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CONFUSION REMAINS OVER VATICAN STUDY THAT LISTED HOMEOPATHY, CHIROPRACTIC AS NEW AGE

Back some years ago the Vatican's Pontifical Council for Culture and Interreligious Dialogue came out with a document about the New Age.

It was called "Jesus Christ, the Bearers of the Water of Life: a Christian reflection on the 'New Age," and in it was a passage saying that "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, etcetera), meditation and visualization, nutritional therapies, psychic healing, various kinds of herbal medicine, healing by crystals, metals, music, or colors, reincarnation therapies, and, finally, twelve-step programs and self-help groups."

It was, to say the least, eye-opening; to many, it was also perplexing: no further rationale or explanations were given for listing most of the practices. Particularly surprising was the mention of acupuncture, homeopathy, nutritional therapies, and twelve-step programs (for example, Alcoholics Anonymous -- which often holds meetings in Christian, including Catholic, churches). Had the council simply decided not to delve into depth on each subject, or were the members simply unfamiliar with the details such practices (and thus not prone to expand upon each)? Was the council referring only to some in the above fields who stray (as seen in advertisements)?

We have had previous articles on the acupuncture debate. Most recently, viewers have questioned the citing of homeopathy -- whereby a small amount of a substance that causes symptoms of a disease is given to someone based on the belief that a substance that in large doses will produce symptoms of a specific disease will, in extremely small doses, cure it. (For example, if the symptoms of your cold are similar to poisoning by mercury, then mercury would be your homeopathic remedy, says a website devoted to it.) The remedy is taken in an extremely dilute form; normally one part of the remedy to around 1,000,000,000,000 parts of water.

Is this -- is homeopathy -- truly occult? Or just alternative medicine? Doesn't the Bible mention herbs?

What perhaps caught the Vatican's attention is the fact that, according to Wikipedia: "Homeopathy is a vitalist philosophy that interprets diseases and sickness as caused by disturbances in a hypothetical vital force or life force. It sees these disturbances as manifesting themselves as unique symptoms. Homeopathy maintains that the vital force has the ability to react and adapt to internal and external causes, which homeopaths refer to as the law of susceptibility. The law of susceptibility implies that a negative state of mind can attract hypothetical disease entities called miasms to invade the body and produce symptoms of diseases."

"Life" or "vital" force often brings to mind Eastern concepts of c'hi (or ki) -- a supposed energy or aura around people -- and this indeed meanders, in the view of many, into psychic phenomena. One expert, Erika Gibello, who, "as a pharmacist and Catholic retreat preacher, secretary to the International Associations of Deliverance and Exorcism in Rome," has thus described homeopathy as "soft occult."

We don't pretend to know the mechanics of life. On the "other side" of the veil, when we die, we may all be profoundly surprised at many things. There are certainly spiritual aspects to disease (otherwise, Christ would not have healed by casting dark spirits out). Others have written to us describing beneficial effects -- as we also have heard from those who say they were helped by acupuncture or chiropractors. Indeed: there are good Catholics (even prominent ones) who are chiropractors. Here we also get into magnetic therapy.

But we must be very cautious with the esoteric.

While many chiropractors stick with what seems similar to sports medicine (manual physical therapy), others stray into realm of the metaphysical and many chiropractors adhere to the philosophical principles that retain vitalistic qualities. "Early chiropractors believed that all disease was caused by interruptions in the flow of innate intelligence, a vital nervous energy or life force that represented God's presence in man; chiropractic leaders often invoked religious imagery and moral traditions," says the encyclopedia.

There is another question:

If it is bad, what about such practices and their wide use in convents and retreat centers run by nuns?

There, as we have reported before, it is rampant.