Pot, kettle?

Imagine our delight when we read this story in today's Guardian - the Catholic Church in America has banned the use of reiki in Catholic institutions, branding it "unscientific" and "inappropriate". The Conference of Catholic Bishops has warned that reiki, an alternative therapy involving the channelling of "energy" from the therapist to the patient, "lacks scientific credibility" and also risks exposing people to "malevolent forces", a notion which is of course hugely credible and strongly supported by scientists, particularly those working in Malevolent Forces and Evil Spirits research departments around the world. Here's a paragraph from the new guidelines:

"A Catholic who puts his or her trust in reiki would be operating in the realm of superstition, the no man's land that is neither faith nor science. Superstition corrupts one's worship of God by turning one's religious feeling and practice in a false direction."

Unfortunately, New Humanist was unable to find a reiki practitioner to comment on the scientific credibility of the Vatican stance on condoms and the spread of HIV...

[Thanks Christina]

Update: One of our followers (though not in a cultish way) on Twitter, @krypto, has kindly passed us a link to the full reiki guidelines released by the Conference of Catholic Bishops. It's a six page PDF which, as Krypto said to us, "Wraps itself up in knots trying to differentiate spiritual and natural healing".