CathInfo.com

Witchcraft is now the fastest growing religion among women in the US.

It is therefore appropriate to post this thorough condemnation of it by Pope Sixtus V. 

AI translation, as curiously there is no vernacular translation. Gee I wonder why that would be.


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The Creator of Heaven and Earth

Constitution of Our Most Holy Lord Pope Sixtus V

Against those who practise the art of judicial astrology and every other kind of divination, and against those who read or possess books about them.

Sixtus, bishop, servant of the servants of God, for perpetual remembrance.

§ 1

God, the Creator of heaven and earth, whom with the heart we believe to be the one Almighty unto righteousness and with the mouth confess unto salvation, gave to man, whom he created in his own image and likeness, a mind which, enlightened by the divine light of faith, might not only know those mysteries that surpass human understanding, but might also, by the power of its own nature, although with great labour, investigate and understand many excellent things. Nevertheless, so that man, a proud creature, should not think too highly of himself, but should fear and, prostrate upon the ground, venerate the boundless majesty of his Creator, God reserved to himself alone the knowledge of what is to happen and the understanding of future things.

For he alone, before whose eyes all things are naked and open, penetrates the innermost thoughts of men and consequently beholds their actions. He alone, who calls the things that are not as though they were, holds all things present and set before his eyes. He alone, finally, has known from all eternity, and disposed by his wonderful providence, each and every thing that will occur throughout the whole course of time and the ages of the world - things of which not only the frailty of the human mind is ignorant, but which even the demons themselves cannot foresee.

Therefore the Holy Spirit, in Isaiah, mocks the falsity and weakness of idols in announcing the future, and the vanity of those who offered them worship, in these words: Announce the things that are to come hereafter, and we shall know that you are gods. And in the New Testament Christ the Lord rebuffed his disciples' somewhat eager enquiry about future events with that grave reply by which he also restrained the curiosity of all his faithful: It is not for you to know the times or moments which the Father has placed in his own power.

Nor are there any true arts or disciplines for foreknowing future events and chance occurrences - excepting only future events that arise necessarily or commonly from natural causes, which do not belong to divination. Such arts are false and vain, introduced by the cunning of wicked men and the deceptions of demons, from whose operation, counsel, or assistance all divination flows: either because they are expressly invoked to reveal the future, or because, through their own wickedness and hatred of the human race, they secretly insert and intrude themselves, even apart from a person's intention, into vain enquiries about the future, so that human minds may become entangled in destructive vanities and fallacious predictions of contingent things and may be corrupted by every kind of impiety.

What the demons know, they know not through any divinity or true knowledge of future things, but through the keenness of their subtler nature and by certain other means of which the duller human understanding is ignorant. It therefore cannot be doubted that the devil's activity deceitfully mingles itself in enquiry into and foreknowledge of such contingent future things and chance events, so that by his fraud and deceits he may turn wretched men away from the path of salvation and ensnare them in the noose of damnation.

Since this is so, some people, failing to attend to these matters faithfully and religiously as they ought, but pursuing curiosities instead, gravely offend God, both erring themselves and leading others into error. Foremost among these are astrologers, formerly called mathematicians, genethliacs, and planetarians. Professing a vain and false science of the constellations and stars, and most audaciously striving to anticipate the ordering of the divine disposition which is to be revealed in its own time, they measure the births or nativities of men from the motion of the heavenly bodies and the course of the stars, and judge future things, or even hidden things present and past. From the birth of children and the day of their nativity, or from any other utterly vain observation and notation of times and moments, they rashly presume to foreknow, judge, and affirm each person's status, condition, course of life, honours, wealth, offspring, health, death, journeys, conflicts, enmities, imprisonments, killings, various dangers, and other favourable and adverse circuмstances and events. This entails no small danger of error and unbelief. Saint Augustine, the outstanding light of the Church, affirms that whoever observes these things, pays heed to them, believes them, receives such a person into his house, or questions one has violated the Christian faith and baptism. The Apostle therefore deservedly reproaches and rebukes them in these words: You observe days and months and seasons and years; I fear for you, lest perhaps I have laboured among you in vain.

These extremely frivolous and reckless men, therefore - to the pitiable ruin of their own souls, the grave scandal of the faithful, and the injury of the Christian faith - ascribe to the stars and constellations future events, whatever will happen favourably or adversely, human acts, and, finally, the things that proceed from the free will of men. They attribute to them the capacity, power or force, and efficacy of signifying future things and of inclining matters so toward the things foreknown that they must happen in precisely that way and no other. For this reason they do not hesitate to make judgements about all these matters, to appropriate to themselves forecasts, predictions, and foreknowledge, and publicly to advertise them. Not a few rude and ignorant people, and others who are excessively credulous and imprudent, place such faith in these men that, on the prescription of their judgements and predictions, they believe or hope that something is certain. Greatly to be deplored are both the recklessness of these lying masters and the credulity of their unhappy disciples. Though warned by the divine writings, they do not understand the dignity of man, whom heaven and the stars, and the most brilliant heavenly bodies, sun and moon, by God's disposition do not command but serve.

