated with Soviet officials on the Health Promotion Project.

Findhorn: this holistic farming community started by Peter and Eileen Caddy achieved the growth of enormous plants by unorthodox methods. The founding of the Findhorn community in Scotland in 1965 was an important milestone in the movement which bears the label of the ‘New Age’. In fact, Findhorn ‘was seen as embodying its principal ideals of transformation’. The quest for a universal consciousness, the goal of harmony with nature, the vision of a transformed world, and the practice of channeling, all of which have become hallmarks of the New Age Movement, were present at Findhorn from its foundation. The success of this community led to its becoming a model for, and/or an inspiration to, other groups, such as Alternatives in London, Esalen in Big Sur, California, and the Open Center and Omega Institute in New York”[106].

Monte Verità: a utopian community near Ascona in Switzerland. Since the end of the 19th century it was a meeting point for European and American exponents of the counter-culture in the fields of politics, psychology, art and ecology. The Eranos conferences have been held there every year since 1933, gathering some of the great luminaries of the New Age. The yearbooks make clear the intention to create an integrated world religion[107]. It is fascinating to see the list of those who have gathered over the years at Monte Verità.

8 RESOURCES

Documents of the Catholic Church’s magisterium

John Paul II, Address to the United States Bishops of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska on their “Ad Limina” visit, 28 May 1993.

Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Letter to Bishops on Certain Aspects of Christian Meditation (Orationis Formas), Vatican City (Vatican Polyglot Press) 1989.

International Theological Commission, Some Current Questions Concerning Eschatology, 1992, Nos. 9-10 (on reincarnation).

International Theological Commission, Some Questions on the Theology of Redemption, 1995, I/29 and II/35-36.

Argentine Bishops’ Conference Committee for Culture, Frente a una Nueva Era. Desafio a la pastoral en el horizonte de la Nueva Evangelización, 1993.

Irish Theological Commission, A New Age of the Spirit? A Catholic Response to the New Age Phenomenon, Dublin 1994.

Godfried Danneels, Au-delà de la mort: réincarnation et resurrection, Pastoral Letter, Easter 1991.

Godfried Danneels, Christ or Aquarius? Pastoral Letter, Christmas 1990 (Veritas, Dublin).

Carlo Maccari, “La ‘mistica cosmica’ del New Age”, in Religioni e Sette nel Mondo 1996/2.

Carlo Maccari, La New Age di fronte alla fede cristiana, Turin (LDC) 1994.

Edward Anthony McCarthy, The New Age Movement, Pastoral Instruction, 1992.

Paul Poupard, Felicità e fede cristiana, Casale Monferrato (Ed. Piemme) 1992.

Joseph Ratzinger, La fede e la teologia ai nostri giorni, Guadalajara, May 1996, in L’Osservatore Romano 27 October 1996.

Norberto Rivera Carrera, Instrucción Pastoral sobre el New Age, 7 January 1996.

Christoph von Schönborn, Risurrezione e reincarnazione, (Italian translation) Casale Monferrato (Piemme) 1990.

J. Francis Stafford, Il movimento “New Age”, in L’Osservatore Romano, 30 October 1992.

Working Group on New Religious Movements (ed.), Vatican City, Sects and New Religious Movements. An Anthology of Texts From the Catholic Church, Washington (USCC) 1995.

Christian studies

Raúl Berzosa Martinez, Nueva Era y Cristianismo. Entre el diálogo y la ruptura, Madrid (BAC) 1995.

André Fortin, Les Galeries du Nouvel Age: un chrétien s’y promène, Ottawa (Novalis) 1993.

Claude Labrecque, Une religion américaine. Pistes de discernement chrétien sur les courants populaires du “Nouvel Age”, Montréal (Médiaspaul) 1994.

The Methodist Faith and Order Committee, The New Age Movement Report to Conference 1994.

Aidan Nichols, “The New Age Movement”, in The Month, March 1992, pp. 84-89.

Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi, Il Cristo del New Age. Indagine critica, Vatican City (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) 1999.

Ökumenische Arbeitsgruppe “Neue Religiöse Bewegungen in der Schweiz”, New Age – aus christlicher Sicht, Freiburg (Paulusverlag) 1987.

Mitch Pacwa s.j., Catholics and the New Age. How Good People are being drawn into Jungian Psychology, the Enneagram and the New Age of Aquarius, Ann Arbor MI (Servant) 1992.

John Saliba, Christian Responses to the New Age Movement. A Critical Assessment, London (Chapman) 1999.

Josef Südbrack, SJ, Neue Religiosität – Herausforderung für die Christen, Mainz (Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag) 1987 = La nuova religiosità: una sfida per i cristiani, Brescia (Queriniana) 1988.

“Theologie für Laien” secretariat, Faszination Esoterik, Zürich (Theologie für Laien) 1996.

David Toolan, Facing West from California’s Shores. A Jesuit’s Journey into New Age Consciousness, New York (Crossroad) 1987.

Juan Carlos Urrea Viera, “New Age”. Visión Histórico-Doctrinal y Principales Desafíos, Santafé de Bogotá (CELAM) 1996.

Jean Vernette, “L’avventura spirituale dei figli dell’Acquario”, in Religioni e Sette nel Mondo 1996/2.

Jean Vernette, Jésus dans la nouvelle religiosité, Paris (Desclée) 1987.

Jean Vernette, Le New Age, Paris (P.U.F.) 1992.

9 GENERAL BIBLIOGRAPHY

9.1. Some New Age books

William Bloom, The New Age. An Anthology of Essential Writings, London (Rider) 1991.

Fritjof Capra, The Tao of Physics: An Exploration of the Parallels between Modern Physics and Eastern Mysticism, Berkeley (Shambhala) 1975.

Fritjof Capra, The Turning Point: Science, Society and the Rising Culture,

Toronto (Bantam) 1983.

Benjamin Creme, The Reappearance of Christ and the Masters of Wisdom,

London (Tara Press) 1979.

Marilyn Ferguson, The Aquarian Conspiracy. Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time, Los Angeles (Tarcher) 1980.

Chris Griscom, Ecstasy is a New Frequency: Teachings of the Light Institute, New York (Simon & Schuster) 1987.

Thomas Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago (University of Chicago Press) 1970.

David Spangler, The New Age Vision, Forres (Findhorn Publications) 1980.

David Spangler, Revelation: The Birth of a New Age, San Francisco (Rainbow Bridge) 1976.

David Spangler, Towards a Planetary Vision, Forres (Findhorn Publications) 1977.

David Spangler, The New Age, Issaquah (The Morningtown Press) 1988.

David Spangler, The Rebirth of the Sacred, London (Gateway Books) 1988.

9.2. Historical, descriptive and analytical works

Christoph Bochinger, “New Age” und moderne Religion: Religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, Gütersloh (Kaiser) 1994.

Bernard Franck, Lexique du Nouvel-Age, Limoges (Droguet-Ardant) 1993.

Hans Gasper, Joachim Müller and Friederike Valentin, Lexikon der Sekten, Sondergruppen und Weltanschauungen. Fakten, Hintergründe, Klärungen, updated edition, Freiburg-Basel-Vienna (Herder) 2000. See, inter alia, the article “New Age” by Christoph Schorsch, Karl R. Essmann and Medard Kehl, and “Reinkarnation” by Reinhard Hümmel.

Manabu Haga and Robert J. Kisala (eds.), “The New Age in Japan”, in Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, Fall 1995, vol. 22, numbers 3 & 4.

Wouter Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Nature, Leiden-New York-Köln (Brill) 1996. This book has an extensive bibliography.

Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement. The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity, Oxford (Blackwell) 1996.

Massimo Introvigne, New Age & Next Age, Casale Monferrato (Piemme) 2000.

