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WASHINGTON—The U.S. bishops have issued guidelines that call Reiki therapy, an alternative medicine originating in Japan, unscientific and inappropriate for Catholic institutions.

They outlined the position in "Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy." The guidelines were developed by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' (USCCB) Committee on Doctrine, chaired by Bishop William Lori of Bridgeport, Connecticut. They were approved by the USCCB Administrative Committee, March 24, during its spring meeting in Washington. The Administrative Committee is the authoritative body of the USCCB to approve committee statements.

The document can be found at http://www.usccb.org/dpp/doctrine.htm

The Guidelines describe Reiki as a healing technique "invented in Japan in the late 1800s by Mikao Usui, who was studying Buddhist texts." The guidelines state that "according to Reiki teaching, illness is caused by some kind of disruption or imbalance in one's 'life energy.' A Reiki practitioner effects healing by placing his or her hands in certain positions on the patient's body in order to facilitate the flow of Reiki, the 'universal life energy,' from the Reiki practitioner to the patient."

The Guidelines state that "Reiki lacks scientific credibility" and "has not been accepted by the scientific and medical communities as an effective therapy."

"Reputable scientific studies attesting to the efficacy of Reiki are lacking, as is a plausible scientific explanation as to how it could possibly be efficacious," they state.

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The Guidelines note that "Reiki is frequently described as a 'spiritual' kind of healing as opposed to the common medical procedures of healing using physical means." They assert, however, that there is a radical difference between Reiki therapy and the healing by divine power in which Christians believe: "for Christians the access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Savior, while the essence of Reiki is not a prayer but a technique that is passed down from the 'Reiki Master' to the pupil, a technique that once mastered will reliably produce the anticipated results."

In sum, Reiki therapy "finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief," the Guidelines state.

"For a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems," the Guidelines state. "In terms of caring for one's physical health or the physical health of others, to employ a technique that has no scientific support (or even plausibility) is generally not prudent."

The guidelines warn that in using Reiki for one's spiritual health, "there are important dangers."

"To use Reiki one would have to accept at least in an implicit way central elements of the worldview that undergirds Reiki theory, elements that belong neither to Christian faith nor to natural science. Without justification either from Christian faith or natural science, however, a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man's-land that is neither faith nor science," they state.

"Superstition corrupts one's worship of God by turning one's religious feeling and practice in a false direction," the Guidelines state. "While sometimes people fall into superstition through ignorance, it is the responsibility of all who teach in the name of the Church to eliminate such ignorance as much as possible."

"Since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health care facilities and retreat centers, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy," the Guidelines said.

Report of CNS is at: http://www.catholicnews.com/data/stories/cns/0901448.htm
16C. US bishops: Reiki is dangerous, superstitious
March 27, 2009 http://www.catholicculture.org/news/headlines/index.cfm?storyid=2429

In a document released March 25, the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops blasted Reiki, a practice developed in Japan in the late nineteenth century that has gained acceptance in some Catholic retreat centers and other institutions.

After distinguishing between natural medicine and supernatural healing effected by Christ, the bishops conclude:

Reiki therapy finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief. For a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems. In terms of caring for one's physical health or the physical health of others, to employ a technique that has no scientific support (or even plausibility) is generally not prudent.

The bishops add, “Some forms of Reiki teach of a need to appeal for the assistance of angelic beings or ‘Reiki spirit guides.’ This introduces the further danger of exposure to malevolent forces or powers.”

The statement says it is inappropriate for Catholic hospitals, retreat centers or individuals representing the church, such as chaplains, “to promote or to provide support for Reiki therapy.”

Reiki — pronounced RAY-kee — is a spiritual or metaphysical healing practice invented in Japan in the 1920s that has gained a fairly substantial following in the United States in recent decades. It claims that by laying hands on or above an injured or sick person in a series of positions, a Reiki master or practitioner can draw “universal life energy” into the person and help hasten his or her healing. 79.

Many women in Catholic religious orders have become Reiki masters or practitioners and regularly teach or practice Reiki therapy at their orders’ retreat facilities or spiritual centers around the country. A Web search showed scores of such U.S. centers as well as several retreat centers run by women religious in Canada offering similar programs.

The six-page doctrinal committee statement was approved for publication by the administrative committee of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops at a meeting in Washington in late March.

It says that “a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science.”

The statement says that on the medical level, Reiki is “a technique that has no scientific support — or even plausibility.”

While Christians believe in the efficacy of prayer for healing, they do so with a reliance on divine power, not with the expectation that the person engaged in invoking that power can cause the release of that power, it says.

The statement says reliance on healing techniques that have no foundation either in medical science or Christian faith moves into “the realm of superstition,” which “corrupts one’s worship of God by turning one’s religious feeling and practice in a false direction.”

The Our Lady of the Pines Retreat Center in Fremont, Ohio, sponsored by the Sisters of Mercy of Cincinnati, offers a different take on the practice.

“There are multiple interpretations about Reiki,” the center says on its Web site. “Our retreat center uses a Christian interpretation based on the life, mission and teachings of Jesus Christ. Nothing and no one replaces his power. Reiki here is offered in the context of prayer.”

