Analyzing the Theological Basis for the position of Catholic Church Confronting the New Spiritual Movement

1960s is among the most important and influential periods in Christian realm. From this decade on, the world specially the west world, witnessed the growth and the development of the spiritual movements which were and are trying to achieve the spiritual goal outside of the traditional religions including Judeo_ Christian tradition. “New Age” is one of the most widespread spiritual movements. This movement experienced an outstanding growth in 1970s and its growth is still going on, while its worldview about God authority, Jesus Christ, sin, salvation, human destiny, good and evil and generally all its beliefs are totally against Christian dogmas. Therefore, this movement turned into one of the church’s concerns and the Catholic Church had to stop ignoring it after years and consequently tried to declare its official position toward it through issuing various documents. The concern of this research is studying the reaction of Catholic Church based on its theological basis. Among all the documents in this area, the one which is directly related to “New Age” movement is called “Jesus Christ, the Bearer of Water of Life” which will be analyzed andmore referred to in this research. By analyzing the document, based on the qualitative content analysis method, three main strategies to confront “New Age” were drawn out: pastoral theology, dialogue and cultural approach. In the next step, these three strategies were placed in Christian theological frame to find out if such confrontation is theologically allowed and if it is, is it fruitful for Christianity or not. The survey showed that the Church has gone through a paradigm shift in its method of confrontation, but not in its theology. It should also be mentioned that only cultural and pastoral approach in Church’s confrontation is not enough and will not end well and it will lead to the fact that the Church may lose its religious authority more than ever and it may just turn into a charity institute. Besides, gradually most of Christian doctrines may fade away from Christian lives and can be just found in books and museums. So, the Catholic Church needs to find better solutions. It should be mentioned that practical and political theologies are also offered as the influential solutions for the Catholic Church to get out of this situation.