Excerpt from An Anthology of Texts of the Catholic Church 1986-1994, edited by the Working Group on New Religious Movements in the VATICAN. For full text, click here.
Note: New Religious Movements is abbreviated as NRMs.
The pastoral documents on the NRMs note that because of the context of religious pluralism in which many Christians find themselves today and because of the weakening of belonging to the faith community, some people attempt to harmonize all religions or to insert into their own creed elements that clash with the Christian message. Others again, while wishing to remain faithful to the teachings of the Church, find themselves confused by the propaganda of certain movements and feel the need for clear principles of theological and spiritual discernment.
These pastoral texts contain, therefore, principles of discernment on the main doctrines taught by the more widespread movements, such as those marked by a fundamentalist interpretation of the Bible or those who adhere to the general myth of the New Age. Moreover, they comment on deviant tendencies of modern religiosity, noting instances where the sense of truth is lost or replaced with a vague spiritualism, where the notion of salvation through Jesus Christ is questioned, and where the eschatological waiting is emptied of meaning.
Especially with evangelical groups there is also an almost universal tendency to attack important aspects of Catholic life, such as sacraments or devotion to Mary or the saints. This goes hand in hand with devaluing the role of church in general and of tradition as opposed to Scripture.
Among syncretistic groups a frequent problem arises from a belief in reincarnation, a doctrine that seems to have many adherents among the new generations of Europe in particular. Answering it involves a genuine understanding of the dignity of each person before God and an appreciation of our sharing in the resurrection of Christ.
Another potential source of theological confusion stems from the trend to seek methods of spirituality and of meditation from outside the Christian tradition. This tendency together with the whole New Age approach is in danger of a Pelagian emphasis on self-salvation and a forgetfulness of the mediation and gift of Christ.
We can find in some NRMs the tendency to replace the person and doctrine of Christ with some other psychological or doctrinal focus: the personality of a charismatic leader, the self-realization of the individual, the quest for the extraordinary, emotional experiences of an intense kind, or the distorted or ideological interpretation of Scripture.
In some movements one finds a preponderance of magical elements that, rooted in the desire to exalt man and his power, stray from the field of authentic religious experience.
DOCUMENTS AND DISCOURSES OF POPE JOHN PAUL
In these movements salvation is considered to be a prerogative of only a small group, led by superior individuals, who believe they have a special relationship with a God whose secrets only they claim to know. Their search for the sacred itself takes on an ambiguous form. For some of them it is a search for higher values towards which man strives without ever being able to attain them; for others it is situated within the realm of the magical; they try to draw it within their own sphere to manipulate it and make it serve their purposes.
"Message for World Migration Day, Doc. 5.
In the context of your mission as educators in the faith, you perceive the need for respectful yet clear spiritual discernment with regard to the syncretist and esoteric groups that are particularly active in many parts of the country. Popular piety itself needs to be purified of an excessive leaning towards the mysterious and magical as far as extraordinary happenings are concerned, which seem to exceed the limits of the human mind.
To the Bishops of Venezuela, Doc. 2.
There iare false prophets /iandi false teachers of how to live. /iFirst of all there are those who teach people to leave the body, time and space in order to be able to enter into what they call true life. They condemn creation, and in the name of a deceptive spirituality they lead thousands of young people along the paths of an impossible liberation, which eventually leaves them even more isolated, victims of their own illusions and of the evil in their own lives.
Seemingly at the opposite extreme, there are the teachers of the fleeting moment, who invite people to give free rein to every instinctive urge or longing, with the result that individuals fall prey to a sense of anguish and anxiety leading them to seek refuge in false artificial paradises, such as that of drugs.
And there are those who teach that the meaning of life lies solely in the quest for success, the accumulation of wealth, the development of personal abilities, without regard for the needs of others or respect for values, at times not even for the fundamental value of life itself. These and other kinds of false teachers of life, also numerous in the modern world, propose goals that not only fail to bring satisfaction but often intensify and exacerbate the thirst that burns in the human heart.
Message for the VIII World Youth Day, Doc. 10.
In their syncretistic and immanent outlook, these para-religious movements pay little heed to revelation, and instead try to come to God through knowledge and experience based on elements borrowed from Eastern spirituality or from psychological techniques. They tend to relativize religious doctrine, in favor of a vague worldview expressed as a system of myths and symbols dressed in religious language. Moreover, they often propose a pantheistic concept of God that is incompatible with sacred Scripture and Christian tradition. 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.