This year’s course offerings there include Reiki I April 14, Reiki II May 12-13, Reiki III Aug. 18-20 and Karuna Reiki — a trademark course that qualifies participants to be recognized by the International Center for Reiki Training as Karuna Reiki masters — Oct. 19-22.

Mercy Sr. Breta Gorman, a registered Karuna Reiki master at Our Lady of the Pines, declined to comment on the doctrinal committee’s statement, saying that her religious superior has asked order members not to speak to media about it until they had time to research the statement and its implications.

At Mount St. Joseph, just outside Cincinnati, the Sisters of Charity of Cincinnati Spirituality Center offers Reiki therapy as part of its “opportunities for spiritual enrichment to the community through a wide variety of programs.” Staff member Sr. Mary Fran Davisson is described as “a Reiki master and nationally certified, Ohio-licensed massage therapist.” Sr. Maureen Heverin is described as a “level II Reiki healing practitioner.” NCR telephone attempts to reach both were unsuccessful.

Capuchin Fr. Thomas G. Weinandy, executive director of the U.S. bishops’ Secretariat for Doctrine and Pastoral Practices, commented on the Cincinnati Mercy Sisters’ interpretation of Reiki, saying, “If you try to turn it into something that’s authentically Christian, then it’s no longer authentically Reiki. But it seems that if you keep it anywhere authentically Reiki, then it’s incompatible with Christianity.”

He said that the classical Reiki literature reviewed by the bishops’ doctrinal committee places Reiki therapy in a philosophy and theology of “New Age pantheism hugging into the cosmic forces, that sort of thing, that has nothing to do with the Gospel of Jesus Christ. It’s purely a Gnostic kind of therapy.”

Gnosticism refers to a number of heresies in various periods of Christian history that focus on esoteric human knowledge rather than divine grace as a source of salvation.

When asked to compare it with other relaxing techniques offered by alternative therapies, he said, “We don’t condemn relaxing techniques, but this is not just a relaxing technique.”

When NCR asked Weinandy if the committee’s research included any interviews with Catholic practitioners of Reiki, he said it did not. He called the committee’s investigation an “academic study” of how Reiki therapy is understood by its adherents. He said the committee based its conclusions about the incompatibility of Reiki with Catholic teaching on “a purely academic type of research, in the sense that we read books and went to Web sites and we amassed a huge amount of material, but we didn’t interview anybody.”

That answer raised serious questions about how the doctrinal committee’s response to the issue corresponded to current Catholic practices that may differ from a classical Reiki approach.

If Reiki is removed from the metaphysical claims of its founder — drawing on a so-called metaphysical “universal life energy” to accelerate healing of the subject — it might easily be put in the same class as various things like massages, aromatherapy, tai chi and other alternative treatments that claim to improve healing, apart from traditional medicine, by relaxing the patient and creating a more positive psychological healing environment.

Weinandy acknowledged that such other practices are not banned by the church, but he said Reiki moves into a different area of pantheism and Gnosticism with its assertion of a universal life force or energy that Reiki practitioners or masters can reliably manipulate and direct by their hand placements over a patient or subject.

He also said that “it’s obvious, isn’t it?” from Web Google searches that most of the Catholic retreat centers targeted by the doctrinal committee’s statement are run by Catholic orders of women religious.

Women religious who are Reiki masters were reluctant to comment to NCR about the bishops’ document or their future ministries in light of it.
“I don’t feel comfortable about talking about it,” said Millvale, Pa., Franciscan Sr. Mary Jo Mattes, a Reiki master who said she had seen the bishops’ doctrine committee statement but had not yet studied it carefully. 80.
Phone calls to other women religious who are Reiki masters or practitioners at their retreat centers or homes in New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, California and other states were not returned.

Immaculate Heart of Mary Sr. Annmarie Sanders, communications director for the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, said the leadership conference has not addressed the issue raised by the bishops’ doctrinal committee because “no one has asked us to.”

The Vatican is quietly conducting two sweeping investigations of American nuns, a development that has startled and dismayed nuns who fear they are the targets of a doctrinal inquisition. 81.

Nuns were the often-unsung workers who helped build the Roman Catholic Church in this country, planning schools and hospitals and keeping parishes humming. But for the last three decades, their numbers have been declining — to 60,000 today from 180,000 in 1965.

While some nuns say they are grateful that the Vatican is finally paying attention to their dwindling communities, many fear that the real motivation is to reel in American nuns who have reinterpreted their calling for the modern world.

In the last four decades since the reforms of the Second Vatican Council, many American nuns stopped wearing religious habits, left convents to live independently and went into new lines of work: academia and other professions, social and political advocacy and grass-roots organizations that serve the poor or promote spirituality. A few nuns have also been active in organizations that advocate changes in the church like ordaining women and married men as priests.

Some sisters surmise that the Vatican and even some American bishops are trying to shift them back into living in convents, wearing habits or at least identifiable religious garb, ordering their schedules around daily prayers and working primarily in Roman Catholic institutions, like schools and hospitals.

