I have read an article with the title "Reiki - A Catholic Perspective" at this website
http://www.in-unity.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=32&Itemid=1

This seems to be a (maybe not unnecessarily) lengthy analysis demonstrating that reiki in fact belongs to the New Age movement/religion/whatever. So reiki should be looked in the light of the Vatican study "Jesus Christ, The Bearer Of The Water Of Life" (http://www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html ). Maybe Catholic spiritual directors and similar need to take seriously in consideration such document.

In my opinion the above-mentioned article represents one extreme of the range of Catholic standpoints regarding reiki (and all the similar practices, including reflexology, enneagram etc.) while the other end of the spectrum seems not to find particular problems in using this type of approaches, even including them in spiritual, pastoral ministries. I see my position sort of in the middle – take these approaches with caution but not to reject them without distinction. I see that the general criterion for sorting out these methods could be put in the following way: if there is a natural or scientific ground to it how they do “work” for healing (physical or psychological) they might be something acceptable approaches of therapy or self-knowledge but if they begin to speak of mysterious or unknown and unknowable “energies” that they claim to manipulate I would say that this might be a sign of caution and to leave such practices alone.

I think also that the above-mentioned Vatican document is just a "working paper" for the moment and it would be really necessary to develop further the method of discernment among the numerous new and less new alternative techniques or movements claiming to be "spiritual" and "healing". Probably we cannot spare the effort to discern about these phenomena one by one as we encounter them, and keep what we think authentic and reject what not. Some guidelines we got from the document, however - but these are not definitive judgments at least in my mind. I think of the case of the enneagram for example, which is mentioned in the document as a New Age practice and it is very often so, although in my view exist such thing that Christian enneagram, and it is good and useful (of course relatively as all things) for certain people. I suppose there is no such thing as "Christian reiki" by the self-definition of reiki itself that claims to be above all religions. The nature of reiki is not so easy to define at it seems that notwithstanding this sort of statements it is in fact a religion or is becoming one as Andrea Menegotto tries to show in his recent study from 2003 entitled 'The "Quasi-Religion" of Reiki'. He says for example: "The fact that nearly all schools deny that [reiki is a religion], it is not decisive at all. In fact, other new Japanese religions and in particular, some in which the imposition of the hands such as Sûkyô Mahikari (Introvigne, 1999), equally deny being religions and prefer introducing themselves like "above" religions opened to people of every faith. Their character of new religion is however given for certain by specialists. But the movement of Sûkyô Mahikari also offers a complete message of salvation, a theology of the history, a cosmological formulation and tries to explain the origins of the mankind. In most Reiki schools, instead, these elements turn out to be absent."

This article is fairly good in my opinion and if you have time read it as it is available in English here: http://www.cesnur.org/2003/vil2003_menegotto.htm

(continued in the next comment)
---K

It is interesting for me that here I have encountered first with the concept of the "Next Age" following the decline of the New Age movement. Menegotto for example writes that "...Reiki can simply appear as one of the alternative therapeutic practises, flowing into the immense network of alternatives therapies. It can be framed, in its turn, in the large metanetwork of the New Age. In particular, the historical evolution of the spreading of Reiki to the West and its present very remarkable international expansion, leads to think that such a practise has not suffered any damage but instead it has drawn benefits from the evolution-decline of the New Age. It has taken place, starting from the half of 1990s, in that phenomenon having a more individualistic character which is called Next Age (Introvigne 2000; Zoccatelli 1997; Berzano 1999; Menegotto 1999)."


If we think of reiki as a distinct religion - with a strong syncretistic attitude however - it is hard to accept it as just a neutral technique fitting in a Christian-Catholic context. Although during the history of Church elements from other religions entered Christianity, were used to express the content of faith but it is not the case in my view with reiki, or its practices bringing with them an underlying doctrinal system of their own, and their particular view of man, divinity and cosmos etc.

Let me note here: it seems utterly strange that certain representatives of the hierchical Church (I think of a concrete Bishop here) does not hesitate to oppress traditional Catholic practices like the use of blessed oil in healing services by lay people while they don’t study and try to form an opinion on practices as reiki (at least they are very silent in this regard - as well as regard of for example of "preemptive" war - and so abandoning their role of teaching and educating).

---K

Just today I got all disturbed again as I happened upon a site where a person is offering Reiki for $50/hr and this person also claimed to have been taught by a Catholic Sister who is a Reiki Master.

Here's the problem I have. The person selling the Reiki treatments claims that the chi or Universal Life Energy brings healing by thought control or intention to bring healing and by the moving of one's hands in certain patterns to allow this healing energy to get to where it needs to be. She also claims the energy is from God or some intelligent source. So, by her thoughts she controls this energy!

Do I have it all wrong or is this just her inability to communicate or mine to understand. How does this fit with Catholic teaching?