The Catechism in a Year (with Fr. Mike Schmitz) - Day 275: Superstition, Idolatry, and Magic (2025)

Episode Date: October 2, 2025

Superstition, idolatry, divination, and magic are all things we can encounter in our daily lives, and, with Fr. Mike, we unpack how they break the first commandment. Fr. Mike reiterates that superstition represents an “excess of religion” and can affect the worship we offer to God. He points out that we can be superstitious even in our Catholic practices. He also explains that idolatry consists of divinizing anything that is not God. Today’s readings are Catechism paragraphs 2110-2117. This episode has been found to be in conformity with the Catechism by the Institute on the Catechism, under the Subcommittee on the Catechism, USCCB. For the complete reading plan, visit ascensionpress.com/ciy Please note: The Catechism of the Catholic Church contains adult themes that may not be suitable for children - parental discretion is advised.

Hi, my name's Father Mike Schmitz, and you're listening to the Catechism in a year podcast, where we encounter God's plan of sheer goodness for us, revealed in scripture, and passed down through the tradition of the Catholic faith. The Catechism in New Year is brought to you by ascension. In 365 days, we'll read through the Catechism of the Catholic Church, discovering our identity and God's family as we journey together toward our heavenly home. This is day 275. We're reading paragraphs 2110 to 2117. As always, I'm using the Ascension edition of the Catechism, which includes the foundations of faith approach, but you can follow along with any recent version of the Catechism of the Catholic Church. You can also download your own catechism in a year reading plan by visiting

ascensionpress.com slash CIY. And you can click follow or subscribe in your podcast app for daily updates and daily notifications. Quick thank you to everyone who has supported this podcast. Thank you for your prayers. I do mean it. I say that I'm praying for you. I literally am every single day. Thank you for your prayers. And thank you for your financial gifts. We couldn't do this podcast without you today as we're continuing this First Commandment. I just, it's so good. We have a couple more days of this commandment. But this day is, they're all great, aren't they? Today we're going to talk about what is it? What does God mean when he says, you shall have no other gods before me? What is idolatry? What's the danger of idolatry to our hearts? What's superstition? Now, superstition is

something that, man, that sneaks in so many places in our lives where we can say, okay, you know, the black cat thing or the don't walk under a ladder, don't open an umbrella inside, but there's also other little mini superstitions, meaning we give a power that belongs only to God to something that's not God. And then idolatry is giving, you know, worship or our heart or whatever it is that belongs to God to something that isn't God. We're also going to look at divination and magic because those are, I mean, in some ways, in some ways, and more of our people are attracted to that notion of divination and magic. So we're going to talk all about that today in order to prepare our hearts. Let's pray. Father in heaven, we love you. We love you and we receive your

love. We acknowledge that you are the giver of every good gift. You're the God of the universe and you know our names. You're the God of the universe and you have called us to be yours. You're the God of the universe and every hair on our head is counted. Lord God, every, every strand of DNA, you know. And who we are matters to you, what we do matters to you. Help us to fully belong to you. Help us to receive your love. Help us to receive your attention. And help us to find a place deep in our hearts where you are the Lord. Help us to create a love. Help us to create a love. life, to craft a life where you are the center, where you are everything, because God, you are the center, because God, you are everything. Help us to do this. In Jesus' name, we pray, in the name of the

Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. It is day 275. We're reading paragraphs 2110 to 2117. You shall have no other gods before me. The First Commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion. Irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion. Superstition. 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. For example, when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices is 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. Adolatory The First Commandment condemns polytheism. It requires man neither to believe in nor to venerate other divinities than the one true God. Scripture constantly recalls this rejection of idols of silver and gold the work of men's hands they have mouths but do not speak eyes but do not see these empty idols make their worshippers empty those who make them are like them and so are all who trust in them god however is the living god who gives life and intervenes in history idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship it remains a constant temptation to faith idolatry consists in divinizing what is not god man commits idolatry whenever he honors and reveres a creature in place of God, whether this be gods or demons, for example, Satanism, power, pleasure, race, ancestors,

the state, money, etc. Jesus says, you cannot serve God and Mammon. Many martyrs died for not adoring the beast, refusing even to simulate such worship. Adulatory rejects the unique lordship of God. It is therefore incompatible, with communion with God. Human life finds its unity in the adoration of the one God. The commandment to worship the Lord alone integrates man and saves him

from an endless disintegration. Idolatry is a perversion of man's innate religious sense. An idolater is someone who transfers his indestructible notion of God to anything other than God. Divination and magic. 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. In Providence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility. 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. All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers so has 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. All right, there we have it, paragraphs 2010 to 2017. Ah, this is, I find this is fascinating. Again, so good for us. This first paragraph 2110 is, to even begin, it says, just to summarize, the First Commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people.

but this sense of prescribing superstition and irreligion. We'll talk about irreligion tomorrow. But what is superstition? It says this. Superstition, in some sense, represents a perverse excess of religion. Isn't that interesting? A superstition represents a perverse excess of religion. So what is it?

