A lay student of mine at the seminary contacted me asking about the attitude of the Church to "astral travel". He writes:
The question is regarding "les voyages astrals" (astral travel): how do we explain this and what is the moral evaluation of this...How can I explain this to someone in a concrete way?
I just finished writing an email to a blog reader who shared a difficulty he is living. He was asked to become a godparent, and indeed accepted joyfully, but then (to everyone's dismay) discovered that he was disqualified because he had never received the sacrament of Confirmation.
I was recently studying the ritual book for the Rite of Christian Initiation of Adults (RCIA), and I was struck by a powerful concept near the beginning, describing the process of initial evangelization. It stated that one of the happy results of a proper evangelization would be the discovery by the individual that a relationship with God in Christ can fulfill every spiritual aspiration of the human heart — or, as the text says, "indeed, infinitely surpass them". It got me thinking: what are "spiritual aspirations", anyway? What are mine?
