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Someone suggested that we have a photo caption. We haven't had one in a while, so . . . here goes . . .
STARTING CAPTIONS:
* "Why, yes, H. G. Wells did write a book about me."
* Pencil-Necked Geeks Go on Charm Offensive
* "My philosophy is that you can never be too rich or too thin."
The PZ Myers Must Be Fired post now has over 1,000 comments, and I've noticed that a lot of people who don't normally hang out on the blog have been commenting, including people who don't normally hang out on Catholic blogs from what I can tell.
I know some other Catholic blogs have linked the post (thanks, guys!), but I couldn't help wondering if the post was showing up in some search results.
So I Googled "pz myers"--that's it, nothing else, nothing about firing--and this is what turned up:
Coming up next . . . something (anything!) that has nothing to do with PZ Myers!
I am not going to provide an extensive response to P. Z. Myers' recent desecration of the Eucharist, along with pages from the Qur'an.
I will simply say that he must be fired.
Although he carried out his action. in his words, to support the idea that "Nothing must be held sacred" (also trashing a few pages of The God Delusion, a book with which he is in sympathy), he did not merely tell people that nothing must be held sacred. Nor did he argue for it. Claiming that nothing must be held sacred or proposing arguments for this proposition are a subject that can be discussed in a civil, respectful manner.
Instead, P. Z. Myers surreptitiously obtained and then desecrated something that is held most sacred by numerous individuals. He went out of his way to offend, to provoke the most deeply held sentiments of others, and he did so in full knowledge of what he was doing, as witnessed by the fact that he complains repeatedly on his blog about all of the outraged complaints he has been receiving from Catholics via e-mail.
In desecrating what Catholics hold most sacred--and what Muslims hold sacred as well--P. Z. Myers has fundamentally compromised himself as an educator.
He has made himself unsuitable for employment as an educator.
In particular, he has made himself unsuitable for employment as an educator at a state-run school, such as the University of Minnesota Morris.
It would be one thing if an employee of a private school--say, Bob Jones University--had desecrated the Eucharist. But state schools have a special responsibility to the citizens of the state to employ educators who will be respectful in their conduct towards the students, parents, alumni, and citizens of the state--including the Catholic and Muslim ones.
P. Z. Myers has demonstrated that he will go out of his way to offend the sensibilities of anybody who holds anything sacred, to treat whatever they hold sacred with public contempt. The problem thus is not limited to Catholics and Muslims. Since, in Myers own words, "Nothing must be held sacred," and since he is willing to desecrate anything that others do hold sacred, the university must conclude that Myers is willing not only to outrage Catholic and Muslim students, parents, alumni, and citizens but members of any other group as well.
Myers is thus incapable of effectively carrying out his mission as an educator and his position must be terminated.
He also is in violation of the University of Minnesota Code of Conduct, which holds that faculty members "must be committed to the highest ethical standards of conduct" (II:2) and that "Ethical conduct is a fundamental expectation for every community member. In practicing and modeling ethical conduct, community members are expected to: act according to the highest ethical and professional standards of conduct [and] be personally accountable for individual actions" (III:1).
It also stresses that faculty members must "Be Fair and Respectful to Others. The University is committed to tolerance, diversity, and respect for differences. When dealing with others, community members are expected to: be respectful, fair, and civil . . . avoid all forms of harassment . . . [and] threats . . . [and] promote conflict resolution."
P. Z. Myers has done none of these things. He is in fundamental breach of the University of Minnesota's Code of Conduct and must be discharged.
To voice your opinion on this subject, contact the offices of the president and the chancellor:
President Robert H. Bruininks
202 Morrill Hall
100 Church Street S.E.
University of Minnesota
Minneapolis, MN 55455Via phone: 612-626-1616
Via fax: 612-625-3875
Via e-mail: upres@umn.eduChancellor Jacqueline Johnson
309 Behmler Hall
600 East 4th Street
Morris, MN 56267320-589-6020
E-mail: grussing@morris.umn.edu
I'll have more to say about this tomorrow, after he reveals the details of what happened.
