Church Growth Through Yoga

A report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.  This week’s item is from the London Times, August 5, 2001, with the headline:  “Church lures new recruits with yoga.”  Irish clerics are adopting New Age philosophies in an attempt to woo people turned off by traditional Catholicism.  A number of religious orders have started to offer courses in Buddhist meditation, yoga, and reflexology, in the hope of bringing people closer to God.  At Bellinter House in Maben, the Sisters of Sion, offer reflexology, relaxation and prayer courses along with a retreat called:  Women in Search of Wholeness.  The first combines hand and foot massage with relaxation techniques, while the second is aimed at middle aged women and provides prayer art and optional dance.  Sister Carmel Niland explained that the courses are a way of reaching those interested in self development who may not be practicing Catholics. “There was a stage when I thought that reflexology might not be the best way to help people but you would be surprised by the numbers who start at that level and then discover a deeper spirituality.  Like yoga and transcendental meditation, it can be a tool that brings people back to God,” she said.  Father Flan Lynch is a Capuchin, who has combined psychotherapy, Buddhist meditation, tai chi, and neurolinguistic programming for a 1½ day course called, The Vision Programme.  He said it challenges negative world views and teaches people to live life as “a peak experience.”  Based in Ards Friary, CountyDonegal, Lynch said he was inspired to devise the program by Pope John Paul XXIII.  “He said the church needed to find ways of presenting the gospels to educate the modern mind.  Look at the popularity of New Age movements, there is a spiritual vacuum that the church has failed to feed.  It is up to us to present a more powerful alternative.  Father Louis Hughes, a Dominican, travels the country providing body-mind meditation courses.  He was based in India for seven years and developed an interest in yoga while visiting ashrams and learning from local Hindu leaders.  He has written two books, Body/Mind Meditation and Yoga, a Path to God.  Hughes said many of those who attend his courses are not regular church goers.  They might not attend church but they are seeking something deeper.  It’s indicative of the spiritual hunger in our society.  The Bellinter House also runs courses in the Enneagram, which is a way of analyzing personalities by categorizing people according to nine predominant traits.  Awareness of an unsatisfactory personality trait is the first step on the road to overcoming it, according to Father Myles O’Reilly, who runs weekends in Dublin.  Used by Islamic mystics, it was adopted by Jesuits in California and Chicago in the 1970’s.  A Jesuit himself, O’Reilly said the courses have proved helpful.  People want more from life and they are now waking up to that and looking for more.  Sister Francis Hurley, a mercy nun, is a spiritual counselor who runs courses in bio-spirituality focusing.  Developed by psychologist Carl Rogers, it encourages people to accept feelings of anxiety and fear as a means of overcoming them.  Hurley also conducts inner child workshops which put people in touch with their lives.  A site of Catholic pilgrimage for generations, Lough Derg in CountyDonegal is attracting growing numbers of non-believers looking for a break from the pressures of modern life.  The three-day pilgrimage involves fasting and a night without sleep.  Despite the hardships, Mohan said the island’s appeal is as strong for non-believers as it is for Catholics.  We use body prayers, which involve walking and repeating prayers like a mantra, and that allows people to halt the thought process and get in touch with their inner selves.

Tom:

Dave, I sent a copy of this to a friend of mine who was a missionary in Ireland.  This is unbelievable to me.  Having grown up Roman Catholic, I’m Irish myself.  I was unaware that this kind of thing was going on over there, but I guess it’s going on everywhere, I don’t know why I am surprised.

Dave:

Tom, we have written books about it going on everywhere.

Tom:

I know, but you know sometimes you just think, oh yes, but not there.

Dave:

Not in Ireland, of course since you are Irish.

Tom:

Well there again, Irish Catholics, it just wouldn’t seem to be true.  Certainly St. Patrick, who I don’t even believe was a Catholic, you know, he would be rolling over in his grave over this, this is too much.

Dave:

“Get in touch with their inner selves”—I don’t know what this inner self is, but if this inner self is part of me, why do I want to get in touch with me?  And, if it’s part if me, how come I am not in touch with it?  I mean, this is such a joke.  We spent quite a bit of time, in the 60s, traveling through Europe with our VW bus with our four kids and we picked up a lot of hitchhikers, many of them from America, and I would always ask where are you heading?What are you doing?  Tom, 90% of them said, I am trying to get in touch with myself, and our kids could hardly restrain the laughter.  Get in touch with yourself?  Come on!  What are you?  You’re god—Yeah, right, there is a god inside and it’s me!  Yeah, I want to get in touch.  Come on!  If you are God, how come you are not in touch?  This is a joke, but Tom, they picked this up from Muslim mystics.  They picked it up from all kinds of occult pagan sources and this is supposed to bring them closer to God.  Jesus said, “I am the way, the truth and the life, no man comes to the Father but by me.”  It seems that they have, somehow, forgotten that and they are going to get people into some real deep trouble.

Tom:

Dave, we have talked about it in the past.  The Pope goes to India; he recognizes the spirituality as something they can learn from.  This one priest is looking to Pope John the 23rd as his inspiration for getting into all of these pagan spiritual concepts.  But you have to lay some of this on the Catholic Church itself, who was always adapted to the spirituality of whatever country they have ever entered.

Dave:

It’s a tragedy, Tom, and on the one hand you want to laugh, it’s so ridiculous, it’s stupid. On the other hand, people out there are seeking for God and they are getting this stuff which is taking them away.