Bishops say Reiki is totally bogus
Look, if you’re going to use spiritual tools for medial purposes, do it right. It’s just silly to use the wrong kind. Any fule kno that.
The US Conference of Catholic Bishops (USCCB) has warned Roman Catholics to shun the eastern healing art of Reiki because it lacks scientific credibility and is dangerous to Christian spiritual health. “Reiki therapy finds no support either in the findings of natural science or in Christian belief,” said the USCCB doctrine committee in a document issued Thursday…”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,” the bishops said in a statement.
Right. So if you’re a Christian and you have an abscess or cholera or a broken arm, the thing you do is you pray to Christ as Lord and Savior, and that will save you all the trouble and expense of taking medications or wearing a cast. This advice has all the scientific credibility anyone could possibly need; it is well known that prayer has a 100% success rate in the cure of all manner of illness and injury.
To use Reiki is to operate “in the realm of superstition, the no-man’s-land that is neither faith nor science,” the bishops warned, urging Catholic healthcare institutions, retreats and chaplains to ditch the therapy.
Catholic healthcare institutions. There are such things? With doctors and medications and all? So they don’t use just prayer then? But I don’t understand – why not? If Christians believe in the healing by divine power, then why do they have sciencey healthcare institutions too? Why do they use both? Isn’t that going against God’s will? If the prayers don’t work, isn’t that because God doesn’t want them to work, for God’s good reasons? So why do Catholics have healthcare institutions?
I don’t understand this stuff at all. It’s seriously confusing.
The helpful and valuable Bishop stated:
“while the essence of Reiki is not a prayer but a technique”
You just can’t make this up.
Can someone please wake me up from hyper-sleep when the UN Human Rights Council passes a resolution on “Defamation of Adherents of Common Sense”.
Thanks (probably millennia) in advance.
Is it just me or are there really few things funnier than one snake-oil salesman accusing another of selling snake-oil?
I recall reading somewhere about a study that showed a negative influence of prayer upon healing. Those who were prayed for did somewhat worse than those who were not prayed for.
But on second thoughts, that could not be right. Because if it was, the bishops would by now be warning their flocks about the dangers of prayer.
Come on Ian, reference please…
My children were born in a catholic health care institution, a private hospital of very good quality. The loopiest thing I met was not a priest, but a woman who was going back to try and have another baby without anaesthesia because she had been given the idea by some of ‘The Sisterhood’ that she hadn’t had a full, legitimate birth experience with her previous two children.
Given inside knowledge of the medical profession at that hospital and others, I am totally confident that my family would not be left to die while they held a prayer meeting.
ChrisPer: One reference coming up:
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/study-tests-the-power-of-prayer-and-finds-it-could-make-matters-worse-472253.html
My grandmother had my mother without no anaesthetic. No sisterhood either.
But times change I suppose.
I find the way people react to Scientology as though it is somehow weirder than all the other religions to be similar to this person’s denouncement of reiki. Familiar delusions and lies that we have been brainswashed into believing since birth are no doubt harder for most people to see through than those we are exposed to later in life.
Chrisper –
“I am totally confident that my family would not be left to die while they held a prayer meeting. “
ermmm, nobody was suggesting that.
The question of the therapeutic value of intercessionary prayer is quite a thorny one – a robustly-constructed study:
” Effects of remote, retroactive intercessory prayer on outcomes in patients with bloodstream infection: randomised controlled trial
Leonard Leibovici
BMJ 2001 323: 1450-1451.”
[http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/abstract/323/7327/1450]
Appeared to show a positive effect, but the interpretation of the data was open to question, as this letter to the BMJ shows:
“EDITOR—Leibovici used rigorous scientific method in his study to explore the role of intercessory prayer in health care.1 Using a randomised controlled trial design with a large group of patients and selecting a range of appropriate outcome measures, he showed a significant difference in length of stay and duration of fever and concluded that prayer may be a useful treatment.
These results, however, need to be interpreted with caution. There was no significant difference between the two groups with regard to the most clinically important outcome (mortality), and the median values varied little between prayer and non-prayer on both length of stay (seven and eight days) and duration of fever (two days each). The religious affiliation of the person saying the prayer is not given. Many religious groups do not accept the power of prayer given by those with different beliefs.” [http://www.bmj.com/cgi/content/extract/324/7344/1037]
A review of 17 major studies for the “Research on Social Work Practice” journal by David Hodge suggested an overall positive effect, but his statistical methods –
“When the effects of prayer are averaged across all 17 studies, controlling for differences in sample sizes, a net positive effect for the prayer group is produced.”
