Halloween, Witches, Demons, and the Occult

by Kathryn Marcellino, OCDS

With Halloween right around the corner, we might ask ourselves if demons and evil spirits are real? The Church gives us an authoritative answer in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (CC 414) which says, “Satan or the devil and the other demons are fallen angels who have freely refused to serve God and his plan. Their choice against God is definitive. They try to associate man in their revolt against God.”

If you ever wondered if demons are just an old-fashioned notion that intelligent modern people don’t believe in nowadays, or just a literary convention, you might be interested in reading a couple of somewhat hair-raising books called Interview With an Exorcist: An Insider’s Look at the Devil, Demonic Possession, and the Path to Deliverance by Fr. Jose Antonio Fortea and also An Exorcist Tells His Story by Fr. Gabriele Amorth. These books are very revealing live encounters with demons today by credible sources (i.e. priests who are exorcists) and give a lot of information on how to protect ourselves from evil spirits and what demons can and cannot do.

Since we are in spiritual warfare while here on earth, it makes sense to know more about our spiritual enemies so that we can be better prepared to battle them (without really focusing on them, or being obsessed, or overly-frightened of them or blaming everything on evil spirits.)

For example, did you know that angels and demons cannot read our thoughts unless we direct our attention to them with the idea of communicating with them? Did you know that there are people who are possessed today and what it takes to gain deliverance from evil spirits, curses, etc.? Did you know that there are other forms of demonic oppression besides just possession?

Some dangerous things to avoid include spells, charms, curses, witchcraft, ouija boards, seances and anything having to do with the occult. These kinds of things, some of them innocently done at children’s parties, are not only strictly forbidden by the Catholic faith, but dangerous, in that they open us up to evil spirits, which are real and not just imaginary. Please don’t ever let your children/teens attend parties (especially popular at slumber parties) where there are seances and ouija boards and/or playing with spells and witchcraft. Ask beforehand what will be done at before allowing your children to attend parties. Witchcraft and spells are becoming more popular due to books and movies and somehow we need protect our children from these dangers of without getting them fascinated with them or making them seem interesting to them.

More from the Catechism of the Catholic Church on “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.”

What is the attraction?

Why do people get attracted to using witchcraft and/or the occult practices? The answer is usually that they are seeking some sort of power, control, or some kind of hidden knowledge of the other world or the future… in other words to have some of the power that generally belongs to God. This is a temptation. The serpent in the Garden of Eden tempted Eve and said, “…you will be like gods…” (Genesis 3:5); however, when doing what the devil said she didn’t become like God, but rather lost all God’s blessings. Reality is that we are creatures and whereas God did give us some power, it is limited and we are dependent on God for all we are and have.

Good angels also truly exist like our guardian angels. St. Michael, the Archangel, and the other good angels battle with Satan and the evil spirits. The name “Michael” means “who is like God” (implying that no one is like God in contrary to Satan’s temptation.) Our guardian angel helps protect us from spiritual and natural dangers.

If you are interested in scary movies and ghosts and goblins and want the real story about demons etc. you might be interested to read first hand accounts and conclusions by the two Catholic priests-exorcists mentioned earlier, as sometimes the truth is even stranger and more scary than fiction.

However if we keep ourselves in God’s grace we really have nothing to fear as the devil cannot coerce us to sin. God does limit the power the devil has over us, and we are not allowed to be tempted more than God gives us the grace to resist. The devil can only do what God allows or we allow him to do. Let’s refuse to cooperate voluntarily with the devil and refuse to open ourselves up to evil spirits by occult practices. There really is a hell and evil spirits, and we don’t want to spend eternity there, so let’s not have anything to do with the occult while here on earth.

If we have been involved in something occult-related, we should go to confession, and if necessary, learn more about how to be delivered from any lingering effects through prayers of deliverance. In the rare instance that possession is suspected, exorcism should only be attempted by someone who is authorized by the Church. (Regular people should not attempt something like this on their own.) Wearing blessed medals, scapulars, holy water, and other sacramentals are also helpful when used with faith in God and not as a superstition.