I can't respond to everything that the reader writes (for space reasons; the post would get way too long for its own good), but a reader in the combox down yonder writes:
Since I would probably be the only one to speak in the man's [PZ Myer's] defense, I feel I must do so. I would like to inquire if when a blog post critical of another individual is made, if that individual is first or opportunely informed so that he is able to defend himself if he so chooses or to write the blogger with a defense.
After putting up the post I considered e-mailing PZ Myers, but decided to wait an think about whether it would be the most constructive thing. I'm also open to taking down the post if that's the most constructive thing. I'm just trying to figure out what the best thing to do is, which isn't always easy with the limited intellectual resources we mortals have.
In any event, PZ Myers is welcome to defend himself, either on his own blog or here. Like anybody else, he's certainly free to post in the combox (as long as he obeys DA RULZ). I'd also be happy to post e-mail (without headers) that he might send and then respond in a follow-up post (I'm not sure if he'd want to do that since he has his own blog, but the offer is there)
I do not deny that Myers is not perfect in charity, but neither is anyone here. I don't think it can be said that his charity seems lesser than the charity of those who have written him hatefully.
This may be true, but it does not excuse Myers' conduct. Just because Myers has encountered Catholics gravely lacking in charity does not excuse Myers from acting with a gravely lack of charity.
I do not see any evidence that would reliably indicate that Myers purpose is to offend. It seems rather by his statements his purpose is to make an artistic demonstration of the powerlessness of the consecrated bread. He is hoping, it would seem, that this would spur Catholics to realize its powerlessness and in turn to question their belief in transubstantiation.
I think that there is abundant evidence of Myers purpose including the desire to offend. The man heaps scorn and abuse on those who disagree with him. Consider the following (in blue, to keep the text distinct from the comboxer) excerpt from his original post:
There are days when it is agony to read the news, because people are so goddamned stupid. Petty and stupid. Hateful and stupid. Just plain stupid. And nothing makes them stupider than religion.
<SNIP>
So, what to do. I have an idea. Can anyone out there score me some consecrated communion wafers? There's no way I can personally get them — my local churches have stakes prepared for me, I'm sure — but if any of you would be willing to do what it takes to get me some, or even one, and mail it to me, I'll show you sacrilege, gladly, and with much fanfare. I won't be tempted to hold it hostage (no, not even if I have a choice between returning the Eucharist and watching Bill Donohue kick the pope in the balls, which would apparently be a more humane act than desecrating a goddamned cracker), but will instead treat it with profound disrespect and heinous cracker abuse, all photographed and presented here on the web. I shall do so joyfully and with laughter in my heart.
These remarks are by their nature intended to be offensive to Catholics, and the statement that he would desecrate the Eucharist "joyfully and with laughter in my heart" unambiguously indicates that this is not a dispassionate scientific demonstration of the falsity of Catholic belief regarding the Eucharist.
However, let's suppose that that was his aim. He's a scientist. How good would the science of the proposed experiment be?
Rotten.
In order to have a scientific demonstration of the falsity of Catholic belief regarding the Eucharist, you would need to have a proposition of Catholic theology regarding the Eucharist that could be falsified by his experiment.
But the Catholic Church does not claim that anything special will happen in the empirical realm if you desecrate a host. Lots of hosts have been desecrated in history, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, nothing special happens in the empirical realm.
Catholics would say that this is because Christ has chosen to make himself vulnerable in body to such disrespect, just as he made himself vulnerable to death on the Cross, though he informed his disciples that all he needed to do was ask and his Father would put twelve legions of angels at his disposal to defend him. The voluntary vulnerability of Christ as the Lamb of God is a central theme in Christian theology.
Whatever the Christian explanation for the fact that nothing unusual normally happens in the empirical realm when a host is desecrated, the fact is that the Church does not maintain that anything is supposed to happen.
PZ Myers and the Catholic Church thus agree that nothing unusual should be expected to happen if he desecrates a host.
His act of desecration therefore would not do anything to evidentially distinguish between the two belief systems (his and the Catholic Church's).
That makes any proposed experiment along these lines Bad Science.
