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Jesus the Diviner
By Carole | October 26, 2008
Friday night I was spending some time with a young friend of mine who is preparing to become a Catholic primary school teacher. One part of her training is preparation to teach religion. The Irish Bishops have mandated the use of a curriculum called Alive-oh! and she recently was given the assignment to prepare a lesson from the book that looks at the various titles for Jesus. She was assigned to do ‘Jesus the Diviner’.
The way the word ‘diviner’ is used in the book is what, where I am from, we call ‘Water Witching’ where someone takes a forked branch and uses it to determine where there is a source of underground water. Now, I’m told by reputable people that this ‘works’, and I don’t have a serious problem with it from the little I know about it. I do, however, have a problem with presenting Jesus as either a diviner or a water witcher.
In the first place, there is no indication from Scripture that Jesus did any such thing. Good Shepherd, yes. True vine, yes. Miracle worker, yes. Son of God, yes. Water witcher….No! I also have a problem with the use of the word ‘diviner’. Whatever it might mean in an Irish context, it means something that is forbidden by God in the Old Testament and the Catechism of the Catholic Church.
Leviticus 19:10-11–”There must never be anyone among you who makes his son or daughter pass through the fire of sacrifice, who practices divination, who is a soothsayer, augur, or sorcerer, weaver of spells, consulter of ghosts or mediums, or necromancer.”
CCC2116
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.
CCC2117 All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others - even if this were for the sake of restoring their health - are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.
So in the first place, Jesus wasn’t a water witcher. In the second place, this kind of lesson de-sensitizes children to the word ‘diviner’ or ‘divination’ in such a way that, should they ever be exposed to real divination, (which is fairly common in Ireland) they mightn’t think anything of it–because after all, Jesus was into this sort of thing.
My young friend has expressed her discomfort about having to do this lesson, but was told that she has to fill the requirement in order to pass her course. I suggested that she write to the bishops and ask for a dispensation, since this constitutes a violation of her conscience. She said she would pray about it.
My question is: is it possible that the bishops don’t know about this?
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October 28th, 2008 at 9:55 am
Could you not yourself write a letter to the bishops if she does not? I would encourage you to follow up on this as any misleading of the young has very serious consequences. “whoever leads one of my little ones astray should be thrown into the depths of the ocean with a mill stone around his neck.”