Halloween in our secular culture is associated with witches, ghosts, evil spirits, demons, etc. but is it really the feast of All Saints Day and this is where the name derives (i.e. All Hallows Eve). Whereas it is good to know the devil exists and evil spirits so we can stay away from them, for the most part we should really keep our focus mainly on God and good things like the Bible tells us to do.

Kathryn is a member of the Secular Order of Discalced Carmelites and runs a web site with a familiar name – Catholic Spiritual Direction

Spiritual Warfare and the Screwtape Letters – Something The Devil Does Not Want You to Hear

With Halloween just around the corner you might be turning your attention to thoughts of spiritual warfare and those dark realities of our fallen world and the spiritual realm. If you have never read the Screwtape Letters, there is no better time. I suspect you will be surprised at how relevant it is to your own spiritual life. Here’s a taste of what you will find… Before you push play, make sure you have your sound turned up – even better with headphones. You are about to get a behind the scenes look into the brilliant work of a good friend on this classic work on the topic of spiritual warfare.

If the name Andy Serkis doesn’t ring a bell, he was the voice of Gollum in the Lord of the Rings movies. Just in case you are unfamiliar with the book itself, it is a humorous and evil correspondence between the a senior demon known as Screwtape, and his apprentice Wormwood, whose assignment is to deliver a particular human’s soul to hell. If this sounds interesting and you would like to purchase the book, just click here. However, you might find this audio dramatization produced by Paul McCusker and featuring Andy Serkis even more interesting. As you can see, Andy’s portrayal of Screwtape is absolutely chilling.

Please forward this post on to your friends – its a great Christmas idea too!

Monsters vs. Monstrance – More Thoughts on Halloween

by Mark Shea Friday, October 29, 2010 Published with Permission National Catholic Register

Come Sunday, we all celebrate Halloween again, that strange night of the year when, with one accord, American civilization dredges up all its darkest fears of the supernatural and waffles between scaring itself and laughing at the whole thing—nervously.

It’s an odd thing really.  Halloween urges upon us a particular *kind* of fear.  Nobody associates fear of terrorism, or a rise in prices, or dogs, or bullies, or cancer with Halloween.  It’s ghosts, demons, witches, and all that sort of fear that our culture plays around with. We sense, somehow, that there are deeper terrors and evils in the world than just muggers or other workaday fears like unemployment.  We whistle past the graveyard 364 days a year and then, on this one night, we run up to the door of the crypt, ring the bell, and run away.  To be sure, much of the business is good clean fun, what with running around visiting the neighbors, getting candy and bobbing for apples.  But there’s also that other side of it, that makes people surf the web looking for creepy “Tales of the Unexplained” that are found, not on the fiction pages, but on those sites that relate some weird story of a haunting or other paranormal event with straight-faced “just the facts, ma’am” sobriety that insists the thing really happened.  It’s the night where people—even jolly happy godless secularists—take a moment and wonder if, really, after all, there might just be something to this whole “supernatural” thing.

It’s not an unreasonable starting place, particularly if you don’t have the good fortune to have been raised in the Church.  I remember a girl in high school who was greatly troubled by whether or not God existed.  She had a dream in which she met a vampire and was greatly relieved because she realized that if supernatural evil existed, then the supernatural good who is God could too.  And when we look at our world and the sort of evil that can occur—piles of human ash as big as a house at Maidanek—the notion of supernatural evil doesn’t look all *that* outrageous, particularly when we look at the fascination the occult held for the people who were the architects of the Nazi project.  Not for nothing did Pius XII say that Hitler was “diabolical”.

