The Laying On Of Hands

by Dennis Green

The American Council of Catholic Bishops has ruled that Reiki, a version of therapeutic touch, or healing massage, is forbidden. No Catholics may practice this healing art, and the priests and nuns who engage in it are hereby ordered to stop. A number of them say they will ignore the Bishops, as do I.

The laying on of hands is a customary method of healing in many cultures and religions. It was practiced by Jesus of Nazareth, who told his disciples to do the same. Until now, Reiki and other similar techniques were practiced everywhere, even in Catholic Hospitals. What now?

Well, for believing Catholics in America, the choices are the same as always. They can pick and choose from a “Menu” of beliefs, ignoring the Church of Rome on Reiki as they do on such issues as birth control and women’s rights. Or else, they can be loyal and true to a hierarchy that seems, with the ascension of former Cardinal “Ratsig,” head of the Catholic Inquisition, increasingly intolerant and narrow-minded.

I’m lapsed, and have no real opinions that matter either way. But I can still criticize the Roman hierarchy, even as I feel the right, even the responsibility, as a lapsed Jew, to criticize Israeli politics. You don’t have to have a dog in that fight anymore to oppose it. And if you lived on the inside for 12 — 16 years, you know more than most laymen.

But this is not about opposition, rather the wonder and the miracle of the laying on of hands. Why is it that the human touch itself should have such miraculous healing powers? What is it in our human and social evolution that sticks with us? Does the grooming of one another, common among all the Five Great Apes, have anything to do with this continued phenomenon? Perhaps.

Chimpanzees are most like the Catholic Bishops, aggressive, domineering, spending most of their time defending their territorial outposts. But they also engage in grooming, stroking and relieving their brothers and sisters of infestations, and simply encouraging each other by physical contact. So do Gorillas. And Orangutans.

But Bonobos, smaller cousins of the Chimps, who live on the other side of the Congo River, are very different. They not only engage in grooming, but spend most of their spare time in sexual interaction rather than in combat. They never quite came down — as we, the Chimps and the others did – out of the trees or depended on an upright posture for their identity. They lay their hands, in a plethora of ways, on each other, calming, comforting, healing each other, more than any of the other Five Great Apes ever do.

We evolve, or suppose we do, from those primate ancestors. We keep a few of the traits and habits that serve our survival well. Perhaps the laying on of hands is one of those practices that sustain us. And why should our religious leaders oppose such a thing?

“It’s only from a direct connection with Jesus that we can trust any healing,” they say. “In this Reiki practice, there appears to be an intermediary, and we can’t know whether that force is divine, or evil.” I would submit that all too often, we cannot tell whether those priestly intermediaries are the real thing, or not…

In the Santa Rosa Diocese of the Roman Catholic Church, which includes the churches in Eureka, where I grew up, more than ten priests are suspected of child molestation, including one of my classmates, Gary Timmons, who died in prison. So much for the laying on of hands.

©2010 Dennis Green