You heard it here first! and here’s the url to prove it! http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/mar/31/us-catholic-bishops-reiki
Proving how scared they are – particularly of empowered women healers and leaders, I expect – Catholic bishops in the US are banning Reiki. Here’s a quote from the story: “Reiki, an alternative Japanese therapy with a growing band of followers in the west, is “unscientific” and “inappropriate” for use in Catholic institutions, according to America’s bishops.
Guidelines issued by the committee on doctrine at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops warn healthcare workers and chaplains that the therapy “lacks scientific credibility” and could expose people to “malevolent forces”.”
I haven’t seen the story on this side of the pond – the link a friend sent me is from the Guardian in the UK.
I wonder what the nuns at Mt. St. Joe who teach Reiki are going to do about this…. that will be interesting to see. And I’m wondering about the mental weirdness involved in call Reiki ‘unscientific’ and then talking about exposure to ‘malevolent forces’.
This is, of course, exactly what happens during a paradigm shift. For a long time, the old forces ignore the changes coming into the culture. When they notice (always too late), they begin to attack. The nice thing is that this attack will bring a lot of attention to Reiki, and even more people will experience how easy it is for us to heal and be healed by each other, without the intervention of big institutions.
And then one day, the world shifts. And instead of being outside the mainstream, Reiki becomes part of the everyday healing spectrum, used by medical personnel and all the rest of us. With, probably, the Catholic Church bringing up the back of the Bell curve.