Michel Lacroix, L’Ideologia della New Age, Milano (Il Saggiatore) 1998.

J. Gordon Melton, New Age Encyclopedia, Detroit (Gale Research Inc) 1990.

Elliot Miller, A Crash Course in the New Age, Eastbourne (Monarch) 1989.

Georges Minois, Histoire de l’athéisme, Paris (Fayard) 1998.

Arild Romarheim, The Aquarian Christ. Jesus Christ as Portrayed by New Religious Movements, Hong Kong (Good Tiding) 1992.

Hans-Jürgen Ruppert, Durchbruch zur Innenwelt. Spirituelle Impulse aus New Age und Esoterik in kritischer Beleuchtung, Stuttgart (Quell Verlag) 1988.

Edwin Schur, The Awareness Trap. Self-Absorption instead of Social Change, New York (McGraw Hill) 1977.

Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion. Secularisation, Revival and Cult Formation, Berkeley (University of California Press) 1985.

Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman (eds.), Beyond the New Age. Exploring Alternative Spirituality, Edinburgh (Edinburgh University Press), 2000.

Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self. The Making of the Modern Identity, Cambridge (Cambridge University Press) 1989.

Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity, London (Harvard University Press) 1991

Edênio Valle s.v.d., “Psicologia e energias da mente: teorias alternativas”, in A Igreja Católica diante do pluralismo religioso do Brasil (III). Estudos da CNBB n. 71, São Paulo (paulus) 1994.

World Commission on Culture and Development, Our Creative Diversity. Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development, Paris

(UNESCO) 1995.

M. York, “The New Age Movement in Great Britain”, in Syzygy. Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture, 1:2-3 (1992) Stanford CA.NOTES

[1] Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement. The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity, Oxford (Blackwell) 1996, p. 137.

[2] Cf. P. Heelas, op. cit., p. 164f.

[3] Cf. P. Heelas, op. cit., p. 173.

[4] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Dominum et vivificantem (18 May 1986), 53.

[5] Cf. Gilbert Markus o.p., “Celtic Schmeltic”, (1) in Spirituality, vol. 4, November-December 1998, No 21, pp. 379-383 and (2) in Spirituality, vol. 5, January-February 1999, No. 22, pp. 57-61.

[6] John Paul II, Crossing the Threshold of Hope, (Knopf) 1994, 90.

[7] Cf. particularly Massimo Introvigne, New Age & Next Age, Casale Monferrato (Piemme) 2000.

[8] M. Introvigne, op. cit., p. 267.

[9] Cf. Michel Lacroix, L’Ideologia della New Age, Milano (il Saggiatore) 1998, p. 86. The word “sect” is used here not in any pejorative sense, but rather to denote a sociological phenomenon.

[10] Cf. Wouter J. Hanegraaff, New Age Religion and Western Culture. Esotericism in the Mirror of Secular Thought, Leiden-New York-Köln (Brill) 1996, p. 377 and elsewhere.

[11] Cf. Rodney Stark and William Sims Bainbridge, The Future of Religion. Secularisation, Revival and Cult Formation, Berkeley (University of California Press) 1985.

[12] Cf. M. Lacroix, op. cit., p. 8.

[13] The Swiss “Theologie für Laien” course entitled Faszination Esoterik puts this clearly. Cf. “Kursmappe 1 – New Age und Esoterik”, text to accompany slides, p. 9.

[14] The term was already in use in the title of The New Age Magazine, which was being published by the Ancient Accepted Scottish Masonic Rite in the southern jurisdiction of the United States of America as early as 1900 Cf. M. York, “The New Age Movement in Great Britain”, in Syzygy. Journal of Alternative Religion and Culture, 1: 2-3 (1992), Stanford CA, p. 156, note 6. The exact timing and nature of the change to the New Age are interpreted variously by different authors; estimates of timing range from 1967 to 2376.

[15] In late 1977, Marilyn Ferguson sent a questionnaire to 210 “persons engaged in social transformation”, whom she also calls “Aquarian Conspirators”. The following is interesting: “When respondents were asked to name individuals whose ideas had influenced them, either through personal contact or through their writings, those most often named, in order of frequency, were Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, C.G. Jung, Abraham Maslow, Carl Rogers, Aldous Huxley, Robert Assagioli, and J. Krishnamurti. “Others frequently mentioned: Paul Tillich, Hermann Hesse, Alfred North Whitehead, Martin Buber, Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Tarthang Tulku, Alan Watts, Sri Aurobindo, Swami Muktananda, D.T. Suzuki, Thomas Merton, Willis Harman, Kenneth Boulding, Elise Boulding, Erich Fromm, Marshall McLuhan, Buckminster Fuller, Frederic Spiegelberg, Alfred Korzybski, Heinz von Foerster, John Lilly, Werner Erhard, Oscar Ichazo, Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, Joseph Chilton Pearce, Karl Pribram, Gardner Murphy, and Albert Einstein”: The Aquarian Conspiracy. Personal and Social Transformation in Our Time, Los Angeles (Tarcher) 1980, p. 50 (note 1) and p. 434.

[16] W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., p. 520.                                                                                     

[17] Irish Theological Commission, A New Age of the Spirit? A Catholic Response to the New Age Phenomenon, Dublin 1994, chapter 3.

[18] Cf. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago (University of Chicago Press), 1970, p. 175.

[19] Cf. Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi, Il Cristo del New Age. Indagine critica, Vatican City (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) 1999, passim, but especially pp. 11-34. See Also section 4 below.

[20] It is worth recalling the lyrics of this song, which quickly imprinted themselves on to the minds of a whole generation in North America and Western Europe: “When the Moon is in the Seventh House, and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then Peace will guide the Planets, and Love will steer the Stars. This is the dawning of the Age of Aquarius… Harmony and understanding, ympathy and trust abounding; no more falsehoods or derision – golden living, dreams of visions, mystic crystal revelation, and the mind’s true liberation. Aquarius…”.

[21] P. Heelas, op. cit., p. 1f. The August 1978 journal of the Berkeley Christian Coalition puts it this way: “Just ten years ago the funky drug-based spirituality of the hippies and the mysticism of the Western yogi were restricted to the counterculture. Today, both have found their way into the mainstream of our cultural mentality. Science, the health professions, and the arts, not to mention psychology and religion, are all engaged in a fundamental reconstruction of their basic premises”. Quoted in Marilyn Ferguson, op. cit., p. 370f.

[22] Cf. Chris Griscom, Ecstasy is a New Frequency: Teachings of the Light Institute, New York (Simon & Schuster) 1987, p. 82.

[23] See the Glossary of New Age terms, §7.2 above.

[24] Cf. W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., chapter 15 (“The Mirror of Secular Thought”). The system of correspondences is clearly inherited from traditional esotericism, but it has a new meaning for those who (consciously or not) follow Swedenborg. While every natural element in traditional esoteric doctrine had the divine life within it, for Swedenborg nature is a dead reflection of the living spiritual world. This idea is very much at the heart of the post-modern vision of a disenchanted world and various attempts to “re-enchant” it. Blavatsky rejected correspondences, and Jung emphatically relativised causality in favour of the esoteric world-view of correspondences.

[25] W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., pp. 54-55.

[26] Cf. Reinhard Hümmel, “Reinkarnation”, in Hans Gasper, Joachim Müller, Friederike Valentin (eds.), Lexikon der Sekten, Sondergruppen und Weltanschauungen. Fakten, Hintergründe, Klärungen, Freiburg-Basel-Wien (Herder) 2000, 886-893.

[27] Michael Fuss, “New Age and Europe – A Challenge for Theology”, in Mission Studies Vol. VIII-2, 16, 1991, p. 192.