– are at the very least questionable, since simply addressing sample sizes does not take a great many other ‘variable quality’ issues into account.
And as he himself concludes:
“Overall, the meta-analysis indicates that prayer is effective. Is it effective enough to meet the standards of the American Psychological Association’s Division 12 for empirically validated interventions? No. Thus, we should not be treating clients suffering with depression, for example, only with prayer. To treat depression, standard treatments, such as cognitive therapy, should be used as the primary method of treatment.”
[http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/03/070314195638.htm]
Dr. Hodge’s impartiality on the matter may also be doubtful – some googling reveals him to be exceedingly keen on religion & spirituality in social work practice…for instance, a trawl through “Equipping Social Workers to Address Spirituality
in Practice Settings: A Model Curriculum” [http://journals.iupui.edu/index.php/advancesinsocialwork/article/view/32/27]
reveals it to be a propaganda mini-epic extolling “spirituality fosters positive outcomes”, (while ignoring the bad shit), although apparently the exact ‘spirituality’ in question doesn’t matter, since it’s all good…
And does this sound like America to anyone?
“Given that the Code of Ethics indicates that social workers
should actively work to prevent and eliminate religious discrimination (standard 6.04d), individuals might deliberate upon the experiences of spiritual believers who encounter life in a culture that often ignores, devalues, and even ridicules their most cherished beliefs and values. Individuals might consider what actions they might take, both personally and systemically, on behalf of Evangelical Christians, traditional Catholics, Muslims, and people of faith from other traditions who often encounter bias in the dominant secular culture.”
hmmmm…
A large dose of “Faithwash” is suspected…
(I really *must* get out more)
A miracle – ChrisPer misses the point again. Sigh.
“Look, if you’re going to use spiritual tools for medial purposes, do it right. It’s just silly to use the wrong kind. Any fule kno that.”
Well, maybe if one went to Marian Shrines, like Lourdes and Knock Shrine, one would, from the perspective of the Catholic church, be doing the right thing. Miracles galore occur in these places all the time and you would not need to be messing about with Reiki kit. The RC Church does not like competition in this big ‘cure’ industry. It is the big alter boy and it does not entertain small Reiki boys on its golden alter.
spoing.
If the reiki boys were CUTE enough, I bet they would entertain them.
(Sorry…hangs my head in gleeful shame).
Rose, as someone who’s being following Scientology for several years now, I have to say that there is something special about it.
It’s not just that Scientology brutally abuses its own members and tries to destroy the lives of its critics, because after all there are other religious movements that do that. It’s that this is all official Scientology policy, followed to the letter by its bureaucracy—the organization was, with little exaggeration, deliberately designed to be a force for evil. It’s almost more like a tiny malign totalitarian state than a religion, what with constant interrogations and forced labor camps and propaganda organs and espionage operations, etc.
The fact that its doctrine is so bonkers is just gravy.
OB:”A miracle – ChrisPer misses the point again. Sigh”
OB, your post explicitly, satirically and sarcastically mocks these morons with the idea that they COULD abandon proper medicine if they believed what they were spouting, so thats a bit rich.
My post was a note on my own experience, which has been that they do good medicine in Catholic healthcare institutions, and therefore do not indulge nonsense as first-line treatment. Which was implied, I think, in your post and therefore my post supports.
Now where is the [rolleyes] smiley? Geez, I need to find a better class of people who think I am their opponent.
and thanks for the references Ian and Andy, thats valuable stuff to read.
“My post was a note on my own experience, which has been that they do good medicine in Catholic healthcare institutions, and therefore do not indulge nonsense as first-line treatment.”
The question is not whether Catholics make good doctors, the question is what is it that Catholics do as good doctors that is actually Catholic as opposed to being non- or even anti-Catholic?
Prayer is religious, antibiotics are not.
“Which was implied, I think, in your post”
No, it wasn’t; that’s why I said you missed the point. It was because you missed the point.
Before this thread fizzles out, and of some relevance, “the Summary Court in Jeddah has sentenced an Asian man to 40 lashes for using a cloth with Allah’s name on it to clean his kiosk.
“The man was arrested by a patrol in Obhur and charged with desecrating the name of Allah.
“The court also took from the accused an undertaking not to repeat the act.”
Did it occur to any of them that the poor bastard might have been using a cloth with ‘dog’ on it, and that the cops read it upside down?
http://www.religiouswatch.com/rw0409.htm#Ragged_Justice_5317