Women of Grace with Johnnette Williams - 112421

ask him to forgive us of our sins we're thankful we thank him for the blessings and trials he's given us and then we make supplications and asked him for help in our own lives doing all of this so we can grow closer to him and spend eternity with him and now the ewtn family prayer with father joseph family a prayer that we pray together is a powerful prayer so please pray together with me our ewtn family prayer [Music] today we pray for those who are dying lord jesus savior who suffered death so that we might live be with those who are now dying comfort those who are alone console those who are suffering renew the hope of those in despair and reveal yourself to those who do not believe let your divine mercy surround all those who are dying to bring them to the place that you have prepared for them in the father's house let none of them be lost amen the women of grace phone lines are open 1-833-288 ewtn 1-833-288-3 [Music] welcome back everybody you are listening to women of grace live i'm janet williams we're happy to be with you inviting you to give us a call here 833 288 ewtn that is the number for you to use it is toll-free for you right here in north america if you're outside of north america 1205-271-2985 is the number for you to use we're eager eager as i say to hear your lovely voice today it's wednesday sue brinkman is with us we're going to be talking about some of the wacky things that are going on in the world today especially as it uh relates to the ideologies that are being promoted and in many cases trying to be blended with our own catholic faith which you really cannot do it's syncretism but nonetheless there are those out there that say it can be done and they do it uh so you know so you've got something you want to talk about and don i'm going to ask you to hold we are going to get to you and we're inviting you all to give us a call 833 288 ewtn and social media land ewtn radio's youtube channel and facebook page available for you we've got matt kabinsky on phones we want you to give him howdy hey we've got jeff berson who is our producer going out there and retrieving your questions in social media land so please do give us all of the information that we need to have so we can address your question and i want to let you know if you're a first time submitter or caller let us know and i will ring that welcome bell for you welcoming you for your first time calling into the program uh so sue you know you've got something you want to talk with us about and this is something that seems to be growing among the catholic population as well as uh you know the rest of the the the world as well go ahead and tell us all about it uh this is called the wim hof breathing method and wim is wim and the second word is hof hof breathing method um and people are wondering you know is this new age does it have some elements the new age in it uh anything that's not christian and the answer to those questions is yes it does uh it's a combination of breathing techniques yoga meditation and exposure to cold it was developed by the ice man this is kind of what his nickname is wim hof he's a 62 year old dutch motivational speaker and he was actually born into a catholic household he was one of nine children and um a researcher named scott carney who actually attended one of hoff's very brutal training sessions said that you know while the rest of the family was learning catholic liturgy hoff became very interested in eastern teachings memorizing the yoga sutras scouring the the bhagavad gita the zen buddhism for wisdom um so he was going into all those directions he wanted to find this connection between mind and body and he said well it's not quite what i'm looking for and then one day he was 20 years old and he just decided that he was going to he was walking along uh a canal in amsterdam and he noticed the ice a coating of ice on the top he said he wanted would be like if i jumped in there so he did he stripped off all his clothes and he jumped in the water wow and he recounts you know what what happened to him during that exposure to that extreme cold it was very shocking um but he said the feeling wasn't cold it was a of a tremendous good so he liked the feeling he said he was in the water only a minute but he felt like time just stood still while he was in the water and and he said this this wash of endorphins cruised through his system and the high lasted through the whole afternoon the whole rest of the day um and so hoff began to say to himself geez i think that i think the cold is my teacher it's going to teach me something and it taught him this breathing technique that really mimics the rapid breathing that people would take if they dive into icy water but also the rapid breathing that that women use in childbirth it kind of mimics that um and in both cases really the body switches to to this instinctual reaction of human resistance to extreme hot or cold um and and he started to develop this and i actually tried it it's a it's a system where you you sit down and well they go into all the clearing of the mind and focusing on breathing which i didn't bother to do any of that part but um you know you inhale and exhale 30 to 40 times and fully inhale and fully exhale you try to do that 30 or 40 times and i'll tell you what you're going to hyperventilate