[28] Ibid., loc. cit.

[29] Ibid.,p. 193.

[30] Ibid.,p. 199.

[31] Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Letter to the Bishops of the Catholic Church on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation (Orationis Formas), 1989, 14.

Cf. Gaudium et Spes, 19; Fides et Ratio, 22.

[32] W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., p. 448f. The objectives are quoted from the final (1896) version, earlier versions of which stressed the irrationality of “bigotry” and the urgency of promoting non-sectarian education. Hanegraaff quotes J. Gordon Melton’s description of New Age religion as rooted in the “occult-metaphysical” tradition (ibid., p. 455).

[33] W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., p. 513.

[34] Thomas M. King s.j., “Jung and Catholic Spirituality”, in America, 3 April 1999, p. 14. The author points out that New Age devotees “quote passages dealing with the I Ching, astrology and Zen, while Catholics quote passages dealing with Christian mystics, the liturgy and the psychological value of the sacrament of reconciliation” (p. 12). He also lists Catholic personalities and spiritual institutions clearly inspired and guided by Jung’s psychology.

[35] Cf. W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., p. 501f.

[36] Carl Gustav Jung, Wandlungen und Symbole der Libido, quoted in Hanegraaff, op. cit., p. 503.

[37] On this point cf. Michel Schooyans, L’Évangile face au désordre mondial, with a preface by Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, Paris (Fayard) 1997.

[38] Quoted in the Maranatha Community’s The True and the False New Age. Introductory Ecumenical Notes, Manchester (Maranatha) 1993, 8.10 – the original page numbering is not specified.

[39] Michel Lacroix, L’Ideologia della New Age, Milano (il Saggiatore) 1998, p. 84f.

[40] Cf. the section on David Spangler’s ideas in Actualité des religions nº 8, septembre 1999, p. 43.

[41] M. Ferguson, op. cit., p. 407.

[42] Ibid.,p. 411.

[43] “To be an American… is precisely to imagine a destiny rather than inherit one. We have always been inhabitants of myth rather than history”: Leslie Fiedler, quoted in M. Ferguson, op. cit., p. 142.

[44] Cf. P. Heelas, op. cit., p. 173f.

[45] David Spangler, The New Age, Issaquah (Mornington Press) 1988, p. 14.

[46] P. Heelas, op. cit., p. 168.

[47] See the Preface to Michel Schooyans, L’Évangile face au désordre mondial,

op. cit. This quotation is translated from the Italian, Il nuovo disordine mondiale, Cinisello Balsamo (San Paolo) 2000, p. 6.

[48] Cf. Our Creative Diversity. Report of the World Commission on Culture and Development, Paris (UNESCO) 1995, which illustrates the importance given to celebrating and promoting diversity.

[49] Cf. Christoph Bochinger, “New Age” und moderne Religion: Religionswissenschaftliche Untersuchungen, Gütersloh (Kaiser) 1994, especially chapter 3.

[50] The shortcomings of techniques which are not yet prayer are discussed below in § 3.4, “Christian mysticism and New Age mysticism”.

[51] Cf. Carlo Maccari, “La ‘mistica cosmica’ del New Age”, in Religioni e Sette nel Mondo 1996/2.

[52] Jean Vernette, “L’avventura spirituale dei figli dell’Acquario”, in Religioni e Sette nel Mondo 1996/2, p. 42f.

[53] J. Vernette, loc. cit.

[54] Cf. J. Gordon Melton, New Age Encyclopedia, Detroit (Gale Research) 1990, pp. xiii-xiv.

[55] David Spangler, The Rebirth of the Sacred, London (Gateway Books) 1984, p. 78f.

[56] David Spangler, The New Age, op. cit., p. 13f.

[57] John Paul II, Apostolic Letter Tertio Millennio Adveniente (10 November 1994), 9.

[58] Matthew Fox, The Coming of the Cosmic Christ. The Healing of Mother Earth and the Birth of a Global Renaissance, San Francisco (Harper & Row) 1988, p. 135.

[59] Cf. the document issued by the Argentine Bishops’ Conference Committee for Culture: Frente a una Nueva Era. Desafío a la pastoral en el horizonte de la Nueva Evangelización, 1993.

[60] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Orationis Formas, 23.

[61] Ibid.,3. See the sections on meditation and contemplative prayer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§. 2705-2719.

[62] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Orationis Formas, 13.

[63] Cf. Brendan Pelphrey, “I said, You are Gods. Orthodox Christian Theosis and Deification in the New Religious Movements” in Spirituality East and West, Easter 2000 (No. 13).

[64] Adrian Smith, God and the Aquarian Age. The new era of the Kingdom, Great Wakering (McCrimmons) 1990, p. 49.

[65] Cf. Benjamin Creme, The Reappearance of Christ and the Masters of Wisdom, London (Tara Press) 1979, p. 116.

[66] Cf. Jean Vernette, Le New Age, Paris (P.U.F.) 1992 (Collection Encyclopédique Que sais-je?), p. 14.

[67] Catechism of the Catholic Church, 52.

[68] Cf. Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi, Il Cristo del New Age. Indagine Critica, Vatican City (Libreria Editrice Vaticana) 1999, especially pages 13-34. The list of common points is on p. 33.

[69] The Nicene Creed.

[70] Michel Lacroix, L’Ideologia della New Age, Milano (Il Saggiatore) 1998, p. 74.

[71] Ibid., p. 68.

[72] Edwin Schur, The Awareness Trap. Self-Absorption instead of Social Change, New York (McGraw Hill) 1977, p. 68.

[73] Cf. Catechism of the Catholic Church, §§ 355-383.

[74] Cf. Paul Heelas, The New Age Movement. The Celebration of the Self and the Sacralization of Modernity, Oxford (Blackwell) 1996, p. 161.

[75] A Catholic Response to the New Age Phenomenon, Irish Theological Commission 1994, chapter 3.

[76] Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Orationis Formas, 3.

[77] Ibid.,7.

[78] William Bloom, The New Age. An Anthology of Essential Writings, London (Rider) 1991, p. xvi.

[79] Catechism of the Catholic Church, § 387.

[80] Ibid., § 1849.

[81] Ibid., § 1850.

[82] John Paul II, Apostolic Letter on human suffering “Salvifici doloris” (11 February 1984), 19.

[83] Cf. David Spangler, The New Age, op. cit., p. 28.

[84] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical Letter Redemptoris Missio (7 December 1990), 6, 28, and the Declaration Dominus Jesus (6 August 2000) by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, 12.

[85] Cf. R. Rhodes, The Counterfeit Christ of the New Age Movement, Grand Rapids (Baker) 1990, p. 129.

[86] Helen Bergin o.p., “Living One’s Truth”, in The Furrow, January 2000, p. 12.

[87] Ibid.,p. 15.

[88] Cf. P. Heelas, op. cit., p. 138.

[89] Elliot Miller, A Crash Course in the New Age, Eastbourne (Monarch) 1989, p. 122. For documentation on the vehemently anti-Christian stance of spiritualism, cf. R. Laurence Moore, “Spiritualism”, in Edwin S. Gaustad (ed.), The Rise of Adventism: Religion and Society in Mid-Nineteenth-Century America, New York 1974, pp. 79-103, and also R. Laurence Moore, In Search of White Crows: Spiritualism, Parapsychology, and American Culture, New York (Oxford University Press) 1977.

[90] Cf. John Paul II, Encyclical letter Fides et Ratio (14 September 1998), 36-48.

[91] Cf. John Paul II, Address to the United States Bishops of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska on their “Ad Limina” visit, 28 May 1993.

