§ 4. On Modern Spiritism

I. Notions. By the name spiritism strictly comes the formal evocation of spirits of the dead, who: a) perform various wonders: noises, rotations of tables, blows, the sound of musical instruments which are moved by no hand, writings which you would call automatic, material apparitions, sometimes preserved by a photographic image ¹, "levitations" by which persons or things are lifted into the air at a certain distance from the pavement; b) and especially satisfy the curiosity of those questioning, by giving various pieces of knowledge concerning the dead, concerning the other life, concerning hidden things, concerning remedies to be applied, concerning future contingents.

In a broader use now, spiritism means the same phenomena, for example answers through blows of tables, obtained without formal or express evocation of spirits.

Often, however, a medium is employed, or, according to the strict notion, a suitable person, who carries mandates between the living and the dead and brings them back. Hence, if we speak properly, no one is or is judged to be a "medium" except one who is the instrumental cause of another agent. But effects whose principal cause is, or is thought to be, another agent endowed with intellect and will are called psychical, or metapsychical, on account of their origin or because they are or are judged to have proceeded from another soul; while those effects are called physical which the medium works as principal cause (cf. Heredia, Spiritism and Common Sense, p. 54).

Some "medium" persons are public, or of public use, who, presenting themselves on every occasion, have acting as a medium almost as their art; others are only of private use.

II. Historical. Already from remote antiquity, men were accustomed through a pythoness, or a person who was judged to have a python, to question the dead concerning various hidden things. Sacred Scripture offers us an example in I Samuel, or Kings, c. 28, vv. 6-19; in this place Saul, after having consulted the Lord in vain, goes to a pythoness, who, at the king's request, raised up Samuel that he might instruct Saul concerning the future event. But a threefold explanation of that fact is proposed. Most of the holy Fathers, St. Augustine remaining doubtful, think that the devil appeared in the figure of Samuel; afterward, from the time of the Protestant pseudo-reformation, Catholic writers judged that Samuel, in reality, with the Lord permitting, appeared; nor were those lacking who ascribed the whole matter to the fraudulent arts of the pythoness.

A certain Swedenborg (1688-1772) is reported to have been the forerunner of modern spiritism, who in the year 1715 declared at London that he had had a vision, after which he was able to enter into habitual commerce with spirits, the fruit of which was a Protestant sect. But he is rather to be called a visionary, whose methods are too distant from modern evocations. Wherefore they rather refer the origin of present spiritism to the mysterious noises which, in a country house of the place Hydesville in North America, heard in the year 1847-1848 by the daughter Fox, impelled her to ask whether perhaps the noises were to be attributed to the spirit of some deceased stranger. After an affirmative answer had been received, she herself and her sister began to try communications with spirits, on account of which the two daughters soon obtained universal celebrity. In the year 1888, however, one of the sisters confessed that all things had been fictitious, and that the credulity of the mother had given occasion to the fraud (cf. Heredia, op. c., pp. 11-14).

Thence the use of communicating, truly or apparently, with so-called spirits began to be spread, so that in the United States of America and in the Canadian region there are many thousands of thousands of associates (Roure, Le merveilleux spirite, c. 12). For already in the year 1900 the association of the United States and Canadian region (National Spiritualistic Association of America) had declared that there were there 10,000 mediums, 350 preachers devoted to propagation, and 82 temples.

For spiritism has grown into a religious sect, which, resting upon a scientific demonstration, as they assert, takes its beginning from communication between the living and the dead, and receives from them its dogmas: infinite divine intelligence; permanent personal identity after death; denial of eternal punishments; and so forth.

III. Harms. Besides the heretical persuasions which occur there, assiduous presence in spiritistic meetings excites the phantasy, disturbs the mind, makes men prone to cultivate superstitions. And serious evocation of spirits makes the one evoking guilty of formal superstition. Therefore spiritism is connected with the worst moral consequences, so that at least for this reason, even if the devil has not seized the hand of the one writing answers, spiritism, like every heresy, can deservedly be called a diabolical work ¹.

