Maureen Dowd of the New York Times has been described in numerous publications as a practicing Catholic even though she’s compared the Church to the Taliban. But why might she believe that dead nuns are haunting her house because they’re upset about their vow of celibacy?
In her New Year’s column the writer talks about…well, see for yourself. She puts in her typical snarky cynicism about the whole thing but then why did she have this New Age person over?
Faith, the faith healer, is twirling a crystal over my green couch.
The pendulum is hovering above a chart, pointing to sources of negative energy in my house that need to be cleared.
The pendulum quivers and swings and slows and finally settles above the word “Curses.”
“That sounds scary,” I say.
Yes it does.
Faith, who says she is a “clairaudio,” as opposed to a clairvoyant, is talking to the pendulum, instructing the High Self Committee — which seems to be the spirit equivalent of the Co-op Board — to throw out all curses.
I’m having my house and body “cleared” for 2008, whatever that means. I’m more of a believer in mystery than mysticism. But I know for sure that New Year’s resolutions require too much discipline. An exorcism seems much easier.
Ashley Parker, a young woman who works with me, had been warning me that I was in grave karmic danger. Her mother, too, works with crystals and healing and says she was told she was a handmaiden in ancient Egypt in a past life. She instructed Ashley never to wear vintage clothes — which I often do — because bad vibes from previous owners could rub off.
Dowd described Faith Green as a pretty, curvy 31-year-old green-eyed blonde, says she has studied tribal shamanism, rolfing, Pilates, tango, movement and stretching. She calls herself a kinetic therapist. Here’s what she found in Dowd’s house:
Her crystal pendulum also identified some “discordant energy” in my house from angels who were meant to protect me but who had fallen prey to bad energy themselves, and from disconsolate spirits who may have been in a religious order.
“Was I a nun in a past life?” I ask, conjuring up a glamorous image of myself as Audrey Hepburn in “The Nun’s Story” rather than Rosalind Russell in “The Trouble With Angels.”
No, Faith explains, these bummed-out trapped souls are lurking from the past. She suggests they may just be unhappy with their vows of poverty, chastity, celibacy and obedience. You don’t need a Ouija board to know that.
This is the woman the New York Times has writing about culture and politics. Disconcerting to say the least.
January 3, 2008 at 2:17 pm
“This is the woman the New York Times has writing about culture and politics. Disconcerting to say the least.”
Well yes, and no. Yes it is disconcerting that MS. Dowd has the monkier of “Practicing Catholic” (denial is not just a river in Egypt), but no not disconcerting that she does so in the NYT.
Remember the NYT is a business first, and a news source second. She is saying what the typical NYT reader wants to hear (or thinks the way a NYT reader thinks). It’s like the old koan puzzle; which came first? The Chicken, or the Egg?
There was a interesting roundtable on the History Chanel recently, where it was brought up that, in American Journalisim, the notion of “objective” reporting was a fairly recent concept (came from the post WW1 disenchantment of what we were told to get us in to the war, and what we actually found when we got in to the war, and after).
Before this, news sources were unabashedly biased. Whigs read one paper with their self-congratulating slant, the Federalists another, and so on.
With the advent of the Internet, as well as the Blogosphere, I think that we are going back to the Balkanized reading habits of the 19th Century and earlier.
So round full circle, Who is reading the Op-Ed page of the NYT? Especially on matters spiritual? I dare say the same folks that read the Op-Eds of outlets like National Catholic Reporter. Need I say more?
I congratulate you for having the intestinal fortitude to read outlets like the NYT, NCR, Commonewal, America and their ilk, and bringing them to this blog.
I sincerely appreciate that you share the “enemy playbook” with us.
As Kipling would say…”You’re a better man than I am, Gunga Din!”
God bless,