[92] Cf. John Paul II, Post-Synodal Apostolic Exhortation Ecclesia in Africa (14 September 1995), 103. The Pontifical Council for Culture has published a handbook listing these centres throughout the world: Catholic Cultural Centres (3rd edition, Vatican City, 2001).

[93] Cf. Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, Orationis Formas, and § 3 above.

[94] This is one area where lack of information can allow those responsible for education to be misled by groups whose real agenda is inimical to the Gospel message. It is particularly the case in schools, where a captive curious young audience is an ideal target for ideological merchandising. Cf. the caveat in Massimo Introvigne, New Age & Next Age, Casale Monferrato (Piemme) 2000, p. 277f.

[95] Cf. J. Badewien, Antroposofia, in H. Waldenfels (ed.) Nuovo Dizionario delle Religioni, Cinisello Balsamo (San Paolo) 1993, 41.

[96] Cf. Raúl Berzosa Martinez, Nueva Era y Cristianismo, Madrid (BAC) 1995, 214.

[97] Helen Palmer, The Enneagram, New York (Harper-Row) 1989.

[98] Cf. document of the Argentine Episcopal Committee for Culture, op. cit.

[99] J. Gernet, in J.-P. Vernant et al., Divination et Rationalité, Paris (Seuil) 1974, p. 55.

[100] Cf. Susan Greenwood, “Gender and Power in Magical Practices”, in Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman (eds.), Beyond New Age. Exploring Alternative Spirituality, Edinburgh (Edinburgh University Press) 2000, p. 139.

[101] Cf. M. Fuss, op. cit., 198-199.

[102] For a brief but clear treatment of the Human Potential Movement, see Elizabeth Puttick, “Personal Development: the Spiritualisation and Secularisation of the Human Potential Movement”, in: Steven Sutcliffe and Marion Bowman (eds.), Beyond New Age. Exploring Alternative Spirituality, Edinburgh (Edinburgh University Press) 2000, pp. 201-219.

[103] Cf. C. Maccari, La “New Age” di fronte alla fede cristiana, Leumann-Torino (LDC) 1994, 168.

[104] Cf. W.J. Hanegraaff, op. cit., 283-290.

[105] On this last, very delicate, point, see Eckhard Türk’s article “Neonazismus” in Hans Gasper, Joachim Müller, Friederike Valentin (eds.), Lexikon der Sekten, Sondergruppen und Weltanschauungen. Fakten, Hintergründe, Klärungen, Freiburg- Basel-Wien (Herder) 2000, p. 726.

[106] Cf. John Saliba, Christian Responses to the New Age Movement. A Critical Assessment, London, (Geoffrey Chapman) 1999, p.1.

[107] Cf. M. Fuss, op. cit., 195-196.

Since the legalization of abortion in 1973, over 57 million unborn children have been killed, more than the entire population of Spain.  That’s 155 babies per hour.  About 1 every 24 seconds.

When will abortion stop?

By the time you finish reading this article, 4 or 5 more innocent lives will be lost. God’s plan for them will be ruined forever.

Can we remain indifferent to such immense human slaughter? NO.  So please read the top 10 reasons why abortion is wrong and must be opposed:

1. Abortion Offends God

Abortion is never a mere personal choice but a grave offense against God and His creation. The anti-abortion struggle has always been a religious battle and foremost in its ranks have been Catholics across the country. This is because Church teaching on abortion is clear and unequivocal: Abortion is murder. There are no exceptions allowed, no compromises possible.

2. The Unnoticed War

The continuing war on terror has lead to a renewed national consciousness of the high price of war, and, for many, a heightened desire for peace. Yet, despite all this concern, the most horrible war of all has gone all but unnoticed. This is a war going on within our own borders, and it has claimed 57 million American lives in the last 43 years.

This scourge is as horrible as anything terrorists can fathom, because it strikes at the very core of humanity and our country: the family. By destroying the most basic human bond of all—that between mother and child—abortion dissolves the precious glue that binds our nation together.

While mother and child are the first victims, there is not a single element of society that is not affected by abortion. Mother, child, father, husband, aunt, uncle, friend, sibling and grandparent alike suffer the scars of the abortionist’s scalpel. Peace abroad is meaningless without peace at home.

3. Life starts at the moment of conception

This is the definition given in any respectable medical textbook. To declare a beginning of life at any point after the fusing of a wife’s egg and a husband’s contribution is irrational and an exercise in sophistical chicanery. Only machines such as clocks and cars come into existence part by part. Living beings come into existence all at once and gradually unfold their world of innate potential. A living human person begins to exist at the moment of conception, even though only as a cell. What is important is not the accident of size or weight but the essence – which is fully human. The unborn baby has a distinct, unchanging and unrepeatable genetic code, unique in all of history, from the moment of conception till death. Nothing is added except nutrition and oxygen.[1]

4. Mankind must protect life whenever possible

The first and foremost instinct of humans is preservation of life. This begins with self-preservation, and extends to all humanity through domestic bonds and realization of a like nature. “Pregnancy termination” stops the beating heart of a growing human being and is in direct contradiction to this most basic premise of human nature. It forsakes natural law, and has left America as a country unable to repopulate itself without the aid of mass immigration.

5. Abortion is unsafe

Compared with other medical procedures, the abortion industry is largely unregulated. Although there are no exact statistics for the number of women who die from botched procedures, LifeDynamics.com compiled a list of 347 women killed by legal abortions since 1973.[2] Furthermore, the National Cancer Institute commissioned a study lead by Dr. Janet Daling, an abortion supporter, and her colleagues at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center which found a link between abortion and cancer: “among women who had been pregnant at least once, the risk of breast cancer in those who had experienced an induced abortion was 50% higher than among other women.”

The Coalition on Abortion/Breast Cancer reports: “28 out of 37 worldwide studies have independently linked induced abortion with breast cancer. Thirteen out of fifteen studies conducted on American women report increased risk. Seventeen studies are statistically significant, sixteen of which found increased risk. Most of the studies have been conducted by abortion supporters.”[3]

6. A biogenetic Tower of Babel

In a cynical but logical progression, the culture of death is now bent on engendering human life so as to destroy it. Its new frontier is embryonic stem-cell and human cloning research. In the name of science and health, human life is destroyed at its very inception and “limited” cloning is used to produce usable cells that can be manipulated and harvested to aid the living. In short, the remaining ethical barriers that preserve human dignity and God’s rights in Creation are steadily coming down. The biotech revolution has as its avowed goal not just curing disease but the construction of a “brave new world” of genetic engineering, changing the very makeup and design of man himself. We cannot permit the completion of this challenge to God, a new Tower of Babel, which will be like another Pandora’s box, unleashing untold ethical and moral havoc on our nation.

7. Breaking the abortion cycle

Abortion is a sin that perpetuates evil. The abortion mentality destroys the family by making it more difficult for new Americans who survive beyond the womb to find the family welded together by the indissoluble bond of marriage solely between a man and a woman. Children need families that will nurture them, guard their innocence and develop their personalities. In particular, all children must find within their homes the Faith that enables them to know, love and serve God in this world and be happy with Him forever in the next. As long as the traditional family remains in crisis, we will never sever the power lines that supply the abortion mills. As long as the Faith remains dead in souls, we will never wipe out the moral rot of sexual immorality, which is the contaminated soil where the abortion movement grows and flourishes.

8. Roe v. Wade: 43 Years of Lies

The 43rd anniversary of the Supreme Court’s infamous Roe v. Wade decision legalizing abortion-on-demand calls to mind the biggest pack of lies ever set in motion — lies that have cost the lives of more than 57 million innocent babies cruelly torn from their mothers’ wombs. How can such slaughter, numerically on par with Hitler’s Germany or Stalin’s Russia, be tolerated by the present United States of America, a republic purportedly based on moral values and human rights?