IV. Objective interpretation of things. First, those who examine the alleged things with a mind empty of prejudices come more and more to this conclusion: that most wonders are to be attributed to the accustomed frauds and conjurers' collusions. On this matter agree the Rev. Fathers Roure in France (Le merveilleux spirite. Le spiritisme d'aujourd'hui et d'hier); Thurston, in England (Month, 1917, p. 226 ff., "Spirit phenomena"); Zacchi, O. Pr., Lo spiritismo e la sopravvivenza dell'anima, in Italy; and, in the United States of America, Heredia, S.J., who detected the very tricks which "mediums" use, so that he was able to imitate the greatest wonders; and in the book Spiritism and Common Sense, reveals several arts, also demonstrates how men skilled in the sciences are less suitable for discerning those frauds, and recounts several confessions of "mediums" who, after they had obtained the greatest fame for themselves, confess that they were deceivers ¹. Wherefore someone could write: the more you explore the facts, the less wonderful they appear.

As to those things, few in number, which have truly happened without conjurers' arts, writers go off into four opinions. Some, among Catholics, impute almost all things to diabolical intervention, abusing this principle: that all things are to be judged diabolical from presumption if certain things are demonstrated to be diabolical. To this saying P. Zacchi, op. c. XII, opposes this: "Because some rare spiritistic phenomenon shows itself refractory to every naturalistic explanation, it is not permitted to affirm, as is done by many, that all the phenomena of spiritism, without distinction, are due to extra-natural causes." - Others, "spiritists," proceeding from this beginning, that besides the material body and the soul there is some more subtle body, the sidereal body, by which the soul communicates with exterior things, attribute those same things to the souls of the dead, which, through the sidereal, astral body possessed by a "medium," whose force is increased by the spectators, perform those exterior actions. Others think all things to be natural; but they are explained by cryptomnesia, unconscious memory, telepathy, and a certain bodily power not yet well known, which has been ascribed by some to a certain animal magnetism.

Others premise these things: a) We are not rightly permitted, because we lack a modern explanation, to flee to a preternatural origin. How many things remain mysterious in certain facts certainly natural; how many things which formerly would have been held for truly preternatural phenomena today admit scientific formulas! b) Against a preternatural explanation there stand: the perpetual repetition of the same phenomenon in the same circumstances; the necessity of certain circumstances; the limited ratio by which, for example, a person or thing cannot be raised beyond a certain height: for it is clear that a spirit is not subject to physical laws. c) Communication with the soul of the dead, which cannot happen without the permission of God, is indeed rarely permitted; but it cannot in any way be held for normal and ordinary, so that certain commands or ceremonies of ours could determine or induce that communication ¹. Nor do good angels thus become our servants. But with good angels and separated souls excluded, nothing remains except the diabolical preternatural.

With these things posited, this opinion attributes many things to the accustomed frauds and conjurers' collusions; it thinks that many other things have their explanation in the special or morbid state of persons. Certain few things it vehemently suspects betray satanic intervention, while desiring nevertheless a better demonstration of the facts.

Thus the Second Council of Baltimore (T. I, c. 7, n. 36) pronounced: "Indeed it seems well explored that many things which are said to be exhibited in circles of Spiritism as wondrous phenomena, either are altogether fabricated and produced by fraudulent collusion of the operators among themselves, or are chiefly to be ascribed to the imagination of the persons who are called mediums and to the credulity of the spectators, or finally are to be attributed to a certain manual dexterity, such as is used among conjurers. Yet it scarcely seems to be doubted that certain things at least from these are to be traced back to satanic intervention, since they can scarcely be sufficiently explained in another way."