now when you're talking about the when you explain that there i mean over what period of time are you doing this inhalation is it one breath after the other right right repetitious you just repeat that 30 to 40 times do these short powerful bursts and then and he says you might experience some lightheadedness and a tingling sensation yes you do you experience hyperventilation that's what that is and he says but these side effects are completely harmless after the last exhalation if you can make it to 40 i didn't i didn't even make it to 20. after the last exhalation you have to inhale as deeply as possible let the air fully out of your lung and then stop breathing holding the breath until you feel the urge to take a breath again so you hold the breath for as long as you can now hoff makes all kinds of claims about the benefits of this breathing because he himself is able to endure um like hiking through the arctic tundra in in shorts nothing but shorts and a pair of hiking boots and he's walking in there and he's fine we're submerging himself into into vats of of ice water i have a picture of that uh actually with the blog uh where he's just sitting in this big tube of ice and he looks like he's just laughing like he's like it's fun uh now according to science there is some results of of some studies that were done that show that the sympathetic nervous system and the immune system they can be voluntarily influenced in that way um the participants in a 2014 study performed those breathing exercises um consciously hyperventilating themselves retaining their breath meditating and the meditation they used was a third eye meditation that's the type of meditation that hoff trained them in and you know science did see some results from that 2017 another study was done the scientists believe that that the brain rather than the body is what helps you to respond to that cold exposure and the study suggested that people can learn to control their uh autonomic nervous system to bring about similar changes but there's risk to this now i you know dug a little bit deeper into this there's risks people who have respiratory problems should not do this such as asthma uh people who've had a stroke higher blood high or low blood pressure if you're on certain medications don't do this it can also the hyperventilation which is i think kind of a no-brainer that poses some problems first of all of course a full risk because you hyperventilate you pass out but what's happened is some of these people and this i found a dutch newspaper that had an article about four deaths that were attributed to the hoff method they're alleging that it was attributed to the hop method three men who were practitioners of it who drowned in a pool uh because they were holding their breath and obviously they passed out while they were in the pool and another man died after he just got done bragging i think to his sister or one of his relatives um hey i'm going to break my own record of breath holding the next thing you know the man's dead so you got to be careful with that the recommendation that i leave with people is that you should use extreme discretion before becoming involved with this breathing method due to its association with non-christian meditation practices and the health risks to certain individuals you just don't jump into stuff like this with your breathing and especially not with all this focus on breath you know that's very buddhist that's how they put themselves into altered states uh and you don't want to do this willy-nilly uh and also uh yeah i i was just gonna ask you i mean i can't see why you would do it in other words like how many people want to sit in a vat of ice cold water um you know and you know how many people want to walk across the frozen tundra in shorts i mean it doesn't make any sense besides that you're exposing the rest of your body to the elements right i mean you know frostbite and all of those other things are not going to go away because you've done this method and you're not feeling you know the same sensations as somebody else would i mean i just i don't i don't know why well and that's a great question yeah they want control over their bodies they want control over their bodies and that they want to to make their body in the control of their consciousness so this is where you get into sort of like the new age stuff i mean in fact when carney went to his class you know he said that that a lot of when he they first started out like the introduction of it was a lot of new age mumbo jumbo and that and he talks about you know universal compassion and connection to divine energy so that's all in there it's all part of of of what he's doing but what he's trying to do is hack the body and this is very attractive carney said to men men are very attracted this and they go on these these training sessions with hof that are brutal i mean the stuff that he makes these guys do out in the cold on the ice and snow like do push-ups and stuff like that it's i would never do it um i couldn't even get through 20 breaths without starting to feel lightheaded of course i have hypertension so i'm not supposed to be doing things like this but um i couldn't get through it but some people apparently it's getting to be very popular with people and they're saying that oh they're you know their bodies they feel more healthy um they