To the Bishops of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska (United States), Doc. 13
To neglect the supernatural dimension of the Christian life is to empty of meaning the mystery of Christ and of the Church.... Nevertheless, it is a sad fact that some Christians today are succumbing to the temptation to reduce Christianity to merely human wisdom, a pseudo-science of well-being i(Redemptoris missio /ino. 11). To preach a version of Christianity that benignly ignores, when it does not explicitly deny, that our ultimate hope is the ''resurrection of the body and life everlasting (Apostles' Creed) runs counter to revelation and the whole of Catholic tradition.
To the Bishops of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, and Nebraska (United States), Doc. 13
The importance of proclaiming a new Christian eschatology is under lined throughout the letter Tertio millenio adveniente. Among other things, the spread of belief in reincarnation is mentioned.
In man there is an irrepressible longing to live forever. How are we to imagine a life beyond death? Some have considered various forms of ireincarnation: depending on one's previous life, on would receive a new life in either a higher or lower form until purification is attained. This belief, deeply rooted in some Eastern religions, itself indicates that man rebels against the finality of death. He is convinced that his nature is essentially spiritual an immortal.
Christian revelation excludes reincarnation, and speaks of fulfillment that man is called to achieve in the course of a single earthly existence. Man achieves this fulfillment of his destiny through the sincere gift of self, a gift that is made possible only through his encounter with God....
Tertio millenio adveniente ino. 9, Doc.
It is certain that we must esteem and respect legitimate religious traditions, for example, those which are authentically African.... However, it would be quite another thing to welcome them and incorporate them into the content of the Christian message. This we would not be able to do without careful discernment. It is necessary to duly purify all elements that, for example, are clearly in. compatible with the mystery of the oneness and absolute transcendence of a personal God, or connected with the economy of salvation, in which Christ is the only way for people to be ret deemed; it is good to recall as well all the topics regarding the demands of Christian moral law.
To the Bishops of the North-2 Region of Brazil, Doc.
Even if the encyclical Veritatis splendor does not speak explicitly of the new religiosity it contains valuable principles for discern ment that apply to these as to other expressions of modern culture Thus, in the introduction and chapter 1 we see how the search for th meaning of life is a call towards the truth and goodness that has i foundation in God. No darkness can totally eliminate in man the light of God the Creator and the longing for his truth and knowledge nos. 7-9). In other articles the link between truth/goodness and man 's freedom is explained (cf. nos. 31-35).
Reason and experience not only confirm the weakness of human freedom; they also confirm its tragic aspects. Man comes to realize that his freedom is in some mysterious way inclined to betray this openness to the True and the Good, and that all too often he actually prefers to choose finite, limited and ephemeral goods. What is more, within his errors and negative decisions, man glimpses the source of a deep rebellion, which leads him to reject the Truth and the Good in order to set himself up as an absolute principle unto himself: You will be like God (Gen 3:5).
Veritatis splendor, ino. 86, Doc. 14.
OTHER DOCUMENTS OF THE CHURCH
The spread of sects and the challenge they present to the Church have theological as well as pastoral implications. Doctrinal confusion regarding the content of the faith opens the way to the proliferation of sects, to their practical justification, and above all, to a lack of commitment in pastoral care and the explicit proclamation of Jesus Christ, which establishes the Christian community.
There is a gnostic relativism and a theological misunderstanding that levels all religions, different religious experiences and beliefs, to a least common denominator in which everything is the same and each person can take an equally valid road to salvation.
There are some theological theories that empty and deform the revealed mystery of the Word Incarnate in Jesus Christ, and that arbitrarily construct the divine mystery that is emerging, is being incarnated in various religious types (incarnations, saviors, mediators, revealers, founders, mystics).
Cardinal Jozef Tomko, Doc. 30
Interreligious dialogue, which in the perspective of the Second Vatican Council is strictly linked with the Church's evangelizing mission, must also rely on a consistent and integral conception and expression of the truth of the Christian faith...
Keeping firmly anchored in the basic truths of the faith, far from jeopardizing dialogue, we make it genuine, possible and fruitful, for the knowledge of the truth.
Episcopal Conference of Italy, Secretariat for Ecumenism and Dialogue, Doc. 52
Facing the phenomenon of religious pluralism and also of the sects and new religious movements, we can find sometimes interpretations and attitudes that deeply reduce the Christian truth. In particular, the opinion can be spread that Jesus Christ is only one of the many manifestations of the Word of God in the religious history of humanity; or that the Holy Spirit is none other than the Christian name of a universal divine spirit, witnessed in various religious experiences; or again, that the Church should be put in parentheses, in favor of a vague concept of God's kingdom that creates a brotherhood of all religions.
