"The Follies of Mindless Religious Fundamentalism"

[Guest guest]

THE VATICAN (Jun 24, 2004): Catholics from more than 25 countries are in Rome

this week to hammer out a strategy for combating the threat posed to

Christianity by "New Age" religions and fads.

 

Astrologers believe that the Age of Pisces - known to them as the Christian age

- is drawing to a close," explained an exhaustive report on the New Age produced

by the Catholic church last year. And as priests around the world watch their

congregations dwindle through boredom or plain disbelief, the Church believes

that the moment has come to fight back.

 

Monsignor Peter Fleetwood, one of the authors of the report, said those at the

closed-door conference include priests and lay people from Latin America

"worried that they can be pushed out by something that has come from abroad,"

and from Asia where "a lot of traditional religions are reviving."

 

But for Fleetwood the greatest challenge may be in England and North America,

"where the New Age began … and where it has become such a part of everyday life

that we don't notice it". That makes it harder to attack, he says: "Where one

sees a threat, it's easier to battle it."

 

This is an enemy with dozens of heads: the version of the Jewish kabbalah

espoused by Madonna, the Enneagram personality-reading cult, ancient Egyptian

occult practices, Sufism, the lore of the druids, Celtic Christianity, medieval

alchemy, Renaissance hermeticism, yoga, Zen Buddhism, and many more.

 

The report acknowledges the strength of the enemy within: "In Western culture in

particular, the appeal of `alternative' approaches to spirituality is very

strong ... New forms of psychological affirmation of the individual have become

very popular among Catholics."

 

Under the liberal dispensation of Pope John XXIII and the Second Vatican

Council, Catholic missionaries explored the religious traditions of lands where

in the past their task would have been restricted to converting the heathen.

 

In Japan, one Jesuit missionary became a Zen Buddhist roshi ("master"). He in

fact became a reverse missionary, implanting Zen Buddhist ideas and practice in

Catholic groups in Germany and elsewhere, where they continue to thrive.

 

But Pope John Paul II's church is far less tolerant about practices that the

Pope's "enforcer of the faith", Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger [now Pope!], dismissed

as "spiritual auto-eroticism."

 

New Age is getting a grip on Christians because many are failing to find

authentic spirituality in the Church. They are failing to find, as the report

put it, "the importance of man's 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."

 

While one of the two "pontifical councils" involved in taking up the challenge

is that for "inter-religious dialogue", suggesting that the New Agers be dealt

with on a similar footing to Muslims, Jews, and indeed Anglicans, the Pope

himself appears to see the issue as a

simple matter of right and wrong.

 

"We cannot delude ourselves," he says, that "this return of ancient gnostic

ideas ... will lead toward a renewal of religion." It is, he said, "a way of

distorting His Word ... in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is

essentially Christian".

 

The time for a decisive battle is clearly fast approaching. And the message to

faithful in the report is plain: quit "shopping around in the world's fair of

religious proposals."

 

*****

 

(EDITORIAL COMMENT: IN OTHER WORDS, GIVE UP THIS FREEDOM TO SEARCH FOR TRUTH,

AND RETURN TO THE SLAVERY OF A HERESY FOR MONEY AND POWER! TOO IGNORANT TO

REASON, THEIR OBSESsION IS ONLY TO CONTINUE TO OWN YOU, REGARDLESS OF THE CRIMES

THEY MUST COMMIT TO ENSLAVE YOU TO THEIR BLASPHEMY. BY THEIR OWN ADMISSION, THEY

ARE AGAINST EVERYTHING NOT CATHOLIC, INCLUDING ALCHEMY, HERMETICISM, AND EVEN

THE ORIGINAL GNOSTIC CHRISTIANITY OF OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST. THEY HAVE EVEN

DENOUNCED THE NAG HAMMADI GOSPELS! SO, WAKE UP NOW, BECAUSE THE "WOLVES IN

LAMB'S CLOTHING" ARE BUSY ON YOUR VERY DOORSTEP!)

 

SOURCE: The Independent, London. By Peter Popham in Rome, 16 June 2004

URL: http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/story.jsp?story=531952