What the Catholic Church says about magic, divination, sorcery, etc?
http://newagemess.blogspot.com/2011/08/what-catholic-church-says-about-magic.html
By Anette Ignatowicz August 20, 2011
The Catholic Church teaches that the first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself, for example, in the introduction to the Ten Commandments:
“I am Yahweh your God, who brought you out of Egypt, where you lived as slaves.”
Through the prophets, God calls Israel and all nations to turn to him, the one and only God: “Turn to me and be saved, all the ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other. . . . To me every knee shall bow, every tongue shall swear. ‘Only in the LORD, it shall be said of me, are righteousness and strength’.” (Isaiah 45:22-24, see also Philippians 2:10-11)
Because God’s identity and transcendent character are described in Scripture as unique,
the teaching of the Catholic Church proscribes superstition as well as irreligion and explains the commandment is broken by having images to which divine power is ascribed as well as in divinizing anything that is not God.
“Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons … power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc.”
The Catechism commends those who refuse even to simulate such worship in a cultural context
and states that “the duty to offer God authentic worship concerns man both as an individual and as a social being.”
The Catechism of the Catholic Church notes that this commandment is recalled many times throughout the Bible and quotes passages describing temporal consequences for those who place trust elsewhere than in God:
The Catechism of the Catholic Church, Part 3 Life in Christ, Section 2
THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
III. “YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME”
2110 The first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion; irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion.
Superstition
2111 Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.
Idolatry
2112 The first commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in, nor to venerate, other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of “idols, [of] silver and gold, the work of men’s hands. They have mouths, but do not speak; eyes, but do not see.” These empty idols make their worshippers empty: “Those who make them are like them; so are all who trust in them.” God, however, is the “living God”
who gives life and intervenes in history.
2113 Idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. Idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God. Man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons (for example, satanism), power, pleasure, race, ancestors, the state, money, etc. Jesus says, “You cannot serve God and mammon.”
Many martyrs died for not adoring “the Beast”
refusing even to simulate such worship. Idolatry rejects the unique Lordship of God; it is therefore incompatible with communion with God.
2114 Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man’s innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who “transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God.”
Divination and magic
2115 God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.
2116 All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.
Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others – even if this were for the sake of restoring their health – are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible.
Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.
Recommended Websites about New Age
http://newagemess.blogspot.com/p/what-does-new-age-movement-really-means.html:
METAMORPHOSE – Michael Prabhu India
NEW AGE DECEPTION – Sharon Lee Giganti
SCP (Spiritual Counterfeits Project)
WOMEN OF GRACE – Johnnette Benkovic
MUST READ
For Many Shall Come in My Name by Ray Yungen
Unmasking New Age by Douglas R. Groothuis http://www.amazon.com/Unmasking-New-Age-Douglas-Groothuis/dp/0877845689
AUGUST 2011
Categories: new age
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