THE CHURCH REDEEMS THE OCCULT
A few things are converging this week. All Saints’ Day, for one, with its ancient pagan precedent, Halloween. All Souls’ Day on Monday. We’ll also begin teaching the Our Father to the children this week. And the diocese re-sent a letter from Bishop Barres on “mediums” and the Catholic Faith. With all this in mind, I offer you an excerpt of the bishop’s pastoral letter. I strongly urge you to read it in its entirety, which is available on our parish website.
[When we] are experiencing loss, we [are] confronting the veil that separates us from eternity and we face the question, “To whom shall we go?” We may seek comfort in mediums and other occult practices, but then we are relying merely on our own broken humanity, or worse, putting our trust in the evil prowling about behind that veil, an evil ready to manipulate us to diminish our faith in God.
Or we can put our trust in Jesus Christ, the one who suffered the darkness of death and returned to reassure us of what lies beyond. As He says to us in John’s Gospel: Do not let your hearts be troubled. You have faith in God; have faith also in me. In my Father’s house there are many dwelling places.
We trust in Christ’s promise that only by His great love for us and His death on the cross do we and our loved ones have hope of coming to the Father. May we continue to pray for all the dearly departed, that they may know of our love and that we may be assured that they are in the hands of their loving and merciful Father.
A GOOD COUNTRY CAN HELP
Midterm elections are also fast approaching, which has us all thinking about the election process and the best candidates. In the spirit of wanting to give God pride of place in our discernment, permit me to offer one way of thinking about civil law. When asking the question, “What makes for good public policy?” it may be helpful to remember that a country’s laws are only good when they reflect the Natural Law and the Divine Law, both of which are from God. The Natural Law is written into creation itself, and the Divine Law is revealed through the Scriptures. We would do well then, as Christians, to reject those who propose laws that are contrary to the ones that God has written for the common good into our humanity, and now into our hearts.
Even as Bishop Barres cautions against the occult,
Consulting horoscopes or having recourse to mediums conceals 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.
the same should apply to our judgment of those who aspire to positions of leadership in the public square, either through politics, industry, or investment. The men and women who present themselves for election must also meet the criteria of the Church. We want people who humble themselves before the Natural Law and the Divine Law, that is, before the true God.
A SAFE FLOCK WITHOUT FLOCK SAFETY
Speaking of our relationship to the state, please know we’ve replaced our Flock Safety cameras with our own that temporarily record and store activity here on our local servers. As you may know, Flock cameras store license plate and vehicle information in the cloud, where it can be accessed by law enforcement for surveillance. So many people, however, have cried out in opposition to what is believed by some to be an intrusion of the state into the private sector that we thought it best to terminate our relationship with Flock in solidarity with those whose rights have, in some cases, been violated in other places. We were one of Flock’s first accounts here in New England. And the cameras did come in handy on a number of occasions. We are confident our new cameras will work just as well without the state looking in from the outside.