These tendencies are unacceptable from the point of view of the Christian faith, because more or less consciously they do not recognize the singularity of Jesus Christ, and therefore neither his uniqueness nor the central place in the work of salvation. They have an erroneous concept of the Holy Spirit and of the Trinitarian mystery, and they neglect or refuse the Church as a universal means of salvation.
Episcopal Conference of Italy Secretariat for Ecumenism and Dialogue, Doc. 52
As regards the values that new religious groups have to offer . . . we said that they must be purified and completed in this deep light. We do not find salvation merely through the sum of worldly truths#151; whose total we could call Divine Logos by virtue of the exemplarity of Creation#151;but only through the concrete Son of God who is our God and our Truth, specifically through his paschal incarnation, and whose name is Christ, Jesus of Nazareth.
The mystery is not necessarily something indistinct, nebulous and vague, but the dazzling luminosity of the divine marvel that divinizes us in a most concrete way, definitive and unrepeatable: through the paschal incarnation of the Word, the Logos, the Son of God. The Holy Spirit is not a stray force in the universe . . . but the love of the Father and the Son who was sent to our hearts to call God the Father Father, since he united us through divine love to the Son of God in such a way that we call ourselves and are children of God.
Most Rev. Javier Lozano Barragan, Doc. 45
A concept deriving from the Hindu tradition, present explicitly or implicitly#151;in the new religiosity, can help us to focus better on this most important point: it is the concept of avatara. This is a Sanskrit term that literally means descent. It is applied to the divinity and to his condescending manifestation in the sphere of the tangible (not only human). Many Hindu experts and occultists translate it simply by incarnation. Here then we have the central dogma of Christianity channeled into a broader historical and religious category. The god Vishnu's descents are supposed to have been frequent. His last human apparition is supposed to have been Krishna. The event of Christ thus becomes only the particular case of a more general category. A case that can be repeated again, as for example, is claimed for the Indian guru, Satya Sai Baba.
In fact, a more careful examination, theological such as the subject requires, immediately shows that the concepts of avatara and incarnation can be linked only by virtue of a serious error. Apart from the historical inconsistency of the figure of Krishna, the human manifestation of God is resolved in the assumption of an apparent body. Whoever applies this concept to Christ falls more or less consciously into the errors of an ancient heresy, Docetism (from the Greek dokeo: to appear) and certainly does not express the Christian faith. The Christian incarnation, which implies the truth and completeness of Jesus' humanity, emerges from this comparison as a unique and unrepeatable event, a true sign of contradiction (Lk 2:34) that does not sustain any syncretistic or pseudo-gnostic homologation, but requires a clear and decisive stance.
Most Rev. Giuseppe Casale, Doc. 55.
Christ cannot be confiscated by anyone. Since he is both Man and God, he goes beyond the limits of time and space and could not be imprisoned even within the boundaries of the Church he himself founded. And nevertheless he said: If anyone says to you then, 'Look, here is the Christ,' or, 'Look, he is there,' do not believe it, for false Christs and false prophets will arise and produce signs and portents to deceive the elect, if that were possible. You therefore must be on your guard. I have forewarned you of everything (Mk 13:2 1 -23).
No one can create his own Christ or meet Christ at the turning the path forged by his own fears, needs, frustrations, psychoses. Faith is not blind trust in a charismatic man. We do not have to adhere to a Christ of human invention, but to the Christ of the Gospels who came to witness to the Truth. Now what Christ is presented to us by the sects and esoteric movements that are on the increase among us? What salvation does he offer us?
God knows the extent to which people in our land are seeking salvation, even a salvation that never, for many of them, goes beyond purely earthly horizons. St. Paul spoke with tears of those who were behaving as enemies of the cross of Christ, who only think earthly things important (Phil 3:18-19). He also speaks to us of people who far from being content with sound teaching . . . will be avid for the latest novelty and collect themselves a whole series of teachers according to their own tastes; and then instead of listening to the truth, they will turn to myths (2 Tm 4:3-4).
Most Rev. Robert Sastre, Doc. 3
The salvation that Jesus Christ brings us is not limited only to physical healing, but consists above all in the forgiveness of sins and the iliberation of the three human lusts: /imoney, the flesh and power....
