"Take me to Church"

(You don’t have to read this little paragraph, it’s just for kicks)**My first blog post, how exciting!  So I read about Sorcery in Christendom and Sorcery and the Nature of Evil. Both of these chapters were quite interesting, and slightly long. A lot is going on through these pages. I tried writing everything down. My thoughts are all over the place with these two chapters. I feel like I really need to go to church. lol **
 I am going to start with chapter 3. What I got from it is it kinda disapproves that all sin is caused by the devil or by demons. This chapter really reminds me of philosophy class: stating an argument or idea, providing support, trumping that source, disproving the statement/idea and declare a new statement or opinion. Anyone else feel like that?
In this chapter, two excerpts (phrases) that really fazed me were “to tempt is a sign of ignorance. But the demons know what happens among men. Therefore the demons do not tempt.” The second is “sin dwells in the will. Since therefore the demons cannot change man’s will” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Second Article, pg. 98). 

So, man has free will and man is ignorant of many things. (Man=humans, mankind, womankind, etc) All this is just a thin layer of the giant cake that represents the ideas behind demons, the devil and their existence. [Note: I am writing this while I am very hungry] Man sins or commits acts of evil through his own free will and ignorance. The devil is not ignorant, and he cannot bend the will of man. Then you have God thrown in the mix. God temps man (pg. 98). He tempts us to test our faith in him or for punishment. [All this talk about God and the devil make me sound like a religious fanatic. Gosh.]

“Not all our evil thoughts are stirred up by the devil, but sometimes they arise from movement of our freewill” (Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, Third Article, pg. 100).Aquinas made things pretty clear for me. I feel that through everything I just mentioned that the devil and demons alike are only as powerful as you or anyone else makes them out to be. (*shifts eyes left to right to check for any upset demons*) We have all this discussion about how the devil cannot do certain things and how God is almighty. This leads into my ideas about chapter 2.
My discussion leadership project is on this chapter so I won’t go to crazy with my ideas that I will share on Monday. Overall, the chapter makes me believe that “the power of Christ is unconquerable” (Voragine, The Life of Justina, pg 85). You have the story of Justina, for example. By the way, this story was quite funny. You have this guy, a powerful sorcerer, Cyprian who tries to win or obtain the heart of Justina. Now, this guy Cyprian is persistent for sure. He uses all his dark magic to summon demons of all sorts to bring her to him in any manner. No demon was strong enough to face Justina and her unwavering faith in Christ. This is such as ridiculous story makes you wonder if this were true. Now using this story, paired up with the things I pointed out in chapter 3, I got one clear message from it all: that the power of Christ/God/Christianity is all powerful. You don’t mess with Christ. What more can you sum up about these chapters. There is so much mentioned on detailed rituals but the fact of the matter is, you need to find your faith in God. Just from certain aspects of these excerpts, Christianity is the way to go if you don’t want anything bad to happen to you or if you want to truly be happy.  

Whether you should do penance (Spoiler: the answer is "yes")

Reading chapters 2 and 3 of the Kors/Peters book, all I could think was, "For people who condemn demons and magical practices, you saints and holy writers sure know an awful lot about the particulars of how they interact with humans."

"Hey, so how do I summon the Devil? Oh, uh, it's just to make sure no one will do it."
(Source: www.traditionalcatholicmass.com)

The evolution of discovering the prevalence of magical practices, addressing them, and universally condemning them I found particularly interesting.  Before the 14th century, magic was considered "singular and episodic, one more manifestation of Satan's usually unsuccessful attempts to tempt mankind from orthodox belief and practice." (p. 59) And yet we have a prominent figure in early(ish) Christianity, Thomas Aquinas, part of whose writings in the 13th century were meant to "explain precisely how it was possible for demons to influence human actions." (p. 88)  It seems like the clergy during this time period wanted magic and demons to be compartmentalized, dealt with, and left behind as they moved on to more important things.  If they described exactly how these "episodic" incidents happened, for example the nature of demons and the extent of how they were able to tempt man, then righteous men (I almost typed "and women" there regarding 13th century Christianity, silly me!) would rise up against any temptation, ever again, because they would know how a demon would go about tempting them.

Speaking of my "and women" comment up there - there were so many descriptions in these chapters of how women were the ones who were usually corrupted by magic, and men only occasionally, and only if they were "weak." Not cool, people. Get over your superiority (even though I know you won't for hundreds of years. If that.)

Considering the eventual acceptance of magic as a widespread (or at least, more widely noticed) event, I was very surprised to read about the penances for various sinful magical practices. It is firmly established that magic and communing with demons is a sin of varying degree based on the results of the magic, but I was expecting more "Burn the heretics at the stake!" and less "Eat bread and water for ten days or so."  In fact, in some cases using demons seems okay - even though it's a grave sin, it might be permitted to use them and then just ask for forgiveness, even if you know you're sinning. (p. 89, paragraphs 2-3) Further, according to Augustine, "all divinations are to be avoided; although physical death ought not to be inflicted without grave cause." (p.89) I wonder when the pivotal shift occurred to go from (comparatively) light punishment and repentance at this time to death by burning in the 17th century.

"Have you ever felt like you were just born in the wrong time period?"
(Source: www.whenintime.com)

Another thought:  while invoking Christ or the cross for various incantations or charms did happen in our other readings from Keickhefer, I feel like the magic in those readings was much more generally secular in nature.  One of the big themes throughout Thomas Aquinas' writing selections was that all magical things come from demons, and all demons and magics are only permitted to act by God. I thought this was an interesting rationalization or analogy for how bad things are allowed to happen to good people - everything is God's will, be it good, bad, or ugly. Whatever you have to say to make yourself feel better, Mr. A.

...was it God's will that I posted a cat video?