It says 21-11, superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. So what's religious feeling? What's the religious sense? That is, okay, if I do this thing, something is going to happen because of it, right? So I feel comfortable, or I'm comforted by rubbing my lucky rabbit's foot because now that I've rubbed this lucky rabbit's foot, something good's going to happen. I feel good when I take three sips of coffee before I spin in the circle,

I don't know, whatever the thing is, right? I'm wearing my lucky socks, and I have a feeling because I did this action that something good is going to happen or the thing I want to happen is going to happen. So you see what that is. It's trying to derive this religious feeling from a random action, essentially. It goes on to say that this can even affect the worship we offer to God. Now look at this one. This is going to be close to home, hopefully for a lot of us. I say hopefully because we have to be aware that we can even be superstitious about our Catholic practices. This is a real thing that we could do. So here's an example. for example, when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices

otherwise lawful or necessary. So when I drive by or walk by a Catholic church, I make the sign of the cross typically. Now, I do that because I'm trying to acknowledge the fact that, yes, here is our Lord Jesus Christ, body, blood, soul, divinity, truly present in every Catholic church. So I'll make the sign of the cross as I go by. So it's a good thing. It is otherwise lawful. What if, though, I say, no, I didn't make the sign of the cross.

I'm going to have bad luck today, or I need to do this in order to have a good day. Now, I would have then taken something that's actually a good, a good action. It's part of the devotion that I have to our Lord Jesus, and you could have that same devotion to our Lord Jesus and his real presence in the Eucharist, and it's turned it into something superstitious. He says, goes on to say, to attribute the efficacy of prayers or of the sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions they demand, is to fall to superstition. And I would say this, I'm not superstitious. I am a little stitious. I needed to say

that. I'm so, I'm so sorry. I'm not superstitious, but we can all recognize that sometimes we reduce our actions, even in church, to their external performance. Now, that doesn't mean we don't still go through the motions. What it means is our challenge, our invitation, is to match the external, but with the internal. So that's, that's our call. Next, I don't know. We talked about this so many times. So we can have idols. We can actually turn to false gods and call them by name and give our lives to them. That is obviously prohibited, like in the old covenant, Ba'all.

That is one example. But in 2113, it highlights idolatry not only refers to false pagan worship. It remains a constant temptation to faith. What we say a couple days ago, the human heart is an idol-making factory. We can make anything into our God. We can take any good thing, even bad things. We most often take good things, make them into ultimate things. So idolatry consists in divinizing what is not God.

So we commit idolatry whenever we honor and revere a creature in place of God. And it goes on to give some examples, whether this be gods and demons, for example, Satanism, or power. Power can be the thing you live for. Pleasure. Pleasure can be the ultimate thing that we sacrifice everything else for pleasure. It could be race. I highlight my own. race or another race above everything else, remember, it's taking a good thing, making it

the ultimate thing. Ancestors, there is such a thing as ancestor worship. The state, how many people are more invested in their politics than they are in worshiping the Lord? Money? I mean, what did Jesus say? You cannot worship both God and money. You might have to have money. Money itself is not bad, but it is dangerous. And so we have to use it wisely. Just like fire. Fire's not bad. but it's dangerous and so we recognize that so many people in the history of Christianity have died for not adoring the beast even refusing to simulate such worship even refusing to pretend to worship remember in the book of maccabees there's the old man and they say you know we like you we respect you so how about this rather than forcing you to eat the pork how about

you go up there and bring your own meat bring some kind of meat that you can eat and so you don't violate the law, but you know, you're kind of giving to the Greeks what they're asking of you. And he even says, he says, far be it from me, to even pretend, to even pretend to violate the law of God. And so we must not do that. And the martyrs died. They were martyrs because they refused even to simulate such worship. We have to also do this. Because why? Because our life, in all of our lives, find their unity in the adoration of the one God. This is so important for us. Lastly, divination and magic. It's interesting that the church doesn't presuppose the divination and magic are empty. I don't know if you caught that here in paragraphs 2115 to 2117. It doesn't say,

hey, avoid Ouija boards, avoid horoscopes, avoid palm reading, avoid seances because they're a waste of your money and your time. That's not what it says. In fact, We recognize that there are spirits that dwell before God as his messengers that worship God constantly day and night, they're called angels. There are also fallen angels. There are also demons. There are more powers in this universe than just God's divine power. There are also demons.

