[JohnZ]

True belief in superstition contradicts Christian faith. Read your horoscope (and believe it)....cheat your faith. Possesses and believing in a good luck charm ....sorry cheating. Having your palm read (and beliving it).....is no no. Spilled salt over your shoulder, walking under a ladder, broken mirror....yada yada......believing those bad luck omens....is a no no. The key word is belief...true belief. Remember George Carlin's comedy schtick on the Catholic interpretation of sin....that it's not the committing of a sin per se that counts...it's the intent behind it. That said though, I agree with the other posts in that your compadres, although meaning well, should lighten up a tad. Many lucky rabbit's feet where carried by aviators in WWII and died with 'em.....I think God, infinitely wise and loving, would understand.


For reference on the subject, here's an excerpt from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

YOU SHALL HAVE NO OTHER GODS BEFORE ME"

The first commandment forbids honoring gods other than the one Lord who has revealed himself to his people. It proscribes superstition and irreligion. Superstition in some sense represents a perverse excess of religion; irreligion is the vice contrary by defect to the virtue of religion.

Regarding Superstition

Superstition is the deviation of religious feeling and of the practices this feeling imposes. It can even affect the worship we offer the true God, e.g., when one attributes an importance in some way magical to certain practices otherwise lawful or necessary. To attribute the efficacy of prayers or of sacramental signs to their mere external performance, apart from the interior dispositions that they demand, is to fall into superstition.