Mons. José Ignacio Munilla, The Bishop of Orihuela Alicante (Spain), warned about the danger that Catholic spirituality runs of being infiltrated, in the 21st century, by Gnostic and rationalist currents that converge in what is known as the “ New era”. He was speaking at a conference on “Metastasis of Gnosticism in the 21st century: Confluence between the New Age and rationalism infiltrated in Catholic spirituality”. The talk is published on the youtube channel. The Spanish Prelate exposed “the errors in against faith ”.
“I am referring to metastasis of Gnosticism in the 21st century because it is not an error that it remains in the first century, but we have it, and with force, today,” he said.
In this sense, Bishop Munilla recounted an event that occurred in a Catholic novitiate that, according to him, reflects the “great crisis” that has arisen from “emptying the content of the most central part of Christianity, which is Revelation.”
“I remember, for example, then, a novice of a religious order who suffered because he saw that in the novitiate of his order they were with these theories that there was no need to have certainties, and the poor boy entered the novitiate and they told him that ‘ what was that about kneeling in front of the Tabernacle ‘”, he lamented.
“These Gnostic extremes are much more present than it seems, as in the fact that the subject of religion in Catholic centers is even being replaced by exercises of internalization,” he added.
The Bishop also warned that the “divorce between theology and the pursuit of holiness” can lead to the heresy of Gnosticism.
“Do you want to study theology? It begins by worshiping the Blessed Sacrament. Do you want to become a doctor or graduate? It begins by fasting, assisting the poor and kneeling before the Blessed Sacrament, and thus theology will have its place. Otherwise, you have a danger of Gnosticism, a kind of abstract study of charity that does not lead you to commit yourself to the poor, ”he assured.