Such an experiment is no more a disconfirmation of Eucharistic theology than the legendary Russian astronaut who, while in space, looked around and declared that he didn't see God. That's no disconfirmation because nobody claimed he would see God.
In both cases, it's a snide jab at religious belief based on an overly simplistic understanding of that belief.
In Myers' case it is also a deliberate and cruel violation of the most deeply felt religious sensibilities of other human beings. He's not just saying he doesn't see evidence for God. He's proposing to deliberately desecrate what other humans hold most sacred, which is bound to stir passionate feelings and cause profound personal pain to every faithful Catholic who hears of it, including those who are not sending him hate mail and who have caused no harm and done nothing to bring about this situation.
Even if PZ Myers does not respect the Eucharist, he should respect those people, who far outnumber the others.
The commenter also writes:
BTW, I've noticed some arguments against sacrality of the bread made by some in the comments thread over there which have adequate (internal to Catholicism, at least) theological explanation but which went unanswered. Some crude commends were made about the digestive process to which can be answered that that is far past the point where Jesus is no longer present in that fashion (that he or God is still present in another generalized fashion is problematic for theism in general). If Catholics were to answer in such manner I think that would be more impressive (that is liable to make a good a impression), than the personal back and forth a few have engaged in.
I agree. I think a display of reason in the face of vile abuse is more constructive than adding more vile abuse to the discussion.
On Thursday's show I fielded a question about Prof. P. Z. Myers, the Minnesota professor who has threatened to desecrate the Eucharist and post the results on the Internet.
Here is an mp3 of the exchange.
"...but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the LORD your God. On it you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant, nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates."
- God to Moses, Exodus Ch. 20
" 'Yo ho, my boys.' said Fezziwig. 'No more work to-night. Christmas Eve,
Dick. Christmas, Ebenezer. Let's have the shutters up,' cried old
Fezziwig, with a sharp clap of his hands, 'before a man can say Jack
Robinson.' "
- Fezziwig, in Dickens' A Christmas Carol
I think we forget, sometimes, that God invented Saturday. It was His idea.
I love Dickens' A Christmas Carol - always have - and I love when Fezziwig (Scrooge's old boss) jovially and emphatically insists that Dick and Ebenezer knock off work right now and join him and all his family and friends in an evening of raucous merrymaking. His attitude is, "It's Christmas Eve! What are you doing still working?".
Who wouldn't give their eye teeth for a boss like that? One who cheerfully orders you to take a day off, relax and have a party on his nickel? We can't even seem to take time off very well anymore. There is always some chore that insinuates its way into our downtime. Even outside of our normal work, our lives are so crowded with activities that taking a whole day off every week to really do nothing seems lazy and irresponsible. We often look at Sunday as not much more than an obligation to go to church. Another chore on top of all the others. But God knows us much better than we know ourselves. We need time to do nothing in particular. We need to carefully plan some time when we have no plans, and guard that time like a mother badger. That time ought to be on Sunday.
There was a time when Christians took the idea of the Sabbath more seriously, but many got that wrong, as well. I remember reading one of the Little House books (by Laura Ingalls Wilder) and particularly a description of a typical Sunday; the family went to church, of course, but afterward they were allowed to do nothing except sit or perhaps read, but then only the Bible. Even the little children must simply sit. Playing, running, whistling or even kicking one's legs was considered irreverent and inappropriate for the Lord's Day. I think maybe that was even more wrong-headed than our own slovenly approach.
It seems to me like we ought to plan our divinely mandated play day with more emphasis on play. I even kind of like the way the weekend has expanded into two days, paying homage to the old Sabbath and celebrating the Lord's Day, too. Hey, I'm for that. Count me in. Why, when we think of God's command to "do no work", must we imagine Him with a scowl? Jesus isn't a Puritan, keeping an eye out for anyone having too much fun.
I prefer to imagine Him sounding more like Old Fezziwig, saying "Yo ho, my boys! No work today, it's Sunday!"
WARNING!! Free-wheeling amateur theologizing ahead! Be Warned!
"Cursed is the ground because of you; through painful toil you will eat of it all the days of your life. It will produce thorns and thistles for you, and you will eat the plants of the field. By the sweat of your brow you will eat your food until you return to the ground..."