As Son of God, Jesus Christ introduces us into the universe of grace making us participants of divine life. By his death and resurrection, he opens to the very heart of our death the way of eternal life. While advancing towards eternal life, the Christian saves all the great earthly realities from corruption. Freeing himself from the concupiscence of the flesh, he saves love and the family. Freeing himself from the lust for money, he saves work and encourages sharing. Freeing himself from the lust for power, he frees social functions for a better service to the human community.
Episcopal Conference of Congo, Doc.
In the Church and through her, man is given the opportunity know God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit, and to participate in the divine life. In fact, Christ endowed the Church, his Body, with the fullness of the benefits and means of salvation; the Holy Spirit dwells in her, enlivens her with his gifts and charisma, sanctifies, guides and constantly renews her. The result is a unique and special relationship that, while not excluding the action of Christ and the Spirit outside the Church's visible boundaries, confers upon her a specific and necessary role (Redemptoris missio, /ino. 18).
Episcopal Conference of Italy, Secretariat for Ecumenism and Dialogue, Doc. 52
Christian revelation does not therefore derive from individual dreams, nor from inspirations left to the human imagination. It comes to us through the Judeo-Christian tradition handed down from generation to generation, under the vigilant gaze of the Church that has been guaranteed the help of the Holy Spirit who leads to the complete truth (cf. Jn 16:13).
This revelation preserves all the truth that our customs and the wisdom of our forefathers contain and enables us to make the most of them. It is not the custom which discerns the Gospel; it is the Gospel which discerns the custom. The first place where humanity's salvation is realized is in the conscience of each human being.
God's kingdom is within us (cf. Lk 17:21); but to share in the sources of salvation, each person is asked to prepare his conscience to listen, in order to accept the news of salvation proclaimed in the Church.
Episcopal Conference of Congo, Doc. 36
The phenomenon of dissidence has not escaped the vision of Christ, who knows what man is and what there is within man. The Christian tradition has always interpreted in this way what Christ said in his prayer after the Last Supper (priestly prayer) which is recounted in the fourth Gospel....
According to Christ, in times of crisis, the phenomenon will be manifest with even greater keenness (cf. Mt 24:4-26; Mk 13:1923). . .
Those who want to read the Acts of the Apostles, Paul's Epistles, John's Revelation, with just a hint of foresight, already feel the wind of dissidence blowing. Sects are no longer mentioned, but the division of believers is already spreading its tentacles (cf. I Cor 1:l0-l3; 2 Cor 6: 14ff, 12:20ff; Gal 1:6-9,4:17ff; 1 Thes 1:3ff, 1:1820; 2 Thes 2:16ff)....
I answered a chief . . . who came to ask me why there are divisions in the Church, that they are one of the consequences of spirit of evil and sin that is in us, a result of man's pride.
Most Rev. Robert Sastre, Doc.
What the Spirit brings is very different, St. Paul said, adding verifiable list: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, truthfulness, gentleness and self-control (Gal 5:22). In this light, discernment can be described simply as the art of judging the roots the bases of the durability of the results.
More concretely, a series of questions can be suggested, which person should ask himself every time he finds he has to face to need to discern the spiritual way he is about to take. The general aim is to discover whether the orientation taken is in harmony with the values of Christ's Gospel. The positive answers to these questions indicate fidelity to Christian roots, while the negative o warn that there is deception and that what now appears good in short term, could bring harm in the end. Does all this lead to conmpassion, humility, generosity or to selfishness and even pride? It really is a crucial question. The stream of life is either directed one's neighbor, particularly to those who have been hurt by world, towards the lowliest or towards one's own self. Involvement in some of the new forms of spirituality seems suspect precisely on this point, because in reality, rather than learning love there is an underlying form of narcissism.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, Doc.
We note especially the following errors that we cannot admit:
1. We cannot admit that God's revelation can be found only the Bible. There was already revelation before any single line the Bible was written. In the case of the New Testament, one need only recall that its earliest book (I Thessalonians) was written about 20 years after Christ's death and resurrection. And yet the first Christians were not deprived of the Gospel of Christ....
2. We cannot admit that the Bible by itself is a sufficient guide to know God's truth.... We need an authoritative interpreter of word of God and that interpreter is the Church, which the Lord commissioned to teach and to which he promised the assistance the Holy Spirit (cf. Mt 28:19; Jn 14:26, 16:13). The truth is Bible is not only God's word but a book produced by God through the Church, and should never be separated from, and much less used against, the faith of the Church that gave it birth.
