SPIRITISM. - In the attempt to give an explanation to the phenomena that are the object of metapsychics (v.), notable and particularly followed since the earliest times, after the revelations and the "sittings" of the Fox sisters (Hydesville, U.S.A., 1848), is the spiritist hypothesis, according to which paranormal phenomena, whether of a psychic or physical order, would be due to the discarnate souls of the dead. The spiritist interpretation of metapsychic phenomena, particularly of those that for the most part depart from normality and that, if admitted as true, most difficultly bear a scientific explanation (ectoplasmy, telekinesis, clairvoyance [v.] premonitory of future events), was in chronological order the first to be advanced, both because an explanation on an anthropological basis could more easily account for the finalistic and intelligent appearance of the phenomena, and because of the natural tendency of the human mind to turn, in its failure to understand the most obscure and complex phenomena, toward animistic and wondrous explanations.
In fact Mrs. Fox and her daughters carried out the first exhibitions of the new phenomena in spiritist form, imagining that they were opening a conversation with presumed spirits (1877). "Are you perhaps a spirit?" asked Mrs. Fox; "If such you are, strike two knocks." The prompt obedience of the presumed discarnate, the "typological" account he gave of his age and of his killing in that very house, was the first step of the cordial relations between the spirits and the Fox family, was the official beginning of the faith in and the spiritist explanation of metapsychic manifestations. On the same path, an illustrious physicist, William Crookes, having devoted himself, with a technique highly criticizable from the scientific standpoint, to spiritist experiments, admitted the spiritist nature of a highly questionable materialization (phantom of Katie King through the medium Florence Cook, 1874). Another scientist of fame, Oliver Lodge, in the years that followed the First World War, affirmed his conviction of having entered into contact, in the course of spiritist sittings, with his son Raymond, who died in the war (O. Lodge, Raymond or Life and Death, 12th ed., London n.d.). We omit speaking of other alleged materializations that proclaimed themselves spirits of the discarnate (phantom of Bien-Boa with the medium Marthe Béraud and the control of Richet, etc.).
The principal source of affirmations and the largest supply of information and bases for the development of the spiritist hypothesis of metapsychic phenomena come to us from the words of "mediums" in "trance" or from their writings penned, under the same conditions, by means of "automatic writing." Here we are in the field of so-called subjective metapsychics, a manifestation in which many phenomena certainly of the natural order are included (v. CLAIRVOYANCE). The "messages from beyond the grave," which spiritists claim to receive by the aforesaid means, have served, particularly for the most authoritative among them, to put together a whole construction of beliefs and precepts that constitute a true "creed," a kind of religion in which are dogmatically revealed the mysteries of the essence of a creative Being, its relations with the worlds and the creatures, the hierarchies and the constitution of these, their destinies and future developments, the norms of life to which the incarnate must adhere.
Among such pontiffs of the spiritist "revelation" the greatest must be considered Léon Hippolyte Denizart Rivail, generally known under the pseudonym of Allan Kardec, born at Lyons in 1804. Affirming a great number of spiritist communications, had principally by means of the automatic writing of a notable number of "mediums" under his direction, he proclaims himself invested with the mission of founder of a new true religion, the spiritist one, which must annul and replace all the others. The doctrine of Allan Kardec, in the crowd of affirmations and constructions as arbitrary as can be, confused, conflicting, often puerilely ridiculous and in themselves contradictory, affirmed by individual spiritists as genuine revelations of discarnate souls, gives the impression of something more fully elaborated, thanks to the particular notes of character and of scientific-philosophical cultural preparation of Rivail, formerly a pupil of Pestalozzi in his school at Yverdon in Switzerland and a teacher for several years, endowed with an exceptionally fantastic culture.