Jesus confirms this intuition by confronting not mere sickness or sin, but the demonic powers behind such evils.  He does not simplistically state that a sick person had it coming due to sin (indeed, he goes out of his way to destroy such assumptions).  And he denies, with emphasis, that those to whom bad things happen are somehow extra sinful.  But he does affirm that evils in this world are aided and abetted by the devil, that Satan can hold us “bound” in sickness as in sin, and that there are such things as demons (i.e. supernatural intelligences called “angels” which have abused their freedom and set themselves as enmity with God and man).

The vast panoply of scary creatures the human imagination has concocted to express our fears reflects this awareness that there is some deeper and more ancient evil behind mere human evil.  Always at the shadowy edge of human evil is the awareness that it trails off into a darkness where something is breathing: something that hates us and wills our destruction.  We call such things “monsters” in our art, and the interesting thing is that “monster” is a word related to both “monstrance” and “demonstrate”.  That is, a “monster” is a thing that shows forth in visible form something Horrible for all to behold, just as the Monstrance shows forth in visible form something Beautiful for all to behold.

We make monsters because it is our nature as sub-creators in the image and likeness of God to do so.  We create, as He does, in our image and likeness and dredge up out of ourselves different faces to show us who we are.  When God made us, he made us innocent and without sin, pure as He is.  But when we fell and chose to trust the word of the Ancient Dragon, who is called the Devil and Satan, we allowed into our souls things that are the stuff of nightmares.  In our art, we give these things body in order to face our fears, not only of what we are, but of what lies behind our fall.  Through those stories we discover again our capacity for evil—and the possibility of resisting it by grace.

The Faith presents this to us in stark form in the form of what the Didache calls the Two Ways: the Way of Light and the Way of Darkness.  It’s what Jesus calls the broad and the narrow way and it boils down to this: the Monster or the Monstrance.

Art Credit: Painting by Jamie Wyeth entitled, “Pumpkins in the Library”

Is it a sin to have bad thoughts? How do I deal with bad thoughts? How can I be sure to avoid the unforgivable sin?

Q: Dear Father John, Thank you for your excellent series on scrupulosity. I have a question that relates to it, namely the occurrence of “bad thoughts” — thoughts that are negative, vile, or even blasphemous against any of the Three Persons of the Holy Trinity or Our Lady herself. I understand that these may occur in cases of psychological imbalance, or gross immaturity, for which I presume there is little culpability. In the context of those trying to develop their spiritual lives, bad thoughts appear to be temptations flashed before us by the devil as a form of spiritual warfare. My understanding is that since temptation is not a sin, the best course of action is to ignore them. In addition, because one is more prone to these thoughts when tired or hungry or under stress, good sense would indicate the importance of food, sleep, exercise, and prayer. But given that, what is the “dividing line,” so to speak? I love God and never remotely want to get close to the “unforgivable sin against the Holy Spirit,” yet these thoughts can be alarming. When and how does one confess them? How does one order the spiritual life to purity of thought?

A: Your question itself contains a lot of wisdom. Actually, it also contains a lot of questions (three, to be exact). Before answering them, we need to make one more distinction.

For someone who is already actively and sincerely trying to follow Christ, bad thoughts may be flashed directly by the devil, as you point out, but there may also be two other sources. First, they could flash up from our own subconscious. If someone has undergone a conversion (or reversion) after spending years in a self-centered, sinful lifestyle, echoes of that lifestyle will still reverberate under the surface of the mind. From time to time, they may break the surface and grasp at the conscious mind, trying to regain a hold on the will. In this case, the bad thoughts are not planted directly by the devil. If we resist these last gasps of our old habits, they will gradually lose energy and their appearances will decrease in frequency. Second, bad thoughts can be the result of carelessness. We are surrounded by non-Christian, and often un-Christian mental influences: images on the Web, billboards, and advertisements; ideas in news articles, movies, books, and television shows; anti-values woven into music and secular art. If we allow ourselves to imbibe these toxins, they will have their effect later on, stirring up thoughts that would pull us away from friendship with Christ.

