Excerpt from chapter three in: A Catholic Response to the New Age Phenomenon by the Irish Theological Commission in 1994. To see the contents of the whole chapter, click here.
"New Age Movement" is abbreviated as NAM.
Every age has had its idols. The Scriptures bear abundant testimony to the fact that people have a tendency to deviate in matters of worship. In the Old Testament whenever the Lord seemed to be very quiet, or the people lost faith in their religious leaders, they turned to pagan practices and idol worship. Sometimes they even mixed the worship of God with pagan rites when they were very confused. And these rites usually involved some form of the occult. The prophets spoke out boldly against these deviations in order to help the people to remain in a true relationship with God.
Today the same phenomenon is occurring, and we need to be alert to it, for fear we get sucked into something that cuts us off from our saving relationship to Jesus Christ our only Saviour. The temptation today is the worship of self. J.R. Pice has a chapter headed: 'The All-in-AII of Self' which says it all.192 We have become so impressed by our own progress that we feel that we can save ourselves also! Society is so absorbed with health, fitness, food, recreation, holidays abroad and fashion, often to the detriment of the spiritual life. When we do become aware of the void this creates, we turn to material things and dangerous techniques in order to have 'peace of mind'. This shows that we have set our hearts on the world, and not on God's Kingdom. We have forgotten that 'we do not have here a lasting city' (Hb 13:14).
Jesus teaches us in Luke 12:22-31 that life is more important than food, and the body is more important than clothes. He says that if we set our hearts on his Kingdom that God will see to our needs according to his Divine Providence. Our tendency today to live life in independence of God could have eternal consequences for us. God wants to be Father, Redeemer, Saviour, Healer, and Sanctifier to his children who are in dire need of these gifts from him. If we refuse this saving relationship with God then we frustrate his loving designs for us as individuals, but also for the furthering of his Kingdom on earth.
NOTES
(Full details of the publications referred to in these notes can be found in the Select Bibliography.
192. The Planetary Commission, John Randolph Price, pp. 92-96.