The spiritist doctrine of Kardec is set out at length in his work: Le livre des esprits selon l'enseignement donné par les Esprits supérieurs à l'aide de divers mediums (17th ed., Paris 1869). Its cornerstones are: God is eternal, immutable, one, omnipotent, just, good, creator of all things animate and inanimate, material and immaterial; spirits can temporarily become incarnate, living on earth after having assumed the particular temporary envelope represented by the body, whose destruction, through the work of death, places the spirit again in freedom; man is constituted by the material part (body) analogous to animals, by the immaterial portion (soul), by the intermediate principle and connecting link between the two parts (perispirit) of semi-material nature; once the body is destroyed by death, the perispirit persists, forming for the spirit an ethereal or astral body, normally not perceivable by the incarnate, except under particular conditions (spiritist apparitions), in which it can become perfectly sensible; there exists a hierarchy of spirits, from the superior ones, more intelligent, good, close to God, to the less good, mischievous chatterers (goblins or light spirits), by degrees down to the lowest and most wicked, full of our worst passions and vices, content with evil actions; spirits do not possess a stable condition, but tend toward perfection, passing from a lower hierarchy to a higher one with intermediate periods of reincarnation, at times with the value of expiation, at times of mission; in relation to this we would all have had previous existences (metempsychosis) either on earth or in other worlds, always however with reincarnations under human form; every discarnate spirit can enter into relation with living men, either spontaneously or after evocation; spiritist morality is summed up in doing good and not evil, according to the maxim "do to others what we would wish to be done to us"; there is no fault that cannot be forgiven, everything being expiated in the lives that succeed one another; free will is admitted.
The spiritist revelations granted by Kardec contain, moreover, negative points in which are demolished beliefs of other religions, in particular dogmas of the Christian and Catholic religion, against which the most violent attack and the greatest hatred of the spiritist doctrine is unleashed. Thus are denied the Trinity, the divinity of Christ (considered only a great spirit), and of the Sacred Texts, the existence of Purgatory and of Hell; the favorite target is the Catholic Church and the Pope, destined to disappear through the work of the "spiritist religion." The doctrine of Kardec, which from the beginning assumes great development and authority in the world of spiritists, has gone on gradually, after the death of its compiler, losing authority and universality; at present the followers of spiritism are divided by diversity of beliefs, often contradictory even in the most substantial points; hence numerous "confessions" that range from positions closest to Christian doctrines to the most anti-Christian, embracing the most heterogeneous and tangled forms of Buddhist inspiration and paganizing tendencies. From the study of the proceedings of the various national or international spiritist congresses (London 1928, Barcelona 1934, etc.) there clearly appears such an uncertainty, variety, confusion of doctrines and beliefs of present-day spiritism.
The spiritist doctrine elaborated by Allan Kardec (and the same can be said of all subsequent variations) appears, on critical examination, clearly inconsistent and impious. Inconsistent: in fact, it is not an original and rational construction, but a jumble of heterogeneous elements in conflict with one another, taken from the most disparate religions and philosophical constructions (v. BUDDHISMO; REINCARNAZIONE; RELIGIONI, STUDIO COMPARATO delle; TEOSOFIA). Its claims, self-styled as revealed, rest on no authority of absolute or demonstrated value, save the gratuitous assertion that they are communicated by spirits living in the afterlife. Such supposed messages would claim to find their justification in themselves; on the contrary, critical examination shows them to be such as not to surpass the level of an ordinary (often petty) human intelligence, contradictory, and most often of a very low moral level; certain elements contained in them, acquired from the speech or automatic writing of the "medium," which might at first sight appear foreign and superior to the content of his consciousness, when properly studied can easily be explained by phenomena of the natural order (v. CHIAROVEGGENZA; METAPSICHICA). On the other hand, the existence and ordinary intervention of discarnate spirits in spiritist manifestations is not proved by the vaunted materializations and phenomena of telekinesis, events quite rare in mediumistic séances, insufficiently controlled, very often tainted by fraud, while there exist serious reasons for denying the attribution of spiritist manifestations to discarnate souls (v. A. Zacchi, L'uomo, II, Rome 1921, pp. 445-56). In substance, the proofs of the supernatural origin of spiritist doctrines are miserably lost in a vicious circle: the claims should be supported by the preternatural authority of the spirits; conversely, of their existence, nature, and mission no demonstration is given other than their own assertions, the sole proof of the nature and authority of the revealers. Impious: in fact, the spiritist doctrine denies the true essence of God (v.) and his attributes, as postulated by right reason and as Revelation (v.) makes known to us; it aims to destroy the divinity of the Son of God and the origin, nature, and magisterium of the Church (v.) and of the Catholic religion, founded on the word and miracles of Christ, of the prophets, of the saints. Whoever wished to admit as true certain absolutely preternatural facts (if indeed any exist), which are asserted to have occurred in the course of mediumistic manifestations, and wished to accept them as a demonstration of the otherworldly origin of the spiritist revelation, in relation to all the anti-religious inspiration that pervades spiritist doctrines, would be forced to admit in the unfolding of such facts the intervention of spirits of a diabolical nature.