This is also our conclusion. We think these things are usefully to be added. From the Roman Ritual, t. X, c. 1: "Signs of the possessing devil are: to speak in an unknown tongue with many words, or to understand one speaking; to reveal distant and hidden things; to show powers above the nature of age or condition; and other things of that kind which, when very many concur, are greater indications." Those signs remain formally true; but when in reality they are present, that must be judged otherwise than formerly, because of facts recently observed. Since from this it seems reasonable to admit that there are those who sometimes unfold in the body a certain mysterious power; that communications are had through mutual phantastic representations, without oral or written speech; that in some persons there is a certain stupendous power of foreseeing facts ¹, we shall say much more cautiously that communication of an unknown tongue, or one naturally inaccessible, is truly had. - Besides, the Apostle himself already (1 Tim. 4, 7), speaking of errors sufficiently similar to those of the spiritists, warned us to avoid foolish and old-womanish fables, but to exercise ourselves in true piety. And the honor of true religion seems to demand that by the very severity with which we test the facts and then judge them, we show that we have no need at all of miserable spiritistic phenomena for strengthening our faith, but that altogether different rational foundations underlie it; and that we remove the danger of lamentable deceptions, the recent memory of which ought to teach us prudence. Facility of credulity cannot at all be confused with promptitude of Faith.

¹ Cf. Thurston, S.J., The Problem of Materialization, Month, 1922, p. 331; 1923, p. 67 ff.; 227 ff.; 334.

¹ Concerning the harms which are to be feared from spiritistic usages, cf. P. Charles, S.J., [OCR uncertain: A ... de spiritisme], Nouv. Rev. Theol., 1921, p. 113 ff.

¹ Very recently the celebrated Guzik dared to commit himself to be examined by some learned men of the Paris Faculty of Sciences and of the Institute called "College de France," i.e., D. D. P. Langevin, Etienne Rabaud, Laugier, A. Marcellin, I. Meyerson. The experiments, begun November 6, 1923, had their end in the middle of the month of December, so that they were prolonged for six weeks. Thus in the official report inserted in L'Opinion and La Croix, December 21, 1923, they conclude: "The undersigned declare that their conviction is complete and without reserve: the phenomena which were presented to them bring into play no mysterious mechanism. - The medium produces them: by using his elbow for certain contacts applied to the region of the shoulder; - by freeing one of his legs from control: he then realizes movements, contacts, projections of objects by means of this freed member." Cf. also Documentation catholique, 1924, p. 495 ff.

¹ We judge that this also holds concerning the souls of limbo. Thurston, S.J., proposes a wonderful hypothesis on this matter, Communication with the Dead (Month, 1917, p. 139 ff.).

¹ There are in Westphalia persons commonly called Kiekers, who seem endowed with a certain gift of foreseeing things. Cf. Zur Bonsen, Das zweite Gesicht ([OCR uncertain: the opening words of the subtitle] Wirklichkeit und Wesen^†, - [OCR uncertain: Neue Gorres] Freiburg im Breisgau, 1923).

Concerning the morality of use or participation, with religion alone considered,. these things seem to have to be said: 1. It is certainly wrong to cooperate actively in meetings of spiritists, where they contend or desire to become more certain, from evoked souls of the dead, concerning religion itself and the facts of the invisible world. For whether the prodigies are true or fabricated, mere and often foul superstition is exercised in these. Cf. letter of the Holy Office, July 30, 1856. - 2. It would also be superstitious to use those mysterious means for knowing things which certainly transcend human science. - 3. He who, with a mind alien from superstition, so that he repudiates diabolical intervention, is present at experiments either of doubtful nature in themselves or which he himself has persuaded himself are of the natural order, cannot indeed be accused of superstition, but will generally foster evil or dangerous curiosity. - 4. Wherefore on April 24, 1917, in plenary assembly, the Holy Office decreed these things (A. A. S., t. 9, 1917, p. 268): The doubt having been proposed: "Whether it is licit, through a Medium, as they call it, or without a Medium, with hypnotism employed or not, to be present at any spiritistic locutions or manifestations, even those presenting an appearance of honesty or piety, whether by questioning souls or spirits or by hearing answers, or merely by looking on, even with tacit or express protestation that one wills to have no part with malignant spirits. - Negative in all things." - The reason is that even mere witnesses favor an illicit thing, and expose themselves to the useless danger of demoniacal intervention and of their own harm. - 5. This, therefore, is the general rule. But a skilled and sufficiently experienced man who wishes to intervene to detect and denounce fraud, to lessen the fortune of superstitions of this sort and to remove the deception of many, is not merely looking on. Wherefore, provided that he sufficiently removes the scandal of another, we do not think this positively forbidden, especially if the Ordinary judges such a plan opportune. - 6. And because probable arguments and recent discoveries lead to that opinion, that there are certain bodily powers still unknown to us, skilled men are not to be prohibited from carrying out a scientific investigation of them without the scandal of another and physical detriments of body or mind. But here there can be no question of any evocation of spirits. - 7. It would be manifestly impious to adhere to the pseudo-religious sects into which, as we said above, spiritists come together.

