{"id":2534,"date":"2007-03-15T15:52:37","date_gmt":"2007-03-15T15:52:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html"},"modified":"2007-03-15T15:52:37","modified_gmt":"2007-03-15T15:52:37","slug":"do-you-know-the-secret","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html","title":{"rendered":"Do you know the Secret?"},"content":{"rendered":"

No? What’s the matter with you?<\/a><\/p>\n

Emily Stimson writes at OSV of the latest faddishness given a platform by Oprah Winfrey:<\/a><\/p>\n

\n
\n

According to Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, who hosts EWTN Live and writes extensively on the New Age movement, The Secret<\/em><\/a>,<\/em> far from being some long-lost piece of ancient wisdom, is just the same old New Age nonsense dressed up for TV. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a standard New Age idea that all the world\u2019s problems would go away if everyone would just be a little more positive,\u201d said Father Pacwa. \u201cThis is an old scam. It\u2019s like a nasty scene from \u2018Poltergeist\u2019: \u2018They\u2019re ba-ack.\u2019\u201d <\/p>\n

The Secret<\/em>, however, go further back than the New Age movement. In fact, said Father Pacwa, they go right back to Eden. <\/p>\n

\u201cWhat did the devil say to Eve? \u2018Eat this, and you\u2019ll become like gods.\u2019 That\u2019s what The Secret<\/em> really promises,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n

The promise of The Secret<\/em> does seem to echo the promise of the serpent. It promises that without help from man or God you can control your destiny. It assures you neither grace nor suffering are necessary. It makes you your own god, and leaves no room for a messiah who hung on a cross. <\/p>\n

Of course, the cost of believing those promises is as high as ever, which is why the best way for Catholics to respond to The Secret<\/em> is not to think \u201clovely, wonderful thoughts\u201d about the phenomenon coming to a quick demise. Rather, Father Pacwa advised, Catholics need to help the culture rediscover their dependence on God\u2019s grace and the redemptive power of suffering. <\/p>\n

"Suffering isn\u2019t easy, but it\u2019s profound and powerful,\u201d he said. \u201cOur task is to help folks in the culture face their problems instead of looking for the easy way out. It doesn\u2019t exist.\u201d <\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

No? What’s the matter with you? Emily Stimson writes at OSV of the latest faddishness given a platform by Oprah Winfrey: According to Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, who hosts EWTN Live and writes extensively on the New Age movement, The Secret, far from being some long-lost piece of ancient wisdom, is just the same old…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":180,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2534","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nDo you know the Secret? - Via Media<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Do you know the Secret? - Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"No? What’s the matter with you? Emily Stimson writes at OSV of the latest faddishness given a platform by Oprah Winfrey: According to Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, who hosts EWTN Live and writes extensively on the New Age movement, The Secret, far from being some long-lost piece of ancient wisdom, is just the same old…\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Via Media\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2007-03-15T15:52:37+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"awelborn\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<!-- \/ Yoast SEO plugin. -->","yoast_head_json":{"title":"Do you know the Secret? - Via Media","robots":{"index":"index","follow":"follow","max-snippet":"max-snippet:-1","max-image-preview":"max-image-preview:large","max-video-preview":"max-video-preview:-1"},"canonical":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html","og_locale":"en_US","og_type":"article","og_title":"Do you know the Secret? - Via Media","og_description":"No? What’s the matter with you? Emily Stimson writes at OSV of the latest faddishness given a platform by Oprah Winfrey: According to Jesuit Father Mitch Pacwa, who hosts EWTN Live and writes extensively on the New Age movement, The Secret, far from being some long-lost piece of ancient wisdom, is just the same old…","og_url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html","og_site_name":"Via Media","article_published_time":"2007-03-15T15:52:37+00:00","author":"awelborn","twitter_card":"summary_large_image","schema":{"@context":"https:\/\/schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html","name":"Do you know the Secret? - Via Media","isPartOf":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website"},"datePublished":"2007-03-15T15:52:37+00:00","dateModified":"2007-03-15T15:52:37+00:00","author":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a"},"breadcrumb":{"@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html#breadcrumb"},"inLanguage":"en-US","potentialAction":[{"@type":"ReadAction","target":["https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html"]}]},{"@type":"BreadcrumbList","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/2007\/03\/do-you-know-the-secret.html#breadcrumb","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Do you know the Secret?"}]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#website","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/","name":"Via Media","description":"Amy Welborn","potentialAction":[{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/?s={search_term_string}"},"query-input":{"@type":"PropertyValueSpecification","valueRequired":true,"valueName":"search_term_string"}}],"inLanguage":"en-US"},{"@type":"Person","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/aea2dcda1635c9c2d6030d9c7595725a","name":"awelborn","image":{"@type":"ImageObject","inLanguage":"en-US","@id":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","contentUrl":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-content\/wphb-cache\/gravatar\/9f2\/9f2100183464289fedc5b8a621c15110x96.jpg","caption":"awelborn"},"description":"Amy Welborn was born in 1960, the only child of a now-retired professor of political science, a teacher-librarian-artist mother,deceased since 2001, was a teacher, librarian and artist. The Catholicism comes from her side. Amy grew up in a number of places - Indiana - Washington, DC - Lubbock Texas - Arlington, Virginia - DeKalb, Illinois - Lawrence, Kansas - and Knoxville, Tennessee, where the family settled in 1973. She attended Knoxville Catholic High School, then the University of Tennessee where she majored in history. She received an MA in Church History from Vanderbilt University, where she wrote a thesis on the changing role of women in 19th century American Protestantism, and the ways Scripture was used to justify those changes. She worked as as a teacher in Catholic high schools and a Parish Director of Religious Education and started writing for the diocesan press - the Florida Catholic - in 1988. Amy has written columns for Our Sunday Visitor and Catholic News Service at times over the past twenty years. Her articles have been published in venues ranging from Our Sunday Visitor to the New York Times to Commonweal. She has written 17 books. 18, if you included the as yet tragically unpublished novel. Amy has five children, ranging in age from 26 to 4 and was married to Michael Dubruiel, who died unexpectedly in February 2009. She lives in Birmingham, Alabama.","url":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/author\/awelborn"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/180"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2534"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2534\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2534"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2534"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/viamedia\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2534"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}