“They think of us as an ecclesiastical work force,” said Sister Sandra M. Schneiders, professor emerita of New Testament and spirituality at the Jesuit School of Theology at Berkeley, in California. “Whereas we are religious, we’re living the life of total dedication to Christ, and out of that flows a profound concern for the good of all humanity. So our vision of our lives, and their vision of us as a work force, are just not on the same planet.”

The more extensive of the two investigations is called an “Apostolic Visitation,” and the Vatican has provided only a vague rationale for it: to “look into the quality of the life” of women’s religious institutes. The visitation is being conducted by Mother Mary Clare Millea, an apple-cheeked American with a black habit and smiling eyes, who is the superior general of her order, the Apostles of the Sacred Heart of Jesus, and lives in Rome.

In an interview in a formal sitting room at her order’s United States headquarters in Hamden, Conn., Mother Clare said she had already met one-on-one with 127 superiors general of women’s orders, many in that room but also in Chicago, Los Angeles, Rome and St. Louis. She is preparing questionnaires to send to each congregation of women and recruiting teams of investigators, mostly nuns and some priests, who will make visits to congregations that she selects. The visitation focuses only on nuns actively engaged in working in society and the church, not cloistered, contemplative nuns.

Mother Clare’s task is to prepare a confidential report to the Vatican on the state of each of about 340 qualified congregations of nuns in the United States, as well as a summary with her recommendations, all of which she hopes to complete by mid-2011.

The investigation was ordered by Cardinal Franc Rodé, head of the Vatican office that deals with religious orders. In a speech in Massachusetts last year, Cardinal Rodé offered barbed criticism of some American nuns “who have opted for ways that take them outside” the church.

Given this backdrop, Sister Schneiders, the professor in Berkeley, urged her fellow sisters to use restraint and caution with the visitation, saying the investigators should be treated as “uninvited guests who should be received in the parlor, not given the run of the house.” She wrote this in a private e-mail message to a few friends, but it became public and was widely circulated.

Mother Clare said she was aware that some women’s institutes “weren’t happy” to hear of the visitation, but that so far about 55 percent had responded in person or in writing.

“It’s an opportunity for us to re-evaluate ourselves, to make our reality known and also to be challenged to live authentically who we say we are,” she said.

Each congregation of nuns will be evaluated based on how well they are “living in fidelity” both to their congregation’s own internal norms and constitution, and to the church’s guidelines for religious life, Mother Clare said. For instance, if a congregation’s stated mission is to serve youth, are the nuns doing that? If they do not live in a convent, are they attending Mass and keeping the sacraments? Are their superiors exercising adequate supervision?

“There’s no intention to make us all identical,” she said.

Church historians said that the Vatican usually ordered an apostolic visitation when a particular institution had gone seriously astray. In the wake of the priest sexual-abuse scandal, the Vatican ordered a visitation of American seminaries. It is now conducting a visitation of the Legionaries of Christ, a men’s order whose founder, the Rev. Marcial Maciel Degollado, sexually abused young seminarians, fathered a child and was accused of financial improprieties. He died in 2008.

But the investigation of American nuns surprised many because there was no obvious precipitating cause.

Sister Janice Farnham, a part-time professor of church history at the Boston College School of Theology and Ministry, said, “Why are the U.S. sisters being singled out, when women religious in other countries are struggling with many issues about the quality of their lives, in the Church and in their societies?”

The visitation could result in some communities of nuns’ being ordered to make changes, but judging from how the Vatican handled previous visitations, those consequences may never become public.

The second investigation of nuns is a doctrinal assessment of the Leadership Conference of Women Religious, an umbrella organization that claims 1,500 members from about 95 percent of women’s religious orders. This investigation was ordered by the Vatican’s Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, which is headed by an American, Cardinal William Levada. 82.

Cardinal Levada sent a letter to the Leadership Conference saying an investigation was warranted because it appeared that the organization had done little since it was warned eight years ago that it had failed to “promote” the church’s teachings on three issues: the male-only priesthood, homosexuality and the primacy of the Roman Catholic Church as the means to salvation.

The letter goes on to say that, “Given both the tenor and the doctrinal content of various addresses” at assemblies the Leadership Conference has held in recent years, the problem has not been fixed.

The Leadership Conference drew the Vatican’s wrath decades ago when its president welcomed Pope John Paul II to the United States with a plea for the ordination of women. But several nuns who have attended the group’s meetings in recent years said they had not heard anything that would provoke the Vatican’s ire.

Officers of the Leadership Conference refused interview requests, but said in an e-mail message that they had one meeting in late May with the investigators, Bishop Leonard P. Blair, of the Diocese of Toledo, and Msgr. Charles Brown from the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith in the Vatican, who voiced the Vatican’s concerns. (Bishop Blair declined to comment). In the fall, they said, they will meet again to respond to the concerns.

“We are looking forward to clarifying some misperceptions,” Sister J. Lora Dambroski, president of the Leadership Conference, said in the e-mail message.

