Vatican document probes New Age movement

The Vatican said the book was the product of requests by bishops for guidance on determining whether practices embraced by New Agers, including yoga, channelling and healing by crystals, were compatible with Christianity.

The booklet doesn’t give a definitive answer. Rather, in setting out a study of the movement – its terminology, history and cultural context – the book stresses that the question comes down to one of individually discerning compatibility.

Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald, president of the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue, said many aspects of the New Age movement were viewed positively by the Church, such as environmental preservation.

“But if one is brought to this by ascribing ’divineness’ to the land, that’s another thing,” he said. “Music that relaxes you is good. But if this music empties prayer and prayer turns into just listening to music and falling asleep, it’s no longer prayer.”

The booklet said the popularity of the New Age movement, particularly in the Western world, was due to a “spiritual hunger of contemporary men and women” unsatisfied with existing religion, political institutions or science.

“If the Church is not to be accused of being deaf to people’s longings, her members need to do two things: to root themselves ever more firmly in the fundamentals of their faith, and to understand the often silent cry in people’s hearts, which leads them elsewhere if they are not satisfied by the Church,” the document said.

The booklet, Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the New Age, was prepared by Fitzgerald’s council and the Pontifical Council for Culture, with help from the Vatican’s orthodoxy watchdog, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

It is not considered to be the Vatican’s final word on the New Age issue. A definitive document will be issued once the Vatican receives feedback from diocese, papal spokesman Joaquin Navarro-Valls said.