Ok so I'm a heathen, what else is new?

Was reading the Watcher when I was referred to this article about the Vatican's reaction to "New Age" stuff including: karma, feng shui and yoga.

A few key quotes I particularly enjoyed:

If "prayer turns into just listening to music and falling asleep, then it's no longer prayer," - Monsignor Michael Fitzgerald

Well, duh? Who said New Age people think prayer is like that? Um...so when people listen to music and fall asleep in the church pews, that's not prayer? I just want to get it straight the next time I attend mass.

Correspondents say the report reflects the Vatican's growing concern about losing support among its one billion followers as New Age therapies ground

This article in the SF Chronicle about how more and more people are choosing to say they are "no religion." The Catholic Church has been losing ground for some time and I don't think it's just because people are going New Age. It may have to do with some of its policies on: women, contraception, homosexuality, etc.

"New Age is a misleading answer to the oldest hopes of man." - Cardinal Paul Poupard

Pot kettle black. As if Catholicism was ahem never misleading. Certainly there is a need in some way for people to connect to their spirituality whether or not it be in religion. I have found that the various different religions seem to mislead people when taken to far enough extremes.

Feng shui, the method of discerning positive and negative vibrations in houses, is described as an "occult" New Age practice that emphasises "being in tune with nature or the cosmos"

They make feng shui sound like it's that simple. For me feng shui is about examining habits and creating symbols in your life and arranging your life in a way that reminds you what you need to do and what is important in your life. It's a way to reflect on your life and how you want to create it. Has the cross not been a guiding symbol in a person's life? So, when farmer's were in tune with nature, that was New Age, as opposed to a practiced observation.

Our correspondent says that the report makes clear that the Vatican basically dislikes fuzzy spirituality.

The Vatican is afraid. It's afraid that no one will believe in what they believe in anymore. That they will no longer hold sway as knowing the path to god. This fear will kill the church. Maybe they should take a sheet from the way Filipinos incorporated Christianity. Filipinos don't practice Catholicism like other people. They kept their pagan celebrations to other deities by replacing them with the more acceptable saints. Or the way the "El Shaddai" is technically "Catholic" but holds mass outside churches. They pray more often to Mary than Jesus. If the Vatican continues on the road of "them...they are not like US!" instead of "them...oh see...we are just like them...we just word it differently" Roman Catholicism will soon be the architects of their own demise.

I myself am Catholic. But I don't think I'd be Catholic if I didn't practice Catholicism in the Filipino way. Speaking of which, I need to hang my parol.