Besides these two investigations, another decree that affected some nuns was issued in March by the Committee on Doctrine of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops. The bishops said that Catholics should stop practicing Reiki, a healing therapy that is used in some Catholic hospitals and retreat centers, and which was enthusiastically adopted by many nuns. The bishops said Reiki is both unscientific and non-Christian.

Nuns practicing reiki and running church reform groups may have finally proved too much for the church’s male hierarchy, said Kenneth Briggs, the author of “Double Crossed: Uncovering the Catholic Church’s Betrayal of American Nuns,” (Doubleday Religion, 2006). Mr. Briggs said of the various investigations: “For some in the leadership circles in Rome and elsewhere, it’s a piece of unfinished business. It’s an effort to bring about a re-establishment of a very traditional, very conservative set of standards for what convent life is supposed to be.”

This article has been revised to reflect the following correction:

Fr Pat Collins CM summarizes the conclusions of a recent report on Reiki brought out by the American bishops

Over the years a number of people have asked me what I think about Reiki. To tell the truth, more often than not, I have had to admit that I do not know much about the subject, but that it sounds a bit like a New Age form of healing to me. Recently, I was delighted to find that, in March 2009, the doctrinal committee of the American hierarchy, consisting of eight archbishops and bishops, had published a lucid and helpful document entitled Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy.

It begins by echoing the teaching of Sirach 38:1-15, when it says there are two kinds of healing, natural and divine. On the one hand, we can be healed by human means such as surgery, psychotherapy and medicine, while on the other hand God can heal us by means of such things as the anointing of the sick and the charism of healing. In this connection the bishops refer to the Instruction on Prayers for Healing which was published by the then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger in 2000, and to par. 1508 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. The bishops point out that charity demands that we should not neglect natural means of healing people because even the most intense prayers do not always obtain the healing of all illnesses.

A Zen Buddhist monk, Mikao Usui, discovered Reiki in the mid nineteenth century in Japan. At the end of a 21-day meditation on Mount Kurama he achieved a spiritual awakening and received the knowledge of Reiki, i.e., how to attune to the universal lifeforce or energy. According to Reiki, sickness is ultimately due to an imbalance of the universal life force in the human body. So a Reiki practitioner brings about healing by placing his or her hands in certain key positions on the patient’s body in order to facilitate the flow of Reiki or universal energy. Rather than being the ultimate source of this healing energy, the healer is merely a channel for something that exists everywhere and in everything, including the healer. To become a practitioner of Reiki healing a person must receive an “initiation,” or “attunement” from a Reiki master, i.e. someone who has reached a high level of attunement as a result of completing an advanced stage of training.

Is Reiki a Natural Means of Healing? When one reads books and articles on Reiki it becomes clear that its beliefs are mainly expressed in spiritual and religious terms of a pantheistic kind. Such literature is filled with references to God, the Goddess, the “divine healing power,” and the “divine mind.” The life force is described as being directed by the “Higher intelligence,” or the “divine consciousness.” Furthermore Reiki healers make use of Japanese sacred symbols and engage in religious type ceremonies. Reiki is often referred to as a way of living governed by five ethical precepts. As the bishops point out, in some respects Reiki is similar to a religion. 83.
That said, many practitioners such as nurses, use Reiki as a purely natural form of healing. However, there is no empirical evidence to show that this form of alternative medicine has any good effects. In fact it lacks credibility in so far as the universal life energy that Reiki talks about is unknown to modern science. As the bishops observe, the justification for this form of therapy must necessarily come from something other than science.

Reiki and the Healing Power of Christ

As I know from personal experience, some modern day Christians such as priests, nuns and charismatics, try to harmonise Reiki with Christian healing. To do so they have to accept, at least in an implicit way, the central tenets of the worldview that underpins Reiki healing. Many of these tenets are incompatible with Christian thinking. This is so, for instance, because Christians see divine healing as a free gift of God’s grace, which is not within human control, whereas Reiki practitioners believe, in a Pelagian way, that healing can be reliably experienced as a result of human insight and effort. The American document points out, “the fact remains that for Christians access to divine healing is by prayer to Christ as Lord and Saviour, while the essence of Reiki is not prayer but a technique that is passed down from the ‘Reiki Master’ to the pupil, a technique that once mastered will reliably produce the anticipated results.” Apparently, some practitioners of Reiki, who are influenced by New Age thinking, consult with angelic beings. It e r c e and spirit guides when they are ministering healing to others. The American bishops point out that this practice can open a channel to sinister demonic influences. They observe, “This introduces the further danger of exposure to malevolent forces or powers.” This point may explain why I have heard quite a number of people say that, having received Reiki healing, they developed all kinds of problems ranging from depression to headaches and physical ailments. Indeed, a man who had been a Reiki master rang me up one day to say that he had heard me warning about the dangers of this form of therapy in one of my recorded talks. He told me that he had come to see the truth of my words from his own personal experience and that of his clients. I was pleasantly surprised when he revealed that he was giving up Reiki because he had discovered that it sometimes had a very dark side.

