Hello again. I am considering entering the seminary at some point in the next three years (after graduating university). I am actively involved in the practice of Kyokushin Karate, a style devised in the 40s by a Korean immigrant to Japan named Masutatsu Oyama, who developed the system after spending a couple years in the mountains with the karate he had learned from other masters. It is a rather direct, effective, and rational style with high emphasis on discipline and technique rather than spirituality or chi-movement, such as in styles like Tai-Chi.

However, there can be minimal spiritualism to it. For example, my sensei teaches a warm up that is taught to be performed before every class that is designed to build "chi energy." I do not do this warm-up, because not only do I recognize that chi does not exist but I know it to be a grave violation to the Catholic worldview (even before I reconverte to Catholicism I did not have any enthusiasm for the warm up, because I somehow did not believe it really did anything).

I am progressed enough in the style to teach, and I teach children and people my age. However, I filter down the teaching purposefully to include absolutely no "chi energy" exercises prior to class. I simply narrow the practice down to nothing but the techniques, sparring, and katas (which is 99% of this particular martial art).

But I am especially concerned about how my lifestyle may change when I enter the priesthood, because I am passionate about martial arts - so much that the only passion that subordinates them is, of course, my love for God, His Church, and what I see as my impending vocation to it. This is obvious simply in the fact that I refuse to do anything regarding chi energy.

Does the Church allow priests to practice martial arts provided they do not engage at all in any of the aspects of Eastern cosmology, only the techniques? This style is not at all like yoga where the whole system and its movements is based on a cosmology. The origins of the system were solely techniques, concrete/wood breaking, and sport sparring.