- God to Adam - from Genesis Ch. 3"I will greatly increase your pains in childbearing; with pain you will give birth to children. Your desire will be for your husband, and he will rule over you."
- God to Eve - from Genesis Ch. 3
As a young Baptist, the word "penance" had no meaning for me. Even a little later, it was a word associated with the exotic machinations of the Catholic religion, and the idea that it may have really incorporated a spiritual dimension - that it might be something pleasing to God - was an utterly alien concept. I now see penance (an act of self-mortification or devotion performed to show repentance and to atone for sin) as a great gift, a spiritual boon to mankind. Through it, and only by His grace, Christ has made a way for us to participate in our own salvation, and that of others. I believe we crave penance.
I say all that because for some time I've kicked around in my mind the impression I have that what are commonly seen as the curses that fell on mankind after Adam and Eve ate from the Tree can be understood as having the character of penances rather than simply curses or punishments.
When you look at the punishments that fell on Adam and Eve, they are things that, though a trial, we see to be of great benefit to individuals when approached in the proper spirit. Eve's punishment had to do with the bearing of children and submission to her husband. Adam's punishment was toil, and the constant struggle against the earth now cursed for his sake - "It will produce thorns and thistles for you".
I'm by nature lazy person. It can be difficult for me to stir myself out of a comfortable place to go and do something that involves sweat, dirt or manual labor. Or other labor. Even my day job, which no one could call strenuous, at times wears thin, and I have to drag myself in some mornings. I'm truly grateful for the work, but it can seem tedious and burdensome when there are great books that need reading and paintings screaming to be painted. But in spite of my natural lack of drive or initiative or whatever, I generally get out and (as Garrison Keillor would say) "do what needs to be done".
And most often, a funny thing happens; the job that I put off or even positively dreaded turns out to be, in the end, profoundly satisfying. To step back and look at a well-painted wall, or a well-mowed lawn, or a door that closes when it wouldn't before, or even a well-washed dog is to have a kind of mystical experience. It almost seems as if we were made for work... or it was made for us. To stack firewood on a crisp fall day is such a poetic activity that it seems almost too great a privilege to hope for.
When you face the work you have been given and "work at it with all your heart, as working for the Lord" what had seemed like a burden becomes a great blessing, not just materially, but in a spiritual sense. One grows through such things. As a man, I have found that accepting the penance of hard work that God gave in a unique way to men, entails all kinds of benefits for me and for those around me. It isn't always pleasant, and sometimes is mainly a matter of plodding through when one would rather quit, but it is always worth the effort, and I don't mean monetarily.
Speaking in very broad terms, God, because of original sin, set men the penance of hard labor and of providing for and protecting the family. That does not mean that all men are always called to that role in the ways we most often conceive of it, but in a general sense, men are called to these things. If we shirk our penance, resist or avoid it, we see no spiritual benefit or growth. We are stuck. As I say to my son, we need to "man up" and do the hard thing.
I used to wonder, when there was a nasty bug to be killed or corralled around our house, why it was that the job always fell to me. Surely, I figured, the weight advantage of any half-grown human made the job as easy for a woman as a man. Most anyone can wield a shoe. Upper body strength matters very little when dealing with a cockroach or a spider. So why is this the man's job? Because it just is. It involves some faint echo of the man's responsibility to protect the family. I am the watchman on the walls, ever diligent against the invading insect hordes. As in other things, the men sometimes have to be pushed in the direction of this responsibility by the women.
For women (and obviously I'm speaking theoretically, here, so input from real, live women would be welcome, as always) the penance given in the Garden touched on the pain of childbirth and submission to a husband. As with men, this penance is given in a general sense and does not mean that every woman must be married or bear children. It does mean, though, that most women are called to these things, and that we should therefore unapologetically present marriage, childrearing and homemaking (in the full and wonderful sense of the word) as things intrinsically good and eminently desirable. When women (in general) embrace these self-sacrificing roles and persevere in them, they grow and find fulfillment. As the man embracing his role as laborer, provider and protector finds a certain joy and completeness, so the woman who willingly takes up her role as mother and keeper of the home can find great satisfaction even through the pain and toil of her position. And not satisfaction only, but joy, which is not mere happiness.