For Moses warned the people of God in this way, so that they might guard against this error: Lest perhaps, raising your eyes to heaven, you should see the sun and the moon and all the stars of heaven and, deceived by error, adore and worship them, which the Lord your God created for the service of all the nations under heaven. But why should it be marvellous that the stars serve man? Are not the noblest intelligences, the angels themselves, all ministering spirits sent to serve those who will inherit salvation? For God so loves his rational sheep that he appointed not only bishops, as Saint Ambrose wrote, to guard the flock, but also assigned angels. Saint Jerome also writes splendidly: Great is the dignity of souls, since each has from the beginning of birth an angel assigned for its guardianship. If angels guard human beings, what can the stars contrive or accomplish against the guardianship and protection of the angels, to whom they can in no way be compared?

Nor, indeed, should the judgement of that distinguished Doctor of the Church and most blessed pontiff, Gregory the Great, be passed over here. With great weight of matter and words he refutes the Priscillianist heretics who believed that every person was born under the configurations of the stars. He says: Far be it from the hearts of the faithful to say that fate is anything. The one Creator who made human life governs it. For man was not made for the stars, but the stars for man; and if a star is said to be a person's fate, that person is declared to be subject to his own servants. If only these mad people would discern and understand these things and obey God's admonition in Leviticus: Do not turn aside to magicians, nor ask anything of soothsayers, lest you be defiled through them. They would not then investigate so zealously the things which Christian and true piety rejects and condemns, nor permit themselves to be wretchedly deceived and ensnared by them.

There are also certain vain and inquisitive - or rather, impious and irreligious - people who are so anxious to possess knowledge of future and other hidden things that, in order to foreknow and investigate them, they offend against the divine law in many ways. Some are not afraid to apply themselves to geomancy, hydromancy, aeromancy, pyromancy, onomancy, palmistry, necromancy, and other forms of sorcery and superstition, not without at least a hidden association or tacit pact with demons; or to make use of them and of unlawful lots through the casting of dice, grains of wheat, or beans. Others retain certain remnants of the old and obsolete idolatry overthrown by the victory of the Cross and devote themselves to certain auguries, auspices, similar signs, and vain observations for divining the future.

Others make a covenant with death and a pact with hell. Likewise, for divining hidden things, finding treasures, or committing other crimes, and having even made an express pact with the devil to the manifest destruction of their souls, they employ wicked incantations, instruments, and poisons of the magical art; trace circles and diabolical characters; invoke demons or consult them; seek or receive answers from them; offer them prayers, fumes of incense or other substances, fumigations, or other sacrifices; light candles; or sacrilegiously misuse holy things, sacraments, or sacramentals. They render acts of adoration, genuflection, or any other impious homage and offer worship or veneration. They also make rings, mirrors, or small vessels for themselves, or have them made, so as to bind or confine demons in them, as they imagine, and thereafter seek or obtain answers from them.

Others, moreover, enquire of demons about future or hidden matters or deeds in the bodies of the possessed, or through frenzied and ecstatic women; thus they deservedly receive vain and lying answers from those whom the Lord commanded in the Gospel to be silent. Other conjurers - and more often certain silly women devoted to superstitions - humbly adore the devil, the sower of every evil, in phials or small glass vessels filled with water, or in a mirror, with candles lit, even blessed candles, under the name of a holy and white angel. Or, in fingernails or the palm of a hand, sometimes anointed with oil, they beg that same architect of every deception similarly to show them any future or hidden thing by means of apparitions and visible images or imaginary visions. Or they seek from that same devil, the father of lies, through other incantations or various superstitious observances, the truth of such future and hidden things and attempt to foretell them to others.

The similar impiety of all those whom we have enumerated above has the same result: both those who divine and those who seek divination discover that they have been most wretchedly mocked and deceived by the illusions and deceits of the demon. Since it is proper to God to behold future events in themselves before they occur, it necessarily follows that astrologers and the others named above, who dare in any manner to foretell or foreknow such future things without God's revelation, unjustly and shamelessly assume and usurp for themselves what belongs to God. Thus, when they wrongly attribute to creatures what belongs to the Creator alone, the divine Majesty is gravely injured, the integrity of the faith is violated, and plague and destruction are brought upon souls redeemed by the precious Blood of Christ.

§ 2

Although it was established long ago, among the other rules of the Index of Prohibited Books compiled by decree of the sacred general Council of Trent, that bishops should take diligent care that books, treatises, and tables of this kind of judicial astrology should neither be read nor possessed when they dare to affirm that something certain will happen concerning future contingent outcomes, chance occurrences, or actions dependent on human will - while permitting, however, judgements and natural observations written to assist navigation, agriculture, or medicine - and that they should cause all books and writings of geomancy, hydromancy, palmistry, and necromancy, or those containing sorceries, poisonings, auguries, auspices, and incantations of the magical art, to be utterly rejected and abolished: nevertheless, the extirpation of the aforesaid errors, corruptions, offences, and abuses has not been provided for so completely that they do not still flourish with too much curiosity in some places and among many people. Indeed, as the snares of the devil are exposed, it is very frequently discovered from day to day that everything is full of divinations, sorceries, and various superstitions.

