The Diocese of Gaylord’s Marriage Tribunal has recently come under fire for its Director and his involvement in a New Age philosophy condemned by the Vatican in 2003. Please send this to other concerned individuals and let Bishop Raica know your concerns.
The Diocesan Marriage Tribunal’s mission is described as follows on the Diocese of Gaylord’s website:
“The Marriage Tribunal is part of the judicial structure of the Catholic Church. The day-to-day work of the Tribunal is supervised by the Judicial Vicar who is appointed by the Bishop. He must be a priest who is educated in the law of the Church. Other officials of the Tribunal are the Judges, Defenders of the Bond, Promotors of Justice, Auditors, Advocates and Ecclesiastical (Church) Notaries.”
The Director of the Marriage Tribunal is John Amos, JCD, a former priest, now married, who lists himself on the professional website LinkedIn as a “Riso-Hudson certified Enneagram teacher”. The Vatican, in a 2003 document titled, “Christian Reflection on the New Age”, condemned the Enneagram movement in the following statement:
“[Gnosticism] has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or a para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian. An example of this can be seen in the enneagram, the nine-type tool for character analysis, which when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian Faith.”
Father Mitch Pacwa has written a concise and pointed critique of this movement. Here are some notable points from his article which can be accessed in full at the following (https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/view.cfm?recnum=2622) :
“The Enneagram is alleged to be a 2000-year-old Sufi system of personality types from Islamic mystics who lived before the time of Christ.
“The Enneagram is a circle, meant to symbolise the Cosmos and the “one-ness” which comes from a monist perspective. The Sufis are monists believing that we are all one with each other and with the universe and at the same time pantheists believing that the universe is god. So that’s why they’re not highly regarded in Islam, because they’re kind of Heterodox.
“Inside the circle is a triangle, and it connects up the points of the 9, the 3 and the 6; and it symbolizes God. We should notice right away that it’s God inside the cosmos, not the cosmos inside God.
“There’s another figure that is 6 sided and it connects from the 1 to the 4, 4 to the 2, 2 to the 8, 8 to the 5, 5 to the 7, and the 7 back to the 1 again. And there you have your Enneagram. (Ennea is Greek for “nine”)
“It is claimed that the Enneagram is a system revealing nine personality types and it is used in the various workshops and taught in seminaries.
“Don Riso is the head of the Enneagram research and study — and I use the term ‘research’ very loosely — in New York City. Claudio Naranzjo is a psyschologist from the Esselin Institute, in California, which is a pretty New Age, humanistic psychology mixed bag centre, on the Coast of California. These two tell the same story, that Oscar Ichazo invented the Enneagram. By the way I am not dealing with any of the enemies of the Enneagram, all of these are Enneagram enthusiasts. I am only using the Enneagram teachers, inventors and enthusiasts for my own source.
“In one of Don Riso’s books, he said that Oscar Ichazo, a Chilean occultist, is in contact with spirits like Metatron, the chief of the Archangels. I said wait a minute. Whose side is that Archangel on? I don’t think it’s St Michael’s.
“Oscar Ichazo claims to have the source of all grace on planet earth today. All grace on the earth comes through Ichazo. He is in contact with all the ascended masters and is himself an ascended master. He was given the Enneagram personality types by his spirit, Metatron. Metatron told him to take the Enneagram — just as a drawing without any names on it—and on the Enneagram place the capital sins.
“Here Are My Critiques:
“I don’t intend to say in any way that the Catholic teachers of the Enneagram are promoting pantheism; they don’t know its pantheistic roots; they don’t know about its occultic roots; they don’t know that it came from spirit channelling; they don’t know that it was originally a form of fortune-telling. They haven’t got a clue of that. They all believe the old myth — or the not so old myth — the 30-year-old myth of it being an ancient system.
“Goofy advice is being given in spiritual direction on the basis of this.
“One nun was told by another nun “What you need to do because you’re a number 2 on the Enneagram, is move out of your convent, get yourself a new apartment and buy a cat, and learn to become creatively self-centred.” Why? Because each one of these Enneagram numbers also has its own totem animal, and the totem of a 2 is a cat. You know, I don’t remember that part of the Sermon on the Mount, where Our Lord told us to be creatively self-centred, or uncreatively self-centred? This is nonsense.
“In Singapore I read three more books on the Enneagram by some of its newer proponents. One was by a nun from the Philippines who still has a lot of the old Sufi lingo with it. She obviously got the material fairly close to the source, and she’s still talking a lot of this Sufi nonsense. The other, by a Benedictine from Chicago, was a book on how to ‘type’ the people, and she has another book on spiritual direction. In her whole book on spiritual direction Jesus Christ is mentioned once! God is mentioned 7 times. What is she directing these people towards?
“One of the examples she uses has a woman who says: ‘Well, Michael and I began to act out sexually, and at first I felt this guilt. But I realized God doesn’t give me this guilt. God just loves us so unconditionally. It’s the guilt I feel because my mother would not approve, and so I had to learn to overcome my mother’s lack of approval.’
“The nun who wrote the book never commented. She was happy the woman came to ‘enlightenment’. This is part of the perversity of the Enneagram. “
Catholics in the Diocese have expressed their concerns that this individual does not have appropriate Catholic standing to be representing Catholic teaching and practice. More information will be forthcoming regarding this topic.