Catholic College Students in Michigan Should Avoid Jesuit Priest Mixing Yoga and Ignatian Spirituality

Yoga aims to control and still the mind, recognizing a detachment untouched by the mind and mundane suffering. Sounds pagan to me!

From LifeSiteNews

By Stephen Kokx

Fr. Bobby Karle is the founder of a program called Ignatian Spirituality & Yoga that purports to 'hold Ignatian spirituality and the Dharmic traditions in conversation.'

Young people headed back to college in the southeastern part of Michigan may be in danger of opening themselves up to demonic possession if they visit St. Mary Student Parish in Ann Arbor.

Jesuit priest Bobby Karle serves as the associate pastor at St. Mary’s, which is located two blocks west from central campus at the University of Michigan. It is also an eight-mile drive from Eastern Michigan University in neighboring Ypsilanti.

Fr. Karle is the founder of a program called Ignatian Spirituality & Yoga. It is endorsed by the Midwest Jesuit Province and purports to “hold Ignatian spirituality and the Dharmic traditions in conversation.”

Students who attend Karle’s classes engage in what his website calls an “asana” or physical posture as well as a “yoga nerdi” or breathing practice, while also spending time in prayer and meditation.

“We strive to proceed with deep respect, sensitivity, humility, and appreciation in engaging the Christian and yoga traditions,” his website reads.

Karle, a native of Michigan who was ordained in 2021, first started practicing yoga “out of curiosity” in 2009 after school at the Jesuit-run University of Detroit Prep in Detroit. In 2010, he entered the order to become a priest.

In a 2015 article for the left-wing website The Jesuit Post, Karle explained how engaging in the non-Catholic practice affects his daily life.

“I practice yoga (on the mat), most simply, because it makes me feel good. I feel calmer, healthier, happier, and most of all, it draws me closer to God. I also practice yoga (off the mat) in my everyday life by living out the teachings of the Yoga tradition,” he said.

Karle’s article included a video of him leading students in a yoga session inside a Catholic chapel, seemingly at Fordham University in New York where he pursued graduate studies.

Karle has since obtained Master of Philosophy and Master of Divinity degrees and has become a RYT 500 level yoga instructor. He has also completed “Isha Yoga” programs such as Inner Engineering, Surya Kriya, Bhava Spandana, Shoonya, and Bhuta Shuddhi, all of which are deeply rooted in Yogi “spirituality.”

While seemingly good-intentioned, Karle’s efforts are sorely misguided and dangerous, as many spiritual experts within the Catholic Church have warned about the demonic influence found in yoga.

During a 2022 interview with author and podcaster Taylor Marshall, Fr. Chad Ripperger warned that yoga is a “portal” for the devil.

“The yoga masters, the people that are at the top of the heap, every single one of them will say that the positions and stretching that is done in yoga, each one of them is a representation of a specific Eastern deity, which is a.k.a. a demon. Because all the gods of the Gentiles are demons,” he said, referencing Psalm 95:5.

“People can become diabolically influenced,” he added. “I do know two women who became possessed from practicing yoga. I know people who were possessed, and then by practicing yoga, they ended up with more demons. And so I just tell people you want to completely stay away from it altogether.”

Ripperger is not alone in pointing out the spiritual dangers of yoga. The late Fr. Gabriel Amorth, the former chief exorcist of Rome who died in 2016 at age 91, warned Catholics about its pitfalls as well.

When invited to a film festival to introduce “The Rite,” the famous film about an exorcist based on true events, Amorth indicated that yoga was a step to Satanism. He said that because it leads to the practice of Hinduism, “and all eastern religions are based on the false belief in reincarnation,” then “practicing yoga is satanic; it leads to evil just like reading ‘Harry Potter.’”

While Karle and his fellow Jesuits maintain that they are simply taking Vatican II’s teachings on inter religious dialogue and adopting what is “true and holy” in the Hindu “tradition,” it is simply not possible to untangle yoga from its diabolical elements.

“Yoga is an Eastern pagan spirituality,” an article published on Catholic author Dan Burke’s Spiritual Direction website recalls. “And it’s an open door to alternate spiritualities. You can’t separate yoga from the spiritual energies inherent in the practice.”

An essay that appeared on Johnette Benkovic’s Women of Grace website in 2023 argues something similar. It points out that the famous yoga “Om chant” that is often mimicked in movies and pop culture is not just a “random sound” but a noise that has a deep significance in the Hindu religion.

“According to the Hindu America Foundation (HAF), ‘The word Om is defined by Hindu scripture as being the primordial sound of creation. It is the original vibration of the universe. From this first vibration, all other vibrations are able to manifest.’ Pronounced a-u-m, these three sounds are said to represent the three states of consciousness: A is the waking state; U is the dream state; M is the state of deep sleep.”

The article rightly concludes that it is “a mistake to trivialize the Om chant regardless of how seriously (or not) it’s presented in a yoga class. It has a very deep and detailed spiritual meaning that the discerning Christian needs to take seriously.”

According to Pew Research Center, the portion of Americans identifying as Christian has plummeted from 90 percent in 1972 to 63 percent in 2020. During the same period, those who identify as agnostic, atheist, or “nothing in particular” skyrocketed from 5 percent to over 30 percent. Eastern religions such as Buddhism and Hinduism have also grown in popularity among Americans, although to a lesser degree.

An ABC News/Washington Post poll released in 2018 likewise found that the share of Americans with no religious affiliation almost tripled from 1990 to 2017. Website Quartz published a piece that found the Wiccan population in the U.S. skyrocketed from 8,000 in 1990 to 340,000 in 2008. The authors argue that “witchcraft is the perfect religion for liberal millennials who are already involved in yoga and meditation, mindfulness, and new-age spirituality.”

Not only should Catholic students who are attending school near Ann Arbor this year avoid Karle’s classes, Catholics of all ages should steer clear of all yoga exercises and instead delve into traditional Ignatius spirituality by going on a retreat or by reading what saints like St. Alphonsus and others have to say about prayer and meditation. Those are far more reliable guides to heaven than a priest who draws inspiration from a false religion.