Saturday, October 28, 2017
Youcat commented through CCC – Question n. 356 – Part I.
(Youcat
answer) No. esotericism ignores the reality of God. God is a personal Being; he
is love and the origin of life, not some cold cosmic energy. Man was willed and
created by God, but man himself is not divine; rather, he is a creature that is
wounded by sin, threatened by death, and in need of redemption. Whereas most
proponents of esotericism assume that man can redeem himself, Christians
believe that only Jesus Christ and God’s grace redeem them. Nor are nature and the cosmos God (pantheism).
Rather, the Creator, even though he loves us immensely, is infinitely greater
and unlike anything he has created.
A deepening through CCC
(CCC 2118)
God's first commandment condemns the main sins of irreligion: tempting God, in
words or deeds, sacrilege, and simony. (CCC 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.
Reflecting and meditating
(Youcat comment) Many people today practice yoga for health
reasons, enroll in a meditation course so as to become more calm and collected,
or attend dance workshops so as to experience their bodies in a new way. These
techniques are not always harmless. Often they are vehicles for doctrines that
are foreign to Christianity. No reasonable person should hold an irrational
world view, in which people can tap magical powers or harness mysterious
spirits and the “initiated” have a secret knowledge that is withheld from the
“ignorant”. In ancient Israel, the surrounding peoples’ beliefs in gods and
spirits were exposed as false. God alone is Lord; there is no god besides him.
Nor is there any (magical) technique by which one can capture or charm “the
divine”, force one’s wishes on the universe, or redeem oneself. Much about
these esoteric beliefs and practices is superstition or occultism.
(CCC Comment)
(CCC 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 (Cf. Mt 23:16-22).
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