While some practitioners attempt to Christianise Reiki, in a syncretistic way, by adding a prayer to Christ and using Christian symbols, the American bishops point out that these cosmetic changes do not alter the essentially pagan nature of this form of therapy. For these reasons, Reiki cannot be identified with what Christians call healing by divine grace.

“Reiki is operating in the realm of superstition, the no man’s land that is neither faith nor science”

The bishops conclude by observing that “for a Catholic to believe in Reiki therapy presents insoluble problems.” They say that a Catholic who puts his or her trust in Reiki ends up “operating in the realm of superstition, the noman’s land that is neither faith nor science.” The bishops warn that superstition corrupts the person’s worship of God by turning religious feeling and practice in a false direction. They explain that while “sometimes people fall into superstition through ignorance, it is the responsibility of all who teach in the name of the Church, to eliminate such ignorance as much as possible.” That was the main reason why I wrote this short article.

The document ends with these salutary words, “Since Reiki therapy is not compatible with either Christian teaching or scientific evidence, it would be inappropriate for Catholic institutions, such as Catholic health facilities and retreat centres, or persons representing the Church, such as Catholic chaplains, to promote or provide support for Reiki therapy.”

(Guidelines for Evaluating Reiki as an Alternative Therapy is available online at:

The complementary therapy known as Reiki is considered from a Catholic perspective. The irreducible content of the

practice of Reiki is identified as putative manipulation of the healing energy known as ki by practitioners initiated through

an attunement ritual using secret symbols. Some general problems of describing ki in the language of Catholic theology

are discussed. Certain critiques of Reiki by Christian groups are found to be inadequate on the grounds of attributing guilt

by association, or targeting beliefs not necessarily held by all Reiki practitioners. Nevertheless, attempting to manipulate ki

according to the principles of Reiki is found not to accord with Christian revelation, and the necessity of practitioners

being initiated by the use of secret symbols is particularly problematic. Some recommendations are made concerning the

pastoral consequences of this conclusion: avoidance of promoting Reiki in a church context, appropriate support for

Christians who have received or practiced Reiki themselves, and addressing the provision of Reiki through the public

health care system.

1. Introduction

The Eastern “healing art” known as Reiki is growing in popularity in the West, and is widely available in Britain.1

A number of Christian groups have become concerned about Reiki and published pamphlets2 warning of the dangers they

believe to be inherent in the technique. In my own pastoral experience, Catholic parishioners in England and Wales are

having recourse to, and sometimes themselves offering, the practice of Reiki; therefore, it is important to have a well-

grounded theological response. If the practice of Reiki is incompatible with Christianity, it is to be rejected; otherwise it

should be regarded as a healing gift from God, to be welcomed in the same way as Western medicine.

84.


2. Essential Aspects of Reiki

Like most alternative and complementary therapies, Reiki is not monolithic. Most sources attribute the origin of modern

Reiki to one Mikao Usui (1865-1926), but offer their own variations.3 I have chosen as a typical example of teaching on

Reiki, the website of the UK Reiki Federation. Their “What is Reiki?” page,4 with very minor variations, reproduces the

content of a page they offered in October 2002,5 in which a National Consultation of Study Groups of the UK Reiki

Federation sought to converge on a text, prefaced with the following:

A complete layperson's explanation of Reiki is needed that can be used in part or whole, for official documentation and for telephone enquiries with the Federation. It must be general enough to encompass all styles, whilst still being informative.

This indicates the Reiki community’s acknowledgement of their own diversity, and indicates that the current statement of

the UK Reiki Federation is likely to represent a broad cross section of UK practice (though there is also an alternative UK

body, the Reiki Association6).

The Reiki Federation’s web page makes four key assertions:

. There exists a “natural healing energy [which] works on every level, not just the physical, and promotes the body’s regenerative self healing ability”. This energy is known as 'ki' in Japan, 'chi' in China, and 'prana' in India.

. The Reiki practitioner serves as a channel for this energy; the client’s body draws in what it needs.

. Reiki practitioners must become attuned in order to receive and act as a channel for this energy.

. The use of symbols (here defined only as “devices used by Reiki practitioners”) is an integral part of such attunement or initiation.

It is clear from usage in the various sources that the name “Reiki” itself is sometimes applied to the energy itself, and

sometimes to the practice of channelling it. The presentation by the Reiki Association7 concurs with the first two points, and elsewhere8 confirms the concepts of initiation and symbols.

3. The Problem of Ki Energy

There is a widespread belief in the East (prevalent in at least India, Japan and China) of a form of “energy” which is believed to flow through the human body and can become unbalanced; in Japanese, this is called ki. Many Eastern practices invoke such energy – traditional acupuncture, reflexology, Tai Chi, yoga and qigong would be examples. As a theory or model of the behaviour of the human body, the idea of ki may have merit – especially since it seems useful enough to be accepted in so many parts of the East. Is ki purely a placebo, a meaningless elaboration of the feel-good factor which works whenever one human being invests time and energy in caring for another, or for one’s own self?9 Is ki a description of a natural phenomenon which people call “spiritual” because they do not understand its true nature? Or is ki truly spiritual, a reality pertaining to the human soul rather than the body?