3. We cannot admit the minimizing of the role of the Church in salvation.... Only Christ saves, yes, but as Saul learned on his way to Damascus, Jesus identifies himself with the Church (cf Acts 9:45), which is his body (cf. I Cor 12:12; Eph 5:30).
Episcopal Conference of the Philippines, Doc. 49
The fundamentalist stance of literal interpretation of Scripture by each believer violates the history and tradition of Scripture. That is the danger. We also believe that fundamentalism constitutes a grave temptation . . . for it offers
a) An unreasonable certainty about the meaning of Scripture texts regardless of their context.
b) An overly simplistic certainty of salvation, achieved instantaneously upon acceptance of Christ as savior.
c) A deep sense of personal security, in often identifying the American way with God's call and will.
d) Intimacy with God in a relationship so personal that it effectively excludes others.
Bishops of Alabama and Mississippi (United States), Doc. 44
Fundamentalists, because of their literalist mindset, have often led others, by using brief Scripture quotations taken out of context, to world views and judgments very much opposed to our Catholic understanding. They set up an exaggerated contrast between the world (evil) and the kingdom (good). While it is true that Scripture talks about the antagonism between the world and the kingdom, it does not condemn our basic creation. The Bible teaches that we often take the good things God has created and misuse them. It is we who can be evil, not the universe. For Catholics, biblical teaching has always maintained that our world is good and has been entrusted to our care by God. We do not see it as something evil to escape; rather we embrace our world without embracing the sin within it.
Bishops of Alabama and Mississippi (United States), Doc. 44
The fundamentalist approach often leads one to an unbalanced spirituality. Holiness, in this view, comes from fleeing the world: perfect holiness will only be achieved when the world is destroyed.
This gives the lie to the incarnation. Christ Jesus entered the world and began the process of its conversion and transformation. What Adam undid through sin, Christ redoes, and more, through the grace of his redeeming death and resurrection.
Bishops of Alabama and Mississippi (United States), Doc. 44
As a community we have to understand that the Bible is not a mere answer book for every problem. It is rather the record of God's loving and saving presence among his people. It is his call to us to become a loving, saving presence to one another in the community that is the Church.
Bishops of Alabama and Mississippi (United States), Doc . 44
In 1993 the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued the statement The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, and although its horizon is broader than the question of the NRMs, some of its comments apply to various fundamentalist groups. It describes this tendency to reject all questioning and to insist on literal meanings as rooted in a rigid ideology that is not biblical. In particular it refuses to take into account the. historical character of biblical revelation and therefore historicizes material that from the start never claimed to be historical.
In its attachment to the principle Scripture alone, fundamentalism separates the interpretation of the Bible from the Tradition, which, guided by the Spirit, has authentically developed in union with Scripture in the heart of the community of faith. It fails to realize that the New Testament took form within the Christian Church and that it is the Holy Scripture of this Church, the existence of which preceded the composition of the texts. Because of this, fundamentalism is often anti-Church; it considers of little importance the creeds, the doctrines, and liturgical practices the have become part of Church tradition, as well as the teaching function of the Church itself. It presents itself as a form of private interpretation that does not acknowledge that the Church is founded o the Bible and draws its life and inspiration from Scripture.
The fundamentalist approach is dangerous, for it is attractive to people who look to the Bible for ready answers to the problems of life. It can deceive these people, offering them interpretations that are pious but illusory, instead of telling them that the Bible does not necessarily contain an immediate answer to each and every problem. Without saying as much in so many words, fundamentalism actually invites people to a kind of intellectual suicide. It injects into life a false certitude, for it unwittingly confuses the divine substance of the biblical message with what are in fact its human limitations.
Pontifical Biblical Commission, Doc. 22
Much has been written in various parts of the world about the New Age movement It is a product of the syncretist and relativist tendencies that are widespread in today s culture. Like some other NRMs, it diminishes the role of Jesus Christ to one of the many manifestations of the divine in religious history, and is similarly reductive of such central tenets of faith as salvation from sin, the Blessed Trinity, and the role of the Church and its sacraments.
For Christmas 1990 Cardinal Godfried Danneels issued a pastoral letter entitled Christ or Aquarius, in which he examined the New Age Movement. He described it, not as a religion, but as a mixture of science, oriental religiousness, psychology, and astrology with a special attraction for people in search of some self-fulfilling experience. Among its dangers he diagnosed a cult of the deep self that in fact denies the Christian notion of the person, of sin, and of prayer as encounter with God. But where New Age narrows faith into a way of self-experience, the Christian answer lies in the feast of Christmas with its concrete gift of the incarnation of the Son of God.
