ARTICLES

Reiki Relativism?

SAN JOSE MARIANIST CENTER DABBLES IN HEALING ENERGY

By James McCoy

In April, Japan hosted the provincial superior of the Marianists from California, while the Marianist Center in Cupertino offered the art of spiritual healing from Japan.

According to an advertisement in the April issue of the San Jose diocesan newspaper, The Valley Catholic, the Marianist Center boasts a class in "the healing energy of Reiki." The Japanese word "Reiki" is a compound of the words for spirit ("rei") and life-force ("ki"). "'Ki' means energy, spirit," said Mimi Latno, director of the Marianist Center and teacher of the class. "It's universal. All life is made of 'ki.'"

"Reiki is not New Age," she added, "because it comes from thousands of years of religious tradition ... Dr. (Mikao) Usui refound the symbols."

According to Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, head of the Vatican Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, there's always a danger that when Western and Eastern religions meet both sides can become steeped in relativism. In a September 1996 speech, Cardinal Ratzinger told 80 bishops from mission territories that Asia's religions have always insisted that "the divine can never enter unveiled into the world of appearances in which we live; it always manifests itself in relative reflections and remains beyond all words and notions ..."

To this, modern Western thought betrays a "strange closeness," Ratzinger pointed out. In post-Christian countries, people think that "faith in the divinity of one concrete person (Jesus Christ) ... leads to fanaticism ... and it is precisely this which must be overcome ..." Relativism in the West is essentially non-religious, a rejection of dogma considered only man-made. But this relativism gets "a kind of religious consecration" from the East, "which seems to give its renunciation of dogma the dignity of a greater respect before the mystery of God and man."

While religious relativism and non-religious relativism may seem like strange companions, they have found a comfortable berth in the Bay Area, where the New Age movement began with the Esalen Institute in the '60s. Catholic retreat centers like the Marianist Center in the San Jose diocese have been active participants in the local scene.

"These days I'm noticing more of what they call a holistic approach," said Roberta Ward, editor of the Valley Catholic. The Marianist Center is not the only local Catholic institution which incorporates other religious traditions in its spirituality courses, she said. "That's true of a lot of retreat centers."

Asked about the Marianist advertisement offering Reiki healing, Ward replied that nothing appears in the Valley Catholic, whether of an advertising or editorial nature, which is contrary to its mission statement in particular, or the teaching of the Catholic Church in general.

Latno describes herself, without seeing any contradiction, as both a Catholic and a Reiki master. "First of all Reiki is not a religion," she said. "It's a hands-on healing which is part of many religions ... Reiki is a healing that comes directly from God."

Direct contact with God is, in a word, mystic. According to the Catechism of the Catholic Church, every Catholic is called to be a mystic in the traditional sense. But Ratzinger said that New Age movements offer a modern mysticism: "The Absolute is not to be believed, but to be experienced. God is not a person to be distinguished from the world, but a spiritual energy present in the universe."

The Marianist Center advertisement says that the "source from which Reiki energy comes is the Source of All Life. Because the Creator of All Life is the source of this healing, it is unlimited, boundless, mysterious and profound."

But the Catechism of the Catholic Church applies the term "source of all life" to the Holy Spirit, the Third Person of the Blessed Trinity. And "creator of all life" is reserved for God alone. The advertisement's terminology raises questions.Can you conclude from it that "Reiki energy" is just another name for "grace"? If so, why not say so? If "Reiki energy" does not come from the Holy Spirit, from what spirit does it come?

"Words mean something," said a San Jose diocesan priest who requested anonymity. "Or they don't mean anything. 'Say what you mean and mean what you say'--that's one of the fundamentals of sanity."

"We believe in objective truth," said the priest, but since the Second Vatican Council the Church on the whole has suffered a loss of "'the sense of objectivity' ... We fall in love with the program and the process rather than the Object of the program and the process, and our union with Him."

"Our whole faith has been passed down to us," said the priest. "The Apostles shouldn't object to what we're doing now in carrying out the sacraments."

But when Christ is relativized as just one religious leader among many, he can no longer be the unique, real and historical incarnation of God-the implication of which is that the dogma and the sacraments which He bequeathed to us "must lose their unconditional character," Ratzinger said.

Asked whether direct contact with the healing power of God through Reiki makes prayer and sacraments of the Church redundant, Latno replied, "I wouldn't say it's 'either-or'--it's 'and.' It's one more avenue towards God. The (Church's) sacraments and prayer and meditation are all things I support and hold. And this (Reiki) is one more."

Dr. Usui himself is believed by some Reiki adherents to have been a Christian who was looking for more spirituality. "He was a teacher in a Christian university in Kyoto," said Latno, "and a student asked him, How did Jesus heal? And this is when he began his search." Yet having discovered Reiki, "he didn't say that's how Jesus healed, but he said this is how healing comes directly from God," Latno said.

The diocesan priest said that "the Church does not want to exclude the good will of anyone." But "the church is the teacher. And it's up to the bishops and priests, specifically, to make a distinction between what's absolutely essential--and what's pretty, but dangerous."

Yet, to the diocesan priest's knowledge, Bishop Pierre DuMaine, the ordinary of the San Jose diocese since its inception in 1981, has never issued a pastoral statement on the New Age movements so prevalent in his diocese.

The Marianist Center is listed in the Kenedy Official Catholic Directory as a Catholic institution in the San Jose diocese. The San Francisco Faith tried ask the diocesan vicar general, Father Michael Mitchell, about the Catholic identity of the Marianist Center, but he would only refer questions to the Marianists. The Marianists said that questions should be addressed to their provincial superior, Father John Russi, who was in Japan at press time.

Ironically, while a cosmopolitan dialogue towards a more inclusive Catholic identity is deepening in the San Jose diocese, there is one Catholic group likely be excluded, Ratzinger's statements suggest. From a relativist point of view, Catholics who affirm that "there is a binding and valid truth in history in the figure of Jesus Christ," as Cardinal Ratzinger put it, will be accused of "fundamentalism."

"Under the encounter of cultures," Ratzinger said, "relativism appears to be the real philosophy of humanity." Anyone who resists--the "fundamentalist" Catholic--is viewed as thwarting "democracy and tolerance--i.e., the basic imperatives of the human community." "Those who want to stay with the faith of the Bible and the Church see themselves pushed from the start to a no-man's land on the cultural level..."

And on the local church level as well. "People tend to believe what they're taught," said the diocesan priest. "That's the scary thing."

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