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The new (old) age movement: Assessing a Vatican assessment

This article examines the recent Vatican document "Jesus Christ the Bearer of the Water of Life: A Christian Reflection on the 'New Age' ". This official Catholic response to a diverse and polycentric religio-spiritual phenomenon reveals problematic conditions and core institutional concerns surrounding religion in the culture of postmodernity. These concerns--which are both cause and effect of the diffusion of Catholic identity--include pollution motifs, the impact of relativism, pluralism, privatized religiosity, and waning institutional control of religious symbols. Attention is also directed to the efficacy of doctrinal formulations as a boundary maintenance mechanism and to the way in which the Vatican response to the New Age movement exemplifies church/sect dynamics within contemporary Catholicism.