(Death, Heaven, Purgatory, Hell)
Rite of Christian Initiation for Adults
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Question 32: John Edward claimed to be able to contact the dead on his TV program, Crossing Over; how did he do it? Now, there is a new television program called Medium, is this a program that Catholics should watch? Does the Catholic Church allow a Catholic to attend a spiritistic séance or to become a Medium? Isn’t spiritism invaluable in supplying us with proof of immortality?
Answer: The answer to the first question is simple, he didn’t. John Edward claims to have had a "psychic" ability since an early age. What he actually does is called "cold reading." A cold reading is the "sleight of tongue" procedure that fast-talking artists or so-called "Readers" use (as opposed to a "warm reading", where the Reader has actually acquired information about the subject beforehand). Cold reading has many methods whereby the Reader can get out of a blatantly wrong guess with extreme speed. So fast that, unless you listen very carefully or are able to review a transcript of what was actually said during the reading, few would ever notice. Cold reading is used by such other "psychics" or "sensitives" as Sylvia Browne and James Van Praagh (John, Sylvia and James being the three most popular Cold Readers at the moment). All of whom claim to communicate with loved ones who have crossed over.
The answers to the rest of your questions are probably not, and no, and no. Although I have not viewed the program Medium, it must be understood that this is pure fiction, designed to be entertaining, with no basis of fact.
That said, it is important to understand that the Catholic Church forbids Catholics to have anything to do with Spiritism, which she condemns as a destructive superstition. The Holy See has issued at least five decrees (1840, 1847, 1856, 1898, 1917) forbidding Catholics “to be present at spiritistic conversations or manifestations of any kind, even though these phenomena present the appearance of honesty or piety, whether by interrogating souls or spirits, or by listening to responses, or only by looking on, even with a tacit or expressed protestation that one does not wish to have anything to do with wicked spirits.”
Spiritism is simply a modern from of pagan necromancy (summoning the spirits of the dead) condemned by the law of Moses. “There shall not be found among you any one who burns his son or his daughter as an offering, any one who practices divination, a soothsayer, or an augur, or a sorcerer, or a charmer, or a medium, or a wizard, or a necromancer. For whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord” (Deut. 18:10-12).
Some of these practices survive or reappear from time to time in contemporary culture. Instead of taking the form of false religions, however, today they may present themselves as programs of self-improvement or psychological therapy, or as new forms of "spirituality." Whatever their guise, one must be careful to avoid any participation in false worship and superstition.
Attempts to summon the ghosts of the dead are forbidden. Such attempts, called spiritism or spiritualism, always risk evoking demonic activity, and often are undertaken for the sake of divination and/or magic. The séances conducted by supposed mediums often involve religious elements whose doctrinal basis denies Jesus' divinity. If Catholics undertake such practices to seek reassurance about the fate of their loved ones, they show lack of confidence in prayer and the rites of the Church, and manifest underlying defects in their faith. Those who seek guidance through a medium also show lack of confidence in divine guidance (see 1 Chr. 10.13-14). Participation is a grave matter, and the Church warns her members to avoid having anything to do with such practices.
Spiritism is a pagan superstition, which denies every dogma of the Christian Gospel in the name of an imagined communication with the dead, which is a cruel parody of the Communion of Saints. Experience has proven that spiritism comes with many dangers to both body and soul; it has frequently destroyed the physical health of its practitioners; caused mental illness, and deprived them of the true faith.
The immortality of the soul is a dogma of the Catholic faith. Spiritism in no way proves immortality, for despite its exaggerated claims, no person has ever succeeded in summoning a spirit from the dead or communicating with one.