§ 3

We, therefore, who by the duty of our pastoral office must preserve the integrity of the faith inviolate and provide for the salvation of souls as far as we can with the help of divine grace, desire this from the depths of fatherly charity, condemning and reprobating every kind of divination which, with the devil as its author, is customarily practised by the aforesaid inquisitive or depraved people for the deception of the faithful. Desiring, moreover, that the holy simplicity of the Christian religion, especially where the supreme power, wisdom, and providence of God our Creator is concerned, should, as is fitting, be preserved whole and uncorrupted from every stain of error; and wishing also to oppose the aforesaid false credulity, the detestable pursuit of such illicit divinations and superstitions, and execrable crimes and impurities, so that it might deservedly be said of the Christian people what was written of the ancient people of God: There is no augury in Jacob, nor divination in Israel.

By this constitution, which is to remain in force forever, we establish and command by apostolic authority that bishops and prelates, superiors and other local ordinaries, as well as inquisitors of heretical depravity appointed throughout the world, shall enquire and proceed more diligently, and punish more severely with canonical penalties and such other penalties as they judge fit, both against astrologers, mathematicians, and any others who hereafter practise the said art of judicial astrology - except in relation to agriculture, navigation, and medicine - or who draw up judgements and human nativities by which they dare to affirm that something will happen concerning future contingent outcomes, chance occurrences, or actions dependent on human will, even if they assert or protest that they do not affirm it with certainty; and against other persons of either sex who practise, profess, teach, or learn the aforesaid condemned, vain, fallacious, and pernicious arts or sciences of divining, or who perform such illicit divinations, sorceries, superstitions, poisonings, incantations, and the aforesaid detestable crimes and offences, as stated above, or involve themselves in them in any way, whatever their dignity, rank, or condition - even if in many of these cases the authorities did not proceed before or lacked the power to proceed.

§ 4

We prohibit each and every book, work, and treatise of this kind of judicial astrology, geomancy, hydromancy, pyromancy, onomancy, palmistry, necromancy, or the magical art, or in which sorceries, poisonings, auguries, auspices, execrable incantations, and superstitions are contained, as already forbidden in the aforesaid Index, from being read or possessed in any way by any of Christ's faithful, under the censures and penalties contained therein. Such books must instead be presented and surrendered to the bishops and local ordinaries or to the aforesaid inquisitors.

Nevertheless, by the same authority we establish and command that the same inquisitors may likewise freely and lawfully proceed against those who knowingly read or possess such books and writings, or writings containing such things, and may punish and restrain them with fitting penalties.

§ 5

Notwithstanding apostolic constitutions and ordinances and any other things whatsoever to the contrary.

§ 6

So that these present letters of ours may more easily be brought to everyone's common knowledge, we command that they be affixed or hung upon the doors of the basilicas of Saint John Lateran and of the Prince of the Apostles in Rome, and in the square of Campo de' Fiori; and, when they have been taken down, that copies of them, including printed copies, be left affixed in the same places.

§ 7

Moreover, by these presents we entrust this to each and every one of our venerable brothers, the patriarchs, primates, archbishops, bishops, local ordinaries, and prelates, and to the inquisitors of heretical depravity appointed anywhere; and, strictly enjoining them in virtue of holy obedience, we command that, by themselves or by another or others, after they have received these present letters or gained knowledge of them, they shall publish or cause them to be published in each of their parish churches when a multitude of the people has assembled there for divine worship, and thereafter once a year and as often as seems expedient to them, in the vernacular language.

§ 8

Since it would be difficult for these present letters to be carried to every place in which proof of them will have to be made, we will that their transcripts, including printed transcripts, when subscribed by the hand of a notary public and secured with the small seal of the Holy Roman and Universal Inquisition, or of some prelate or ecclesiastical court, shall everywhere receive, both in and out of judicial proceedings, precisely the same credit as would be given to these original letters if they were produced or shown.

Therefore, let it be lawful for no one whatsoever to infringe this docuмent containing our statutes, commands, prohibition, injunction, commission, and will, or rashly to contravene it. If anyone should presume to attempt this, let him know that he will incur the indignation of Almighty God and of his blessed Apostles Peter and Paul.

Given at Rome, at Saint Peter's, in the year of the Lord's Incarnation one thousand five hundred and eighty-five, on the Nones of January [5 January], in the first year of our pontificate.

H. Prodat.

Giovanni Battista Canobio.
A. de Alexiis.

Record of promulgation

In the year from the Nativity of the Lord one thousand five hundred and eighty-six, in the fourteenth indiction, on the ninth day of the month of January, in the first year of the pontificate of Our Most Holy Lord Sixtus V, pope by divine providence, the foregoing apostolic letters were affixed, read, and published upon the doors or gates of Saint John Lateran and Saint Peter, Prince of the Apostles, in Rome, and also at the Apostolic Chancery and in the square of Campo de' Fiori, and were left there for a period of time, by us, Giovanni Freile and Niccolò Taglietti, couriers of Our Most Holy Lord the Pope.

Alessandro Parabiacco, master of the couriers.