This paper aims to apply a Catholic ontological and moral analysis to the practice of Reiki. This is complicated by the fact

that the categories of Catholic analysis do not map neatly into an Eastern worldview. In the dualistic Christian paradigm, a human person is a unity of body and soul; the realm of the body is natural (physical), and the realm of the soul is spiritual (supernatural). From an Eastern perspective, the whole human person – body, mind and spirit – would be regarded as natural, and so care must be taken in interpreting the word “natural” in references such as the “natural healing energy” quoted above.

Energy has a precise meaning in the language of science: it can be measured, and converted from one form into another.

In the realm of spiritual phenomena, the word “energy” is used analogously: something which flows and produces an effect at its point of destination. The Christian tradition recognises three possible sources of spiritual energy: God, the human soul, and evil spirits. There is no category of detached energy or life-force: the Hebrew Bible sees the life of living creatures as due to the ruach, the breath of God which at times appears as a “life-force” and other times as almost an independent being in God’s service.10 In the New Testament tradition, this is understood as a divine person, the Holy

Spirit; and another Divine Person, the Word incarnate in Jesus Christ, is identified as “life”11 and the one “through whom all things have their being”.12

In this paper, I am not going to attempt to identify the true (ontological) nature of ki. This would be a vast undertaking requiring an analysis of many practices from numerous Eastern countries, and possibly also empirical tests of the usefulness of ki as a model. Fortunately, as demonstrated below, it will be sufficient to consider beliefs about ki as held by

Reiki practitioners in order to compose a moral response to Reiki. Here I shall merely indicate the more general moral implications which would follow if the true nature of ki were resolved in the various possible ways:

. If it were shows that there were no evidence that ki was real, any further attempt to manipulate it would be superstitious, a sin under article 2111 of the Catechism of the Catholic Church.

. It may be the case that there are properties of the human body which Western medicine has not yet come to terms with. If the concept of ki is shown to encode such a property of the physical body, then we may undertake exercises understood to “manipulate ki” within the limits validated by science without any special moral problems.

. If ki were established to be spiritual, and attributed to God as its source, then nothing alien to God could be ascribed to it. But in this case, the only assertions which could be made about ki could be those which do not contradict the contents of the Deposit of Faith insofar as they concern the nature and activities of the Divine Persons.

In any case, techniques to manipulate ki would constitute the sin of “tempting God”13 except where clearly founded in revelation from the Triune God.

. If ki were established to be spiritual, but did not meet the above conditions for being due to the Triune God, then its source must be the human soul (psychic energy) or evil spirits. 85.

The invocation of evil spirits is both sinful and potentially dangerous, and clearly forbidden to Christians. But even if ki were shown to be a psychic power, its exercise would not be permitted to Christians: Article 2117 of the Catechism forbids as “gravely contrary to the virtue of religion” all “attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one's service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health”. The scope of what is meant by “occult” here clearly includes psychic powers, since the same article later emphasises the gravity of recourse to demons as a special case.

In the remainder of this paper, we shall consider the question of what Reiki practitioners believe they are doing when they attempt to manipulate ki. The description above makes a baseline definition clear: They believe they are channelling a spiritual energy which comes from beyond themselves, into their clients. An individual Reiki practitioner may, or may not, espouse the belief that this energy is an all-pervasive monistic force;14 Western practitioners with limited training, especially if Christian in personal faith or cultural background, may hold a more syncretistic view. I shall offer my own moral critique of Reiki shortly, but first we shall examine criticism made by other Christians.

4. Inadequate Critiques of Reiki

In the absence of scholarly, peer-reviewed material in this area, the available critiques on Reiki are documents published by various concerned groups. Three have come into my possession: one by the Maranatha community, an ecumenical

Christian grouping based in Manchester; another from a Catholic group in Dublin; and the third is a briefer document, Christian in tone but not in explicit content, by a group of ten concerned medical practitioners from Stockport. Addresses for all these sources are given in the endnotes. A particular difficulty in accepting the findings of all these documents is the diversity of practice within Reiki acknowledged above: their critique may apply to the version of Reiki which they have

investigated, but may not apply to every practitioner.

A common line of argument found in these documents, as in much Christian literature opposed to New Age practices, is “guilt by association”. This seeks to establish that the person who invented/promoted a particular technique was a practitioner of occult arts; or that the technique in question is being promoted by a group which also offer practices clearly contrary to Christian morality; or simply that the technique originates from another religion. All of these are rightly treated as warning signs that the technique must be scrutinised carefully, and are of value in apologetics for building an emotional case to urge listeners to be wary of the technique; but none of them actually taint it. Catholic theology15 “rejects nothing of what is true and holy” from any of the world’s religions. An academic critique must consider the practice of Reiki itself.

“Guilt by Association” arguments include claims that Mr Usui was involved in fortune telling and a member of a spiritualist group;16 assertions that Reiki groups falsely claim Mr Usui was a Christian scholar or minister;17 and quotes such as: “Reiki training is offered at Stonehenge and Glastonbury … a web-site ‘Reiki healing Glastonbury’ also offers links to Tarot and astrology readings”18 or: “It should be noted that many Reiki practitioners are also involved in a range of other psychic activities.”19 All of these give a Christian cause for concern, but none build a substantial argument.

