SOURCE : Pope Condemns African Belief in Witchcraft : Is One Man’s Faith Another’s Superstition?
At a Mass on Saturday in Luanda, Angola, Pope Benedict tried to warn his listeners of the dangers of belief in witchcraft. Though he never used that word, his implication was clear when he suggested that African Catholics should offer Christ to their fellow citizens because “so many of them are living in fear of spirits, of malign and threatening powers.” He worried aloud about many Africans: “In their bewilderment they end up even condemning street children and the elderly as alleged sorcerers. Who can go to them to proclaim that Christ has triumphed…?”
Who indeed?… But the problem is that one man’s superstition is another man’s religion… Many Protestants today still see Catholicism as being rife with superstition, most notably in the “hocus pocus” of the Eucharist (from the Latin words… hoc est enim corpus meum, “This is my body”), while atheists and agnostics would see… Protestants as worshiping an equally absurd form of the supernatural. It is all a matter of degree…