just feel like they have more control over their bodies and that sort of thing i wonder what that's a good question that yes why why do you have to have that kind of control over your body don't you trust god you know uh what's going on there that you have to have that kind of control over your body systems yeah what are you so afraid of yeah um or are you afraid of anything maybe they just want a different way of doing things because we are so many of us are into more natural methods of healing you know we don't necessarily want to be drugged up as a culture so that could be what's motivating people i'm sure that everybody has their own reasons for why they want to why they want to do this but i once i looked into it i had reservations about it i thought you know what you need to be careful with stuff like this because the new age has a way of infiltrating itself very subtly into different practices but it's in there and what it does is i think develops a taste in you for new age and it may very subtly lead you into other practices that you think well that's okay i've been doing this and nothing happened to me so let's just go ahead and i'll just go ahead and get involved in this now too so you just have to be careful with that sort of thing yeah well you know and here the other part of that is that the evil one you know takes advantage of every opportunity and as you say so often people will go to a class thinking they're going to learn one thing but they're really being indoctrinated with a whole again system of thinking that is outside of the teachings of the church and you know against sacred scriptures so you know i just these there's always fattish things that are coming along and maybe this is a fad that will work its way out but um to me you know there just doesn't seem to be any reason why people would want to do this i i appreciate the idea of wanting to control your body we would do a whole lot better off we tried to control our passions it makes you wonder why would a catholic what it there's just there's a spiritual aspect to this breathing thing too of course and and like why do we need that and i think that that's that's the big question that was raised in my mind why do i need to do that am i still kind of on some level seeking a spiritual thrill of some kind you know what am i i'm always trying to avoid that because i i see how that has led so many people into new age into eastern practices they they're really not looking for god they're looking for a thrill of some kind they want an experience they want to feel something it's very hard to get used to not you know when jesus begins to withdraw those constellations and and those good you know cushy fuzzy feelings from you that's difficult but it's also a transition stage that helps you to mature in your faith it's something that we need to learn how to muscle our way through with the help of the lord so i wonder to myself if if you know uh people might be trying to get that back those consolations that god is withdrawing from them and they're just kind of reaching out here reaching out there you know why would they want to get involved in something like this i can tell you that even just doing those those breaths at first it felt really good to take a nice deep breath we all like to do that but then when it got to be 10 11 12 13 i'm thinking whoa wait a minute and my head start getting like a little swimmy and i thought 40 i can't get up to 40 breaths i'll be laying on the floor yeah before i'll be unconscious well you know there might be another aspect of that that you know your comment is bringing into my mind and and i you know the spiritual quest and here i mean an authentic spiritual quest where you're looking for union with the one god who is father son and holy spirit by way of the passion death and resurrection of his son our lord jesus christ that is one thing and i think people can get very confused when the spiritual life progresses and god withdraws those consolations because he wants to be loved for the god who is not for the god who gives you know so there's kind of a you know i mean that is a that's a more mature reality so we're moving forward that way so it could be a way of filling that that that sensation of a void which is really not avoid because sometimes god's even more active then than he is when the constellations are coming i would venture to say all the time but uh there's that but then you know on on a secular thing sue you know when we have so satiated our passions i'm just thinking about this now when we've so associated our passions with sex or with drugs or with drinking or with shopping or uh just with with consuming whatever it is that we consume right even television you know um then nothing tastes good anymore on any level it's like if you sit down you know and you're gonna have a piece of cake that first piece of cake tastes so good you say i want a second piece and maybe you have a second piece then you have a third piece and after a while you're not even enjoying it anymore and i think that maybe that's what happens i think that maybe we we get to a point where we have so um adulterated our sense of satisfaction that nothing satisfies anymore everything is bland you know everything is is is um you know you know kind of flatlined in the sense of of you know uh you know experience there is none of