Life and Health in the Third Millennium
The Third millennium is now upon us. The United States and Western society are experiencing a period of economic prosperity that is unheard of in the history of mankind. The typical American citizen today has a standard of living greater than that of the vast majority of all men who have lived on earth since time began. With this affluence has come a longer life expectancy, as well increased rates of previously rare diseases and an obsession with health in general.
New technologies arise at an astonishing rate in the West. Previously untreatable diseases are now not only cured but eradicated, and much physical suffering has been alleviated.Yet there is an unease as we realize that all the promise of our technology, and all the money of our booming economy spent on new treatments and cures, has failed keep pace with our demands for more and better cures for all our ills. In the back of our collective psyche, it is dawning on the world that all these advances are failing to resolve the basic problems of the suffering of man. In reality, there have truly been enormous advances. Life expectancy climbs steadily, despite the perceived "dangers" of our technological world, from industrial chemicals to pollution, to new sources of ionizing radiation and electromagnetic fields. Life expectancy alone is the best gage of true advance in the life sciences. It'sincrease is primarily a result of modern medicine, despite its synthetic and "unnatural" chemicals and techniques, and overall improvement in diet, which has been achieved by farming techniques with heavy dependence on chemical fertilizers and pesticides.
Yet the public perceives that medicine and science has failed them. For instance, they rightfully point out rising cancer rates, then make only half right assumptions. There is indeed an increase in breast cancer, for example, and society wrings its hands while "trying" to find the culprit. Estrogen-mimicking industrial chemicals in the water supply and pesticides in the food chain, the radiation of mammograms themselves, vaccinations, red meat and fatty foods, and a host of other sources are advanced as primary causes for this mysterious epidemic. As questions build, no true answers are forthcoming, at least from science.
Thus, as modern knowledge fails to fulfill its promise of solutions for all the world's ills, the public is turning, en masse, to alternatives to mainstream medicine, and alternatives to traditional life practices in general. If penicillin fails, an herb may help. If chemotherapy fails, accupuncture and meditation and vegetarian diets are embraced.
Much of this new" medicine comes from the "old" religions. American Indian and Chinese herbology, eastern religious meditation techniques, vegetarian Hindu diets, accupuncture, and a myriad other old techniques are "rediscovered," and advanced as an alternative for the failure of modern science to cure all the suffering in the world.
Yet how can the educated west forget so quickly the roots of western medicine itself? Traditional western medicine has grown alongside the traditional western culture. That culture, the culture of Europe, and to a certain degree the Americas, is the culture of the Church that formed it and from which it received its principles of scientific investigation. Those principles are, boiled down to their basis, Thomistic realism.
Granted, St. Thomas Aquinias dealt with theology and philosophy. The Jesuits took this rational examination of nature and formed it; it was Thomistic thought, the rational, reasoned examination of concepts and ideas, from which grew the body of scientific evidence upon which modern western medicine is based. And these concepts have grown from a fundamentally Catholic understanding of reality.
That reality is that God made the created world, along with the Laws of Nature by which it is governed. God, of course, is the infinite omnipresent power in the universe. He also made angels, man, and the lower anaimals. Some of the angels are fallen demons. All His creation must obey His Laws of Nature, which are described and codified by scientific inquiry, as well as the Natural Law, which is written on our souls and summed up in the Ten commandments. Of course, we were created perfect, but disease and death entered the system with the Original Sin of Adam and Eve.
That is essentially a summary of the reality of our existence, properly understood by science and philosophy. We are created physical bodies, imbued by God with an eternal soul, living a finite Earthly life. We are forced to live according to the Laws of Nature and the Natural Law, and we cope daily with disease and death, the price of sin.
Western medicine grew up with a fundamental understanding of this reality, and works within its finite framework. As such, it examines the body in a rational scientific Jesuitical manner, with its (sometimes limited) understanding of the Laws of Nature, and attempts to apply remedies to the body based on this reality and the diseases present.
There are biochemical, electrical, and other forces acting within the body, any disruption of which can lead to the diseased state. Investigation of disease entails the use of all the sciences, including biology, chemistry, physics, etc. Treatment may be a chemical to restore functure to an injured or malfunctioning organ, surgery to remove a diseased organ, vitamins and nutrients to restore proper function, or any of the thousands of treatments available to modern medicine.