There is demonic power. We realize this, that the church isn't saying that, hey, avoid divination because it's not real, or avoid magic because it's not real, or avoid these other things because they're not real. It's saying avoid them because they're evil. That's the thing. and give some examples. So, yes, we know that, knowing the future, 2115, God can and has revealed the future to his prophets or to other saints.

Yet, if we're going to be wise Christians, if we're going to be holy Christians, then we have to put ourselves confidently into the hands of providence for whatever concerns the future and give up all unhealthy concern about it. That is so important. We trust in God's providence. and we place ourselves in his hands, in his care, without any unhealthy curiosity about the future. And yet, here at the last line of paragraph 2115, in Providence, however, right, I don't care at all about the future can constitute a lack of responsibility.

So I'm just going to, you know, it's the fable of the ants and the grasshopper, right? The ants are working really busily all day, and the grasshopper is just playing, and then winter comes and the ants have enough food, but the grasshopper is freezing and starving. So we recognize that, yes, one of the ones. the calls of virtue is to be prudent and to recognize that, yes, I need to look into the future a little bit, not literally in a crystal ball kind of situation, but I need to look in to say, oh, winter's coming. I probably should get some firewood. You know what I'm saying? Okay, so keep that in mind. So what we need to avoid is unhealthy curiosity about the future. 2116 talk about

the fact that all forms of divination are to be rejected. Whether that be 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, phenomenon of clairvoyance, recourse to mediums, all conceal a desire for power for time history in the last analysis of other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. So this is, listen, we have to realize this, that you might say, yeah, but, you know, I go to a medium, or there was a TV show back in the day, I don't know if it's still on right now, but there was a medium and she talked about being Catholic and she was and she was like no but I also

you know talk to dead people kind of a situation and that would be the kind of thing that you would want to avoid that would be 100% need to avoid and and I don't know what her deal was maybe she did have this preternatural gift of being able to see or communicate with the dead yet scripture makes it absolutely clear that we are prohibited from doing that and so so as a good Catholic, she, hopefully, God willing, has repented of that, and we, if we're entertained by that or we seek that out, we need to repent of that as well. Again, not because there's no power there and you're wasting your money, but because there is power there and it's dangerous. Lastly, 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 for the sake of restoring their health are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. Now, keep that last piece in mind. Even if this was to restore someone's health, there are cultures that still exist right now where, like, let's go to the witch doctor. I'm not going to sing that song. I'm just like, we go to the witch doctor, the idea of the shaman, because, yeah, this shaman has some kind of power. This witch doctor has some kind of power to heal my loved one. Even that, even that would be evil. It must be avoided.

Absolutely must be avoided. It goes on to say, 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. Next line, wearing charms is also reprehensible. So keep that in mind. And you have to ask the question, what is a charm? That's a great question. So what it's not is I know that a lot of moms and grandmas, you know, have like a bracelet.

And on their bracelet, they have little like figurines. And those figurines might be something along the lines of, oh, this is, this represents, you know, my my granddaughter Sophia and this represents my grandson Alex that kind of a situation those aren't the same things as charm so what they're talking about are objects that are intended to give some kind of benefit some kind of good luck that kind of thing like a good luck charm that's it's reprehensible here according to the church spiritism is the last one here spiritism often implies divination or magical practices in the church for her part warns the faithful against it. So we must avoid these things, even if this is recourse to traditional or so-called

traditional cures that doesn't justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another's credulity. So keep that in mind, keep all those things in mind. Even if this is part of our tradition, as a part of our culture, we'd still avoid those at all costs. Does that make sense? Hopefully, you don't mind me going back and rereading. As I mentioned, that when we go through R-CIA and we look at the commandments, sometimes I find myself just teaching straight out of the catechism. I'm talking to our students and like, okay, you guys, let's just read the whole book. So this is very actually, this is much like my RCIA classes. And I don't know if they like that or not, but I do know that we have to get through all this content because it is so, so important.

Tomorrow, as we said, we're going to talk about irreligion. And we're also going to talk about what are some of those ways in which, again, we can violate this first commandment. that we shall worship the Lord God alone, and Him only shall you serve. We talk about that. We have no other gods before God. Talk about that even more tomorrow when it comes to the sin of a religion. But right now, I am praying for you. Please pray for me. My name is Father Mike.

I cannot wait to see you tomorrow. God bless.