Guarding the Castle

Thus, the first answer to your third question: we can grow in purity of thought by guarding our senses and minds from toxic input. This may seem a bit puritan in a pluralistic society, but it is only common sense. We are careful about the food we put into our body, because we know that it affects our physical health. We should be even more careful about what we purposely let into our minds and hearts, because that will affect our spiritual health. (Another favorite image used by spiritual writers is that of a drawbridge and a castle. You don’t let down the drawbridge when enemies come knocking; you keep it securely in place to protect the castle from invasion.)

A wife who regularly reads grocery-store romance novels (which are a subtle form of pornography), or who daily drinks in the titillating sensuality of your typical soap opera, is clogging her marital arteries and setting herself up for a spiritual heart attack. A husband who goes to strip bars “just for business,” spends more time with atheist buddies than with fellow Christ-seekers, and doesn’t take the initiative to protect himself from Internet pornography is not keeping in spiritual shape. In both cases, “bad thoughts” and blasphemous ideas will pop up more and more frequently, even without the devil’s direct provocation. In these cases, we are at least partially responsible for the evil thoughts that come up to tempt us, and we should confess this negligence in the sacrament of reconciliation, and God will give us strength to be more coherent.

Spiritual Self-Defense

One other tactic useful for developing purity of thought consists in responding positively to the bad thoughts that do come up, whatever their source. As you mention in your question, once we recognize the flash of a bad thought, the last thing we want to do is pay attention to it. If you can simply ignore it and get back to doing God’s will with your whole mind and heart, great. But if the bad thoughts are violent and insistent, ignoring them is not always easy. In those cases, we need to have a prearranged plan. We need to be ready to counteract them with prayer as we try to turn our attention back to God’s will. This can be a simple vocal prayer, like the Our Father or the Hail Mary. It can be a favorite verse from Scripture used as a shield against evil (e.g. “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want…” Psalm 23:1). I recently heard the example of a man battling to overcome sexual temptations who committed himself to singing hymns until the sensual thoughts dispersed – he said that he ended up memorizing four whole verses to more than a dozen hymns in his efforts to grow in purity! If we fail to fight actively, with a spirit of faith, against the evil thoughts that tempt us, or if our efforts to fight them are lackadaisical, then we should confess this negligence in the sacrament of reconciliation, and God will give us strength to be more courageous.

Circumstantial Evidence

This brings us to your first question about where to draw the line. If you know that certain circumstances (the use of particular media, or physical tiredness and stress, as you mention) tend to increase the intensity, frequency, or seductive power of evil thoughts, you have a responsibility to make a decent effort to avoid those circumstances. Eighty hour work weeks may win you the promotion you covet, but is winning that promotion worth exposing yourself to the occasions of sin? Jesus didn’t think so: “What, then, will anyone gain by winning the whole world and forfeiting his life?” (Mt 16:26) At times, however, the circumstances are out of our control (needy babies make for sleepless nights). That’s when our Lord is inviting us to lean more fully on him, and on the means for perseverance that he gives us (the sacraments, prayer, healthy friendships, a loving spouse…).

If you are actively making a decent effort to do your part to live a Christ-centered, balanced life and to grow in purity of thought, and still the evil ideas and images plague you, they really do not qualify as material for confession. They are more like bad spiritual weather. In this sense, it is worth mentioning that many saints experienced violent and intense temptations to blasphemy towards the end of their lives, when they were well advanced in the spiritual life. The devil sent these temptations to cause confusion and to try and steal away their confidence in God and their peace of soul. If that happens to you, put up your umbrella of prayer and obedience to God’s will, and endure the storm for as long as the Lord allows it. As you do so, you will exercise all the major Christian virtues, thereby growing in holiness and building up the Church.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC

Introduction to Spiritual Warfare – Part IV – Getting Down to Action

Q: Dear Father John, I have been working on my prayer life consistently for a few years. During this time I have been on retreats and other similar activities. I have noticed a strange pattern: the conservative groups I have had contact with talk a lot about spiritual warfare, but the less traditionalist groups don’t. Until now, I haven’t paid much attention to the discrepancy. But lately I was wondering if maybe I should look into it – maybe understanding it better will help me grow spiritually?