9. Addressing an abortionist

You were once an enchanting child, as all babies are. Today you are an abortionist, a killer of babies. Do you not regret your wicked deeds? Do you not see the innocent blood of our children that stains your hands and cries out to God? Have you no shame as did our first parents when they sinned against God? Why do you not turn to Him today, seek His forgiveness and His strength never again to murder the innocent? Would you not rather bring children into the world than destroy them? Children you could raise with respect for life to take the place of those you robbed from God?

10. The slippery slope

Yesterday it was contraception. Today it’s abortion and same-sex “marriage.” Will it be widespread euthanasia tomorrow? Then what…? Once abortion is universally accepted, what logical arguments will stop euthanasia and other forms of murder and brutality?

Other helpful facts:

The unborn baby’s heart starts beating at 20 days[4] and the brain gives off brainwaves at 40 days. If these factors are used by the law to determine death, why can’t they be used to determine life?

Babies can survive outside the womb at 21 weeks.[5]  By 14 weeks, the entire body surface, except the back and top of the head, are sensitive to pain.[6] The embryo is not a blueprint that becomes a human being, any more than a paper blueprint becomes a house.[7]NOTES

[1] http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_books/love_them_both/why_cant_we_love_them
_both_10.asp

[2] http://www.lifedynamics.com//AboutUs/index.cfm?fuseaction=BlackmunWall

[3] First Way Abortion Causes Breast Cancer, http://www.abortionbreastcancer.com

[4] J.M. Tanner, G.R. Taylor, and the Editors of Time-Life Books, Growth, New York: Life Science Library, 1965

[5] H. Hamlin, “Life or Death by EEG,” JAMA, Oct. 12, 1964, p. 120.

[6] S. Reinis & J. Goldman, The Development of the Brain C. Thomas Pub., 1980.

[7] S. Reinis & J. Goldman, The Development of the Brain C. Thomas Pub., 1980. http://www.abortionfacts.com/online_books/love_them_both/why_cant_we_love_them_both_11.asp

By Dave Armstrong

Yours truly at age 29 in October 1987, three years before I was persuaded of Catholicism. At this time I was an evangelical Protestant campus evangelist / apologist at the University of Michigan and Wayne State University in Detroit. I would have thought that the chance of my becoming a Catholic would have been about as likely as growing wings and flying to Mars (without oxygen). But God had other plans for me! We often don’t know what lies ahead in our lives.

This was originally written on December 9, 1990 / revised: July 1992 / expanded version: 1993. This was my draft of what was later somewhat edited and included in Surprised by Truth with ten other conversion stories (some words were actually added in the book story that were not my own). That book (1994; edited by Patrick Madrid) has now sold over 300,000 copies: the highest total (I understand) of any Catholic book besides the Catechism.

Unfortunately, by agreement, I never received one red cent. Oh well: lots of advertising of my name, anyway, which counts for something when one is trying to live as a full-time apologist. Another heavily-edited (I would even say, “butchered”) version of this story was published in This Rock [now, Catholic Answers Magazine] in September 1993 (my first time published in that important periodical).

I was received into the Catholic Church in February 1991 by Fr. John Hardon, an act which as recently as a year earlier, would have seemed to me absolutely inconceivable. Not much in my background would have indicated this surprising turn of events, but such is God’s ever inscrutable mercy and providence.

My first exposure to Christianity came from the United Methodist Church, the denomination in which I was raised. The church we attended, in a working-class neighborhood of Detroit, appeared to me, even as a child in the early 1960s, to be in decline, sociologically speaking, as the average age of the members was about fifty or so years. In my studies as an Evangelical later, I learned that shrinking and aging congregations were one of the marks of the deterioration of mainline Protestantism.

As it turned out, our church actually folded in 1968, and after that, I barely attended church at all for the next nine years. My early religious upbringing was not totally without benefit, though, as I gained a respect for God which I never relinquished, a comprehension of His love for mankind, and an appreciation for the sense of the sacred and basic moral precepts.

At any rate, for whatever reason, I didn’t sustain an ongoing interest in Christianity at this time. In 1969, at the age of eleven, I first came in contact with the quintessential altar call of Fundamentalist Christianity at a Baptist Church which we visited two or three times. I went up front to get “saved,” perfectly sincere, but without the knowledge or force of will required (by more thoughtful Evangelical standards) to carry out this temporary resolve.

During this period, I became fascinated with the supernatural, but unfortunately, it got channeled into a vague, catch-all occultism. I dabbled, with great seriousness into ESP, telepathy, the Ouija board, astral projection, even voodoo (with a vicious gym teacher in mind!). I read about Houdini and Uri Geller, among others.

Meanwhile, my brother Gerry, who is ten years older than I am, converted, in 1971, to “Jesus Freak” Evangelicalism, a trend which was at its peak at that time. He underwent quite a remarkable transformation out of a drug-filled rock band culture and personal struggles, and started preaching zealously to our family. This was a novel spectacle for me to observe. I had already been influenced by the hippie counterculture, and had always been a bit of a nonconformist, so the Jesus Movement held a strange fascination for me, although I had no intention of joining it.

I prided myself on my “moderation” with regard to religious matters. Like most nominal Christians and outright unbelievers, I reacted to any display of earnest and devout Christianity with a mixture of fear, amusement, and condescension, thinking that such behavior was “improper”, fanatical, and outside of mainstream American culture.

During the early 1970s I occasionally visited Messiah Lutheran Church in Detroit where my brother attended, along with his “Jesus Freak,” long-haired friends, and would squirm in my seat under the conviction of the powerful sermons of Pastor Dick Bieber, the likes of which I had never heard.

I remember thinking that what he was preaching was undeniably true, and that if I were to “get saved” there would be no room for middle ground or fence-sitting. Therefore, I was reluctant, to say the least, because I thought it would be the end of fun and fitting-in with my friends. Because of my rebelliousness and pride, God had to use more drastic methods to wake me up.

In 1977 I experienced a severe depression for six months, which was totally uncharacteristic of my temperament before or since. The immediate causes were the pressures of late adolescence, but in retrospect it is clear that God was bringing home to me the ultimate meaninglessness of my life – – a vacuous and futile individualistic quest for happiness without purpose or relationship with God. I was brought, staggering, to the end of myself. It was a frightening existential crisis in which I had no choice but to cry out to God. He was quick to respond.

It so happened that at Easter 1977 the superb Franco Zeffirelli film Jesus of Nazareth (still my favorite Christian movie) was on television. I had always enjoyed Bible movies, such as The Ten Commandments. They brought the biblical personalities to life, and the element of drama (as an art form) communicated the vitality of Christianity in a unique and effective way. Jesus, as portrayed in this movie, made an extraordinary impression on me, and the timing couldn’t have been better. He seemed like the ultimate nonconformist, which greatly appealed to me.

I marveled at the way He dealt with people, and got the feeling that you could never expect what He would say or do – – always something with unparalleled insight or impact. I began to comprehend, with the help of my brother, the heart of the gospel for the first time: what the Cross and the Passion meant, and some of the basic points of theology and soteriology (the theology of salvation) that I had never thought about before. I also learned that Jesus was not only the Son of God, but God the Son, the Second Person of the Trinity, which, incredibly, I had either not heard previously, or simply didn’t comprehend if I had heard it. I started to read the Bible seriously for the first time in my life (the Living Bible translation, which is the most informal paraphrase).

It was the combination of my depression and newfound knowledge of Christianity that caused me to decide to follow Jesus as my Lord and Savior in a much more serious fashion, in July 1977 what I would still regard as a “conversion to Christ,” and what Evangelicals view as the “born-again” experience or getting “saved.” I continue to look at this as a valid and indispensable spiritual step, even though, as a Catholic, I would, of course, interpret it in a somewhat different way than I did formerly. Despite my initial burst of zeal, I again settled into lukewarmness for three years until August 1980, when I finally yielded my whole being to God, and experienced a profound “renewal” in my spiritual life, as it were.