Canonical sanctions. Besides the general prohibition of consulting those who were said to possess a python, or diviners (Deut. 18, 11; Levit. 19, 31), the evocation of the dead for learning truth is specially prohibited in Deut. 18, 11 and Levit. 20, 6, 27. - Several canons of the more ancient Councils prohibited consultations of diviners, augurs, and lot. You may see them collected in the Decree of Gratian, Cause III, q. 5, c. 9; C. XXVI, q. 5, cc. 1, 2, 5-10; and in the Decretals, V, 21, c. 1-3. - Pontifical constitutions against sortileges can be read in Ferraris, v. Sortilegium (VII, p. 470). - To these, as to spiritism, were added the decrees of the Holy Office, April 21, 1841; July 8, 1847; May 21, 1856; July 30, 1856; April 2, 1894; April 24, 1917 (here above), which certainly must be circumscribed to meetings where they truly attempt to enter into conversations with the dead or to obtain their manifestation. - The Sacred Penitentiary touched the matter in its responses July 1, 1841 and February 1, 1882 (A. S. S., I, 177). From c. 2325, he who has exercised superstition must be punished by the Ordinary.

On animal magnetism and hypnotic suggestion. At the end of the eighteenth century there was much discussion of a certain mysterious power proper to living bodies, which, because of the magnetic-electric power then discovered, obtained the name animal magnetism. Today various names are used: Od; radiant nervous power; fluidic vital power; psychic power; ideoplastic, teleplastic power (cf. Zacchi, op. c., p. 191); physico-psychical powers: which words explain nothing. It can be admitted that certain mediums are endowed with a power of this sort. They exercise it especially in a special excitation which they call "trance." - They can also undergo hypnotic suggestions; but these are now accustomed to be separated much more from the phenomena of spiritism, so that they rather find a place below, where the care of one's own life and health is treated.

Superstition is false religion, i.e., a vicious worship of the true God or prohibited worship of a creature, and is said to be opposed to religion by excess.

I. Vicious worship of the true God can be of false signification, as when someone wishes to honor God through the abrogated ceremonies of the Old Law, or through usurped ministry, or through false relics or miracles: this, mortal of itself, can be excused from grave sin by ignorance, simplicity, or lightness of matter; - it is superfluous worship, which sins in mode and circumstance: as if you add certain ceremonies, or trust in the very number of prayers as such: these are thought rather venial. The rude are to be taught concerning the right use of sacred things.

II. Concerning superstitious worship of a creature. In order we shall treat of idolatry, of magic, of vain observance, and of modern spiritism.

1. On idolatry. Idols signify both false gods and, more properly, their images, statues, symbols. Wherefore idolatry strictly is the worship of latria attributed to a false god or to some image or symbol of him.

Material idolatry simulates worship; formal idolatry truly renders it. Perfect idolatry adores a creature which from infidelity it estimates to be God; imperfect idolatry, from desire or hatred of God, exhibits honor to a creature as to God. Perfect idolatry must be judged objectively, though not always subjectively, at least immediately, graver than imperfect. Material idolatry itself is a grave sin. And vulgar paganism confused the image or symbol with the god itself. In Sacred Scripture, idols are sometimes called nothing, sometimes demons. There was also worship of the principle of evil. Similar things occur today among barbarians.

