Errors of the New Age Movement

The good folks at Ascension Press recently posted an essay I wrote regarding the errors of the New Age movement, and how its erroneous thinking has crept into many sectors of life in our culture. I include links to various statements of the Church in this overview. Click the link here to read the full story. A preview is below.

The flowery words of many New Age authors sound appealing, uplifting and inspiring, but when we get down to basics we see that such ideas as “being one with the universe” lead to a rejection of God. By turning inwards, people who become enamored with this philosophy attempt to experience various states of “consciousness” where they come to fuse with “the Whole” where “one is all and all is one”. 

This is in stark contrast to what we as Christians believe will happen to us once we enter eternal beatitude with God. We don’t become but a drop of water that coalesces into a giant pool, but instead we retain our identity as we become perfected sons and daughters of God himself in heaven. In reality, such attempts to become one with “the universe” is nothing more than a revisiting of Gnosticism, condemned by the Church very early on.

Triumph of Christ the King

What Is Theosis?

When I was writing a previous article for Ascension Press, I was thinking about how to counter the narrative that we see running through many "New Age-y" (yes, I added a "y" there) circles. That is, one is all and all is one. We are, and everything around us, in some way, is God. It's basically pantheism in a modern veneer. Well, as always, the Catholic Church and 2,000+ years of tradition has a better answer for us on how the universe works. I recently had the opportunity to write a little bit about what that tradition entails in my latest essay over on Ascension's blog.

Below, you'll find a snippet of the article. I was able to feature quite a few selections from the Catechism as well... that is, the Catechism of the Ukrainian-Greek Catholic Church. The Byzantine tradition of the Church has a lot of insight on what "theosis" or "divinization" is all about, and it's definitely not about what our New Age friends would have us believe:

The early Christians had a specific name for this process of becoming more like God. It was (and still is) called “theosis”. We sometimes see this rendered as “divinization” or “deification” in Western Christianity, but the three terms all describe the same thing. St. Athanasius puts it very succinctly: “God became man so that man might become God.” The Early Church Fathers found the roots of this concept of theosis in Sacred Scripture: 

“His divine power has granted to us all things that pertain to life and godliness, through the knowledge of him who called us to his own glory and excellence, by which he has granted to us his precious and very great promises, so that through them you may escape from the corruption that is in the world because of passion, and become partakers of the divine nature.” (2 Peter 1:3-4)

Follow the link to read the article in its entirety.

The Harrowing of Hell

An Open Letter to a Catholic University Chaplain

It's no secret that many of North America's (and Europe's) Catholic colleges and university have had a streak of unorthodox practices and dissent for several decades. A great example of a college that once upheld Catholic teachings, and now possesses a most questionable attitude to the doctrines of Christ's Holy Church, would be the University of Notre Dame. Many other places of higher education could be named, but we don't need to go down that rabbit hole. We'll instead go down another, where I noticed a certain Catholic university had been displaying images near the school's chapel that were dangerous to the faith of those not well grounded in their faith, and were crafted by a man who had clear intentions to subvert the Truth revealed to the Catholic Church. Below is the letter I made up for the chaplain of this university:

North Quad at Notre Dame

What Came First? The Egg or Moral Relativism?

I came across an interesting meme the other day. It wasn't one of your typical memes with a little bit of text emblazoned on a funny picture. The picture can be found below, with a long (for a meme) essay attached to it, seen here. The meme is titled "You were on your way home but you died". It involves a man who dies in a car accident, meets a being who purports to be God, with the God character telling the man he will be reincarnated, and will keep being reincarnated until he has lived the life of every living thing on Earth, because then he will be sufficiently mature.

The conclusion is that the universe is simply an egg for this person to mature in. However this person is simultaneously Hitler and Abraham Lincoln. Therefore, our actions do not have any real consequences. In addition, the God character comments that "All religions are right in their own way." Not to mention, the typical nonsense of God being a woman comes into play again, because it's everyone's favorite thing to disregard the fact that God has revealed Himself to humanity as "Father". But anyways, read the whole thing at the link above. We'll be focusing on one main error here: the moral relativism that the author's notion of "all religions being right in their own way" leads us to.

To Humiliate Ourselves and Proclaim Our Unworthiness Before God is (Apparently) a Bad Thing

As I was perusing random news headlines (again), one ridiculous title caught my eye. Yes, the clickbait worked and I felt less intelligent for even doing so. I need to stop doing this to myself. In any event, the ridiculous headline read as such: Dear Pope Francis, End the Religious Ritual That Devalues Human Life. The sound of the collective rolling of eyes is deafening, no? You can read the whole article at the link above, but the most egregious part of this woman's article is as follows:

"Every single day before communion, millions of Christians verbally declare one of the most destructive phrases in human history... In the Bible, a Centurion soldier relates, 'Lord, I am not worthy to have you enter under my roof…' (Matthew 8:8)

"Dialogue and constructs that perpetuate 'I am not worthy' are the root of all evil behavior. It is divisiveness personified. By believing we are not worthy, we open the door for the mistreatment of ourselves and the mistreatment of others as we seek to assuage the psychological pain the false belief imparts. The guilt of unworthiness calls for us to judge ourselves and to judge others just as harshly."

The author, Chrisitne Horner is also a self-described "healed ex-Catholic, [and] her religion is love." She is basically a new age pantheist, as seen through her various writings. There are several reasons why this misguided person is absolutely wrong.

Christ and the Centurion- Adam Camerarius