A: I hope the first three parts of this series have succeeded in helping you understand the reality and nature of spiritual warfare. By now you may be piqued, though, at how theoretical it has been. That was necessary – no one can act intelligently without knowledge of the situation they are facing. But now it’s time to get practical. We know that our daily life as Christians consists in an ongoing battle, a steep climb beset with obstacles and enemies. The battle takes place in each person’s heart, where we make our decisions. In every decision, we can choose our personal, natural, and self-centered preferences, or God’s wise, redeeming, and often uncomfortable (for us) preferences. So, what can we do to defend ourselves against our enemies (the world, the flesh, and the devil), who are always trying to drag us away from God’s will and into the pit of self-will? Four things.

1) Steering Straight

First, we have to keep our mind clear. We have to stay focused on the truths that our faith reveals to us: the truth of heaven and hell; the truth of where happiness resides (in communion with God); the truth of whose voice is dependable (the voice of the Church); the truth of our own weakness and wounded nature… Jesus put it simply: “… You will come to know the truth, and the truth will set you free” (John 8:32).

Our spiritual enemies obscure the truth. They hide part of it, or exaggerate another part of it. They put before our mind’s eye a false promise. We can only avoid being deceived if we are consciously, purposely, and regularly feeding our minds with the truth. If you are driving and take your hands off the steering wheel, what will happen? Sooner or later (probably sooner), the wheels will turn whichever way gravity, momentum, friction, and the road pulls them, and you will crash. You have to keep your hands on the wheel so as to keep heading in the right direction. You don’t necessarily have to grip the wheel with all your might (unless you are in the middle of a storm). You don’t necessarily even have to grip the wheel with both hands. But you have to keep steering, or the forces of entropy will steer you to destruction.

Keeping our minds clear is like keeping our hands on the steering wheel. We have to stay in touch with the sources of our faith: the Bible, the teaching of the Church, the writings of the saints and spiritual masters. It doesn’t necessarily mean that you spend four-and-a-half hours a day in the library. But it does mean finding and regularly dipping into the sources that explain our faith and apply it to our lives. It means finding dependable explanations of current events and issues, explanations that shed the light of God’s revelation on them. It means actively asking questions about what you believe and seeking the answers from trustworthy guides. It means study, reflection, discussion, and an active pursuit of deeper understanding. How sad it is to meet grown-up Catholics who know no more about their faith than they did when they received their first Communion as a child! How happy the devil is with such Catholics, because it’s so much easier for him to lead them astray with a skewed story on CNN about the Church, or an article in the New York Times, or a seductive work of spiritual distortion like The Da Vinci Code!

2) Keeping the Pedal to the Metal

Second, we have to keep our will in shape. We have all been wounded by original sin, and by our personal sins. And so we all can identify with St Paul when he says, “I do not understand my own behavior; I do not act as I mean to, but I do things that I hate” (Romans 7:15). Even when we know what our faith asks of us, we often find it hard to comply. The mind (the intellect) may see our destination clearly, but the will (our willpower) may resist (our enemies egg on this resistance). If we have our hands on the steering wheel, it does no good unless we also put our foot on the gas pedal.