Throughout the 1980s I attended Lutheran, Assembly of God, and non-denominational churches with strong connections to the “Jesus Movement,” characterized by youth, spontaneity of worship, contemporary music, and warm fellowship. Many of my friends were former Catholics. I knew little of Catholicism until the early 1980s. I regarded it as an exotic, stern, and unnecessarily ritualistic “denomination,” which held little appeal for me. I wasn’t by nature attracted to liturgy, and didn’t believe in sacraments at all, although I always had great reverence for the “Lord’s Supper” and believed something real was imparted in it.

On the other hand, I was never overtly anti-Catholic. Having been active in apologetics and counter-cult work (specializing in Jehovah’s Witnesses), I quickly realized that Catholicism was entirely different from the cults, in that it had correct “central doctrines,” such as the Trinity and the bodily Resurrection of Christ, as well as an admirable historical legitimacy; fully Christian, albeit vastly inferior to Evangelicalism.

I was, you might say, a typical Evangelical of the sort who had an above-average amateur theological interest. I became familiar with the works of many of the “big names”: C.S. Lewis, Francis Schaeffer, Josh McDowell, A.W. Tozer, Billy Graham, Hal Lindsey, John Stott, Chuck Colson, Christianity Today magazine, Keith Green and Last Days Ministries, the Jesus People in Chicago and Cornerstone magazine, Inter-Varsity Christian Fellowship (a campus organization), as well as the Christian music scene: all in all, quite beneficial influences and not to be regretted at all.

My strong interest in both evangelism and apologetics led me to become, with my church’s permission, a missionary on college campuses for four years. I also got involved in the pro-life movement, and eventually Operation Rescue.

It quickly became apparent to me that the Catholic rescuers were just as committed to Christ and godliness as Evangelicals. In retrospect, there is no substitute for the extended close observation of devout Catholics. I had met countless Evangelicals who exhibited what I thought to be a serious walk with Christ, but rarely ever Catholics of like intensity. I began to fellowship with my Catholic brethren at Rescues, and sometimes in jail, including priests and nuns. Although still unconvinced theologically, my personal admiration for orthodox Catholics skyrocketed.

In January 1990 I began an ecumenical discussion group which I moderated. Three knowledgeable Catholic friends from the Rescue movement, John McAlpine, Leno Poli, and Don McSween, started attending. Their claims for the Church, particularly papal and conciliar infallibility, challenged me to plunge into a massive research project on that subject. I believed I had found many errors and contradictions throughout history. Later I realized, though, that my many “examples” didn’t even fall into the category of infallible pronouncements, as defined by the Vatican Council of 1870.

I was also a bit dishonest because I would knowingly overlook strong historical facts which confirmed the Catholic position, such as the widespread early acceptance of the Real Presence, the authority of the Bishop, and the communion of the saints.

In the meantime, I was reading exclusively Catholic books (and all the short Catholic Answers tracts), with an open mind, and my respect and understanding of Catholicism grew by leaps and bounds. I began (providentially) with The Spirit of Catholicism by Karl Adam, a book too extraordinary to summarize adequately. It is, I believe, a nearly perfect book about Catholicism as a worldview and a way of life, especially for a person acquainted with basic Catholic theology. I read books by Christopher Dawson, the great cultural historian, Joan Andrews (a heroine of the Rescue movement), and Thomas Merton, the famous Trappist monk, which all extremely impressed me.

My three friends at our group discussion continued to calmly offer replies to nearly all of my hundreds of questions. I was amazed by the realization that Catholicism seemed to have “thought out” everything – it was a marvelously complex and consistent belief system unparalleled by any portion of Evangelicalism.

At this time I became seriously troubled by the Protestant (and my own) free and easy acceptance of contraception. I came to believe, in agreement with the Church, that once one regards sexual pleasure as an end in itself, then the so-called “right to abortion” is logically not far away. My Evangelical pro-life friends might easily draw the line, but the less spiritually-minded have not in fact done so, as has been borne out by the sexual revolution in full force since the widespread use of the Pill began around 1960.

Once a couple thinks that they can thwart even God’s will in the matter of a possible conception, then the notion of terminating a pregnancy follows by a certain diabolical logic devoid of the spiritual guidance of the Church. In this, as in other areas such as divorce, the Church is ineffably wise and truly progressive. G.K. Chesterton and Ronald Knox, the great apologists, could see the writing on the wall already by the 1930s.

I was utterly shocked by the facts that no Christian body had accepted contraception until the Anglicans in 1930, and the inevitable progression in nations of contraception to abortion, as shown irrefutably by Fr. Paul Marx. Finally, a book entitled The Teaching of “Humanae Vitae” by John Ford, Germain Grisez, et al, convinced me of the moral distinction between contraception and Natural Family Planning and put me over the edge.

I now accepted a very “un-Protestant” belief, but still didn’t even dream of becoming Catholic (which is, of course, unthinkable for an Evangelical). Yet I was falling prey to Chesterton’s principle of conversion – – that one cannot be fair to Catholicism without starting to admire it and becoming convinced of it.

Meanwhile, my wife Judy, who was raised Catholic and became a Protestant before we dated, had also been independently convinced of the wrongness of contraception. She returned to the Church on the day I was received. What a joy unity is! By July 1990, then, I believed Catholicism had the best moral theology of any Christian body, and greatly respected its sense of community, devotion, and contemplation.

Moral theology and intangible mystical elements began the ball of conversion rolling for me, and increasingly rang true deep within my soul; beyond, but not opposed to, the rational calculations of my mind – what Cardinal Newman terms the “Illative Sense.”

My Catholic friend, John, tiring of my constant rhetoric about Catholic errors and additions through the centuries, suggested that I read Newman’s Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. This book demolished the whole schema of Church history which I had constructed. I thought, typically, that early Christianity was Protestant and that Catholicism was a later corruption (although I placed the collapse in the late Middle Ages rather than the usual time of Constantine in the fourth century).

Martin Luther, so I reckoned, had discovered in Sola Scriptura the means to scrape the accumulated Catholic barnacles off of the original lean and clean Christian “ship.” Newman, in contrast, exploded the notion of a barnacle-free ship. Ships always got barnacles. The real question was whether the ship would arrive at its destination. Tradition, for Newman, was like a rudder and steering wheel, and was absolutely necessary for guidance and direction. Newman brilliantly demonstrated the characteristics of true developments, as opposed to corruptions, within the visible and historically continuous Church instituted by Christ. I found myself unable and unwilling to refute his reasoning, and a crucial piece of the puzzle had been put into place – Tradition was now plausible and self-evident to me.

Thus began what some call a “paradigm shift.” While reading the Essay I experienced a peculiar, intense, and inexpressibly mystical feeling of reverence for the idea of a Church “one, holy, catholic and apostolic.” Catholicism was now thinkable and I was suddenly cast into an intense crisis. I now believed in the visible Church and suspected that it was infallible as well. Once I accepted Catholic ecclesiology, the theology followed as a matter of course, and I accepted it without difficulty (even the Marian doctrines).

My Catholic friends had been tilling the rocky soils of my stubborn mind and will for almost a year, planting “Catholic seeds,” which now rapidly took root and sprouted, to their great surprise. I had fought the hardest just prior to reading Newman, in a desperate attempt to salvage my Protestantism, much like a drowning man just before he succumbs! I continued reading, now actively trying to persuade myself fully of Catholicism, going through Newman’s autobiography, Tom Howard’s Evangelical Is Not Enough, which helped me appreciate the genius of liturgy for the first time, and two books by Chesterton on Catholicism.