that so then we go seeking things that maybe subconsciously makes us still feel alive because we don't really feel very alive because we've so indulged ourselves am i making any sense oh you are i what keeps running through my head is pleasure reigns supreme on the secular level everything is pleasure i want to feel good i want to feel comfortable i want to feel this this everybody wants to feel something that's right and that's what's leading so many people out of christianity they're going into these different you know new ages very esoteric type practices because they promise experience yeah and experience is very often had through going into these altered states this is this different kind of meditation where you're you're blanking your mind and you're sitting there for 20 minutes with a with a blank head we were talking about this last week on the show um and and that begins to induce these you know wonderful euphoric feelings you can have from doing that i mean who wouldn't feel great sitting 20 minutes blanking out all your problems you know of course you're going to feel good so but people are are looking for that i think even those of us who are are with the lord you know even on maybe some you know subconscious level we still have that secular drive within us that that we we've got to feel good all the time we've got to feel comfortable all the time that's why i think it's penitential seasons of lent and advent are so very important yes and for us to take them seriously you know advent's coming up now and it's a time a penitential season and it is a time to begin to mortify that and to take that that pleasure reign supreme and knock it off its pedestal yeah and say no it doesn't i don't need all this pleasure to be happy it reminds me too that you know the the penitential nature of advent is not not stressed anymore i've even had people argue with me that advent is not a penitential season it always was a penitential season it's not really changed it's not emphasized as strongly as lent is in terms of a penitential season but it is nonetheless that you know to make preparation for something you've got to let go of something right so you know that letting go of something is a sign of this desire to make preparation one last thing we're living in these really strange times and everything seems out of control uh gas prices you know food costs everything is out of control and so sometimes there's an effort to try to engage in activities that still remind us that we have control but as you're saying we don't need to seek in ways that can be deleterious to us in any way 833 288 ewtn is the way you can join us we are here we're going to go to donna we're eager to hear from you as well call us call us call us 833-288-3986 coming right back sue brinkman in today it's wacky wednesday stay with us okay i've been a catholic for five years but i suffered under a lot of things due to my protestantism as a pentecostal and i just want to personally ask god to bless you for your ministry for everything you do and the help that you give people ewtn helping people grow in their love and understanding of god this is john at williams if you missed part of today's show catch the encore tomorrow morning at 3 eastern check out the podcast anytime at ewtnradio.net and click podcasts [Music] hi i'm doug keck this is an ewtn bookmark brief speaking with benjamin weicker about the book he co-authored with scott hahn entitled the decline in fall of sacred scripture how the bible became a secular book why is this so important for the average layperson to understand about this concept well what we have right now if you go to almost any graduate school and study biblical studies you think oh i'm going to study the bible i'll be learning about revealed truth what you'll actually be learning is 75 different ways that the bible is actually a book of mythology and we wrote this book literally as an antidote if we get to the foundation of those ideas then we can overturn the difficulties that we're facing in regard to scriptural scholarship benjamin weiker along with scott hahn the book the decline and fall of sacred scripture and how the bible became a secular book available through the ewtn religious catalogue ewtnrc.com all things catholic check this book out this has been an ew10 bookmark brief we hope to see you next time hi this is psychedelic host of catholic answers live later today joe heshmeyer carlo broussard catholic answers live 6 pm eastern on ewtn radio now back to women of grace transforming the world one woman at a time let's return to women of grace with johnette williams welcome back everybody we're so happy you are with us today let us know you are with us today pick up the phone and give us a call 833 288 ewtn that's 833-288-3986 it's the way that you can join our discussion today sue brinkman is in the house it's wacky wednesday we're talking about wacky things phone lines are lighting up and i thank you that you have called but we've got room for more of you and we would love to see your name in one of the boxes that tells us who's with us so please do call we're also inviting you to share with us out there at ewtn radio's youtube channel and facebook page sometimes you prefer to watch as well as listen and you can do that there the chat features the way you communicate with us jeff burson who is our social