New Age is a tremendous challenge to Christianity not only because it is spreading so vigorously, but primarily because it attacks Christianity directly, while at the same time appropriating whole aspects of the Christian heritage, beginning with the Bible. Moreover, New Age claims to be a new religion, a planetary, universal religion that will take over from all previous religions and bring them all to perfection. New Age is very good at flattering our dreams.
Nevertheless, there are some good things about New Age. It stresses universal brotherhood, peace and harmony, greater awareness' involvement in making the world a better place, general mobilization for good, etc. Moreover, the techniques it promotes are not always bad: yoga and relaxation can have excellent effects.
There is an important distinction to be made: not all that makes us feel good is necessarily good for us, and not all that is pleasurable is necessarily true. This is where the problem lies, for Christians as well as for others.
Cardinal Godfried Danneels, Doc. 5
It needs to be acknowledged that there are positive features of the New Age movement. It does reflect a commitment to the sacred and spiritual, a rediscovery of the transcendent that is a reaction to the scientific rationalism and the secularism of our day. It seeks truth as the key to all mysteries. It does reflect the seeking in our time of a living, feeling experience of spirituality. It recognizes value in expressing spirituality through signs and symbols, as do the sacraments. It nourishes self-esteem as a necessary ingredient in the search of truth. It is committed to peace, human happiness, good will and benevolence....
Most Rev. Edward Anthony McCarthy, Doc. 46
There is a total omission of a personal God. There is a total omission of God's revelation through Jesus Christ, a total ignoring of the mystery of God's love, of the incarnation, God becoming man in Jesus Christ. There is a total neglect of the redemption through Jesus Christ, of the Holy Spirit, of the Church established by Jesus, of judgment after death, of heaven or hell.
Most Rev. Edward Anthony McCarthy, Doc.
The question of God: . . . God is not the supreme Lord of a pantheon related to him or deriving from him; he is not the (impersonal) Divine or a nameless transcendental order of all that exists. No, God manifests himself to men as the only God, the only Lord of world and history, in his immutable, personal individuality, as the eternal Other, as the Creator of world and man. But he revealed himself and made known his name, and through his name, he granted to man his saving nearness and presence.
The question of world and man: . . . There is an abyss between God and the world, between God and man: on the one side, there God, the Creator; on the other, the world and man, a creation. Though the world has come out of the hand of God, making thus visible something divine, this difference has to be taken into account. But precisely because the world is a creation and man a creature of God, it is neither his extension nor his puppet, but something apart and complete in itself.
The question of communication between God or the divine and man: Here we discover a decisive difference between Christian faith and New Age doctrine: for this last, the world is something divine, and its divine element determines its structure, its law and its evolution; only those who know these divine laws are able to know the heart of the world and to attain, by way of a process of consciousness that leads from ignorance to knowledge, a harmony with the world. The image of man presented by New Age is therefore the image of a man who tries to and even has to redeem himself. What is important is . . . his supposed capacity to redeem himself, to discover God in himself.... Jesus is just one of the masters of spirituality, one of the numerous prophets of the various religions: he is no longer ithe Lord.
Most Rev. Amedee Grab, Doc. 57
Reference to Christ remains very vague. He is supposed to be a new force, another energy that will one day return in a new form. In fact, for them, the age of Pisces is supposed to have been inaugurated with Christ's coming, that of Aquarius is meant to see the coming of the new Christ, superior to the former one. In the meantime, it would be necessary to wake up to the spiritual capacity that is in every individual. The concept of the New Age Christ is just this. There is nothing on the life of Jesus; no reference to his death and resurrection. No hint of the Gospel, revelation, the incarnation. According to some theologians, the Christ of the New Age is similar to the Antichrist. He is like Christ, he appears like Christ, but he is opposed to the essence of the Christian faith: Christ, Redeemer of man.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, Doc. 34
Reductions that the New Age has brought to the great concepts of Christianity . . . I summarize in seven points: inner enlightenment replaces the faith that is the obedience of all our being to God; the liberation of one's own creative potential replaces salvation; prayer is transformed into a journey into the depths of the self; a vague harmony,' with the universe substitutes the concrete call to social commitment; theology is overthrown by psychology or theosophy; revelation is found more in the person's heart than in history and finally, all these reductions-substitutions flow into a vague and ingenuous optimism. This might serve, as they say, to make one feel better for a while, but certainly not to give valid responses to tragic problems such as suffering, death, nor even lea to love, true joy, and profound peace.