In a more general acceptance, idolatry designates every vicious worship of a creature. This is already had if you wish to obtain certain things through a creature otherwise than God has ordained. For religion wills that we expect all goods immediately or mediately according to the order pre-established by God.

Through express worship, either knowledge or other effects can be sought, besides general protection. Since, excepting the devil, no other creature invisible to us wills to act while released from dependence on God, an absolute invocation of a creature necessarily terminates in the devil. But express invocation of the devil, by which formal commerce of servitude is entered into with the sworn enemy of God, is to be charged as a grave sin. To express invocation of the devil is referred the more general pact with the devil.

2. On magic. What formal idolaters contended to obtain by suppliant prayer, magicians contended to obtain by use of mysterious power. He who consciously exercises a power which he at the same time estimates to be preternatural and not proceeding from God, in operating, is subjectively guilty of tacit invocation of the devil, which cannot be excused from grave sin.

3. On vain observance, or positive use or omission which is inept for the end for which they are employed. Those vain usages, if they are employed as rites of worshiping a creature or obtaining magical power, contain a grave sin of idolatry or invocation of the devil. Employed without firm faith outside an intention of this sort, they are rather venial defects of trust in divine Providence, unless by constant use the distrust becomes grave.

A protestation by which someone excludes commerce with the devil can be overcome by the fact, when someone employs means which he knows are ineffective without diabolical intervention, or when he absolutely wills things which he suspects to be demoniacal. Nor does protestation prevent that, when there is serious doubt, that intervention is permitted. Wherefore a proportionate excusing cause must be present, just as for materially cooperating with those who are subjectively guilty of superstition.

It is not licit to exercise the art of pythons seriously. In admitting dreams, prudent discernment of spirits must be employed.

Certain usages of devotion, innocent in themselves, are mixed with some venial superstition if material circumstances of place, number, or person are held as necessary or infallible. But conjecture concerning propensities from physical signs, or employment of a falsely estimated natural remedy, is empty of superstition. Credulity concerning malefices is rather to be restrained, although malefices can still exist.

4. On modern spiritism. Spiritism is properly the formal evocation of spirits who do various things and especially teach various secrets, whether a person peculiarly suitable, a "medium," is employed, or direct questioning is made, for example, through blows of a table. Phenomena are distinguished as physical and psychical, from the principal cause operating: psychical phenomena are judged to have proceeded from another soul. There is also a religion of spiritism, which is judged to receive from the dead dogmas stained with errors against the faith. Moreover, frequent use of spiritism begets harmful effects upon the phantasy and the mind, so that it can truly be called a diabolical work. In public meetings of spiritism, at least most of the portents by which bystanders are moved are fictitious. Things which truly happen some attribute to the devil, others to separated souls, others to natural powers. With commerce with separated souls excluded, which God regularly does not permit, most things seem to be ascribed to natural powers, whether already known or probably knowable and to be known. Few psychical things remain, and indeed rather knowledge plainly inaccessible than various wonders, for example "levitations," which bring in a founded suspicion of the devil, insofar as they are established. Cf. Rituale, T. 10, c. 1, n. 3.

It would be wrong to cooperate actively in meetings of spiritists, since in these many truly exercise superstition. And it would be superstitious to use mysterious means for knowing things which certainly transcend human science. He who, repudiating diabolical intervention, is present at experiments of doubtful nature, or which he himself is persuaded are of the natural order, generally fosters evil or dangerous curiosity. Yet skilled men are not prohibited from carrying out, without scandal and physical detriments of persons, a scientific investigation of facts, with every evocation of spirits excluded. Assistance at spiritistic locutions or manifestations was declared illicit by the Holy Office on April 24, 1917. Yet a sufficiently experienced man does not therefore seem impeded from wishing, without scandal and especially after consulting the Ordinary, to intervene to detect and denounce frauds.

Learned theologians are now accustomed to ascribe hypnotic suggestions, as such, to natural phenomena, so that these are rather to be treated below, where suicide, etc., is treated.