From the moral aspect, leaving undecided the question of the nature of mediumistic facts (whose preternatural value many modern authors, even in the Catholic camp, deny entirely), the spiritist interpretation of metapsychic manifestations and their practice, for the purpose of entering into communication with discarnate spirits, represents a grave sin of idolatry and superstition. For this reason, since the Old Testament such practice has been condemned, declared worthy of the death penalty (Deut. 18, 9-12; Levit. 20, 6; 27) and at times directly punished by God with the greatest severity.
With regard to the magisterium of the Catholic Church, the doctrines of spiritism, being a jumble of errors against Revelation, the dogmas, the doctrine of the Sacraments, etc., fall one by one automatically under the condemnation of the errors and heresies that have appeared over the centuries along the Church's path. This explains how the Church has been cautious in admitting the practice of spiritism, even when it cloaked itself in pseudo-scientific intentions. A decree of the Holy Office of 4 Aug. 1856 declares illicit, heretical and scandalous the practice of evoking the souls of the dead, receiving responses from them, etc.; the declaration of the Sacred Penitentiary (1 Feb. 1882) declares illicit attendance, even passively, at spiritist consultations or games; the constitution Officiorum ac munerum of 25 Jan. 1897, of Leo XIII (tit. I, c. 5, n. 12), prohibits the publication, reading or keeping of books in which sorcery, divination, magic, the evocation of spirits and similar superstitions are taught or recommended; the response of the Holy Office (1 Apr. 1898) declares illicit the evocation of the dead even in the form of automatic writing, and even with the protestation of excluding any accord with the evil spirit; the excommunication latae sententiae (constitution of Pius IX, Apostolicae Sedis) applies to those who defend and publicly spread or give credence to the errors of the spiritist sect; finally, the Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office in a response of 24 Apr. 1917 to the question: "Whether it be licit, with the intervention of a so-called medium, or without any medium, using or not using hypnotism, to attend any spiritist manifestation whatsoever, even those that present an appearance of honesty and piety, whether by questioning the souls or spirits, or by listening to the responses, or merely by watching, even with the tacit or expressed reservation of not wishing to have anything to do with the evil spirits," replied in the negative. The response was approved by Pope Benedict XV. See also the CIC, can. 2325, concerning the penalties against those who practice superstition. The appropriateness and gravity of the aforesaid prohibitions and penalties of the Church, with regard to spiritism and those who practice it, receive their high motivation not only from the grave risk that the tenor of faith and morals runs in such practices (the content of spiritist doctrines and the circumstances that accompany spiritist séances, besides being contrary to the law of God, are very often a direct cause of immoral actions); but they also represent a wise precaution of a material order, experience teaching abundantly the grave harms in the physical and mental order and the social disorders of which spiritism is the father.
Nevertheless, the wisdom of the Church, not wishing to place an obstacle to the progress of true science, and admitting that in the obscure mass of mediumistic phenomena there may be contained some phenomenon of the natural order, albeit of an unusual aspect and extraordinary in its manifestation, worthy of being studied and known, while safeguarding every protestation against collaboration, even merely material, and against acceptance of spiritist methods or interpretations, permits true scientists who explicitly request it, indeed at times even invites them, to direct their investigations upon that whole set of facts that constitute the object of study of metapsychics, in order to discriminate in them the eventual truly preternatural and supernatural phenomena from those due to an unusual unfolding of the forces of nature or merely staged by the bad faith of those involved.