They all have, as common denominator, at least an attempt to understand structure and body function through rational scientific thought within the framework of created reality, or in other words, Catholic reality. Even the early herbal remedies of modern western medicine were attempts at treating the body with the realm of reality. If remedies were found to be without merit, they were relegated to the dustbin with the other snake oils of history. As herbal remedies stood up to scientific investigation, the active ingredients were codified, formulized, and purified into the modern medicines we use today.
Often when the patient steps from western medicine into the world of alternative, holistic, or eastern medicine, he steps from the known to the unknown. For all its failings, western medicine attempts to treat the body using rational scientific concepts. Alternative medicine largely refrains from making any such claims. Instead, remedies are couched in terms of balancing the "powers" within the body, or opening energy channels, or bringing "harmony" within.
Concepts of healing are drawn from eastern mysticism or ancient spiritualism, or other old world religious traditions such as wicca and Earth worship. There is a belief that mother Earth provides all the cures necessary for the healing of her children. Many common maladies are believed not to be biochemical errors from a fallen human nature, but an unbalance of energies or powers, or bad karma from a previous life.
The public, in essence, is turning away from science, and returning to that which so much of early man embraced, namely superstition and Gnostic Paganism. These "new" alternative techniques rarely have scientific basis, but rely on mystical interpretations of the body and soul which are inherently foreign to the Catholic understanding of reality.
The powers or energies of the body, which form the fundamental basis of these alternative remedies and techniques, must be examined. Are they "real?" Do they indeed exist? Can they be quantified or measured? If not, why? Are they part of that Nature God created? Of course, if they do exist, they must be made to "fit" into the realm of God's creation.
However, our western understanding of God's creation has no place for powers or energies (such as the Star Wars "force") freely floating around for us to tap into, use and manipulate. Western tradition has a simple word for the tapping into and manipulation of energies or life forces. That word is "Magic." Magic, in the western understanding of the world, is a forbidden art. God did not make energies freely floating around into which we may tap and which we may manipulate by our will, like some cosmic internet. Any religion or "medicine" that promises its adherents such power is a deceptive or dishonest one, for such is forbidden by God. Such "knowledge" is Gnostic, or forbidden or hidden knowledge. It is antithetical to Christian belief.
What of so-called healings brought about by practitioners of eastern or New Age mysticism based medicine? Are there other "powers" by which we may be healed?
The only force or power in the universe is the power of God. We are not permitted to attempt to conjure up that power by herbs, potions, incantations, "Healing Touch," or any other technique.
We can indeed use intercessory prayer to ask God for true healing by His power. Saints have done so. Jesus our Lord healed many by His power. Angels are credited with healings in Scripture, but only through God's power.
However, we can not conjure up this power by an act of our own will or by ritual or incantation or meditation. Therefore, in the Catholic understanding of reality, these healings can at best only come from forces which God never intended us to understand or attempt to manipulate. Two thousand years of Christian thought and proper scientific investigation have not revealed any such powers. At worst, and more likely, they come from demonic forces, and magic is always and only the conjuring of demonic forces.
For the typical individual who walks into a local alternative medicine shop, the herbal remedies they sell are not likely to open him up to demonic influence. However, the attraction of further advance into these Gnostic healing arts that are the next logical step are hard to ignore. Power over physical reality, even the reality of our fallen physical nature, even if pursued to help and heal, is not a power to be grasped at by Christians. It is another attractive yet forbidden fruit so very much like that first one of which Adam and Eve tasted.
What is the solution to this malaise that has taken over the mind of modern man, this obsession with health and healing?
The root problem is a fundamental fear of death. Disease is simply a stage on the road to that death introduced by original sin. So man must come to terms with his own death. All the chemical compounds of all the plants of the world will never provide a cure for original sin, and therefore, disease will always be present. The sooner modern man grasps this reality, the sooner he will truly be healthy in body and soul.
This can only come with a return to that reality that tells us that God exists, He made us, and because of Original Sin and our sin, we must suffer and eventually die. The reality that the only "cure" from this suffering and death is the embrace of the Cross, and the Savior who hung there and died for us. This reality must be proclaimed by all who would seek to heal his fellow man and himself. The cure is the Good News, and the sooner modern man takes His medicine, the sooner our world will be truly Healed.
© Brian J. Kopp, DPM, Johnstown, PA
This item 3035 digitally provided courtesy of CatholicCulture.org
