Catholic Morality: A Course in Religion - Book III by Laux Rev. Fr. John

Author:Laux, Rev. Fr. John [Laux, Rev. Fr. John]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: TAN Books
Published: 2015-05-26T16:00:00+00:00

What are we to think of Spiritism? Why has the Church condemned it?

We must distinguish between Spiritism as a science and Spiritism as a creed or religion.

a ) Although an enormous amount of fraud has always accompanied the practice of Spiritism, we cannot ascribe all the phenomena to fraud. There is a considerable residue of well-observed phenomena which until now have baffled all attempts to explain them by natural laws.

The alleged messages from the spirit world, whether they be by voice or the hand of the medium, may be nothing more than the result of thought transmission of Telepathy, which appears to be an established conclusion of science.

Many eminent scientists who examined the physical phenomena, such as sounds, lights, the movement of objects, and the various forms of materialization, are not satisfied with the evidence presented in their favor. Each case must rest on its own merits.

b ) As a creed or religious system, Spiritism is directly opposed to the teachings of Christianity.

"It professes to have its own revelation derived from communication with spirits. It claims that all space is peopled by the spirits of persons who once inhabited this or other worlds. Even when separated from the body these spirits retain an ethereal human form; they are of every degree of excellence and happiness according to their life in the flesh, but all are subject to the law of progress and capable of arriving at perfection; all are able to communicate with mankind" (Catholic Dictionary, Art. "Spiritualism").

Hence the Church has more than once condemned the practices of Spiritism, and declared it grievously sinful to have any part or share in them, or even out of curiosity to be present at spiritistic gatherings. She condemns in the strongest terms any attempt to communicate in this manner with the spiritual world, as contrary to the Divine Will.

Some Catholic writers account for the spiritistic phenomena by the action of the wicked spirits, but they fail to bring any solid proofs for their view. The alleged manifestations from the other world are for the most part so childish and nonsensical that they do little honor to the intelligence even of a "fallen angel." It is true that many of the so-called revelations are opposed to Catholic teaching, especially in regard to the future state, to hell, heaven and purgatory, but in every case they have been found to correspond to the religious bias of the mediums or their inspirers. Even if we have not as yet found a natural explanation of certain spiritistic phenomena, that is no reason to suppose them to be of preternatural or diabolical origin. *

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