I’ve said a lot about all the various ways for centuries critics of religion have claimed same is some sort of self-projection or epigenetic hypertrophism…and from such diverse criticisms of such types, further criticized all religions as therefore psychology. Whereas I do believe metaphysics has room for both religion and sciences such as psychology, there is one particular dynamic of any relevant religion I could agree is nothing but psychology.
My earliest knowledge of what is meant by “religion as psychology” actually began with translated works of folks like Karl Konrad Grass ThD (and Counselor of State), Pensionary Professor of New Testament Exegesis in the Imperatorskij Jurjevskij University, Dorpat, Russia, and John Chapman, OSB, Palazzo San Calisto, Rome…as well as religion and ethics encyclopedias they were cited in around the year of my own birth, topic “Mysticism”.
Such men, and many subsequent researchers, make out an abundantly logical case for saying that where soul AND body only APPEAR affected by mystical light or visions (where such light or vision is needed to sustain physical rapture, ecstasy, or general well-being without intellectual or physical advance), definite psychological stimuli/response matters exist…and are more prevalent in persons open to suggestion, including their own. Grass and Chapman were among those citing most of the well-known female Roman Catholic saints of medieval times and later as examples of such “ecstatic visionaries”, noting even the medieval Church did not so much authenticate their visions as promulgate them for being nihil obstat (not outside the doctrine of faith; indeed, even the 1994 Catechism of the Catholic Church in part states that Catholic prophecy ended with Jesus and elsewhere that visions do not increase faith deposits as if Scriptural in nature or otherwise, and does not favor making fanfares for alleged visions).
But such writers also identified that where the response to the Absolute is wholly intellectual, as or in the nature of existing in objective reasoning only, there is no physical dependency and thus such religious pursuit need not be de facto psychology.
When it comes to those just wanting to feel physically or emotionally better, it seems to me that if one can imbue relief to them like (but not necessarily only) Jesus Christ…one real problem, one real touch or word, one instant and permanent cure or accurate forecast, with as little regard for a recipient’s initial faith as Scriptures show Jesus had…then obviously they’re a healer or seer; same goes for those who claim an angel, Jesus, God, or whatever appeared to them and completely fixed them day one. But when the excuses are: “It takes PERFECT faith to work such miracle”, “The Power moves in mysterious ways and not right away”, “Something beneath the powers of the Power must be interfering”, and so on, I must admit no matter what religion or metaphysics, I can’t see why any psychic/healer/healing mystic SHOULDN’T be examined by States to ensure merely a common non-afterlife immediate need to feel better/empowered isn’t at the center of a mystic’s ministry unable to produce more than erratic random-chance “cures”.
For theses reasons, I do not oppose government screening for anyone at all claiming some supernatural or extra-human power in any way will effect physical changes in or to bodies or spirits “given enough time”, nor for those who allege visions as to anyone’s particular temporal future events ; but I do contest government regulating anyone who may provably heal on contact, or separately anyone for whom all ritual, prayer, sacramental activity, and ministry are incidental hypertrophisms of intellect-only, nonaggressive objectively reasoning response to an Absolute toward eternal…not just temporal…progress.