For us Christians, salvation is liberation from the sin that is in man. Christ alone is the liberator, he who works redemption....
In the New Age there is no need of the Redeemer nor of the cross and resurrection of Christ. Everything is branded with sweetness and sentimentalism, harmony, calm, peace with oneself. Now, we are saved when we are at peace with God, not with ourselves, or rather, each of us will find peace with himself only when he has is with God. If salvation is not understood in this way, we shall end b falling into a sort of selfish well-being, the fruit of an ingenuous optimism.
Cardinal Paul Poupard, Doc. 34
In 1989 the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith issued a letter on Some Aspects of Christian Meditation and warned especially again various dangers involved in attempts to harmonize Christian and oriental techniques of prayer: falling into syncretism, remaining within on self and not realizing the relationship of creature with Creator, or imagining a dissolving of the personal self into the Absolute.
With the present diffusion of Eastern methods of meditation in Christian world and in ecclesial communities, we find ourselves faced with a pointed renewal of an attempt, which is not free from dangers and errors, to fuse Christian meditation with that which non-Christian. Proposals in this direction are numerous and radical to a greater or lesser extent. Some use Eastern methods solely as psychophysical preparation for a truly Christian contemplation others go further and, using different techniques, try to general spiritual experiences similar to those described in the writings certain Catholic mystics. Still others do not hesitate to place t absolute without image or concepts, which is proper to Buddhi theory, on the same level as the majesty of God revealed in Chri which towers above finite reality. To this end, they make use of negative theology that transcends every affirmation seeking express what God is and denies that the things of this world can offer traces of the infinity of God. Thus they propose abandoning not only meditation on the salvific works accomplished in history by the God of the old and new covenant, but also the very idea of the one and triune God, who is love, in favor of an immersion in the indeterminate abyss of the divinity.
Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Doc. 19
Christian prayer is always determined by the structure of the Christian faith, in which the very truth of God and creature shines forth. For this reason, it is defined, properly speaking, as a personal, intimate and profound dialogue between man and God. It expresses therefore the communion of redeemed creatures with the intimate life of the Persons of the Trinity. This communion, based on baptism and the Eucharist, source and summit of the life of the Church, implies an attitude of conversion, a flight from self to the You of God. Thus Christian prayer is at the same time always authentically personal and communitarian. It flees from impersonal techniques or from concentrating on oneself, which can create a kind of rut, imprisoning the person praying in a spiritual privatism that is incapable of a free openness to the transcendental God. Within the Church, in the legitimate search for new methods of meditation it must always be born in mind that the essential element of authentic Christian prayer is the meeting of two freedoms, the infinite freedom of God with the finite freedom of man.
Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Doc. 19
In order to draw near to that mystery of union with God, which the Greek fathers called the divinization of man, and to grasp accurately the manner in which this is realized, it is necessary in the first place to bear in mind that man is essentially a creature, and remains such for eternity, so that an absorbing of the human self into the divine self is never possible, not even in the highest states of grace....God is love (Jn 4:~). This profoundly Christian affirmation can reconcile perfect union with the otherness existing between lover and loved, with eternal exchange and eternal dialogue. God is himself this eternal exchange, and we can truly become sharers of Christ, as adoptive sons who cry out with the Son in the Holy Spirit, Abba, Father. In this sense, the Fathers are perfectly correct m speaking of the divinization of man, who having been incorporated into Christ, the Son of God by nature, may by his grace share in the divine nature and become a son in the Son. Receiving the Holy Spirit, the Christian glorifies the Father and really shares in the Trinitarian life of God.
Congregation for the Doctrine of Faith, Doc. 19.
The word reincarnation . . . describes a doctrine that holds that the human soul assumes another body after death. It has, that is, a new incarnation or enfleshment. This is a child of paganism in direct opposition to Scripture and Church tradition, and has been always rejected by Christian faith and theology.
In our time, reincarnation has a substantial vogue even m the West, and among many who define themselves as Christians.... The reason for its acceptance by many people is possibly due to an instinctive and spontaneous reaction to the rampant materialism of the present day...
