Oprah has become a real cult prophetess. For some time, she has been in cahoots with sham artist and new age guru Eckhart Tolle, as was pointed out here by prolepticlife not so long ago. The latest information indicates that this is not just a passing interest. What is more, her new religion is also good for her bottom line:
And what’s different about the Tolle connection for Winfrey is that for the first time in her much-applauded Book Club’s history, she’s gone into business with the author. And the author is not one of a novel, memoir or cookbook; he’s the mysterious creator of a philosophy that Winfrey endorses and suggests her readers live their lives by.
I noticed that even Salon.com was scandalized by Oprah’s crooked promotion of The Secret.
Just how shameless is all this too-good-to-be-true hype that has become the hallmark of Oprahware? Salon author Peter Birkenhead refers to The Secret sham as a “bottle of minty-fresh snake oil.”
Here is just one example: when I was researching The Secret, I took a look at the cast of characters employed by the author Rhonda Byrne. One of her gurus is a gentleman by the name of “Dr.” Joe Vitale, who goes under the revealing nickname of Mr. Fire (take it as you like), and promotes himself as a marketing expert. Indeed. I checked out some of his books. If this is not a red flag, I do not know what is. That’s right, the title is Hypnotic Writing: How to Seduce and Persuade Customers with Only Your Words. Now that’s shameless.
I cannot emphasize enough how destructive this way of thinking is to our moral and cultural future. Turn Oprah off.
Mary Victrix 
Yes, turn Oprah off because Oprah IS a turn-off!! But, you know. I think people … and I’ve been there, done that so I’m not some smug ‘holier than thou’ person … look for love in all the wrong places. People are starving for LOVE but true love calls us to some serious level of commitment. And we are a non-committal people. People run from Christ to all of these scams because of fear of commitment, I think. I remember a non-Catholic speaker once (Chuck Colson maybe?) said how people move along three phases in their conversion … the three C’s, he called them. The first is ‘curiosity’ … you are curious about Christ and want to learn more. Many people have no problem with this step, imho. Then comes ‘convinced’ … this, to me, is where you start to lose people. If you dig enough and truly open yourself up to the Holy Spirit, then you will become ‘convinced’ that Christ is the Way. But, if you were too lazy or scared to dig very much, you will probably leave here. Or, you can stay here forever … this is where many lukewarm Catholics probably are. They’re convinced of Christ’s divinity but don’t want to make that next step. This next step is ‘commitment’ … you commit yourself to following Christ. This is where we probably lose even more people because, as I said, people don’t want to commit .. .esp when He calls us to leave our sinful ways. Which, as Fr. Angelo says, we grow to ‘love’ some of our sins and we become attached to them. So, we want to convince ourselves that He is not the ONLY way!! This is where Oprah is, I guess. Desperately searching for some other way that doesn’t require her to make nearly the same level of commitment nor the immensely difficult struggle of dying to self.
But, she’s making a killing. Atleast 3 times a week, I get spam for Oprah herbal teas and other nonsense. I keep tagging it as spam but they must change something in the address because it keeps finding its way into my main inbox. I’m sure she’s making something off of these items since they carry her name on them.
There needs to be some people who get into her audience and blurt things out to start getting people to see the truth … blurt out, say, the book that Mr. Fire wrote on how to milk all of them for their money!
Can I upload this to gloria.tv?
Shameless? Have you EVER read Hypnotic Writing? What is it exactly that is shameless. Enquiring minds want to know!
Context, Sagebrush. No, I have not read the book, but I have read The Secret which is shameless bs marketed brilliantly, or should I say, hypnotically. Read the whole paragraph.
Have you all heard of Ludwig Andreas Feuerbach? According to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosphy he’s the guy that convinced a lot of people like Marx and other materialists that there was there a spiritualism compatible with materialism.
“Thought comes out of being, not being out of though”. God is just a projection of man without his physical limits, etc.
That’s why they reject conscience because conscience can only be self-determined and if you are accepting some set of beliefs from outside of yourself you are not accepting something that can truly exist – it must be a lie.
SO there is no God and there is no right and wrong (except as you create it). And they must be free from any ethical or religious standard because these are falsehoods.
So appealing to reason or to law or standards is not possible as long as they do not accept the idea that there is anything greater than themselves.
This is only one thread of the narrative of this particular gnosticism. There are at least two more elements – the standard “con” game and the “path”. This is an older spirituality that accepted greater forces than oneself (though they usually placed God as a demi-god against another force of equal strength).
But if you really want to have a response to it and to see how the argument is developed to destroy the fundamentals of natural law and absolute truth that all men have access to understanding then I think that C.S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man is a good place to start.
But all this is hard to put in these little comment boxes.
I am constantly amazed and grateful for your blogs.
