Has anyone else on this board ever had a fascination with witchcraft and the occult, perhaps horror movies of a more abstruse nature?  The fascination with evil, with staring into the beady, cold eyes of the serpent, can be hard to shake.  Yet another one of my problems.  

Sometimes I wonder about the witch-hunters of the Middle Ages.  I see them as having gone down a road I very nearly went down, and it wouldn't have been good.  When you read medieval manuals against witchcraft like Malleus Malleficarum you can't help but feel that the authors are reveling in the sordid details of these black masses and obscene rituals.  They are so explicit.  

When witches were punished in the Inquisition, they would almost vie to outdo each other with how many grotesque details they could spew forth, and only these details would satisfy the priests.  If the witch being tormented said, "I ate meat on Friday!" it wouldn't be good enough; she'd be put back on the rack until she said something more appropriately nauseating.  

I wonder if the witches weren't, in their last minutes on Earth, trying to draw the priests down to their base level by filling their minds with this filth, making the priests see nothing but degradation everywhere.  I know I was like this -- obsessed with witchcraft in pop-culture and in the world around me, only seeing the ugly side of life, not God's love for each one of us.

Though I'm sure this nugget of wisdom will not come as a surprise to anyone here, sin is not just an action committed.  It can be your whole ethos, a mindset.  Were the authors of Malleus Malleficarum displeasing to God with their obsessive focus on the seamy side of life, with the devil?

These reflections were brought on by my recent thread on pornography where, in the guise of helping someone, I might have been wallowing mentally in my past sins, even though what I wrote did not excite me whatsoever.  But I have noticed from my own experience that the commitment to celibacy often boomerangs on you in ways you don't expect.  You give up physical pleasures, only to see them migrate into the mental realm where they transform into the concepts of sin and evil.  You then become overzealous in eradicating sin in others in a way that shows you are still under its spell.  

I don't want to put a Jєωιѕн Freudian spin on the Inquisition, but this is when you start to take on that Grand Inquisitor personality.  These kinds of Catholics can almost seem envious of the sɛҳuąƖ licentiousness of those they punish.  It is like a love-hate relationship with one's past -- or with what one never experienced -- and borderline sadomasochistic.  The devil knows very well how to make people displeasing to God and I think the witch-hunter personality may very well be displeasing to God, despite the heroic reputation they have among some, especially among traditional Catholics, who see them perhaps as the kind of men who could have stopped Vatican II ( for that we would have needed fighters against heresy, not witch-hunters ).

The trick is to get to the point where you "hate the sin and love the sinner."  When you learn to love the sinner, to feel pity for him instead of any residue of jealousy, you are free.  Some won't like what I'm saying but often those who persecute sinners with no mercy are slaves of sin themselves.  It is mercy that distinguishes the true Catholic, and is seen as weakness by those who don't understand.

Yes, excellent. St. Pius V was Grand Inquisitor though.