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Vatican Chair for "Religions and Unconventional Spiritualities"

2006-08-24 17:48 | ESSWE admin (Administrator)
In reference to the recent announcement of the creation of a chair for the study of esotericism in a Vatican university, a rectification seems to be necessary (prompted by one of our members, PierLuigi Zoccatelli). The official title of the chair is "Religions and unconventional spiritualities" ("Religioni e Spiritualità Non Convenzionali"). This means that the focus of the teaching is not particularly on esotericism, but on the phenomenon of new religious movements as a whole (which may, however, also include aspects of what scholars refer to as "Western esotericism"). The chair has been promoted by a Catholic anti-cult association, the GRIS (www.gris.org) and has been created at the Pontifical University of Saint Thomas Aquinas (also known as "Angelicum", www.angelicum.org). For an announcement of the creation of the chair, with a description of its goals, see the link below. Finally, the text on the New Age for which there was a link in the previous announcement (www.vatican.va/roman_curia/pontifical_councils/interelg/documents/rc_pc_interelg_doc_20030203_new-age_en.html) was not an article by the first holder of the chair, Prof. Michael Fuss, but a confessional analysis of the New Age produced by two official committees of the Catholic Church, the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue.


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