Keeping the will in shape requires self-discipline and self-governance. I wish there were a shortcut, but there isn’t. We have to discipline ourselves: use a budget; follow a personal schedule; go to bed at a reasonable hour so as to get up at a reasonable hour; eat and exercise healthily; keep our stuff (room, car, house, office, garage…) clean and in order; avoid over-indulgence in entertainment; do chores; don’t get distracted at work; avoid procrastination… Everything your mother taught you when you were growing up was steeped in wisdom. An ordered life is the backbone of a healthy will. This type of self-discipline, because it requires self-denial, can also be a fruitful source of penance. Sometimes we are attracted by exotic penances, like climbing the Holy Stairs on our knees. Nothing wrong with that. But the warp and woof of spiritual maturity are the quite unromantic realities of constancy and hidden sacrifice. These strengthen us, so that we can say yes to whatever our faith asks of us, no matter how wily our enemies get. Remember, it’s an ongoing thing – we will never be perfect at this here on earth; we will always be tweaking, adjusting, and recovering from bouts of disorder and laziness, but if the effort is constant, the fruits will be too.

Of course, we have to stay balanced. Some personalities tend to revere order for order’s sake, and they go berserk at the slightest alteration in their schedule or plans. They are constantly on edge, lest they arrive two minutes late, or lest the dishes don’t get done right away. If you have one of those personalities, you need to form your will in the other direction, disciplining yourself to relax and be flexible, to forgive and bear with the faults and personalities of others, without compromising the essence of an ordered, purposeful life.

3) Keeping the Gas Tank Full

Third, we have to keep our spiritual gas tank full of God’s grace. Jesus made this amply clear: “I am the vine; you are the branches… With me, you can do nothing” (John 15:5). The Christian life is a supernatural life. We have to do our part, because God doesn’t want us to be robots – he wants us to be friends. But our part is never enough. His grace is the lifeblood of spiritual maturity, wisdom, and lasting happiness. If you have your hands firmly on the steering wheel and your foot on the accelerator, you still won’t go anywhere if the car is out of gas.

We tap into God’s grace through regular and conscientious participation in the sacraments, especially the Eucharist and confession (both of which make the devil furious and send him packing), and through prayer. And, in fact, a lively and growing life of prayer is the secret to a conscientious participation in the sacraments. If you aren’t cultivating a personal relationship with your Lord on a daily basis, listening for his words to you and speaking to him from your heart, even your sacramental life will begin to fall into routine. So your daily God-time is crucial. It is your lifeline. It is the one thing that you need to protect the most.

If you were the devil, you would do everything in your power to empty the gas tank of grace, wouldn’t you? Don’t let him. To this end, it is often helpful to be part of a small group (Bible study, prayer group, ecclesial movement…) that can supply some accountability in your spiritual commitments. Life in today’s world is just so busy, so noisy. It never has been easy to stay close to God all by oneself, and it is even harder now. To this end, we also need to take time for spiritual retreats, pilgrimages, and special liturgical celebrations. Our lives should be punctuated by objective encounters with God’s grace. That’s why he gave us the Church.

4) Don’t Be A Fool

Fourth, we need regular, strong doses of objectivity. In other words, we need to be told that we are fools, but God still loves us. The devil loves convincing people that their subjective point of view is sufficient for growth in holiness – they are called, eventually, heretics.

Do you remember the two disciples that abandoned the Apostles after Good Friday? They were walking home to Emmaus, and Jesus (now resurrected) fell in with them, but they didn’t recognize him. They told him all about the events of the Passion, and explained that they had been wrong (so they thought, subjectively) about Jesus being the Messiah, so now they were heading home to go back to their old lives. And Jesus’ first words to them were: “You foolish men!” He called them fools! And then he explained the bigger picture and put them back on track. It was the first spiritual direction after Christ’s resurrection. We need spiritual direction. Just as even the best athletes will never reach their full potential without a coach to push, guide, and motivate them, so we will never really get in spiritual gear if we try to direct ourselves. Which, by the way, is why we started this blog.

In conclusion, if someone tells you that spiritual warfare is irrelevant, you can confidently discard their input. And now I think you can see that yes, indeed, it is extremely useful for our spiritual growth to understand, and to reflect deeply upon, the reality and dynamics of spiritual warfare. I hope these posts have helped you to do that. Happy fighting.

Yours in Christ, Father John Bartunek, LC

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