The priest here says there is nothing wrong with feng shui as long as it is not cultic?
My goodness! Feng shui IS cultic! Look at how the people interviewed attribute the charms as the source of their luck!
WHAT THE?!?!
A Catholic priest does not know what the Catechism teaches?!?!
The Catechism of the Catholic Church states, "All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to ‘unveil’ the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone" (CCC 2116).
Feng shui is a form of geomancy, an occult Chinese method of deciphering the hidden presence of positive and negative energies in the universe that flows through buildings and other places, on the basis of a knowledge of earthly and atmospheric forces. Feng shui practitioners attribute the "luck" a person gets from the harmonizing of these energies, through the positioning of buildings, furnitures, and wearing of crystals and amulets.
This is clearly a violation of the Commandment of worshiping false gods, attributing the graces received as luck, rather than grace freely given by God, who is the ONLY source of grace, not luck, but grace. The Catechism explains it further.
2110 The first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion; irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion.
2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.
And people think that by wearing these amulets, they invite luck not knowing that there are several people who were demonically possessed, as shared by exorcists, for practicing feng shui.
The CCC is also specific in its warning:
2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity.So my advise?
Read the Catechism. Consult exorcists and even knowledgeable Catholics (catechists) about the subject matter of the New Age. A Jesuit, believe it or not, even spoke against feng shui. You can even read the latest Vatican statement against feng shui and other New Age practices here.
is yoga prohibited as well?
ReplyDeleteThe reason for the rampant superstition and secularization is precisely because priests never talk against or about it. Absence of effective catechism and banal liturgies have contribured greatly to the erosion of our catholic culture.
ReplyDeleteThank you for writing this article. Many Catholics (and, as you now pointed out, Catholic PRIESTS) are not aware of the teachings of the Church. Shame. The Church's teaching, or more precisely, the teaching of God, as entrusted to the Church, is full of grace and is LIBERATING.
ReplyDeleteAwesome post :) I've cited this at the bottom of my blog post about the same topic, which I published on the same day you've published this. You can find it here - http://www.coolcatholics.org/2014/12/what-ordinary-catholics-should-know.html
ReplyDeleteHAPPY NEW YEAR! May God bring you more joy and prosperity this coming year.