Sure Catholic teaching teaches that man is body and soul, but there's also something referred to as an "animal" soul, going back to Aristotle and also picked up by St. Thomas, which might have a component of energy (and likely does). I don't see any issues with it personally, because I honestly believe that there's something to it, the notion of energy streams permeating the body via this Aristotelean "animal soul". I've seen those pictures of the "auras", the energy fields which remain even after part of a living organism has been physically severed, and I see that as an indication of the animal soul which is actually what gives living organisms their physical form. I wouldn't be surprised if Chinese medicine is superior in many ways to modern Western medicine, which was actually rolled out by the Rockefellers, a notion which views the body as something merely mechanical.
I had never before heard of this distinction between the immortal soul and the "animal" soul --- guess it's true what they say about learning something new every day! --- but it makes sense. Anything that is alive, even a single cell, has some form of energy within it, otherwise it would be dead. Even when we die, some cells remain alive for quite some time, you don't just "die all at once". How that ties into the departure of one's immortal soul, I'm not even going to try to parse that one. Traditionally, priests have administered last rites to people who have, to all appearance, been "dead" for some time. I think the Novus Ordo doesn't like that, though, and besides, they're pretty much agreed that everyone goes to heaven, so in their eyes, last rites aren't even strictly needed.
Back 30+ years ago, I received a fascinating catalog, long since lost, from N.M. Gwynne's Britons Catholic Library (I'm assuming he is one and the same as the British grammarian Nevile Martin Gwynne, whose seminal text I purchased on Kindle for our home high school in a year or two), in which NMG argues that a person is not really "dead" until putrefaction sets in, and that prayers should be recited over that person until that happens --- something about the alleged fact that you can still hear because your auditory system is the last thing to die, or something like that. When I have to "check out", I wouldn't object to that --- it wouldn't hurt and it could help. As the saying goes, you're not dead until you get cold and then warm again. Our modern, money-driven rush to embalm the deceased ASAP kind of nips that in the bud. (If I could, I would choose lying in state, unembalmed, for three days, then buried naturally and free to the earth with only a shroud or a crude, cheap coffin, in the fashion of modern-day "green burial", but I have had to defer to strong family sensibilities, and agree to be pickled, put in a metal box, and shoved in a glorified filing cabinet. Bet
that's going to be a dandy if they have to open it up in fifty years!)
That's one thing the Muslims actually get kind of right --- bury in a shroud, free to the earth, with a type of "bottomless box" over top of you, so that the grave can be covered without shoveling dirt directly on top of the shrouded corpse.
That sure would hammer home to all the proud worldlings the concept of "you are dust, and unto dust you shall return"! (I used a similar arrangement, and that's where I got the idea, when I had to dig up part of my front yard and valve off a leaky PVC pipe that fed the broken sprinkler system. I knocked the bottom and two sides off a repurposed speaker box, then placed the shell over the valve and the leaky joint, so that it could easily be accessed if need be, and then shoveled dirt on top of it all. Saved a $300 plumber bill.)
Topic: Acupuncture OK for Catholics? (Read 1567 times)