The Catholic faith and Theosophy.

Waiapu Church Gazette, Volume XIII, Issue 2, 1 August 1922, Page 393

The Catholic faith and Theosophy.

It is not our intention to deal with the personal or other aspects of the unhappy controversy m connection with the Theosophical Society, which has filled so large a place m the public interest m Sydney during the last few Avceks. We only desire to "use the occasion of this controversy to give to the faithful iv Christ Jesus as emphatic a warning as we can of the real and subtle danger with which the Church is confronted. The festival of the Holy Trinity, is m itself a challenge to set clear before us and to hold fast the Faith once for all delivered to the Saints m the face of those who are .'too 'shrewd to oppose it with a frontal attack and who adopt the means of insidious teaching which seeks to paint rank heresy m the colors of Christian belief. Men and women are told that they can join the Theosophical Society without ceasing to "be members, and even communicants of the Church. They are told that m Theosophy they, will firid a higher and more spiritual Christianity than that Avhich the Church has offered them; and many listen to and accept "this plea so attractively put. For a time they attempt to live a kind of '"dual ' religious - existence, which too often ends m their complete abandonment of the "faith and worship of the Church. It needs to be said and said clearly that Theosophy is not only un-Christian but anti-Christian, and that however far it may use Christiari terminology it denies a Christianity for which Jesus Christ is the central figure of human history and Avhich is founded on the Incarnation and the Cross. The Creed may be verbally accepted ; but it is explained away; and m place of the great historic facts on which the Faith is built there is left nothing but a nebulous haze of mystical and symbolic . explanation. Thus the Catholic Faith is undermined until it

is lost. The attraction is held out to the unwary of a higher- esoteric knowledge hidden from, the average man, to which they may hope to be initiated as they advance m the precepts of Theosophy. The \vhole emphasis is laid on this inner knowledge-. 'with no corresponding insistence on a corresponding standard of ' conduct, and nothing can be more contrary to the breadth and sanity of the .teaching of the ' Church than this subtle i*ndermining of its most cardinal doctrines. A choice must be made between the, one. and the; other, the Christianity" of the Church and of common life and. a modern gnosticism which is its worst enemy. — "Church Standard." .-7V--7