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In this episode Trent breaks down common Catholic superstitions that are actually sinful.
Can Catholics Follow Astrology? – Jimmy Akin’s Mysterious World
Transcription:
Trent:
Most of us know it’s superstitious to worry about black cats or walking under ladders, but even faithful Christians can involve victim to superstitions that put their souls in grave jeopardy. So what are these superstitions and how can we avoid them? That’s what we’ll be talking about in today’s episode, and to do that, we need to define our terms. One author says, superstitions are irrational beliefs that an object, action, or circumstance that is not logically related to a course of events influences its outcome. All sin is irrational, but not everything that is irrational is sinful. Some superstitions are just silly beliefs a person needs to think more clearly about so they can be freed from them, which applies to everybody, not just religious people. According to a 2024 study in the Journal of Individual Differences, 97% of people engage in some kind of superstition. For example, every year, hundreds of millions of dollars is lost by people afraid to travel or do business on Friday the 13th. What the study found is that many people might say they aren’t superstitious, but they end up sending chain emails or not stepping on cracks just to be safe. Something researchers call half belief in superstition, or as Michael Scott put it,
CLIP:
I’m not superstitious, but I am a little superstitious.
Trent:
One of the reasons Christianity spread so rapidly in the ancient world was that it offered hope of salvation in the face of superstitious paganism that made people feel trapped by omens and capricious deities that controlled their fates. However, Christians are not immune to superstition and relying on these practices when God warns us against them is sinful. The catechism of the Catholic Church says the sin of superstition happens 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. For example, I’ve seen prayers in adoration chapels that promise they never fail, which is something no prayer can promise because God is not a cosmic vending machine. James four three says, you ask and do not receive because you ask wrongly to spend it on your passions.
This kind of thinking is the backbone of prosperity theology, which I’ve covered in a previous episode that teaches certain prayers or tithing practices guarantee God’s blessings. In Bruce Wilkinson’s New York Times bestselling book, the Prayer of Jobes, he promises to teach the reader quote, a daring prayer that God always answers. That prayer comes from one Chronicles four 10 Jobes called on the God of Israel saying, oh, that you would bless me and enlarge my border and that your hand might be with me and that you would keep me from harm so that it might not hurt me. And God granted what he asked. However, in his book, Wilkinson has turned a single request, God graciously answered in salvation history into a formulaic, superstitious prayer, although it’s possible to take any good thing and become superstitious about it. For example, in the early church, some Christians replaced pagan amulets worn as good luck charms and put Bible verses inside of them instead, which the church fathers said bordered on sinful idolatry.
Even today, some Christians treat the Bible like a magic eight ball and flip to a random page expecting it to tell them their future. Of course, just because the Bible can be misused, it doesn’t prove the Bible has no proper use. Likewise, some Catholic devotional items like a brown scapular can be misused when people think the act of merely wearing them guarantees salvation. One promise associated with the brown scapular of the CARite is that whoever wears the scapular until death will be preserved from hell. But the Catholic encyclopedia notes that this refers to those who faithfully imitate the mother of God in loving her son and the person is not presumptuously relying on the scapular as on a miraculous amulet. It’s similar to someone faithfully wearing a cross necklace until death as a personal act of faith to show their love for Jesus Christ. In my debate on purgatory with James White, he brought up the so-called sasine privilege related to the scapular during the last statement of the debate,
CLIP:
The sasine privilege that when you wear the brown scapular, I wonder if there’s someone in this room wearing the brown scapular right now because the promise is that when you die, that Mary will come down into purgatory and release you on the Saturday after your death.
Trent:
Except scholars agree the sabot privilege comes from a forged papal bull, and this belief was discouraged all the way back in the 17th century. In 1613, the holy office prohibited paintings being made of Mary descending into purgatory in accord with that fake papal bull. The medieval veneration of relics like the bones of holy people also became an opportunity for people to superstitiously trust these relics to guarantee good luck and for greedy people to make money off of possessing them. Now, that doesn’t disprove venerating relics because as I said before, abuse does not a null proper use. Acts 19 says, God did extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul so that handkerchiefs or aprons were carried away from his body to the sick, and diseases left them and the evil spirits came out of them. And in the Old Testament, the bones of Elijah brought a dead man back to life.
So there is biblical and historical precedent for venerating objects and things associated with holy people, but when a practice is abused, the church will step in to guide the faithful back to its proper use. That’s why the 16th Century Council of Trent said, in the invocation of saints, the veneration of relics and the sacred use of images, every superstition shall be removed and all filthy Luca money abolished. But like heresy, superstitions always find a way to come back into the body of Christ just in different forms. For example, there’s nothing wrong with sending a group text or a group email asking for prayers, but prayer chain emails and social media posts that bribe or threaten people into passing the chain along make Christians as one Protestant website puts it, appear weak minded and superstitious. Likewise, Catholics know there’s nothing wrong with asking saints in heaven to pray for us, but sometimes respect for saints can turn into superstition.
This happens, for example, when Catholics try to sell their home faster by burying a statue of St. Joseph upside down in their yard, the idea is that St. Joseph will be so annoyed at being placed in this position. He will pray very hard for the house to be sold so he can be dug up and placed upright. Father Donald Callaway and his book on St. Joseph says, whatever you do never bury a statue of St. Joseph. Upside down, such a practice is akin to treating a statue of St. Joseph as a talisman or a good luck charm. St. Joseph is your spiritual father, not a trinket. And to my Protestant listeners who might be concerned about the spiritual father language, remember that St. Paul said he was a spiritual father to the Christians in Corinth, we believe the foster father of Jesus praised for all Christians to be united to the person who was the Christ child.
