Catholicism and Mediums~Question for ceo_esq

[Cleopatra]

I apologize for this ceo_esq but this is the only way to attract your attention since you don't accept PMs.

In another thread I mentioned that the Greek Orthodox Church considers mediumship as Necromancy and it's very hostile towards mediums.

I tried to search for the opinion of the Catholic Church on that and I haven't found anything. Since you, ceo_esq, seem more familiar with the Catholic sources can you illuminate us on that?

Thank you.

 

[ceo_esq]

I have access to some sources on this but no ready answer. I'll have to get back to you. Off the top of my head, I would venture to guess that Orthodox and Catholic views of mediumship are fairly similar.

 

[ceo_esq]

I was going to look for some recent Catholic theological writing on this subject, but sloth overtook me and I decided just to check the standard online sources.

The online, turn-of-the-last-century Catholic Encyclopedia has some relevant information. The article on "Necromancy" (the practice of supposedly communicating with the spirits of the dead in order to predict the future) says:

The Church does not deny that, with a special permission of God, the souls of the departed may appear to the living, and even manifest things unknown to the latter. But, understood as the art or science of evoking the dead, necromancy is held by theologians to be due to the agency of evil spirits, for the means taken are inadequate to produce the expected results. In pretended evocations of the dead, there may be many things explainable naturally or due to fraud; how much is real, and how much must be attributed to imagination and deception, cannot be determined, but real facts of necromancy, with the use of incantations and magical rites, are looked upon by theologians, after St. Thomas, II-II, Q. xcv, aa. iii, iv, as special modes of divination, due to demoniacal intervention, and divination itself is a form of superstition.

The article on "Spiritism" (the belief in communication between the dead and the living) warns of the potential dangers of mediumship:

If to practise or encourage deception of any sort is reprehensible, the evil is certainly greater when fraud is resorted to in the inquiry concerning the future life. But apart from any intention to deceive, the methods employed would undermine the foundations of morality, either by producing a disintegration of personality or by inviting the invasion of an extraneous intelligence. It may be that the medium "yields, perhaps innocently at first, to the promptings of an impulse which may come to him as from a higher power, or that he is moved by an instinctive compulsion to aid in the development of his automatic romance - in any case, if he continues to abet and encourage this automatic prompting, it is not likely that he can long retain both honesty and sanity unimpaired. The man who looks on at his hand doing a thing, but acquits himself of responsibility for the thing done, can hardly claim to be considered as a moral agent; and the step is short to instigating and repeating a like action in the future, without the excuse of an overmastering impulse ... To attend the séances of a professional medium is perhaps at worst to countenance a swindle; to watch the gradual development of innocent automatism into physical mediumship may be to assist at a process of moral degeneration."

For a religious article written a century ago, the essay offers a critique of certain weaknesses in the case for legitimate mediumship that sounds remarkably modern/skeptical:

• the difficulty of establishing spirit-identity, i.e., of ascertaining whether the communicator is actually the personality he or it purports to be;
• the love of personation on the part of the spirits which leads them to introduce themselves as celebrities who once lived on earth, although on closer questioning they show themselves quite ignorant of those whom they personate;
• the trivial character of the communications, so radically opposed to what would be expected from those who have passed into the other world and who naturally should be concerned to impart information on the most serious subjects;
• the contradictory statements which the spirits make regarding their own condition, the relations of God and man, the fundamental precepts of morality;
• finally, the low moral tone which often pervades these messages from spirits who pretend to enlighten mankind.

I could only find one paragraph in the modern Catechism that directly addresses the subject:

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.