Catholic and Enjoying It!
Some time ago, Tom Kreitzberg formulated the above, stating:
Whenever a person appeals to quantum physics as the basis for a theological or religious principle, he is making an ass of himself.
The latest demonstration of this principle (or perhaps a corollary of it) is found in the National Catholic Reporter, in which the following bafflegab appears:
…Judy Cannato’s thoughts on morphic resonance from her book The Field of Compassion came to mind.
Now, Rupert Sheldrake’s biological theory that “like attracts like,” would seem to be a Universe away from a Dr. Seuss story, but is it? According to Cannato:“[G]enetic material alone cannot account for the development of living systems. Sheldrake proposes that systems are surrounded by non-visible fields that carry information or memory from one generation to the next, thus making a new behavior patterns easier to learn. …The human person is a field of energy and information rooted in the body but extending out from the body, interacting with the energy and information of others. None of us is a discreet, separate unit, but an integrated system of interactions and relationships connected to all.”
Cannato suggests that we can alter our energy and information fields by the choices we make…and “can become increasing aware of who we are and how we influence our environment, and that we can and must make choices that are life-giving for all.”
Using the image of the morphogenic field as a template, she says, “we can look at the mission of Jesus. Although he never could have used these words, Jesus was about creating a morphogenic field, one in which love is the standard operating procedure and genuine concern for the other is the behavioral norm.”
I’m sure the person who wrote this is a very nice person. I expect I would like the person who wrote this and that they wouldn’t intentionally harm a flea. But I would also say that this very nice person is very muddled and that nonsense about morphogenic fields is the sort of thing bruited by a New Age dilettante who doesn’t want to just deal with the Christian revelation as it is. Such bafflegab is the hobby of upscale suburbanites with a horror of The Same Old Thing. It’s a form of snobbery.
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