The Enneagram in Christian Settings

The system entered the English-speaking world partly through Jesuit channels: Naranjo taught it in Berkeley in the early 1970s, and among those who learned it were Roman Catholic clergy, notably Robert Ochs, who introduced it into Jesuit retreat and formation work at Loyola in Chicago, from which it spread rapidly through Catholic and later evangelical spiritual direction. The link to the capital vices made it look continuous with the Christian ascetic tradition, which helped. Reception has been mixed. Some Catholic and Protestant bodies have welcomed it as a tool of self-knowledge; others have objected to its syncretic origins and to the historical claims made for it, and a 2000 draft document of the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops' committee on doctrine raised concerns about its use. Both responses are part of the record.

One of the most widely read Christian treatments, Richard Rohr's and Andreas Ebert's The Enneagram: A Christian Perspective, reached English readers in a 2001 edition adapting Rohr's earlier 1989 German-language treatment; it presents the nine types as spiritual patterns to be worked through rather than as a secular personality inventory and did much to extend the system's use in Catholic retreat work beyond the Jesuit circles where Ochs first introduced it. Rohr, a Franciscan friar rather than a Jesuit, represents a second and independent Catholic channel by which the system reached a wide readership.