NORTH HAVEN CT., April 14, 2003 (LifeSiteNews.com) – The National Catholic Register on line has just published two articles by Father Alfonso Aguilar on the dangerous growing phenomenon of the ancient heresy of gnosticism. Fr. Aguilar writes that “Gnosticism may be, at the beginning of the third millennium, the most dangerous enemy to our Christian faith”.
The author says that gnosticism is the ideological soil that “Harry Potter, the Star Wars series, The Matrix, Masonry, New Age and the Raelian cult, which claims to have cloned the first baby”, all have in common. The entertaining movies are not harmful in themselves emphasizes Aguilar, but they are “signs” of the “atheistic religion” and “alternative spirituality” of gnosticism.
Pope John Paul has written that gnosticism has returned “under the guise of the so-called New Age”. Gnosticism emphasizes acquiring “secret knowledge”. Part of that secret knowledge, supposedly given only to a few “spiritual” people, is that only spirit is good and “Everything material, like man’s body, is foul and evil”. This contradicts Christian teaching that the all creation was made good and that both body and soul will rise for eternity.
For those who treasure life and family, gnosticism must be seen as a serious danger. If the material world and the human body are seen as evil and knowledge of truth is given only to an elite few, then the sacredness of human life and of family life must naturally be endangered by gnostics who hold political and other power.
See the Catholic register articles
Gnosticism and the Struggle for the World’s Soul
Into the Gnostic Wonderland
Gnosticism, Harry Potter and the Faith