media manager and our producer will dash on out there and retrieve your question or comment inside inspiration or word of encouragement and get it up on the board matt gabinski on the phones and he will get your question up for us do let us know if you're a first timer either way because we want to ring our welcome bell for you i have three of them sitting here i never know which one i'm going to pick up until i pick it up and bring it they have different tones so we certainly do look forward to hearing from you today well so let's get to don and donna's been holding since the beginning of the program patient woman don is with us from ottawa ontario good morning to you donna how are you good morning jeanette i'm a first time caller oh could he come drop there you go welcome welcome and we envy sue her warm weather i mean ottawa is really cold oh yeah it's warm here compared to ottawa absolutely okay um what i'm calling you about a very very peculiar situation um the parish that i'm going to we have a very good priest he's only there i guess about four months but uh for quite a long time now we've had this this man who has transitioned to a woman uh it's almost like henry goes to thailand and comes back hillary you know that way he's had all his the surgery and everything now this man is uh dresses like a woman wears a blonde wig and i'm you know i want to be i want to be charitable because this person obviously has problems but um he has he's a minister of he's an extraordinary minister of holy communion um i feel now in 2003 a document came out of the vatican that said vatican says sex change operation does not change person's gender and this this document tells the bishops they're never to change a baptismal certificate right now this one i don't believe he was baptized in this church he just came as a parishioner some time back well i i think that the document's absolutely correct i mean it's not an opinion on my part it is absolutely correct because you cannot change your gender uh your dna is always going to say what gender you are and there's only two genders male and female so you know you can mutilate your body uh you can have these sex change operations and you can pretend that you are somebody other than you truly are but but on some level uh our you know our subconscious level we we we know that it's really a type of play acting i mean there's just no way you can change who you are and i think that people be can there is such a thing as gender dysphoria you know and it is a mental health condition uh but i think that what's been created in our day and time quite frankly is that there is a uh you know there's a cultural dysphoria that that's really been um what's the word that i want to say forwarded by our secular society at every age and in every demographic it doesn't matter if you're a little child it doesn't matter if you're rich or poor it doesn't matter where you live or what your ethnic reality is there is this attempt to convince us that this is this is acceptable that this is in some way normal and there's been all kinds of efforts to normalize it but it's not normal when it comes to to this business on the church i'm going to send you out to an article that was written uh this year in may uh it's in the arlington catholic herald it's written by mary hassan h-a-s-s-o-n and its catholic scholar addresses gender ideology and transgender issues with compassion and honesty and i think that this is one of the the the problems that we have is that we don't want people to be living you know a life that is not a life that's built on truth um you know and and the church has spoken on this and in this article mary hassan uh quotes uh some of the statements of uh pope francis and and talks about these kinds of issues so what would you contribute to the to uh donna's question here well i i had looked up a little bit of information and and found that the the vatican congregation for the doctor of the faith back in 2015 uh they did not permit a transgender man in spain to serve as a godfather which effectively bars bars transgendered catholics from serving as baptismal sponsors so i know they've made if they've made it they've taken a position on that whether they've taken a position on extraordinary ministers i don't know but it's something that could be taken up with the bishop because of the fact that this person's on display everybody knows that it was a man before now as a woman and this could be causing scandal right of some kind and you want to be very careful that and bishops are very sensitive to that it may be something to take up with the bishop to say um not in an accusatory way but just say you know how should we deal with this um now the pastor is saying telling everybody to to just you know be compassionate and be kind and all that that of course is is a nice thing to do we should be that way with everybody regardless and we don't really know what the spirituality what is going on spiritually inside that person only his priestess pastor his spiritual director would really know that um but i think it would be worth pursuing that with the bishop to say okay you know how should we feel about this i feel scandalized by it um i could see the person going to mass but whether or not the person is distributing communion um or taking any kind of a leadership role in the church i would raise