He faithfully guarded during his earthly life. Another form of superstition claims that the gift of knowledge can be derived from occult practices apart from God. However, the catechism of the Catholic church says 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 the wish to conciliate hidden powers, they contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone. In the ancient world, the line between astrology and astronomy was fuzzy. So you could find people like St. Thomas Aquinas speaking positively of astrology and even the biblical story of the Magi noting a star in the sky being a sign of the Messiah’s birth. But there was also an understanding that purely natural astrology was faulty as can be seen in St.
Augustine’s criticism that twins born at the same time could have very different lives and temperaments for a nuanced take on how Christians should understand astrology and its development. See this episode from Jimmy Akins, mysterious world link below. Most modern horoscopes and astrologers rely on something called the for rare effect to du people psychologist Bertram Forer called this the fallacy of personal validation, noting that people often ascribe vague positive statements to themselves. In one study, a group of participants were each given the same horoscope that had lines in it like this. At times you were extroverted, affable, sociable, while at other times you are introverted, wary, reserved. All the respondents were amazed at the horoscopes accuracy until they found out they each got the same one. Here’s a clip from ABC’s John Stossel revealing this to a group of people.
CLIP:
I don’t know, it’s just weird that everyone thinks it’s about them. Everyone is saying, oh, it’s me, it’s me, it’s me. And then it was the same horoscope. I think these people are looking for something. There’s something missing in their life and that’s why they’re following the stars. I think it’s ridiculous.
Trent:
Psychics also use the for air effect in cold readings to make it seem like they can talk to the dead. What they do is they ask the subject vague questions that could apply to almost anyone. Like, did your loved one have pain in their chest or head, or did they need medicine before they died? The psychic hopes the audience will ignore his failures and only remember his successful guesses. Here’s self-proclaimed psychic, James von Prague, not Mike Lindell, the My Pillow guy. Though there is some resemblance trying to do a cold reading using the for air effect, and he still botches it,
CLIP:
And I feel some arthritis. By the way, there’s a lot of arthritis and there’s a bone problem. There’s also something with the back. So I dunno if she sees us sitting up a pillow with the back of her or is that you? No, no, that doesn’t make sense to you. Okay, and we’re not trouble with legs. No. Okay. Who has trouble with the legs now? Well, my father’s had two hip replacements, two hip replacements if cannot walk as well as he used to. Oh, no. He walks very well. Okay, okay.
Trent:
Now the catechism does tell us that 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. When someone claims to be a seer or have a vision from God about the future, we should treat that very cautiously and look to the church’s guidance on the issue. In some cases, a saint or even the blessed virgin Mary might reveal a message to someone through an apparition. The catechism says that this is not part of God’s public revelation, which was given once during the apostolic age, but these private revelations are something that can be useful to the faithful, but they’re not obligatory to hold. And since Protestants believe it’s impossible for groups of people like the apostles to hallucinate seeing the risen Jesus, then they shouldn’t write off groups of people seeing the blessed Virgin Mary as a mere hallucination either in his dissertation defending Christ resurrection, Michael Laona says, for myself, I’m not prepared to adjudicate on the matter of Marian Apparitions because I am Protestant, I carry a theological bias against an appearance of Mary.
However, I am not predisposed to reject the reality of apparitions in general. But one thing we absolutely cannot do is to try and learn about the future by consulting creatures in the next life. The catechism says 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. The Catholic and Orthodox practice of asking the saints in heaven to pray for us is not the sin of divination or necromancy because Catholics and Orthodox are not trying to extract information from the departed saints. And if you’re a Protestant who finds this devotion challenging, try this prayer to God. Lord, if my departed loved one is in heaven, please let him or her know about my current struggle so he or she can pray for me. This is far different than the sin of necromancy conversing with the dead like in one Samuel 28, where Saul uses the witch of Endor to speak to the deceased prophet Samuel.
But it isn’t always a sin to make a message known to a deceased person because Jesus did just that on the Mount of Transfiguration when he spoke with Moses who had died centuries earlier. While psychics sometimes use tricks, they may also have seemingly impossible knowledge because of demonic assistance. That’s why Christians should not initiate any two-way communication with a spiritual creature, be they souls in heaven or demonic spirits in hell. In some cases trying to contact the former to acquire information just results in reaching the latter. You can see this in practices like the Ouija board, where participants place their fingers on a pointer and spirits allegedly moved the pointer over letters on the board to transmit a message. As a youth. Prior to his conversion, GK Chesterton and his brother would play with the Ouija board and receive strange and even evil messages through it.
He writes in his autobiography, I would not altogether rule out the suggestion of some that we were playing with fire or even hellfire. So instead of trusting in our own abilities to wield devotional items, passages of scripture or specific prayers like magical objects in a superstitious way, let’s trust in God and use these spiritual tools to grow closer to him in accord with his plan of salvation. And I trust in your ability to like this channel and leave a comment on the episode because it’s not superstitious to say that this actually helps our videos be recommended and reach more people. And if you like our episodes, please consider supporting us@trenthornpodcast.com. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you have a very blessed day.