Bishops say Reiki is a no no- watch the fun !
Does not surprise me, but rather amuses me. Wonder how my husband, the ordained Roman Catholic Deacon , is going to react to this. If you are a Deacon it is your oathbound duty to follow the dictates of the Bishop and the Magesterium. ( Brat in me is giggling here- we have fun debating these technicalities
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As long as your husband has a bishop who ignores it etc. things should be cool
I think the ex cathedra was used quite often, but not as often as people say. I think the issue about Mary had to do with the change in Dogma itself in modern times. Dogma cannot change from what was revealed in the Scriptures, thus when assertions on the scale of the Immaculate Conception are made, they need ex cathedra to be made, as an assertion of its validity as Dogma.
Dogma is very different from Doctrine, which is next on the scale of authority, and Discipline (the third D) even less so. It is not Dogma that a priest cannot be married; that is a matter of Doctrine for the ROman CHurch rather than the Eastern Churches where the priest can be married, he just needs to be married PREVIOUSLY to ordination and cannot be married afterwards. And Discipline is even more loosely held, such as requiring the wearing of clerical garb in public.
The whole kid thing is tragic, not only for the Church, but society at large. Back in the day, if you saw a kid bullying and beating another kid, even as a passerby, you could pull them apart and tell them to knock it off and take them to the parent if need be. Now you would be accused as a child molester and charged with assault, and our society became the weaker for it.
I don't know very much about Reiki, so I can't say anything in that direction. But I can see that there might be conflict in his work as a Deacon and his practice as a Reiki Master. I thought from your original post it was more that you were into reiki and he wasn't, but WOW, yea, I can see there might be some real issues he is going to have to figure out!
That was part of the reason I decided I could not be a priest, because I still believed in my Native American ways. Hard enough to be a Catholic and still commune with the nature spirits and be an animist...but to be a Master in Reiki AND a Deacon! whoa, that's a tough one.
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Technically at this time he is a Deacon without official facilties. He was trained, ordained, but refused to do the continuing education requirements that this particular Diocese enacted after his ordination. While a Deacon, like a Priest, remains one for life, your preaching credentials can be revoked. Which they were. Then we moved into a different Diocese and he never went through the moves of incardination/excardination ( technical terms for Catholic Deacon change of address) , so he is officially in a sort of grey area. The Priest at the Catholic church he is currently serving as a cantor recently found out he is a Deacon, and this can prove to be very interesting. Meanwhile, he is also serving in the music ministry for a Methodist church, and the experience has really opened his eyes to several things. Most of which I had told him of in the past , but...
Reiki is a universal energy that is all arounjd. When you are attuned, it is sort of like receiving a TV set to enable you to transmit the signal. Reiki energy is sent through the eyes, the hands and the breath. For my husband, music is the real expression of God, and when he sings for liturgical purposes this gets pressed into service. As Reiki is transmitted through breath, if the higher self of another is present and desires reiki energy to enter into their field, a channel is tapped ( reiki practitioner). He sings at funerals, weddings and healing services, and at any time reiki energy can flow through him and out with his singing, reaching the one who needs it. There is no stopping it, and no control when this happens. I have had it happen several times in places like the grocery store or out to eat myself, and it is profound. So now if a somewhat official position is on the table about this ( and it is speculated that Benedict will speak on it in the near future in an official capacity) what is he supposed to do ? Or what should he do ? He is already less than happy with the feelings he is getting with Catholic worship as opposed to Methodist, is really fed up with the personality conflicts and egos that come with the Catholic parishes he has dealt with , and feels that the soul has left the whole thing, so to speak. Yet, he is under contractual obligation to this parish, and things can get financially interesting, so to speak.
It certainly is going to make for an interesting kettle of fish. I suspect he is going to just file the info under the "that's nice to know" heading and continue to do as he always has. It is going to make for a very interesting discussion between us though. I will be torn between being a brat and helping to support him in his discernment.
You just don't get this kind of entertainment everyday !
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I've been filing most of the Catholic Church's pronouncements under the "that's nice" heading for the last ten years. Seems to me the hierarchy is becoming quite Pharisaical (like the Pharisees of Jesus' time), if you catch my drift.
This issue won't draw nearly as much attention as the Church's position on abortion. But it makes an interesting paradox. On the one hand, you can't take a life in the womb. On the other, you can't preserve a life outside the womb with Reiki.
Somewhere along the way, the concept of God as Creator of all things got lost. Same with the maxim given by Jesus himself, "that which is not against us is for us."
Oh, I should also mention that as far as the document itself goes, the believability starts heading south in Paragraph 2:
...the Church has never considered a plea for divine healing, which comes as a gift from God, to exclude recourse to natural means of healing through the practice of medicine.
As you well understand (even better than I), modern medicine is as far from 'natural' as the East is from the West! And there was such a time when Mother Church frowned upon such intervention. That eventually shifted to the herbal healers, which is sad because that's actually closer to natural than the long list of pharmaceuticals available today (with names I can't pronounce, leave alone the lovely side effects).
Maybe the Vatican should order a study to indicate the potential number of clergy (and the average age is well above 50) with signs of Alzheimer's or dementia. Now that would shake up the faithful!
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And don't start me on modern ailment management...er health care. And it strikes me as pertinent to remember that the last time healing methods got sanctioned or forbidden by the Church, people got burned at the Stake as a result. Once again the root of the problem seems to be some uppity women- in this case both Franciscan and Dominican Nuns who got attuned and began practicing Reiki in the context of Parish Nurses and during some healing services. From my perspective it sort of is a glimpse into the days when midwifes and herbal healers became forbidden by The Church. It was also at that time that the Churches actions thrust the medical community to become organized and powerful. I think people are a lot smarter in these days. At least I hope so.
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