[About anthropology:] Christianity defends duality, reincarnation defends a dualism in which the body is simply an instrument of the soul and is laid aside, existence by successive existence, as an altogether different body is assumed each time. As far as eschatology is concerned, the doctrine of reincarnation denies both the possibility of eternal damnation and the idea of the resurrection of the body. But the fundamental error is in the rejection of the Christian doctrine of salvation. For the reincarnationist the soul is its own savior by its own efforts. Its soteriology is one of auto-redemption, which is diametrically opposed to the hetero-redcmption of Christian soteriology. In fact, if such a heteroredemption is suppressed, any talk of Christ the Redeemer is null and void.... The whole doctrine concerning Church, sacraments and grace stands or falls on this central point.
International Theological Commission, Doc. 18
The response to the doctrine of reincarnation does not consist in condemning other people because of their opinions. But it consists in rediscovering Christian values. The positive truths of Christianity, which offer ithe Christian alternative /ito the new religiosity's idea of reincarnation are, amongst others, faith in the resurrection of the flesh, of precisely that flesh that we received once and for ever; the Christian understanding of the human body; vigilance as a quality Jesus demanded nourished by the awareness that every moment is irrevocable; the forgiveness of sins, which is immediate and total, even before man has earned it through reconciliation; the dignity of the individual as an image of God, and the absolute rights of the conscience.
Most Rev. Hans Ludvig Martensen, Doc. 58
The phenomenon of the new religiosity can present specific characteristics by virtue of its structure to the extent and in the measure that it responds to a misleading religious attitude, in which the spirit of the ihomo faber /iprevails over the spirit of the homo religiosus. The authentic religious experience is based on the essence of man as a creature, on the link (religio) that man has with a reality that transcends him and in which he is rooted, before which it is necessary first of all to have an attitude of acceptance and gratitude. There is nothing that more deeply contradicts it than the claim to dominate this link, to invent it or to dissolve it. We have seen that some have been able to speak with regard to the new religious movements, of auto-religion, or to evoke the slightly desecrating but vivid image of the supermarket, the religious version of do-it-yourself. But a self-religion becomes, by its very nature and despite appearances, a non-religion.
Most Rev. Giuseppe Casale, Doc. 55
The pluralistic nature of society, which seems to be growing everywhere, is a challenge to the Church, perhaps even a factor of renewal. Yet the Church also challenges the new religious movements, offering criteria of discernment between false and true promises. As elements for this discernment the following could be proposed:
Most Rev. Michael L. Fitzgerald, Doc. 32
Under the oppression of totalitarianism the only people who were able to stay free in heart and belief were those who bound themselves more intensely to God. Faith, adoration and love have a profound relationship with human freedom. Even in free societies there are some subtle influences that, like secret seducers, captivate our minds, distort our sensibilities and seek to direct our ways of acting. The person who, in a spirit of adoration of the one true God, bends his knees only to this Lord, is able more easily to reject the multitude of attractive idols.
In fact, the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ reveal and, through the grace of the Holy Spirit, give that freedom which is worthy of the name. In the history of the life and death of the Lord, it is made clear that the summit of freedom consists in totally free self-giving to the will of the Father for the life of the world. Compared to the full measure of this self-giving, it becomes clear just how much a person can become the servant of self and surrender to powers that enslave him or her.
Synod of Bishops: Special Assembly for Europe, Doc. 50
In the chapter of the Catechism of the Catholic Church on the first commandment, one finds timely clarifications that help to discern the authentic religious spirit from its counterfeits, such as superstition, idolatry, divination, magic and witchcraft, and spiritism (nos. 2110-2117, Doc. 17). An accurate distinction between religion and magic is made also in the pastoral letter of the bishops of Tuscany entitled With Regard to Magic and Demonology.
An objective distinction between religion and magic: . . . the distinction derives from the different way with which the two experiences are linked to the transcendent:
Magic, in whatever form it is expressed, represents a phenomenon that has nothing to do on the objective level with the genuine sense of religion or the cult of God; on the contrary, it is his enemy and antagonist....
Some people . . . have found in magic the expression of a will for power in man, directed to implementing his archetypal dream: to be God. In fact, whatever may be the explanation of motivation, with belief in magic a sort of imitation of that temptation of the ancients is reproduced which was at the root of original sin, present in the heart of man as a tendency, a sly suggestion of the tempter.
Regional Conference of the Bishops of Tuscany (Italy), Doc. 54
From Sects and New Religious Movements
An Anthology of Texts from the Catholic Church 1986-1994
edited by The Working Group on New Religious Movements in the VATICAN.
Last updated August 19, 2000 23:58