'Subtle Seductions' and Spiritual Drift
From Harry Potter services to yoga and New Age spirituality, confusion keeps getting packaged as evangelization in the Catholic world.
A Catholic parish in Germany announced an ecumenical “Harry Potter” church service. It is not entirely clear what the service will involve beyond the fact that it’s ecumenical, which is promoted as outreach to Catholics and non-Catholics alike. Church officials defended it as evangelization; critics said it crossed a clear line. Yet, this is not an isolated incident.
It fits a pattern the Church has been confronting for years.
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We’ve been seeing these flirtations with the occult or paganism in local churches for years, causing Bishops and even the Vatican to intervene when these practices were promoted in sacred settings.
“Behind Harry Potter hides the signature of the king of darkness.”
-Fr. Gabriele Amorth
These types of events import non-Christian spiritual frameworks or distort peoples’ understanding of the nature of prayer, and true worship.
In the United States, the bishops formally warned Catholic institutions against Reiki, concluding that it rests on spiritual assumptions incompatible with Christian belief.
In Spain, bishops publicly cautioned that Zen meditation and modern mindfulness movements are not forms of Christian prayer, warning that they replace a God-centered spirituality with techniques focused inward, rather than on God.
“It is good that you enlighten people about Harry Potter, because those [books] are subtle seductions which act unnoticed and…deeply distort Christianity in the soul, before it can grow properly.”
-Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (Benedict XVI) 2003
Other bishops have issued similar warnings.
In Ireland and the UK, bishops and pastors have discouraged or prohibited yoga and mindfulness programs in Catholic schools and church facilities, warning that practices rooted in pagan or occult spirituality risk being treated as compatible with Christian prayer and spirituality.
These aren’t fringe concerns.
They are recurring pastoral interventions responding to recurring problems.
At a higher level, the Vatican has addressed this issue directly.
Official Vatican documents—Orationis Formas (1989) and Jesus Christus, Aquae Vivae Lator (2003) —and have warned against mixing Christian prayer with Eastern or New Age spiritual practices, cautioning that this kind of borrowing from alternative traditions blurs or distorts what Christian prayer actually is and who it is directed toward.
None of this requires panic. I can hear it already, “Vatican II, Vatican II, Oh my!!!). God’s faithful have been drifting out of the lanes since Exodus. The thing to focus on is this.
This is a concern the Church has, and addresses—The Church doesn’ overlook or ignore it.
Occult or pagan spirituality is completely incompatible with Christian spirituality and Worship.
Sacred spaces are to be properly respected (Canon 1210 CIC: in a sacred place “only those things are to be permitted which serve to exercise or promote worship, piety, and religion,”)
The Church doesn’t lack imagination, symbolism, or depth. Healthy Catholic spirituality and culture is enough; in fact it’s superior! Let’s not seek anything “more” than that.
Don’t flirt with paganism, or the occult, and discourage or forbid members of your family from doing it. God sees. God notices. And so does the enemy, who is courted through those practices.
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A X Spaces session talking about my research process, some things that concerned me about the reporting on this issue, and what Catholics should, and shouldn’t pay attention to.
Some Catholic news outlets are reporting this in a way that suggests the church is somehow being done up to look like the great hall in the Harry Potter books. I think that’s a stretch.
There have been no public details that state that explicitly, not even from the Parish. What we do get from the Parish looks like illusions to things at Hogwarts in the novels but it looked time like marketing/speak, not a description of what attendees could expect. So be careful not to take this story too far.
I encourage readers to focus on what I offer here and not on the sensationalism you may get elsewhere.
The amount that these things subtly creep in places is what bugs me most.
I actually enjoy yoga as a stretching practice, but I recall one where the girl was talking about breathing in prana, etc. and I was like, “how on earth are you so comfortable just taking a little snippet from an eastern religion you probably don’t understand and dropping it on a bunch of American strangers who you also want money from?!”