'Catholics and the New Age' Book Review
Pacwa, Mitch. Catholics and the New Age. Ann Arbor, Mich: Servant, 1992.
In Catholics and the New Age, Father Mitch Pacwa takes a hermeneutical approach to disprove various New Age doctrines. He also utilizes his first hand experience experimenting with the New Age Movement as a young Priest. While he does also incorporate scientific study into his arguments, his lack of sourcing and the fact that he wrote over thirty years ago means that much of the science espoused can no longer be considered compelling evidence.
The book starts with an incredibly convincing narrative. In the first few sentences of the introduction, Fr. Pacwa details the various workshops that were being held at Catholic Churches and Centers across the country. A few examples- “A Catholic Women’s College offers workshops in Wicca (witchcraft) and the goddess within.”, and “The sisters staff ‘The Christine Center for Meditation’, teaching yoga, astrology, and Tarot card readings.” successfully serve to shock the reader and cause one to wonder what on earth was going on in the Catholic Church in the nineties.
Throughout the book, it is evident that Fr. Pacwa is painting a painful picture of a spiritual movement within the Church that has gone sideways. It seems that in 1992, the Catholic laity were seeking spiritual support beyond what the Church offered, and the New Age Movement answered the call. However, with the movement’s emphasis on pantheism, the proclaimed divinity of each individual person, and the denial of the existence of sin- the New Age Movement set otherwise devout Catholics at an irreconcilable distance from Church teachings. Fr. Pacwa releases this book as a counter-attack, and calls on the faithful to denounce the New Age Movement in favor of the Church’s teachings. He states, “Today the weak link is the lack of understanding of our faith” and encourages the faithful to learn Church teachings, study scripture, and be prepared to respond to their New Age Counterparts. He also shares his personal story of embracing the movement, and admits, “I bought into many ideas and practices which are now termed New Age during my college years-and I regret it.”
If one looks around the Catholic Church today, 30 years later, it would seem this counter attack was somewhat successful. Any Catholic organizations offering retreats that smell of the New Age are publicly denounced. Fr. Richard Rohr, OFM, who featured positively in the book, is now considered ‘spiritually dangerous’ by Catholic apologist, Tom Nash.
However, Fr. Pacwa does not acknowledge that there is anything potentially beneficial about what he learned. As a result of this black and white position- he often contradicts himself. After sharing the details of a retreat he attended which combined Oriental meditation techniques with Ignatian Spirituality, Fr. Pacwa admits, “A change in the direction of the retreat, and the rest of my spiritual life, occurred when I pictured Jesus coming toward me.” He follows with several pages clarifying that in everything he tried (including recreational drug use), Fr. Pacwa was trying to become ‘worthy’ of God’s love. Those following pages are essentially a confession of his own lack of prior knowledge regarding the true person of Jesus. He attempts to blame the New Age Movement for his lapses, but one cannot help but wonder if he had ever really known the God whom he clearly, deeply loved. The ultimate irony is that despite writing over two hundred pages on the errors of the New Age Movement, it was in a ‘New Age-esque’ retreat that Fr. Pacwa encountered the Son of God.
‘Catholics and the New Age’ is a highly readable book that shares Fr. Pacwa’s journey through the New Age Movement, which was apparently taking the Church by a storm in the eighties and nineties. It was very clearly written for the laity as a sort of handbook to defend the faith from what Fr. Pacwa deemed as heretical controversies to the faith.
While he adeptly quotes scripture as his main defense against the movement, I did not find his arguments against Astrology compelling. For example, he retold the story of the Magi, whom he had previously thought were Zoroastrian astrologers (an assumption long held by members of the Church but that has later been disproved by a fellow Catholic Priest, Father Dwight Longenecker in ‘The Mystery of the Magi’). In Fr. Pacwa’s retelling, he notes, “The star only brought the magi as far as Jerusalem and Herod the murderer, which indicates astrology’s limits.” Now we know that the star was not in fact a star at all, but an astrological configuration which could not be seen by the naked eye. Fr. Longenecker states, “... the “star” was not a spectacular astronomical display but an alignment of planets that astrologers interpreted as a sign that a child who would rule over the Jewish people was about to be born.” Unfortunately, this is not the only lapse in scholarship from Fr. Pacwa.
It is a combination of Fr. Pacwa’s poor scholarship and fundamentalist opinions regarding the New Age, despite the fact that those exact practices led him into an ever deeper relationship with Christ, which leads me to hesitate in recommending Catholics and the New Age.
Bibliography:
Pacwa, Mitch. Catholics and the New Age. Ann Arbor, Mich: Servant, 1992.
Nash, Tom. “A Primer on Richard Rohr.” Catholic Answers. Accessed July 22, 2024. https://www.catholic.com/qa/a-primer-on-richard-rohr.
Longenecker, Dwight. Mystery of the Magi: The Quest to Identify the Three Wise Men. First Edition. Washington, D.C: Regnery History, 2017.