Aside; Here's something many feminist types may not realize; men - the vast majority of them, anyway - never worked outside the home because it was fun. They worked because they had to. I understand that a lot of you feel strongly that all options ought to be equally open to all adults, regardless of sex, and that's fine. As I said, not everyone is called to live the same way, and there should be as much freedom and as little compulsion as possible in one's choice of work. So, I'm all for a lot of the gains women have made in recent decades. But many of you probably know by now that looking after your boss and keeping a nice, tidy cubicle is no more rewarding than looking after your kids and keeping a nice, tidy house. If you go to work outside the home looking for personal fulfillment, well, good luck. I think one reason women - in general - lost so much of a sense of fulfillment in their roles as wife and mother is because since the industrial revolution we have almost totally destroyed our social connections to extended family, neighborhood, etc... but that's another post. End aside.
To sum up - hard labor, painful childbirth, thorns and thistles, deference to a husband... are all difficult. They are crosses to bear. But when we take them up in a spirit of loving obedience to God, and even thankfulness, they become a path to holiness and joy. What look like punishments, by the grace of God, become penances, and we need penance. Real, deep, meaningful penance can be hard to come by, but if we look carefully, we can find opportunities all around us. Penance is an unspeakable privilege and a gift from God, if we can only get past the wrapping.
By the way, this is just a notion, this idea that the punishments of the garden can become more like penances. Just something that has occurred to me a number of times and that I thought might be worth running up the virtual flagpole. I don't presume to teach.
Discuss.
Next; On the Importance of Not Working
(Visit Tim Jones' blog Old World Swine)
(Painting American Gothic by Grant Wood - 1891-1942)
The Sacred and the Profane
At last! At last! MONSIEUR VINCENT, Maurice Cloche’s beautifully crafted, award-winning biopic starring Pierre Fresnay as St. Vincent de Paul, is coming to DVD next Tuesday!
I first saw Monsieur Vincent years ago via a local library copy of an out-of-print English-dubbed VHS, which is the only way the movie has been available, at least for North Americans. (Checking Amazon.fr, I see there's been a Region 2 DVD for a little over a year.) I loved the film then; having just rewatched it (in French with English subtitles), I find that I love it even more now.
Monsieur Vincent is one of the 15 films in the "Religion" category on the 1995 Vatican film list, and as such has been one of the most neglected and hard-to-find of the 45 films honored on the Vatican list. (Other johnny-come-latelys to DVD include Ichikawa's lovely The Burmese Harp (1956), released last year, and Mallet's haunting Au Revoir Les Enfants in 2006.
With Monsieur Vincent now on DVD, I think the only remaining unavailable titles may be Buñuel's difficult Nazarín and Gance's 1927 silent epic Napoléon (1927), the best version of which is withheld from U.S. audiences due to rights issues.
Of all these, though, Monsieur Vincent is the film I love the best (read the review to find out why).
The Lionsgate/StudioCanal DVD is a bare-bones release featuring the original French soundtrack with English and Spanish subtitles, but no extras or bonus features. On the other hand, you can get it for under $13 at Amazon.com. What are you waiting for? Go buy it now!
(Added: Oh, incidentally, the DVD back cover art includes a blurb by, um, me.)
In other movie news, I've just posted an article on Hellboy and Spirital Warfare, Hollywood Style for today's release of Hellboy II: The Golden Army. Along with my Hellboy II review, it was written for Christianity Today Movies.
In addition to the Hellboy movies, the article discusses movies from Constantine and Ghost Rider to The Exorcist and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, as well as the films of Terence Fisher (The Devil Rides Out, Horror of Dracula), an Anglican director of British horror films in the 1950s and 1960s.
Among other things, the article discusses the role of Christian iconography in such films, the implications for a moral worldview, and why Heaven often seems more remote than hell in art. (For instance, why didn't C. S. Lewis write another series of fictional letters from an archangel in heaven to a guardian angel on earth?)