rate that would raise some eyebrows i would think yeah it's something if people will won't like if people prefer to take it from the priest than him he gets quite annoyed he can he just kind of glares and transgendered person or yes the transgender person he's transcended to a woman my feeling is well and let me let me just say donna and this is this is not a castigation against your statement but he's not transit he has not transitioned to a woman he's not a woman you know so calling him a man yeah yeah i mean it's a and you're doing a good job of that and i think it's important uh that that we you know we articulate that because yeah again it leads to the general confusion that we have so go ahead i did i just wanted to clarify that you know we're trying to help little kids are in school they're being taught these things then they go to mass and it's endorsed what they're being told in school is then being reflected in the parish here's here's a question that's answered um by mary hassan in this article and i mean it's really a q a kind of an article and the first question is this most catholics are compassionate by nature and want to support others what's a constructive approach that catholics can take without endorsing gender ideology and transitioning and she responds she says in general our faith calls all of us to treat everyone with respect and kindness acknowledging the dignity of the person before us a person truly loved by god and we need to be compassionate for those who suffer literally suffering with and accompanying the person she says but the more complicated question is what compassion looks like in a given circumstance and the direction in which we accompany the person and she goes on and she talks about authentic compassion seeks the good of the other person and accompanies them on the path toward healing and happiness in light of god's plan it is not compassion it is not compassionate to validate a person's sinful or harmful choices or to accompany the person towards serious harm more or physical she says catholic striving to be compassionate to a person who identifies as transgender need to see clearly the good for that person according to god's plan the catechism of the catholic church teaches that each person should accept his or her sexual identity paragraph 23 33 in amoris leticia pope francis reminds us that our bodies are a gift from the lord to be received with gratitude from the lord it is not good for a person to assert an identity at odds with the body because we are embodied persons no one can be born in the wrong body and if a person's self-perception conflicts with the reality of the body then the good is to help the person gain a clearer self-perception one that aligns with the truth but that can be a complicated task because of the psychological issues that are often involved and i think that that's it and i'm not sure that it's helpful to permit a person to um participate in that way in a very public way who is struggling whether they realize it or not uh with with a major issue and i think that that would apply across the board uh for anyone who would offer to be you know or or desire to be an extraordinary minister or elector you know there's got to be a certain suitability and even sacred scripture talks about that saint paul writes about that with regard to uh bishops and their households right so there's a certain suitability and i i'm not sure that that's suitable frankly i don't think it's suitable at all well somebody like he's he's open about i mean everybody knows and he he suffers from depression a lot of depression and anxiety and i was wondering if by him being endorsed by the church in this way that he's a he's permitted to be an extraordinary eucharistic minister if that maybe gives him a certain credibility in who he says he is now mm-hmm well and that's it's not helpful it's no it's not and i'm sure i'm sure that it does give him some credibility to himself it's reinforcing himself and what he's doing is giving him an affirmation that really isn't healthy he's not healthy to affirm him and what he's doing there it's more like what mary hassan was saying but they really need to be compassionately and kindly and gently led back to the truth of who they truly are so they can get all this anxiety and all this depression that's inside of him that's where that's coming from it's not coming from the fact that he's in in the wrong body it's coming from the fact that he's not accepting that he's in the right body and and for some odd reason we don't know what that reason is um he has determined that his problems are because he's in the wrong body which leaves me to think that what the real problem is is going unaddressed so that's why he's anxious and depressed right and and what we do know also too and then donna we'll leave it at this uh sue is that the the statistics that are available for this segment of the population are not happy statistics that drug abuse alcoholism even domestic violence is up in those in those populations and the suicide rate is four times that of the general population so uh change striving to change our bodies to correspond to a false perception of who we are is not the answer as you're saying sue to the problem it only exacerbates it and i know i had a fellow that called years ago maybe three or four years ago named brian who