Question 30

Answer: The Catholic Church condemns astrology as a pagan superstition, which by encouraging fatalism leads to the denial of Divine Providence. The stars have absolutely no influence whatsoever upon human life and human affairs, and the casting of a horoscope or diagram of the heavens at the birth of a child in order to foretell its future is downright foolishness. St. Augustine attacked it strongly in his City of God (8, 19), and St. Thomas Aquinas writes: �If anyone applies the observation of the stars in order to foreknow casual or fortuitous events, or to know with certitude future human actions, his conduct is based on a false and vain opinion: and so the operation of the demon introduces himself therein, wherefore it will be a superstitious and unlawful divination� (Summa, IIa. IIae., Q. 95, art. 5).

Divination is the attempt to learn hidden facts with the expressed or implied aid of evil spirits. Divination in this sense includes palmistry, crystal gazing, astrology, omens, and the ouija board. It is a sin against the first commandment of God because it involves business with the devil, a lack of trust in God, and the danger of being harmfully deceived.

Divination seeks guidance from a higher power apart from God. Divination is any attempt to foresee future contingencies, which human beings can know neither naturally nor by divine revelation. In taking seriously omens, astrology, automatic writing, or reading palms, cards, tea leaves, and so forth, people engage in divination. Implicit in these practices is recourse to something more than human, which is assumed either to know the future, to determine it, or both. Such a higher power other than God would be either personal and demonic or some sort of impersonal, cosmic, ruling force which subjected human life to inexorable fate. In either case, something other than God is regarded as if it were divine, insofar as enlightenment is sought from it to supplement the guidance God has made available. Divination is always a mortal sin unless it is used out of ignorance or as a joke.

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