Longtime readers of this blog may know that I don't like the word "cult," at least as it is commonly used (i.e., bad religious group). The reason that I don't like it is that, although every "cult researcher" will try to formulate a definition of what a cult is, these definitions invariably include elements that are (a) arbitrary (e.g., if you don't believe in sola fide, you're a cult), (b) objectively unverifiable (e.g., saying that a group is "too" this or "too" that, which makes it a matter of opinion), or (c) applied selectively to groups that the user doesn't like but not to groups that he does (e.g., did you know that those Christians are supposed to be willing to give up their lives rather than deny the founder of their group? and that they're supposed to believe all of his teachings? and that he's God? How cultlike!).
In the end, I find that using the term "cult" (in the "bad religious group") sense adds more heat than light. It just starts arguments over who is or is not a cult, stirs up bad feelings, and in general distracts from a discussion of the merits or demerits of whatever religion is under consideration.
As far as I can tell, the word "cult" in its colloquial sense is just a term of contempt used to refer to religions that one doesn't like. "Cult" = "religious group I don't like," esp. "smaller, newer religious group I don't like."
(BTW, yes, I know all about its other, historical, positive use, but that's not the usage I'm concerned with here.)
Another term I don't like--but that is often used in "cult studies" is "mind control." This is a scare word introduced by "cult researchers" to refer to what historically has been referred to by the word "persuasion."
But we can go into those topics in more detail another time.
I'm writing today to talk about another word that is commonly misused: "Gnosticism."
Today I was reading the excellent publication Catholic World Report, which is very much worth reading, and I recommend that you subscribe if you haven't (SUBSCRIBE HERE).
As readers may know, I get almost all of my information electronically these days, and so for me to actually read a print publication says something very special about it. Catholic World Report is one of a handfull that I even bother with, so it's quite special indeed.
And the July 2008 issue has a very nice article on Reiki by Anna Abbott (whose name has the interesting quality of having all of the consonants doubled, making it very easy to spell; kudos to her parents and ancestors!).
The article is quite well done, and I especially like the way Anna uses a particular passage from the Catechism of the Catholic Church to show the incompatibility of Reiki with Catholic practice (it's paragraph 2117, in case you're wondering), and I'd highly encourage you to get the July issue just to read this article.
But it does have one part about which I have concerns. That comes when the article states:
Reiki appears to be a form of Gnosticism. Its practitioners assert "secret" knowledge, despite the fact one can find the symbols of it on the Internet with a few clicks. A Reiki practitioner in Calistoga, California reported to me that when she looked at one of the "power symbols"--which bears an uncanny resemblance to the musical treble clef--she perceived it differently than I did because she's initiated.
After the first sentence, my spidey sense was going off, because, unfortunately, it is very common for writers in the religious press to label things as being "Gnostic" or as "Gnosticism" when, in fact, they are totally unrelated to the historical heresy of that name. As soon as someone claims something modern to be Gnosticism, I cringe, because it's usually wrong.
The second sentence doesn't improve my confidence level. It appears to be justifying the claim that Reiki is Gnosticism based on the fact that "its practitioners assert 'secret' knowledge."
This is not enough. All kinds of people claim secret knowledge--or at least knowledge that other people don't have. That doesn't make them Gnostics.
I think the root of the problem may be that historical Gnosticism was a pluriform heresy that didn't have just a single set of beliefs. As a result, it is difficult to say "This is what a Gnostic believed" in the same way that it is hard to say "This is what a New Ager believes" or even "This is what a Protestant believes." There was no single, official statement of Gnostic belief--no Catechism of the Gnostic Church--any more than there is an official Catechism of the New Age Movement or an official Catechism of the Protestant Church.
To really say what Gnostics taught, you have to note that certain ideas were characteristic of different Gnostic groups but that not all Gnostic groups shared them. You have to do the same thing with the New Age Movement and Protestantism, too, since they also are doctrinally diverse groups that have certain common characteristics among their different branches but do not have a single, official position on their distinctives (e.g., not all New Agers believe in reincarnation, and not all Protestants understand sola fide or sola scriptura the same way).