had gone through that surgery and he said you have to continue to speak the truth on this he said because it doesn't help things and he wanted to know if it would be okay with the church if he tried to go back to being the man that he actually is realizing of course that he could never regain that which he had sacrificed um and moral theologians say that is a very legitimate thing to do uh so we know that this doesn't help and and to affirm somebody in this kind of a thing i think is not helpful and um and i think that's one of the problems that we have in our secular culture today um that we really have lost our moral compass and a notion of god donna thank you for your call it was a very good one uh we're going to go to gertrude next gertrude i'm going to ask you to hold on for just a second though because i do want to uh take uh these two issues quite youtube questions that came up sue on the wim hof winhoff method this is dennis he says i am a first-time commentator and thank you dennis i'm going to ring my bell for you we're happy to have you with us he says i am a first time commentator the church has not condemned wim hof method it is meant to heal many elements ailments that big pharma claims to heal but hurts nothing to do with new age can we address that i actually incorporate the jesus prayer into the method and it is a way of healing many ailments in the body and then here's another one i have an m.a in theology from franciscan university this might be a continuation i have an m.a in theology from franciscan university of steubenville and i've tested this method and distilled it from any new age connection it becomes a form of penance with the cold showers cold showers i like that one that's a good one okay no first of all the church has not condemned it nor have we we have told you to use great discretion before getting involved in it um you have these two that we've just read about these are your own personal experiences with it we can't really extrapolate that out into the general public because you don't know who's out there trying this and who is going to go down that road of using third eye meditation or any other kind of meditation so a cautionary uh to put a cautionary flag on this is i think is the prudent thing for us to do here and that's why we do it because in the general public you don't have that kind of catechesis you know you don't have a lot of people running around out there with mas in theology so um that really you really have to be careful with that to say well hey this is this is what i say this is what i do so this this has got to be right for everybody no it doesn't and they need to be warned that there are new age um components to this program and they need to be warned about that breathing and and how that can lead you into an altered state and that may be leading you in an altered state too whether or not you're using jesus's name it doesn't matter if you're using that name to blank your mind in any way um you are putting yourself into an altered state uh and that is something that's that's very uh attributable to eastern meditation that's that's what they do because they believe that leads to enlightenment so you need to be careful with it um that's really what we're saying just be careful with it um the church does not condemn it people like to say that well what does the church say about this this the church doesn't do that it's not it's not like a how-to book from them you need to understand the bible you need to understand the catechism and understand what the church teaches on a broad variety of subjects before you can come to the conclusion about whether or not something is good for you or not good for you that's right and and it doesn't hurt to have a little knowledge on different heresies because the heresies are all involved in these things and that third eye this this idea of the third eye what is that third eye it's an opening to the psychic world and generally speaking there is an initiation into that in some way and oftentimes those initiations are going to use uh these these techniques that can and do alter your consciousness um and then you feel like you're merging with the all is one which is you know a monism and it gets it goes from there to there to there so you know jury's out church isn't going to talk about that the church doesn't the church outlines for you you know what the heresies are what you should be looking for jesus christ bearer of living water uh the document that's the provisional document right on the new age zoo uh yeah that's a good order of life yeah bearer of the water of life that is a very good one uh for you to read well let's get to gertrude she's there in alexandria virginia today good morning to you gertrude yeah hi uh listen i just have a quick question some weeks ago sue was talking about fortune cookies and some time ago i got a fortune cookie i don't remember where i got it from and i want to tell you what it says it says god looks after you especially okay that's beautiful so um i wanted to ask the sue what she thinks of that because i thought it was so beautiful saying and i faced it and and put it in my prayer book it okay gertrude that is a beautiful saying um but you have to ask yourself your question do you really need did you really need a fortune cookie to tell you that because you probably didn't you didn't