Conferences on the Virtues
By Fr. Bruno Cocuzzi, ocd
Number 79
Sins against the Virtue of Religion
Superstition
Next in this
treatment of the Virtue of Religion we come to Section C: The Sins Opposed to the Virtue of
religion, and to
Chapter I – Superstition
This is how my
textbook introduces this topic:
A Superstition is something that stands above
(IN Latin: super stat), and thus
signifies an excess, anything over and above. When we apply this to the Virtue of
Religion, it means stepping outside the boundaries in the practice of Religion.
Superstition is opposed to Religion not in
regard to excess quantity, as if we could give God more honor, reverence and
worship than He deserves (actually, we can never give Him enough), but in
regard to the object of our worship and to the manner in which we
worship.
We may define Superstition, therefore, as the
vice which (1) offers divine worship to whomever or whatever is not worthy of
it, or which (2) offers worship to God in a manner not worthy of Him.
There are three kinds of superstition when
offering divine worship to a creature rather than to the One True God.
The first is the worship of false gods, or
idolatry.
The second is seeking instruction from a demon
or from a source other than God, or Divination.
The third is seeking help or favors from a demon
or from a power other than divine, or Vain Observance.
Included under Vain Observance is Magic,
by means of which someone seeks to obtain marvels (miracles).
As pointed out earlier, true worship is
expressed by means of sacrifice, vow, and oblation that are directed to the One
True God, the Most Holy Trinity.
Seeking instruction from the One True God is
done by means of [scripturally based] spiritual reading, [sacred] meditation,
and prayer.
Seeking help or favors (graces) from the One
True God is accomplished through frequenting the Sacraments, through the
liturgical observance of the Lord’s Day, Solemnities and Feasts, through
liturgical blessings, and through approved devotions.
Question I – Undue Worship of the True God.
The forms of Worship not worthy of God can be
either false or else one or more of superfluous, affectatious and
empty. That is, they do not succeed
in rising to the level of true worship.
False and pernicious
worship is that which expressed something that is either simply not true
or which signifies a harmful lie.
As examples of these my textbook cites:
a. Using
the ceremonies of the Old Testament in Divine Worship (which signify that
Christ is yet to come)
b. Proposing
to the faithful as from God miracles, revelations and prophecies of which he is
not the author.
c. Presenting
false relics for the veneration of the faithful.
d. Falsely
representing that a religious image or object is miraculous (i.e., source of
extraordinary cures or favors).
All of the
above has to do with want of truth in what is done or presented.
Other examples
have to do with want of truth regarding the person performing acts
pertaining to divine worship:
a. In
general, by a person, acting as a member of the church, performing religious
acts contrary to what has been officially established by the
Church. Specifically, by purposely
deciding to honor God by fasting on Easter Sunday, rather than on any of the
days designated by the Church.
b. By
a lay person celebrating Mass.
c. By
a validly ordained minister of the Church conducting religious services or
administering sacraments according to a rite not approved by the Church.
d. By
someone using counterfeit documents to prove ordination to sacred orders.
These, my
author says, are ordinarily very serious sins.
To explain what he means by ordinarily, he cites an observation
by another moral theologian (Noldin):
We
say for the most part (i.e., ordinarily) because it seems we have to allow that
the superstition, which is false worship, can on occasion admit of parvity of
matter and thus be a venial (not serious) sin.
Thus, were a preacher to add to the account of an otherwise true,
miraculous happening something that is not true, or which he did not try to
verify, in order better to enkindle the devotion and deepen faith of the
listeners, this could be considered a slight sin. It would be a slight sin either because the false embellishment
is not intended directly as a means of worshipping God, or because doing so
does not greatly prejudice true worship.
Superfluous,
affectatious and empty worship is that which is not
false in its content, but which is not appropriate for divine worship.
As pointed out
in previous conferences, the purpose of worship is to give honor and glory to
God and to submit oneself, mind and body, to Him. Whatever
(1) by
its nature cannot give honor and glory to Him, and
(2) whatever
expression of submission to Him in body and soul is not in accord with how He
Himself (through Divine Revelation and through the Apostles and their
successors) has instructed us to submit body and soul to Him,
is vain (empty
and useless), affected, and superfluous.
As an example
of (1) we would have to say that any sacrifice (praise, adoration, love
thanksgiving) offered to God that does not include offering to God the One
Sacrifice of the New Covenant, the Redemptive Sacrifice of Jesus, is utterly
inappropriate and inadequate.
As an example
of (1) we would have to say that, in the offering of the Holy Sacrifice of the
Mass, an attempt to change bread and wine into the True Body and True Blood of
Christ by use of words other than those of Jesus at the Last Supper is utterly
useless and void.
The first of
these would probably not be a grave sin in itself, though it could easily
become so if done out of contempt for the Church’s liturgical discipline, or
because it would cause serious harm to souls.
The second
would have to be gravely sinful, unless done out of ignorance or inadvertence
(which hardly seems likely in practice).
Question
II – Idolatry
According to its
etymology, idolatry means the act of offering divine worship to an image or
likeness of a false god. It is idolatry
whether the worshipper thinks that the image or likeness is itself the god, or
whether he thinks it is just a representation of the god. Hence, idolatry is the word that is applied
to any form of worship, which gives to a mere creature the honor and reverence
owed to the True God alone.
A sin of
idolatry can be committed internally only, without any external ceremony of
worship. (Jesus spoke of other sins
that are committed internally – without being carried out externally – in the
Sermon on the Mount).
There can also
be a sin of idolatry that is merely external, without any internal intent on
the part of the worshipper. This has happened and could happen again, as
in the case of some early persecuted Christians, who pretended to offer
worship (burn incense to) the gods of Rome out of fear of torture and death.