Talking about what makes someone a Gnostic thus involves a decent bit of hard work and historical research, and many authors trying to do that work encounter oversimplifications of what Gnosticism was.
Often, rather than describing in detail the content of Gnostic thought, authors will oversimplify and try to explain what a Gnostic was by focusing on the name "Gnostic."
It's easy to point out that the name is based on "gnosis," which was one of the Greek words for knowledge--which, back then wasn't really secret either because the Gnostics talked and wrote all about it--and the Church Fathers critiqued it! (What was secret was not the content of the knowledge but more the way it had allegedly been preserved from Jesus' time.)
Merely claiming to have knowledge that other people don't have doesn't make you a Gnostic. Christians claim that. We call that knowledge "revelation."
Even claiming that you should act on this knowledge that other people don't have in order to be saved isn't Gnosticism. Christians claim that, too.
You can even have knowledge that you don't share with outsiders. That doesn't make you a Gnostic. That just makes you secretive.
What was distinctive about the Ghostics was not that they claimed to have knowledge that others didn't, it was not that they thought you should act on their knowledge in order for things to go well for you, and it wasn't that they were in some measure secretive.
That describes every organized group of humans in world history!
Every group thinks that it has, if not the master key to the universe, at least a piece of knowledge that is true and that not everybody shares. Every group thinks that this knowledge should be acted upon in some way (even if it is by sitting passively by while Cthulhu eats up the world, in hopes of being eaten last). And every group has privileged or proprietary information that it doesn't share with just anybody (like what the local pastor's credit card number is, for example).
What made the Gnostics Gnostics was the content of their belief system--their views about God and the world and death and life and how to be saved and what salvation means.
If a modern author wants to declare a modern thing to be "Gnosticism," he needs to show more than that a movement claims to have some sort of privileged information that should be acted upon. Every diet book salesman claims that.
Instead, one must be prepared to show that the modern thing--whatever it is--has multiple (not just one or a few) points of contact with the content of the beliefs of the historical Gnostics.
And the article on Reiki doesn't provide that.
Neither does the fact that a particular Reiki practitioner may say that a symbol means something different to her than to a noninitiate. Christians have had their own symbols historically, like the Chi-Rho and the Ichthus and, most of all, the Cross, that mean something different to them than to outsiders. In fact, during the age of persecutions, some of these symbols were used precisely because outsiders didn't know or didn't always know what they meant.
As part of my apologetic discipline, whenever I read claims about another religion, I try to turn it around and see if the same claims could be made about my own religion. It's a way of being fair to other religions and weeding out unjust arguments against them (and it's one of the reasons I don't like the terms "cult" and "mind control" in their contemporary senses, because the definitions offered for them frequently are so vague that they can be turned around and applied to Christianity, evangelization, and apologetics).
So let's take a look at how the paragraph quoted above might be rephrased:
Christianity appears to be a form of Gnosticism. Its practitioners assert "secret" knowledge that other religions don't have, despite the fact one can find the symbols of it on the Internet with a few clicks. A Christian in Calistoga, California reported to me that when she looked at the Cross--one of the Christian "power symbols"--which bears an uncanny resemblance to the letter "t"--she perceived it differently than I did because she's a Christian.
I wouldn't think that this establishes that Christianity is Gnosticism, and so I don't think that the paragraph as originally quoted establishes Reiki as Gnosticism.
I'm no expert in Reiki, but from what I have read about it, it doesn't seem that Reiki practitioners have an elaborate cosmogony or message of how to have things go right for you after death that reads like the Nag Hammadi manuscripts with the names changed.
So I don't, from my own knowledge, see Reiki as Gnosticism. Instead, I see it as a bunch of New Age snake oil that engenders superstitious beliefs about a mystical life/energy field for which there is no scientific evidence and that in its healing efforts combines the placebo effect with the facts that it is pleasant to relax and be touched by another person.
To conclude, the article on Reiki in the July issue of Catholic World Report is a good article, and I'd encourage you to read it. It's only the three sentences dealing with Gnosticism that I find unpersuasive.
My compliments to the author!
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