Keep in mind that the Jesuits are called to thoroughly embrace and study other faiths.
The Jesuists are not called to 'thoroughly embrace…other faiths".
Fr. Kennedy, so far as I understand him, is not watering down the Catholic faith, merely employing Zen as a complementary tradition. Zen Buddhism is not really a religion but a nondogmatic philosophy, different from other Buddhist schools in this way, and as such it is fully compatible with the Catholic Church.
Even if Zen was a ‘nondogmatic philosophy’ , just because it may be a ‘nondogmatic philosophy’ that looks good does not make it compatible with the Catholic Church -which is exactly the point I have been trying to make in this thread. Zen Buddhism is a kind of mysticism and it is incompatible with the Catholic faith.
JESUS CHRIST
THE BEARER OF THE WATER OF LIFE
A Christian reflection
on the “New Age”
Again, this is evidence of a deep desire for a fulfilling and healthy existence for the human race and for the planet. Some of the traditions which flow into New Age are: ancient Egyptian occult practices, Cabbalism, early Christian gnosticism, Sufism, the lore of the Druids, Celtic Christianity, mediaeval alchemy, Renaissance hermeticism, Zen Buddhism, Yoga and so on.(15)
Here is what is “new” about New Age. It is a “syncretism of esoteric and secular elements”.(16) They link into a widely-held perception that the time is ripe for a fundamental change in individuals, in society and in the world. There are various expressions of the need for a shift:
– from Newtonian mechanistic physics to quantum physics;
– from modernity’s exaltation of reason to an appreciation of feeling, emotion and experience (often described as a switch from ‘left brain’ rational thinking to ‘right brain’ intuitive thinking);
– from a dominance of masculinity and patriarchy to a celebration of femininity, in individuals and in society.
In these contexts the term “paradigm shift” is often used. In some cases it is clearly supposed that this shift is not simply desirable, but inevitable. The rejection of modernity underlying this desire for change is not new, but can be described as “a modern revival of pagan religions with a mixture of influences from both eastern religions and also from modern psychology, philosophy, science, and the counterculture that developed in the 1950s and 1960s”.(17) New Age is a witness to nothing less than a cultural revolution, a complex reaction to the dominant ideas and values in western culture, and yet its idealistic criticism is itself ironically typical of the culture it criticizes.
A word needs to be said on the notion of paradigm shift. It was made popular by Thomas Kuhn, an American historian of science, who saw a paradigm as “the entire constellation of beliefs, values, techniques and so on shared by the members of a given community”.(18) When there is a shift from one paradigm to another, it is a question of wholesale transformation of perspective rather than one of gradual development. It really is a revolution, and Kuhn emphasised that competing paradigms are incommensurable and cannot co-exist. So the idea that a paradigm shift in the area of religion and spirituality is simply a new way of stating traditional beliefs misses the point. What is actually going on is a radical change in world- view, which puts into question not only the content but also the fundamental interpretation of the former vision.** Perhaps the clearest example of this, in terms of the relationship between New Age and Christianity, is the total recasting of the life and significance of Jesus Christ. It is impossible to reconcile these two visions. **(19)
vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html
