stanley123:
See:
catholicconcerns.com/New-Age.html
unmaskingcatholicism.com/Chapter-13.shtml
Its an antiCatholic site, but there is reference and some info on the (Catholic?) New Age movement from some Catholic sources.
Let me help with the apparent ambiguity expressed by the phrase, “the (Catholic?) New Age movement.” Just as “Catholics For a Free Choice” aren’t Catholic, so too New Age movements are not Catholic, even if some Catholics blunder into them. When they do so, they step away from full communion with the Church, no matter who they are.
As a general, but highly applicable rule, “New Age” = monist pantheism, which is (as I noted elsewhere) intrinsically incompatible with theism, let alone Christianity.
Take meditation, for example. For centuries before Christ, God’s people have meditated. But not the way “Eastern” religions meditate. There is no effort to empty one’s self, to commune with a wholeness, or oneness, or whatever among God’s people. Hebrew and Christian meditation has always had a focus, on God, his law, his Son, and other such things. For example, in Psalm 1, we read:
[1] Blessed is the man who walks not in the counsel of the wicked, nor stands in the way of sinners, nor sits in the seat of scoffers;
[2] but his delight is in the law of the LORD,
and on his law he meditates day and night. (emphasis added).
Superficial similarities do not make pagan acts Christian acts, and the fact that pagans and Christians both meditate points to neither similarities in the faiths, or appropriateness of the techniques of the pagan for the Christian.
And when it comes to women priests, considerations from pop psychology, and ceremonies on boats conducted by people who are wearing costumes similar to those of Bishops of the Church, do not make the women anything like priests, or the rites anything like the Sacrament of Holy Orders, any more than sticking the label “Catholic” on New Age paganism makes it any less pagan, or anything close to Catholic.
Blerssings,
Gerry