Some Reiki practitioners, it is alleged, explicitly acknowledge that “spirit guides” assist the performance of Reiki,20 or that

the energy is directed to the right place by a higher intelligence.21 Where this is the case, then the practice of Reiki is certainly mediumship, a practice forbidden22 and spiritually dangerous. But both the Maranatha23 and Dublin24 documents cite Diane Stein’s book Essential Reiki as acknowledging that the presence of spirit guides is not apparent to those practicing Reiki at the lowest level. If first level Reiki practitioners are not aware of such guides, and do not invoke them, can their practice of Reiki fairly be called mediumship? And is the involvement of such guides proven, or merely a belief held by some Reiki masters? Such questions undermine the universal applicability of critical statements such as “Practitioners are actually spiritist mediums who channel spiritual powers in the same way as mediums in séances.”25

“Many Reiki practitioners use dowsing to identify their [clients’] problems.”26 If some form of divination is used to advise bout appropriate treatment, this is a valid objection to Christian participation – but the objection is to the diagnostic method, not the application of Reiki.

“Reiki dismisses the concept of a personal God.”27 Some Reiki practitioners may do so, especially if they hold a monistic belief that the energy they channel is part of the ultimate force which governs the universe.28 But in my pastoral experience, Christian Reiki practitioners may claim they are channelling energy from God; an individual practitioner may have reached a syncretistic blend of prior personal beliefs and Reiki formation.

“Reiki teachers are first asked to accept five basic innocuous principles … [which] are Buddhist in origin: ... For today only, do not anger, do not worry. Be grateful and do your work with appreciation. Be kind to all living things.” 29 These principles may be of Buddhist origin, but of themselves are not opposed to Christianity. The difference is in the world-view which informs their practice: a Christian seeks God’s grace for what the Buddhist attempts to achieve by force of will. And to whom can a Buddhist be grateful? Since the text itself acknowledges that there are other formulations of the principles, critiquing them does not constitute a critique of Reiki.

5. Problematic Universal Features of Reiki

Two defences may be offered by Christian Reiki practitioners: that the treatment is natural; or that it is a spiritual technique which should not be rejected because the Catholic Church rejects nothing true and holy from other religions.

We have already seen that the term “natural” in this context does not equate to “non-spiritual”, and that Reiki practitioners generally believe they are manipulating an energy which affects both body and spirit. They do not generally believe (at least in the case of low-level practitioners) they are calling upon a personal being, nor do they believe they are exercising psychic powers to release something sourced in themselves. Given our earlier general discussion of ki, we must ask if they could be exercising something good which has its origin in the Triune God. 86.
Luke 11:11-13 tells us that, as a human father will not give bad gifts but good things to his children, so God will “give the Holy Spirit to those who ask”. At face value, this seems to be a strong promise of protection, that no harmful power will be received when the true God is sought; and the nearest equivalent to ki in Christian thinking is the Holy Spirit. But

Scripture must be read in context, and elsewhere affirms the importance of honouring only the one true God, and testing the spirits.30 Nowhere does Scripture teach us to “channel energy” in the way characteristic of Reiki; and in fact, presuming that God will assist in a way which He has not revealed to be His will constitutes the sin of “tempting God”.31 Furthermore, given reason to doubt that God has sanctioned the manipulation of ki, channelling Reiki constitutes the kind of taming of spiritual energy (actual or attempted) which falls short of explicit recourse to demons but which is nevertheless forbidden by article 2117 of the Catechism.

Of even greater significance is the process of initiation32 which Reiki practitioners must undergo, with the use of secret “symbols” for initiation. First level practitioners are initiated by having the symbols made over them, though they are not taught the symbols themselves; these are taught at the second level. If these symbols originate in a non-Christian mystical experience undergone by Mr Usui, as claimed by the Christian anti-Reiki literature,33 then any attempt to use them (including the attunement to become a first-level initiate) constitutes a use of knowledge obtained by divination – though the first-level initiate may not be aware of this at the time. The mere fact of needing to be initiated rather than simply being taught to manipulate ki gives Reiki the character of a ritual rather than a therapy.

Since the attunement enables the initiate to connect to the source of ki, it is religious in the etymological sense that religare means to reconnect.

A possible defence might be that ki exists and of its very nature can only be manipulated by a person who has been enabled to do so by a ki manipulator, so initiation is not sinister but logically necessary. If eventually ki were found to be a natural phenomenon with this very property, this approach would be defensible, though it would need to account for how the original manipulator (Mr Usui) acquired his ability to do so. This, however, smacks of special pleading given that ki is believed to be spiritual by Reiki practitioners; one who submits to a Reiki initiation allows spiritual authority to be exercised over oneself. Since the authority is not clearly sourced in the Triune God, this act of submission must constitute idolatry; and the indispensability of initiation34 is the clearest sign of why Reiki cannot be compatible with Christianity.