The Holy Spirit had on my mind and thought something along the lines of what you’ve written here. I was trying this morning to remember a quotation I had found a long time ago that had been encouraging when I became aware of intentional sublimal devices employed to subvert hearts and souls with audio . It said something like” The words spoken have only the power of the one speaking them.” What I remember of that at the time , God was teaching me that His Word is supremely powerful and the deceivers words were
beneath God’s heel so to speak. Do you know the correct quotation that I am struggling to recall?
Last night, listening the Immaculee, the survivor of the Rwanda holocaust speaking on EWTN Ralph Martin’s program set into my thinking this whole topic. God bless you for being such a powerful intrument in Our Lady’s Immaculate hands! Thanks be to the Holy Spirit who is at work, leading, teaching and guiding us through Mary’s intercession.
Colleta – I’m sorry I do not know that quote, but that thought is repeated often and everywhere. It’s begins in the garden with the one who says “I will not serve”.
Gnosticism begins with jealousy of God and a desire to claim all that He knows and all His authority and power. It always ends badly.
It reappears in many forms over time and I don’t doubt it will be the main attack of the anti-christ. But that’s just my opinion.
I agree with you. Thank you, Elizabeth!
I just needed to add this:
Christus vincit! Christus regnat! Christus imperat!
🙂
Coletta,
Thanks for the encouragement!
I am not aware of the quote, but it your comment is quite interesting. Indeed, God’s word is power. The secularist mantras are accepted so readily because they are repeated so often and encourage us to do what is so easy. The Gospel is never even heard by most people, and they end up assuming as true the most patent nonsense. But God’s word can penetrate even is crack in the door of our hearts.
Liz,
Bingo. No one has patience for logic when it comes to morality and spirituality. Natural law arguments are so easily dismissed because people have not patience for logic. Emotional arguments are much more effective. The secular dogma of universal tolerance is at the heart of the dictatorship of relativism. It sounds broadminded and generous: the brotherhood of man, yadda, yadda, yadda.
Apologetics is not enough. The gospel is not just a philosophy it is a story, a true story of which we are, in a sense, a part. Unless we consider the fact that God is speaking directly to us and challenging us we will never accept the imperatives of the Christian life.
Thanks, Fr. Angelo and Colleta. Here is an quote from Archbishop Fulton Sheen (one of my favorites) echoing your sentiment.
“But between these two extremes of the simple souls who live by
faith, and who are content to be children all their spiritual lives,
and the learned souls like Augustine and Aquinas whose torches of
wisdom, lit at the foot of the crucifix, continue to illumine a
darkened world – between these extremes there is no mean. The simple
shepherds heard the voice of an angel and found their Lamb; the wise
men saw the light of a star, and found their Light. But Herod the
Great, who lived within a dozen miles of the shepherds and was
visited by the wise men en route to the crib, never found God – not
even in his massacre.
“All the race of proud Herods from that day to this, who think that
they think, have missed God either because they are too complicated
to understand the simple reports of the shepherds, or too filled with
useless learning to grasp the only useful truth which the wise men
bring. They lack that quality which the modern world conspicuously
lacks, namely, teachableness, or what the Latins called docility.
Therefore they disdain the idea that God might add to their knowledge
by revelation.”
—————
From Archbishop Fulton J. Sheen, Eternal Galilean, (Doubleday
Publishing)
Elizabeth,
whenI read this “So appealing to reason or to law or standards is not possible as long as they do not accept the idea that there is anything greater than themselves.”
I was thinking that is perhaps one of the reasons God allows certain sufferings in our lives. In His Mercy He is bringing us to see the limits of ourselves… to bring us to realize our need for Him and to call out to Him.
I also love Archbishop Fulton Sheen.
Jennifer,
Sorry for missing your question. You may certainly upload anything I produce to gloria tv.
You are right, the real pull of the New Age is spirituality and moral concern without obligation, or as you say commitment.
Coletta,
Yes, I think that when feel the pain of rejection of others towards ourselves we experience a little of the pain of Our Lord. And then when remember those times we rejected Our Lord ourselves we realize what incredible freedom He gave us to do so.
We are fortunate to understand these things and to know the solution is to draw nearer to Our Lord. Other people are not so fortunate and have no where to turn.
Still, even then Our Lord calls them. So there’s always hope.
Yes, Liz.
Always there is hope. We know who wins in the end! Who has already won!
As our Holy Father Benedict XVI said recently, “the hope which never disappoints is Jesus Christ.”
Exactly as FrAngelo wrote in “Allow me to Praise You, O Holy Virgin”
St. Maximilian Kolbe believed that the dogma was a blueprint for Catholic life, a battle plan for the crushing of the serpent’s head in our godless age. His act of consecration is a chivalric commitment, in our order a vow of blood to fight under Our Lady’s banner for the extension of the kingdom of Christ. Allow me to praise Thee O Holy Virgin, give me strength against Thine enemies.
and I love that FrAngelo says this about posting:
Attend upon your weapons and commence at will.
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