Catholicism and Occultism

Review and Herald Publishing Association · Takoma Park Station, Washington, D. C. · Jul 12, 1906

Catholicism and Occultism

THE Roman Catholic Church admits the fundamental principles of spiritualism, but claims a monopoly of the right to receive and to interpret the communications which may come from disembodied spirits. A writer upon this subject in a recent magazine declares that the Catholic and the occultist are absolutely one in recognizing the immortality of the soul and the actuality of communications between incarnate and discarnate spirits, and asserts that the Catholic Church accepts, though seldom without reservation, the messages or private revelations received by the saints in all ages, but at the same time he says that she altogether rejects and condemns the methods of modern spiritualism. He further affirms that she believes that the world beyond the veil is of unimaginable extent, and composed of an equally unimaginable variety of characters. In his own words:—

It is impossible, therefore, for any but infallibly safe-guarded persons to test with any hope of security the authenticity or truth of communications apparently received from that source. Setting aside the danger of human fraud, there still remains the far greater danger of spiritual fraud. The church believes so firmly that the character which a man takes out of the world remains his substantially in the next, and further, that there is in existence there a huge force of evil or degenerate spirits whose object it is to deceive and ruin the souls that God would save, and of whose capacities for impersonation and fraud we have no adequate knowledge, that she sees no security anywhere, even in the voices of those supernatural beings that speak with apparent reverence of holy things, unless there is somewhere a touchstone of truth to which these utterances can be brought; and this touchstone she claims to possess.

If the Roman Catholic system was based upon the Bible, it would deny the immortality of the soul and the conscious condition of the dead, and by so doing it would settle once for all the whole question of spiritualism; but being a perversion of the truth, it accepts the false teachings, and then professes to be able to detect any fraud, human or spiritual, which might be attempted in the practise of occultism.

It is plain to see that there can come a union between Catholicism, apostate Protestantism, and spiritualism. The Catholic Church is already perceiving the opportunity offered to it by the disintegration of Protestantism due to the infidelity of the New Theology. When the time is ripe for the acceptance of an outward visible authority both by an apostate Protestantism and a refined spiritualism, Rome is ready to supply the need, and the gulf which now seems to separate them will be bridged. And there is nothing which will contribute more to this result than Rome's claim of authority over the Sunday sabbath—an institution of its own. Watch for the threefold union. It is one of the last moves in the great controversy.