Dear Parishioners,

Today I am going to warn you about the dangers of superstition. It is described in our Catechism as follows: “The First Commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to His people. It proscribes superstition… Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion… Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.” (CCC 2110-2111)

So, as we can see, superstition is against the First (and most important) Commandment of loving God above all things. It is listed even before more obvious examples of violations of the First Commandment such as idolatry and magic. It is particularly dangerous because someone can easily mistake being superstitious as being more devout. However, even though someone’s external practices may be similar to someone who is devout, God sees the heart of the person. Also, some of these practices may subtly contradict what the faith actually teaches. For example:

• Practicing novenas that guarantee results. Like claiming that if you say a St. Jude Novena for 9 days and you leave 9 copies of that novena in 9 churches, God has to answer your prayer. However, this novena makes promises it can’t keep and if God does not answer a prayer in a way we like, it is more important to conform to His will than to impose our will on Him.
• Obsessing over the appearance of sacramentals. Specifically someone might claim that a miraculous medal or a rosary has to look a certain way to be true versions of those sacramentals and those that do not have that standard design are really satanic or masonic versions of those devotions. This is silly because what makes it so is the intention and faith behind using these objects. The objects in themselves have no real power. To say they have to conform to certain externals beyond the basic design is just making up rules.
• Believing in people who claim private revelation from God even though they contradict the Church. God does communicate divine revelation to prophets even today. However, anything that is revealed in this manner is private revelation. Therefore Catholics are not required to believe them nor are they necessary for salvation. Even approved apparitions like at Lourdes or Fatima are not required to be believed. So, whenever we hear someone claim to have divine revelation that changes everything, or calls into question the authority of the Church, or is meant to make people worried, we ought to be skeptical and expect to be given reasons to believe it. We can immediately disqualify any private revelation that contradicts the teachings of the Church, which is the pillar and bulwark of truth and who Christ has granted teaching authority until He returns.

Overall, we have to recognize that God loves us and wants what is best for us. He is not trying to trick us or hold us to anything He did not reveal for our salvation. So, trust in Him above all things.

God bless!

Fr. Carter