6. A Pastoral Response to Reiki

Given that we have established that recourse to Reiki is forbidden by Catholic moral principles, we can assert that soliciting or practicing Reiki is always wrong in the sight of God, though only formally sinful to the degree that the persons involved realise the wrongness of their actions. Evidence from those exercising the ministry of deliverance and exorcism indicates that deliberate and informed choices to resort to non-Christian spiritual powers can result in the form of demonic attack known as obsession or infestation, and that uninformed exposure to such powers (as might be the case with a person who receives Reiki having been assured that it is a simple form of “healing touch”35) can result in the lesser form of demonic irritation known as oppression.36 Anecdotal evidence indicates that involvement in Reiki has led to Christians needing deliverance, although the nature of the cases makes it difficult to publish evidence. It must be stressed, however, that demonic attack is a vulnerability, not a certainty, for those who have exposed themselves in these ways.

It is clearly not appropriate for Reiki to be promoted in any way under Catholic auspices: it should not be offered on church property,37 nor by clergy or members of religious orders, nor should it be promoted in any kind of church literature. It is not necessary to argue that there is no such thing as ki or that Reiki is ineffective; pastors and superiors may prescind from the questions of whether it works, and the mechanism, by simply stressing that Christians are committed to turn to no spiritual source other than the Triune God, who has not revealed Reiki as a means of harnessing his power.

Opposition to Reiki can be turned into an opportunity for evangelisation: the emphasis can be placed less on what is forbidden, and more on the true healing power of Christ which can be accessed through the sacraments, through the pastoral care mechanisms of the faith community, and through explicitly Christian healing prayer ministries.

In the case of Christians who have received or practiced Reiki, sacramental confession is always appropriate as a means of coming to term’s with one’s own wrongdoing, even the case of one for whom ignorance may have precluded formal sin.

The confessor should stand ready to pray for deliverance from oppressive spiritual influences (this may be done inaudibly); under current Vatican directives,38 if there is evidence of obsession (often manifested in the form of strong recurrent temptation in a particular area), prayer for deliverance from this is reserved to the diocesan exorcist.

Preachers should consider whether to publicly warn against recourse to Reiki in their homilies; there are many texts about worshipping God alone or the healing power of Jesus Christ which could provide an appropriate opportunity. Pastors may consider the implications of presenting such teaching if a member of the congregation is makes their living as a Reiki practitioner; what support might the Christian community offer if a member must be challenged to give up their livelihood for the sake of the Gospel?

Reiki is now offered in some hospitals and health centres, and it may not be helpful to lodge appeals with secular authorities on the basis that Reiki might actually invoke evil spirits. The authorities may truthfully reply that Reiki practitioners deny attempting to invoke evil spirits, and clients genuinely feel better after receiving Reiki. The best that might be sought realistically in the secular arena is a clear labelling of Reiki as a spiritual technique in all relevant literature and publicity; it is up to the Churches to remind Christians that they must turn to no spiritual power other than

Jesus Christ, His Father and the Holy Spirit. 87.

7. Conclusion

Reiki practitioners believe that they are invoking a spiritual energy, ki, which has healing properties. Even if ki exists as a natural phenomenon not yet explained by science, the practitioners attempt to manipulate ki in the belief that it is spiritual. The Catholic Church rejects nothing “true and holy” from other religions. The truth about Reiki, however, in the sense of whether it works at all, would demand a clinical trial to demonstrate its efficacy; another aspect of truth demands a full understanding of ki, which is beyond the scope of this paper. The “holiness” of Reiki depends on whether or not it can be shown to honour and call upon the Triune God to the exclusion of all other spiritual powers; since this cannot be demonstrated, the exercise of Reiki constitutes a sin of “tempting God” and is unholy. The practice of Reiki therefore constitutes a forbidden manipulation of spiritual powers, and renders both practitioner and client vulnerable to attack by evil spirits.

The rejection of Reiki poses numerous pastoral problems: the exclusion of Reiki from Catholic auspices, pre-emptive advice to Christians not to become involved; appropriate challenge and pastoral care (including deliverance, where necessary) for those already involved; provision of a Christian healing ministry as a positive alternative to Reiki; and advocacy to prevent Christians being misled into accepting Reiki in a secular (healthcare) context.

Endnotes (incorporating Bibliography)

1 See, for instance, the “practitioner list” of the UK Reiki Federation: http://www.reikifed.co.uk/pub/dir/counties.shtml; also a short list at http://www.reiki4u.free-online.co.uk/healerdirectory.htm. All websites cited here were accessed on August 12th/13th 2004 except where indicated.

2 Should a Catholic use “Reiki Healing”! / The Truth About Reiki – “A WARNING TO CATHOLICS”. Published by: Catholic

Response to the New Age, PO Box 8340, Rathmines, Dublin 6, Ireland (hereafter, “Dublin”); Maranatha Briefing – REIKI. April 2002, The Maranatha Community, 102 Irlam Road, Flixton, Manchester M41 6JT (hereafter, “Maranatha”);

unpublished lecture notes. Also F. MacNutt, Deliverance from Evil Spirits: A Practical Manual, Chosen Books, 1995, pp. 67-74.