At about this time I had a conversation with an old friend, Al Kresta, who had also been my pastor for a few years, and whose theological opinions I held in very high regard. I admitted to him that I was seriously troubled by certain elements of Protestantism, and might, perhaps (but it was a far-fetched notion) think of becoming a Catholic. To my amazement, he told me that he, too, was heading in the same general direction, citing, in particular, the problem that the formulation and pronouncement of the Canon of Scripture poses for Protestants and their “Bible-only” premise.

These types of unusual “confirming” events helped to create a strong sense that something strange was going on during the bewildering period just preceding my actual conversion. Al was in such a theological crisis (as was I), that he resigned his pastorate within two months of our conversation.

Also at this time I had the great privilege of meeting Fr. John Hardon, the eminent Jesuit catechist, and attending his informal class on spirituality. This gave me the opportunity to learn personally from an authoritative Catholic priest, who is a delightful and humble man as well. After seven tense weeks of alternately questioning my sanity and arriving at immensely exciting new plateaus of discovery, the final death blow came in just the fashion I had suspected.

I knew that if I was to reject Protestantism, then I had to examine its historical roots: the so-called Protestant Reformation. I had previously read some material on Martin Luther, and considered him one of my biggest heroes. I accepted the standard textbook myth of Luther as the bold, righteous rebel against the darkness of Catholic tyranny and superstition added on to “early Christianity.”

But when I studied a large portion of the six-volume biography Luther, by the German Jesuit Hartmann Grisar, my opinion of Luther was turned upside down. Grisar convinced me that the foundational tenets of the Protestant Revolution were altogether tenuous. I had always rejected Luther’s notions of absolute predestination and the total depravity of mankind. Now I realized that if man had a free will, he did not have to be merely declared righteous in a judicial, abstract sense, but could actively participate in his redemption and actually be made righteous by God. This, in a nutshell, is the classic debate over Justification.

I learned many highly disturbing facts about Luther; for example, his radically subjective existential methodology, his disdain for reason and historical precedent, and his dictatorial intolerance of opposing viewpoints, including those of his fellow Protestants. These and other discoveries were stunning, and convinced me beyond doubt that he was not really a “reformer” of the “pure,” pre-Nicene Church, but rather, a revolutionary who created a novel theology in many, though not all, respects. The myth was annihilated.

Now I was “unconvinced” of the standard Protestant concept of the invisible, “rediscovered” church. In the end, my innate love of history played a crucial part in my forsaking Protestantism, which tends to give very little attention to history (as indeed is necessary in order to retain any degree of plausibility over against Catholicism).
At this point, it became, in my opinion, an intellectual and moral duty to abandon Protestantism in its Evangelical guise. It was still not easy. Old habits and perceptions die hard, but I refused to let mere feelings and biases interfere with the wondrous process of illumination which overpowered me by God’s grace. I waited expectantly for just one last impetus to fully surrender myself. The unpredictable course of conversion came to an end on December 6, 1990, while I was reading Cardinal Newman’s meditation on “Hope in God the Creator” and in a moment decisively realized that I had already ceased to offer any resistance to the Catholic Church.

At the end, in most converts’ experience, an icy fear sets in, similar to the cold feet of pre-marriage jitters. In an instant, this final obstacle vanished, and a tangible “emotional and theological peace” prevailed.

In the three years since I converted, some astonishing things have occurred among our circle of friends (I don’t claim credit for these, other than maybe a tiny influence, but rather, marvel at the ways in which God moves people’s hearts). Four people have returned to the Church of their childhood and three, like myself, have converted from lifelong Protestantism. These include my former pastor, Al and his wife, Sally, one of my best friends and frequent evangelistic partner, Dan Grajek and his wife Lori, Dan’s longtime friend Joe Polgar, who had lapsed into virtual paganism for years, another friend Terri Navarra, and the daughter, Jennifer, of a friend, Tom McGlynn. Additionally, another couple we know converted to Eastern Orthodoxy, a second is seriously thinking about the same, and a third couple may convert to Catholicism.

Needless to say, many of our mutual Protestant friends view these occurrences with dumbfounded trepidation. One of my former pastors, in the most heated encounter since my conversion, called me a “blasphemer” because I believed there was more to Christian Tradition than simply that which is contained in the Bible! Another good friend who is a Baptist minister said that although I had made a terrible mistake, I was still saved because of his belief in eternal security! All in all, it has, thankfully, been fairly smooth sailing among our Evangelical Protestant friends. Many ignore our Catholicism altogether.

I believe that all Catholics can share in such experiences as I’ve been describing, in the sense that each new discovery of some Catholic truth is similarly exhilarating. As we all grow in our faith, let us rejoice in the abundant well-springs of delight, as well as instructive times of suffering which God provides for us in his Body, fully manifested in the Catholic Church. I feel very much at home in it, as much as could be expected this side of heaven.

St. Thomas Aquinas’ five ways are definitely a key milestone in the history of philosophy. Their purpose is to rationally demonstrate God’s existence. How? Well, starting from the wise advice from Aristotle about that, regardless of how we will perform a demonstration, “what is certain is that we must start from what is known”[1].Thus, St. Thomas starts with certain well-established features of the world we know such as movement, causality, contingency, degrees of perfection and order; then, through a rigorous logical process, he arrives at the existence of a Prime mover, an Uncaused cause, a Subsistent being, a Pure perfection and an Intelligent mind, respectively, all of which corresponds, of course, with concept of God in an univocal way.

Well, St. Thomas Aquinas lived in the thirteenth century and therefore had no opportunity to respond to criticism that will be subsequently performed by philosophers and thinkers such as David Hume, Immanuel Kant, Arthur Schopenhauer, Bertrand Russell, Graham Oppy, etc. However, in my book (currently available in Spanish) Does God exist?: The book that every believer will must (and every atheist will fear) read[2] I give a direct response to all these criticisms and much more, showing the tremendous depth and strength of St. Thomas Aquinas’ five ways when they are understood in their proper philosophical context and illustrated with the latest scientific advances.

So, as an example of this, I will respond to a critique of the five ways performed by one of the most famous and influential philosophers of our times: Fernando Savater. In one of his speeches in the TV program about philosophy “The Adventure of Thought” he says regarding the Thomist ways: “Obviously, history has not accepted a large part of the five ways which are due to an ancient physics and a very dubious knowledge about the world, and especially to a misunderstanding that is that you cannot explain what we do not know by mean of something we know even less. That is, we know little about the origin of the universe but nothing about God. So, from saying that God explains the origin of the universe follows an immediate question: And who explain God? This would be the end of the matter, but obviously neither St. Thomasnor his time allowed go so far”[3].