you didn't and and but i just thought it was a beautiful uh i mean such a surprise i never had something like that in a fortune cookie or anywhere yeah yeah they're very general the things that they have and they're very very general um uh but they did originate as as fortunes as a form of divination in shinto shrines that's really where they came from um but now you know god loves you and he is washing over you in a special way and if you wanted to keep that fortune cookie slip because it reminded you of of perhaps a pleasant experience that you had maybe that evening when you went for dinner or because you just loved what god seemed to be saying that's fine but don't believe that you needed that fortune cookie for that because then you're starting to get into divination yeah and you want it you don't want to move in that direction at all i mean if i were you yeah you if i were you i would just write that down on a piece of paper and throw that little slip out that's what i would do i would write it down a little yellow stick them i would put it somewhere in my bible and whenever i wanted to read i would just look at it and and be reminded of it so that you don't have any way that you're attaching any kind of power at all to the fact that you got that in a cookie i see right okay that sounds great right okay thank you thanks gertrude thank you very much thank you for your question today we're going to go to allen allen is there in texas somewhere he's listening to us via guadalupe radio network and we're delighted uh how are you today alan oh i'm doing great how are you we're doing really well thank you yes well the as i was explaining to the call screener the situation that i experienced just made me a little uncomfortable i didn't know if this was the way lay people should be behaving the situation was in a this ministry meeting that we were having one of the uh people who have been struggling with issues we all are praying over him and the gentleman leading the prayer part of our ministry is actually a former priest who's left the priesthood and he's a married man now and all of that but as he's leading this prayer it's and everybody's got their hands on it sort of turns into [Music] almost an exorcism where he's calling a spirit out and uh the the gentleman actually starts to kind of we don't let him lay down on his back he can't stand up anymore and uh then other [Music] members of the ministry start they get out this anointing oil and they're anointing his forehead chest and his feet and praying as they do it a special prayer for that and you know i was just wondering as it's going on it made me feel uncomfortable something we do as lay people as catholics that we're supposed to be doing as a way of praying over someone having an issue or good and i should mention this former priest i've seen him do this before with another gentleman where he sort of prays over him and his ass yeah i know that we have a signed exorcist in the catholic church right so alan uh you're cutting in and out and we've just got two minutes left and this is an important question so go for it sue yeah you know deliverance prayer is okay for laity to to say that that is okay but you've got to watch it you can't cross that line for you're going into you know actually you know calling out spirits and and you know trying to you know sit there and wrestle with these spirits you shouldn't be doing stuff like that as far as anointing with oil people use oils from shrines um from around the world that they use um it sounds like he's making sort of like an elaborate ritual out of this kind of thing i would say to you that if it's it's something that's making you feel uncomfortable that you don't intend those i don't attend those sessions then um it can he can cross over a line because the fact that he was at one time a priest we don't know really what he's doing there is it deliverance deliverance prayer is fine but but uh you can't cross over into you know calling out you know naming spirits and and all that kind of stuff you've got to be really careful about that sort of thing and and like i said if it's making you uncomfortable you know i think twice about going back yeah and ellen here's a thought too i mean maybe maybe it would be good for you to just have a talk with a guy and and just say you know can you explain to me what's going on here because i was a little uncomfortable about it and i want and i want to know more and talk with him and that'll help you to see and to understand you know if if he is crossing a line or not crossing a line um but it'll give you some insight and it'll give you some guidance and the sue says you know that this kind of prayer is acceptable the person falling down sometimes it's it's called being slain in the spirit these are some of the charismatic gifts uh but you know again if it makes you uncomfortable i think that that's what sue is saying is is good but you might want to talk with him hey sue this has been good thanks so much have a blessed and happy thanksgiving and all of you thank you all of you have a happy and blessed thanksgiving as well may god bless you in all things bye bye now [Music] the most original and exclusive catholic

Channel: EWTN

Views: 923

Keywords: Catholic, EWTN, Christian, television

Id: fvq-Dz9CoXU

Length: 44min 20sec (2660 seconds)

Published: Wed Nov 24 2021