The complete
sin of idolatry requires both the internal and the external counterparts.
It is imperfectly
complete if, out of ignorance, the worshipper really believes the creature
is a god.
It is perfectly
complete if the worshipper seeks from a creature what he knows the True God
does not want to give him. As Jesus
says: You cannot serve (worship)
God and Mammon (Money).
To place
creatures on a par with the One True God is gravely sinful, obviously. So it is much more serious to place
creatures above Him.
My textbook
states that there is a twofold cause of the sin of idolatry.
One is dispositive
in that it arises out of an inordinate love for creatures, whether they
be parents, children, earthly rulers, extraordinarily gifted people, etc., or
whether they be creatures that bring exceedingly great delight and pleasure to
the physical or aesthetic senses, or to the ego.
The other cause
is consummative, and who is the devil himself, because he has been known
to speak to idolaters through the idols that are being worshipped, to work
apparent wonders, and to give the worshippers what they are seeking through
worship of their idol.
There are
relevant Scriptural texts. With regard
to the dispositive cause:
Anyone
who prefers father or mother… son or daughter to me is not worthy of me
(Matt 10:37) and
If
anyone comes to me without hating his father, mother, wife, children, brothers,
sisters, yes and his own life too, he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26)
With regard to
the consummative cause:
Next,
taking him to a high mountain, the devil showed him all the kingdoms of the world
and their splendor. ‘I will give you
all these’ he said ‘if you fall at my feet and worship me.’ (Matt 2:8,9) and
Then
leading him to a height, the devil showed him in a moment of time all the
kingdoms of the world and said to him, ‘I will give you all this power and the
glory of these kingdoms, for it has been committed to me and I give it to
anyone I choose. Worship me then, and
it shall all be yours.’ (Luke
4:5-7)
Question
III – Divination
As my author
points out, whoever presumes to know and to predict the contingent future,
attributes to himself something that is proper to God alone. Thus they are called divines and
their acts [of foretelling the future] are called divination.
Let me explain
why we distinguish between just the plain old future and the
contingent future. It is because
there are some things we cannot unerringly foretell and predict.
When we have a
complete grasp of certain laws of nature that have been created by God,
established by Him to govern natural phenomena, we can use that
knowledge to predict certain necessary outcomes. For example, if I see someone who is carelessly smoking in the
proximity of uncontained hydrogen gas or gasoline, I can, with assurance,
predict an imminent explosion. This
would be foretelling a non-contingent future event.
On the other
hand, the contingent future is that which is not determined by
unchangeable natural laws, but which is determined by the free will of human
agents. Anyone who has any experience
of human nature knows that we cannot infallibly predict what a particular human
being is going to do in the future.
Why, we cannot even infallibly predict what we ourselves are going to do
in the particular, upcoming situation.
That knowledge is known only to God, who exists and sees everything in
the ever-present now.
This, of
course, does not mean that His knowing what we will do in the future takes away
our freedom of choice. Because He is
faithful, He cannot take away a gift (free will) that He has freely (read:
lovingly) given us.
As we said
above, everything in God IS God. For
Him to be unable to do something (act out of love), and then undo it, would
amount of His being God and Not God at the same time, which is a
metaphysical impossibility.
To say it in
another way: Every act of God is as
eternal as he is. Two mutually
exclusive eternal acts cannot possibly co-exist.
To
continue: my author goes on to say that
by extension, the word divination is applied to any form of seeking
knowledge of the occult (including the hidden future) with the help of a demon.
Divination may
be explicit, as when the assistance of the devil is expressly asked
for. This is done in several
ways. Among them are (I’m reporting
what’s in my textbook):
Necromancy: When he responds through departed souls whom
he falsely purports to call up to be in the presence of the questioner.
Pythonism: When the devil
responds through living persons whom he has entered into.
By
Oracle: When he
responds through idols.
Divination can
also be implicit. This happens
when one seriously, and fully expecting an answer, makes use of means to
inquire into the occult that of their very nature are utterly disproportionate
and thus physically incapable of yielding that knowledge. The person doing so, therefore, is tacitly
invoking the help of some intelligent being.
We know that in
the Old Testament God has forcefully condemned any and all forms of
divination. (cf Lev. 20:6,27; Deut
18:10-12) Though these deal with the explicit
forms. We can be sure that the implicit forms are also an abomination to
Him, and He would have no part of them.
Neither would
the good Angels, the only other intelligent spirits, lend themselves to totally
inordinate and naturally vain and empty practices.
We would have
to conclude, then, that those who engage in implicit divination are
invoking the intelligent spirits who are demons. Demons love (rather, are most anxious) to insinuate themselves
into such situations in order to lead souls astray and separate them from God.
Examples abound
in history of these naturally inefficacious means (implicit invocation of the
aid of demons) to discover the contingent future. Some are:
The
reading of configurations in inanimate objects. My textbook mentions entrails of animals,
earth, water, fire, etc. (We are
familiar with the reading of tea leaves and the lines in the palm of
one’s hand).
Still
another example is astrology, i.e., interpreting the configuration of
the stars (location in the sky of certain constellations) at the time of one’s
birth.
That all forms
of divination are very serious sins is evident from the Old Testament
references given above.
But also,
reason tells us that, even though those who resort to the various forms of
divination might have no intention of honoring demons, they nevertheless are
entering into a relationship with the bitter enemy of God and of Mankind. Those who resort to the superstition we call
divination thus implicitly submit to the devil as if he, the Liar and the Father
of Lies, the Seducer of Mankind were a friend and a teacher of truth. This has to be seriously offensive to God.
One final form
of divination is known as Spiritism. To
this category belong Séances and the Ouija Board. (continued in the next conference)
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