Can a Catholic Support the Enneagram?

*** Updated to include Pope John Paul II's, Address to the United States Bishops of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska on their “Ad Limina” visit, 28 May 1993.
___________

First, it should be understood that the claim that the enneagram can be used as an index for "self-realization" of one's personality is pure speculation, having no basis in fact as this Homiletic & Pastoral Review article from April, 2001, demonstrates.

The Enneagram and Catholic personalism
Unlike some personality-type indices the Enneagram remains untested by any scientific study
By Christopher Rees

This is a long and detailed article and provides more than the necessary documentation to refute proponents of the enneagram.

But let's not dwell on this when we can go directly to the Church to see what she says on the matter.

In February 2003, the Pontifical Council for Culture and the Pontifical Council for Interreligious Dialogue released the document "Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian reflection on the New Age."

This document warned Catholics that caution and discernment were necessary in dealing with the Enneagram and other New Age practices because these activities can be in conflict with Catholic doctrine.

1.4. The New Age and Catholic Faith

Even if it can be admitted that New Age religiosity in some way responds to the legitimate spiritual longing of human nature, it must be acknowledged that its attempts to do so run counter to Christian revelation...

An adequate Christian discernment of New Age thought and practice cannot fail to recognize that, like second and third century gnosticism, it represents something of a compendium of positions that the Church has identified as heterodox.

John Paul II warns with regard to the

“return of ancient gnostic ideas under the guise of the so-called New Age: We cannot delude ourselves that this will lead toward a renewal of religion. It is only a new way of practising gnosticism – that attitude of the spirit that, in the name of a profound knowledge of God, results in distorting His Word and replacing it with purely human words. Gnosticism never completely abandoned the realm of Christianity. Instead, it has always existed side by side with Christianity, sometimes taking the shape of a philosophical movement, but more often assuming the characteristics of a religion or a para-religion in distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian”.

An example of this can be seen in the enneagram, the nine-type tool for character analysis, which when used as a means of spiritual growth introduces an ambiguity in the doctrine and the life of the Christian faith.[emphasis added]

Further, in Section 6.2, Practical Steps, we read in the same document:

It must unfortunately be admitted that there are too many cases where Catholic centres of spirituality are actively involved in diffusing New Age religiosity in the Church. This would of course have to be corrected, not only to stop the spread of confusion and error, but also so that they might be effective in promoting true Christian spirituality.

And Pope John Paul II, in his address to the United States Bishops of Iowa, Kansas, Missouri and Nebraska on their “Ad Limina” visit, 28 May 1993 has stated:

Many of you have written Pastoral Letters on the problems presented by pseudo–religious movements and sects, including the so–called "New Age Movement". New Age ideas sometimes find their way into preaching, catechesis, workshops and retreats, and thus influence even practising Catholics, who perhaps are unaware of the incompatibility of those ideas with the Church’s faith. In their syncretistic and immanent outlook, these parareligious movements pay little heed to Revelation, and instead try to come to God through knowledge and experience based on elements borrowed from Eastern spirituality or from psychological techniques. They tend to relativize religious doctrine, in favor of a vague world–view expressed as a system of myths and symbols dressed in religious language. Moreover, they often propose a pantheistic concept of God which is incompatible with Sacred Scripture and Christian Tradition. They replace personal responsibility to God for our actions with a sense of duty to the cosmos, thus overturning the true concept of sin and the need for redemption through Christ. [emphasis added]

Yet, in the midst of this spiritual confusion, the Church’s Pastors...should insist on the spiritual dimension of the faith, on the perennial freshness of the Gospel message and its capacity to transform and renew those who accept it...

To preach a version of Christianity which benignly ignores, when it does not explicitly deny, that our ultimate hope is the "resurrection of the body and life everlasting" ("Symbolum Apostolorum") runs counter to Revelation and the whole of Catholic tradition. More vigorous preaching and catechesis on eschatological themes is needed in order to eliminate confusion regarding the true nature of Christian life and of the Church’s unfailing hope in her Lord who is "the resurrection and the life" (Jn. 11: 25).

Moral theologian Msgr. William B. Smith has also cautioned Catholics about the dangers of the enneagram. Writing in the March, 1993 issue of Homiletic & Pastoral Review, Msgr. Smith said:

"The enneagram is a circular diagram on which nine personality types are systematically represented at nine equidistant points on the circumference. Lines connect various points to each other. It is this diagram itself which is the enneagram, and it is used as a psychological tool of self-discovery. Each of the nine personality types (numbered 1 through 9) is described negatively by some compulsion, fixation, or basic driving force to avoid something unpleasant. This compulsion is seen as one's basic psychological orientation. To discover your number, you have to realize what you seek to avoid, what your compulsion is....

"The basic premise of the enneagram is that there are nine and only nine personality types; this is simply given as true, it is nowhere demonstrated as proven. To my knowledge, there are no scientific studies to determine whether enneagram theory can be integrated with other typologies; but that would not really bother some advocates one way or the other.... The more you read about it, the more it begins to resemble a college-educated horoscope; and that is not compatible with Catholic doctrine or practice....

"As a tool for spiritual direction, it seems to me most deficient, even dangerous. The enneagram is really built on a theology (?)-perhaps ideology-of self-renewal and self- regeneration that is a far cry from (perhaps contradiction of) the Gospel teaching: 'Amen, amen, I say to you, unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains just a grain of wheat; but if it dies, it produces much fruit' (John 12:24)....

"Pope John Paul II said on Nov. 1st, 1982:

'Any method of prayer is valid insofar as it is inspired by Christ and leads to Christ who is the Way, the Truth, and the Life (John 14:6).'

The enneagram is not the Way, nor is it the Truth, and on those bases not truly compatible with-much less essential to-the Life in Christ."

The source for this excerpt is here.

And from Zenit, we read:

Why New Age Is a Challenge for Christianity
Father Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi Responds
VATICAN CITY, 30 JUNE 2004 (ZENIT)
The spread of New Age and its use and abuse of Christian elements make of the movement a challenge for the baptized, says a specialist at the Lateran University.

Father Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi, a professor at the Mater Ecclesiae Higher Institute of Religious Sciences of the Lateran, gave that warning in an interview with ZENIT.
. . .
The 1989 document of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, a Letter to the bishops of the Catholic Church on certain aspects of Christian meditation, is a reference text on the attention that must be given to updating the ancient Gnosis, in which salvation takes place through the conscience, [and is] esoteric, for the few.

In regard to New Age — or Gnostic, which is to say more or less the same thing — practices, there are at the basic level, numerous examples.

To mention one: the last Vatican text on New Age refers to the use — expanding alarmingly — of the enneagram: a symbol originally of an initiation character developed in an esoteric context, syncretist, which has subsequently been transformed to a system of classification of the personality of nine psychological types, which serves for the search for self-fulfillment by an esoteric or magical way.

This is pure Gnosis.

Click here for the entire article: http://www.ewtn.com/library/ISSUES/ZNACHALL.HTM

Any yet another article reiterates what was contained in the Vatican document listed above:

Despite its vast popularity in certain sectors, a recent Vatican document on the new age noted the enneagram is a form of Gnosticism, a formally declared heresy, which says Pope John Paul II is in “distinct, if not declared, conflict with all that is essentially Christian."

So now, understanding that the enneagram is a New Age tool, having no scientific validity in helping one to discern his behavior patterns coupled with the fact that it's pure gnosis as stated by Father Alessandro Olivieri Pennesi and "is conflict with all that is essentially Christian" as the late Holy Father said, how is it possible for a faithful and devout Catholic to support its inclusion in a high school theology curriculum?