Madrid, Spain, Nov 28, 2024 / 07:30 am (CNA).
The Spanish Bishops’ Conference has published a doctrinal note criticizing the practice of so-called “intergenerational healing” or “healing of the family tree” promoted by some Catholic priests.
The doctrinal note was published in response to these practices “in some Spanish dioceses, especially in the area of prayers and retreats organized by new religious movements of a charismatic nature.”
After receiving reports from various experts “in the fields of dogmatic theology, spiritual theology and psychology,” the conference’s Commission for the Doctrine of the Faith prepared the text that was approved for publication.
The doctrinal note identifies as originators of these practices Anglican missionary Kenneth McAll, Claretian religious John Hampsch and Catholic priest Robert DeGrandis of the Society of St. Joseph, “who has popularized the practice in the Catholic Charismatic Renewal due to his involvement in it.”
These authors teach “the intergenerational transmission of sin and, correlatively, the possibility of intergenerational healing.” The way to “cure” physical and mental illnesses resulting from the sins of ancestors consists of “identifying the sin in one’s own family tree” and breaking “the bond of sin” through “intercession, exorcisms and, especially, the celebration of a Eucharist,” which results in a supposed healing, the doctrinal note explains.
The bishops warn that “merging aspects proper to the Catholic faith with others that are foreign to it, results in a syncretism that appears Catholic with aspects that concern, explicitly or implicitly, questions of eschatology,” as well as ecclesiology, anthropology, and the theology of the sacraments.
The magisterium of the Catholic Church on sin
In the doctrinal note, the Spanish bishops emphasize some magisterial points to be taken into account on the question of “intergenerational healing.”
First, they state that “sin is always personal and requires a free decision of the will. The same is true of the punishment for sin. It always involved personal responsibility.”
In connection with this, they note that “the only sin that is transmitted from generation to generation is original sin,” but they also point out that this transmission occurs “in an analogous way,” that it does not have the character of personal guilt and that its punishment “does not pass on” to the next generation.
The prelates explain in the second instance that although in the Old Testament it is affirmed “that the sins of the fathers are visited on the children,” this conception of corporate responsibility, “which called into question the justice of God,” evolved “making man responsible for his own destiny”.
“In the New Testament Jesus rejected the concept of a hereditary transmission of sin, breaking with the logic of ‘personal and collective guilt-punishment’ in the well-known scene of the healing of the man born blind,” the bishops explain.
Baptism, Eucharist and intergenerational healing
The Spanish bishops also point out that it’s not possible to “maintain there is an intergenerational transmission of sin without contradicting the Catholic doctrine on Baptism,” the sacrament in which “the forgiveness of all sins occurs.”
Regarding the Eucharist, the prelates note that “the so-called ‘Masses of healing or deliverance,’ closely linked to the practice of intergenerational healing,” are not found in the Roman Ritual and therefore “the introduction of such intentions into the scope of the celebration of the Holy Mass seriously changes the nature of and distorts the Eucharistic celebration.”
The doctrinal note also refers to prayer meetings “whose purpose is to obtain from God the healing of the sick,” to reaffirm that, although “any member of the faithful can freely lift up prayers to God asking for healing,” when it comes to meetings “they must be subject to the supervision of the local Ordinary.”
“These prayers for healing, as well as prayers for exorcism, liturgical or non-liturgical, cannot be introduced into the celebration of the Holy Eucharist, the sacraments and the Liturgy of the Hours,” they specify.
In conclusion, the Spanish bishops affirmed that “basing ourselves on the Word of God, we wish to affirm that you can’t be guilty of someone else’s sins you had nothing to do with nor can anyone be held responsible for the sins of previous generations, but that each person is responsible for his own life and his own sins.”
This story was first published by ACI Prensa, CNA’s Spanish-language news partner. It has been translated and adapted by CNA.
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Spanish bishops have a just cause in addressing a trend that, although it may possess degrees of value, poses the danger of becoming a sect, cultic in form. Who the bishops, CNA attribute its origins seems related to generational concepts of sins passed on as a curse.
Exorcist Fr Amorth referred to curses inflicted on progeny by evil forebearers that could be alleviated by exorcism. That may have truth. It may not. If we pursue addressing it as a dimension of faith practice we open the Church to occultism. As Spanish bishops assert we don’t find evidence in scripture or Apostolic tradition. It opens the mind to fears and false beliefs that bad habits, physical impediments result from previous evil rather than the weakening of the will in resisting sin, or humbly accepting impediments due to accidents of nature. It reduces receiving the Eucharist to acquiring relief from natural impediments, habitual sin without the requirement of personal effort.
But we are often, individually and as a human community, affected negatively by the sins of others. For instance, a person who grows up in a household full of pornography as a few of my acquaintances did, is going to suffer psychologically at least from the side effects of being in that atmosphere. Does not that damage call for some spiritual healing? I get that they are not guilty of their father’s sins, but those sins may well have affected them greatly, and that calls for an effort to heal them of the damage of the father’s sins, does it not? It would have been helpful if the bishops had acknowledged this sort of thing and used that fact to draw some distinctions about the effects of sin downstream or corollary from the original actor.
I can believe that this is an issue that needed to be addressed, so do not mean general criticism, but, at least as summarized here, there are a plethora of related questions that might be asked and addressed.
Well said, Mark.
Yours truly agrees about “being affected negatively by the sins of others” (or positively by acts of virtue). The article addresses only the case of false intergenerational guilt for past sins, but does not speak to the “healing of memories” that might actually be intergenerational. Yes? Not only the “father’s sins,” but also the great grandfather or before? How differently might we ourselves feel even subconsciously if, say, the Luther rupture point in Christian history (affecting the Communion of Saints?) had turned differently?
Or, at least, through the openness of prayer cannot a person become spiritually insightful about how a current situation or resentment traces back to actions made by family members or others unknown in past generations? Not a theologian, but a novelist, gives us this kind of depth perception. Georges Bernanos:
“‘We couldn’t go on living if we thought of such things. ”No madame, I don’t think we could. I don’t suppose if God had given us the clear knowledge of how closely we [all of us] are bound to one another, both in good and evil, that we could go on living, as you say'” (“Diary of a Country Priest”).
Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, an Exorcist at the Saint Michael Center in NYC, holds monthly Deliverance sessions on YouTube.
In each of those sessions, he devotes a section to Deliverance from Generational curses.
I highly recommend these sessions as I have found them to be helpful for me.
See: https://www.catholicexorcism.org/prayers-for-priest-exorcists
I don’t know who is more worthy of condemnation: the priests who preach intergenerational sin or the prelates who claim that divine revelation “evolves”, implying either that there is no objective revelation (and a rupture between the Old and New Testament).