In what follows, the point-by-point rebuttal to what was said by Savater (I quote his words and then introduce my comments):

1) “Obviously, history has not accepted a large part of the five ways…”: Obviously Savater’s opinion in this regard is based on either an exaggeration or a very dubious knowledge about history. There is no such thing as “History has not accepted a large part of the five ways”, strictly speaking what has existed is a group of thinkers at certain times in history (especially from the eighteenth century) who have rejected the five ways. But it has not constituted an unanimous or permanent position at all. Even more, nowadays the debate on the five ways, rather than being a finished issue, it is an issue that has returned in a very strong way to intellectual and academic fields in various forms. If in the late nineteenth century we found that “philosophy”, along with Nietzsche, proclaimed “God is dead!”, now, in the early twenty-first century, we clearly find that “He is risen!” in the sense of that theism returns to be the subject of serious debate even in the most renowned universities in the world. If Mr. Savater does not know this and just wants “to look away” regarding this reality, it is another problem…

2) “… which are due to an ancient physics and a very dubious knowledge about the world”: In this, it seems that Savater has “a very dubious knowledge” of the Thomistic philosophy. It is true that St. Thomas Aquinas appeals to the (limited) scientific knowledge of his time in order to illustrate his arguments, but these are eminently philosophical arguments and therefore their validity is much more general and transcendent and does not depend on this or that situation in the advance of scientific knowledge. To prove this, let’s look at the most common case which is mentioned in this type of criticism. Regarding the first way, which starts from the existence of the movement to deduce that, given that there cannot be an infinite chain of movement,there must be a First being which cannot be moved by another and instead gives the principle of movement to all the rest, we found that the common critique is: “That way is invalid because Thomas Aquinas’ understanding on the movement was based on Aristotle’s physics, which was obviously very flawed and has become outdated”. And yes, the Aristotle’s physics was too basic. But it turns out that the philosophical background of the first Thomist way is not this or that Aristotle’s old scientific theory but rather the most fundamental and general philosophical concept that he gave about movement. Thus, in Aristotelian philosophy, movement is defined as “the act of what is in potency in terms of potency”[4]. That is, the movement is the passage from potency to act. Is this compatible only with the old vision of the movement in terms of simple mechanical locomotion? Not at all, the passage from potency to act is something quite general and can be compatible with more sophisticated scientific views on the movement that can incorporate issues such as inertia, quantum physics, relativity theory, chaos theory, etc.

3) “… and a very dubious knowledge about the world, and especially to a misunderstanding that is that you cannot explain what we do not know by mean of something we know even less. That is, we know little about the origin of the universe but nothing about God”: It is really surprising that a skeptical philosopher can say such a thing (in the first sentence) as that we know “even less” about the universe than what we know about God. And this because, outside the realm of faith, for human beings in general what is material (body, universe) is much better known that what is immaterial (soul, God). Therefore, the Aristotelian-Thomistic method is still perfectly appropriate to prove the existence of God: starting from what is known arrive to what is unknown. Additionally, it is not true that the universe is absolutely unknown to us. We have a limited knowledge about the universe, of course, but much of that knowledge is well established. May be we do not have full all the “crossword puzzle” of the universe, but we have made progress to fill several parts and we can trust in it (not as a dogma, but rather as a valid knowledge). As astrophysicist Paul Davies says: “I often liken fundamental science to doing crossword puzzle. (…) With each new solution, we glimpse a bit more of the overall pattern of nature. As in a crossword, so with the physical universe, we find that the solutions to independent clues link together in a consistent and supportive way to form a coherent unity, so that, the more clues we solve, the easier we find it to fill in the missing features”[5]. What advances in our knowledge of the universe and its origins we have had in recent decades? Well, let’s see: Big Bang theory which, as standard model, establishes an absolute beginning of the universe from literally nothing; Penrose-Hawking singularity theorem which demonstrates that with the beginning of the universe begins to exist not only matter but also space and time themselves; Borde-Guth-Vilenkin theorem which generalizes the above independently of the “Planck time” and even possible scenarios of expanding multiverses; and fine tuning, which states that arbitrary initial conditions of the universe have to be extremely special for the emergence of intelligent and interactive life like ours. Does all this point to an immaterial, timeless, spaceless and intelligent First cause behind the universe? It seems so and all this is explained in detail in my book Does God exist? So, contrary to what Savater wants to imply, I have to say what I defended in a public discussion with an atheist physicist and an agnostic philosopher: physics does point to the existence of God[6]. And this, of course, consistently with Thomas Aquinas’ philosophical approaches.

4) “So, from saying that God explains the origin of the universe follows an immediate question: And who explain God? This would be the end of the matter, but obviously neither St. Thomas nor his time allowed go so far”: It can be expected that an atheist with low philosophical training, like Richard Dawkins, for example, can express such type of criticism. But it is quite striking to see that a renowned philosopher like Savater says “Who created God?”. In a scathing way, he says: “This would be the end of the matter, but obviously neither St. Thomas nor his time allowed go so far”. No, that is not the end of the matter, we can still take an additional step, namely: “Does it make sense to problematize the question itself?”. And turns out that the answer is yes. If, according to classical theism, God is defined as the “Subsistent being”, we will have that the question would be: “And who created the Subsistent being, i.e., the being that does not depend on other being for its existence”. Or, if we take the second way which reaches God as “Uncaused cause”, the question would be formulated as: “What caused the Uncaused cause, i.e., the cause that has no cause?”. It is clear that ask things like these is as absurd as asking about a “square circle”. One can understand that someone to say that there is no Uncaused cause, but what cannot be understood is that someone to say that you can propose as something coherent, though it be as a question, whether there is a “caused uncaused cause”. So, it is not that Aquinas’ thought does not allow “go so far” but rather that Savater’s biases and his lack of depth in this regard are those that do not allow him to go so far in order to put into question the question itself. This is typical of certain skeptical thinkers: they are very critical regarding theism and very dogmatic regarding their own criticism. It is also necessary to be skeptical about skepticism itself.NOTES

[1] Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Bk. I, ch. 4.

[2] Dante A. Urbina, ¿Dios existe?: El libro que todo creyente deberá (y todo ateo temerá) leer, CreateSpace Press, Charleston, 2016.

[3] Fernando Savater, “Santo Tomás de Aquino”, in: La Aventura del Pensamiento (TV program), Encuentro channel, 2008, ch. 3.

[4] . Aristotle, Physics, Bk. III, ch. 1.

[5] Paul Davies, The Mind of God: The scientific basis for a rational world, Ed. Simon&Shuster, New York, 1992, ch. 5.

[6] Dante A. Urbina, Luis del Castillo and Humberto Quispe, “¿Apunta la física hacia la existencia de Dios?” (Dialogue), Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Lima – Peru, December 4, 2015.

Many Catholics squirm at the very mention of the Spanish Inquisition, oftentimes conceding to claims that it was the most brutal time in Church history. But was it really as brutal as it is often described?

If you have never seen the BBC documentary The Myth of the Spanish Inquisition, I highly recommend it. At a little over forty-five minutes, it summarizes the most recent scholarship about the “Black Legend,” how it began, and why it persists.

Here are just a few of the more interesting points covered in the documentary:

• The “Black Legend” began as an anti-Spanish propaganda campaign that succeeded largely because of the invention of the printing press. The Inquisition was the prime target.
• Inquisitors were not fanatical priests as they are often portrayed. In fact, many of them were not priests at all but legal experts trained in Spanish schools.
• Contrary to popular belief, torture was rarely used. It was used less by the Inquisition than it was in the tribunals of other countries throughout Europe at the time.
• Stories about cruel torture methods used by the Inquisitors and the terrible conditions in which prisoners were kept were completely falsified. The Inquisition actually had the best jails in Spain.
• Prisoners of secular courts would actually blaspheme so that they could be transferred to Inquisition prisons and escape the maltreatment of the secular prisons.
• Persecuting witchcraft was a craze in Europe at the time, and secular courts were not tolerant of these kinds of offenses. The accused were often burned at the stake. The Inquisition, on the other hand, declared witchcraft a delusion. No one could be tried for it or burned at the stake.
• The Inquisition was virtually powerless in rural areas.
• In the entire sixteenth century, the Inquisition in Spain executed only about 50 people, which is contrary to the “Black Legend,” which numbers the executions in the hundreds of thousands.
• Of all the Inquisitions together throughout Europe, scholars estimate that the number of people executed ranged somewhere between 3,000 and 5,000. That averages, at most, about fourteen people per year throughout the entire continent over a period of 350 years.

The entire documentary is available on Youtube here:https://www.youtube.com/embed/CY-pS6iLFuc