Quote of catholic evangelist involved in healing/ deliverance ministry:
I don’t have any personal knowledge of these therapies only that I know they are not of God’s Spirit.
For those of you who want to do more research, the Vatican Website and other church files state that the following practices and organisations are New Age/Occult practices and are therefore banned by the Catholic Church.
Enneagram, Reiki, Yoga, Rebirth, Biofeedback, Sensory Isolation, Holotropic breathing, hypnosis, mantras, fasting, sleep deprivation and transcendental meditation, Reincarnation, Channelling, Psychics, Mediums, Ascended Masters, Nature Spirits, Higher Self, Crystals, Feng-shui, Geomancy, Gaia, Human Potential Movement, Shamanism, Paganism, Druid, Wicca, Freemasonry, Neopaganism, Spiritualism, witchcraft.
There are many who will say that the Catholic Church is ‘not with the times’ and need to be open to these practices. The reason these practices are banned, is because the Catholic Church understands the hidden dangers behind these practices.
A priest who specializes in deliverance and healing the family tree argues otherwise.
Family Tree Priest quotes:
This is Father Yozefu-B. Ssemakula of Uganda (and now the Washington, D.C. area), who points out that while many are now using yoga as an exercise like aerobics or a means to relieve tension, it has deep spiritual undertones that cannot be avoided by those who believe they have taken the physical aspect of it — the discipline, the twisting, the relaxation techniques and even trance-like state — away from the mystical ones.
“Yoga is one whole thing, it’s one ‘package,’ just like I am one package,” argues the priest. “The split of exercises from their spiritual load is a good analysis in the mind, but it’s not a concrete reality out there. You did not invent yoga, so you can’t split it or put it together as you like. You cannot separate the rituals of Santeria from what they mean and say. For example, have you ever thought of that — doing the rituals of Santeria without its spiritual components? If you can’t do it with Santeria, how should you do it with Yoga?” [Terribly, 2012 Triple Crown winner in baseball Miguel Cabrera is a, ahem, Catholic, who also practices santeria, which is a form of demon worship, just like the death cult “santa muerte” that is becoming so popular in Mexico and with Hispanics in the US]
Yoga, like all forms of “new age,” is a very dangerous practice, spiritually. Even the various body positions assumed in yoga are a form of prayer – like a Catholic genuflecting before the Blessed Sacrament. All new age practices are extremely dangerous and should be totally avoided by all Catholics.
But back to yoga (for our discernment). Adds this priest (in The Healing of Families): “ Can you imagine the children of Israel telling God, ‘No, God, we are only bowing and prostrating ourselves before these statues of Baal just for the stretches it does to our backs and biceps and leg muscles. We don’t really care about about those statues in front of them, it’s not for them!‘
“Do you think God would buy that?” Father Yozefu asks.
It is a physical workout enjoyed by millions and its devotees include Madonna, Gwyneth Paltrow and Sting.
But yoga enthusiasts have been warned by a leading Roman Catholic clergyman that they are in danger of being possessed by the Devil.
Father Jeremy Davies, exorcist for Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor, the leader of Catholics in England and Wales, says that activities such as yoga, massage therapy, reiki or even reading horoscopes could put people at risk from evil spirits.
In a new book, he also argues that people with promiscuous lifestyles could find themselves afflicted by demons.
And he says that the occult is closely linked to the scourges of ‘drugs, demonic music and pornography’ which are ‘destroying millions of young people in our time’.
The 73-year-old Catholic priest, who was appointed exorcist of the Archdiocese of Westminster in 1986, was a medical doctor before being ordained in 1974.
He has carried out thousands of exorcisms in London and in 1993 he set up the International Association of Exorcists with Fr Gabriel Amorth, the Pope’s top exorcist.
An exorcist must be a catholic priest appointed by their bishop and trained in Rome in that ministry, they cannot exorcise anyone without express permission from their bishop for each individual case, and not until a psychological report has proved that the problem is not psychological in origin but demonic
I’m not arguing against exercise, oh man-on-skies, I am simply attempting to put things in perspective because deceptively tame things can so easily snowball into something bad and yoga is one of those dangers, except more so, because the spiritual aspect is demonically centred. St. JPII would not, I think, have ever advocated yoga. It would be like saying: “let’s do black magic but don’t worry about the consequences because you are not wishing to worship Satan!”.
