Let's look at the wonderfully intrepid stuff said and done by the Vatican in recent years. In 1992, there was that thing where they admitted, nearly 400 years later, that Italian physicist and astronomer Galileo Galilei was right about the Universe. Even more recently, L'Osservatore Romano, the Vatican's newspaper denounced James Cameron's Avatar for its alleged exaltation of nature as a divinity. Why get so theological, Catholic brothers? Why not just call a spade a spade? It was a bad movie, after all.
Still, with each passing day comes another opportunity for the Roman Catholic Church to offer up, if nothing else, great quotes. Father Gabriele Amorth, a founder of the International Association of Exorcists, and an exorcist of the Diocese of Rome (appointed by the late Pope John Paul II) has made recent claims that yoga--yes, the aerobic activity--is "the work of the devil." Speaking earlier this week at the Umbria Film Festival in Terni, Father Amorth posited: "You think you are doing it for stretching your mind and body but it leads to Hinduism. All these oriental religions are based on the false belief of reincarnation." (And Edward Said reels)
Christian groups have been lashing out for years against yoga, the Hindu stretching practice so popular in the West, alleging that it is unGodly.
The Italian Yoga Association responded against Father Amorth's claims, by positioning themselves away from religion entirely: "[This] is an outrageous thing to say; yoga is not a religion but a spiritual discipline. It is about freedom and the search to find one's inner self. It does not touch religion and has nothing to do with Satanic sects nor does it encourage people to join them."
All of this talk of "Satanic yoga" leaves nothing for true critics of the Vatican. Maybe the Church thinks that if they keep up the sensational theatrics, we'll forget about that other, more "unholy" scandal that has been plaguing them recently?
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