The Catholic Accent Podcast

Halloween Special: Part 1

β€’ Diocese of Greensburg β€’ Season 2 β€’ Episode 1

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Are you ready to unearth the spiritual significance hidden beneath the spooky surface of Halloween? Join us for a captivating conversation with Jordan Whiteko, Father Andrew Hamilton, and Father Christopher Pujol as we uncover the Catholic roots of this much-misunderstood holiday. Discover how Halloween, often seen as a secular or occult celebration, actually has deep connections to All Saints Day and All Souls Day. Learn how these sacred days form a meaningful triduum that reminds us of the importance of reflecting on death, the afterlife, and praying for those who have passed on. By examining the misconceptions surrounding Halloween, we clarify its true spiritual significance within the Catholic tradition and how it can serve as a reminder of God's grace.

Together, we will debunk the myth that Halloween is solely a festival of darkness linked to pagan traditions. Instead, Father Andrew and Father Christopher reveal how it is an opportunity to reflect on what could be without God's light and how the festivities can reinforce faith and hope. We delve into the modern-day practice of dressing up in costumes, urging listeners to remember the Christian elements behind this tradition rather than focusing on glorifying darker themes. With poignant insights on the importance of prayer and the triumph of light over darkness, this episode promises to transform your understanding of Halloween and inspire a celebration grounded in faith.

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Fr. Pujol:

Oh, I like that. Welcome to the Diocese of Greensburg. Catholic Accent Podcast for this special Halloween edition.

Jordan Whiteko:

Ooh spooky. I'm Jordan Whiteko, along with Father Andrew Hamilton and Father Christopher Pujol.

Fr. Pujol:

Kick it up a notch.

Fr. Hamilton:

If you use that as a filler thing.

Jordan Whiteko:

Thank you, Bishop. It's been a while, but we're back. We've been busy. Father Andrew has two new churches and a new job. You want to tell them what that is?

Fr. Hamilton:

Big job. Yes, I go into the prisons every Wednesday to minister to the men that are in there that need the light of Christ just as much as anybody else does, and it's a great opportunity for me as well to challenge myself in ministry and to, you know, really just see where Christ is leading me in the midst of my priesthood Nice.

Jordan Whiteko:

And you got some new responsibilities as well.

Fr. Pujol:

I have as well I have. I'm now co-director of the Office of Worship, and the Office of Worship basically is to help Bishop carry out his role as chief liturgist in the diocese.

Jordan Whiteko:

So you could say that the Catholic Accent podcast really made you guys stars and they recognized you know these guys need to be in other positions.

Fr. Pujol:

Jordan. We are on the rise.

Jordan Whiteko:

You're welcome, just like our podcast. This episode is not a part of one of our seasons. It's a special episode. We're going to be talking about Halloween, and you know what are the Catholic roots of Halloween? The name itself, you know, comes from All Hallows Eve, which is the vigil of All Saints Day, when Catholics remember those who have gone before us. So let's talk a little bit about that.

Fr. Hamilton:

Yeah, so just take the name itself Hallow. Hallowed be thy name. That people know from the Our Father. To be hallowed is to be holy, and so we have essentially that Halloween comes from Catholic roots and that you would celebrate the eve of All Saints All Saints and then All Souls. It's almost like a little triduum three days in the midst of the year, just as at Easter time we celebrate a triduum right Going into the holiest days of the year that there's Holy Thursday, good Friday and then leading into Easter itself, and so we have this in the Catholic calendar, but some of the Catholic roots have maybe been a bit lost. People argued about whether Halloween is an occultic celebration, especially of maybe Gaelic or Irish origin, called Samhain, but there's not good scholarship on that to say that that predated what all souls and all saints would be for the Catholic faith Right.

Jordan Whiteko:

it's more like they're seeing those traditions kind of can relate to these, but that doesn't necessarily mean that they cross paths.

Fr. Pujol:

And as Christianity really developed and exploded throughout the world, there was a whole change in viewpoint on death and dying as well. Because we know Christ came, suffered and died for us, we always treated our dead with respect and with reverence, because we know that at the end of time, all of our dead with respect and with reverence, because we know that at the end of time all of our dead will rise. And so a lot of times, if we take today's viewpoint, cultural viewpoint, and look at Halloween from a Catholic perspective, people just see ghouls and ghosts and skeletons. But really I think, Father, you know we're the ones that made that cool.

Fr. Hamilton:

In many ways too, catholicism, with its focus on souls right that need prayers, what we talk about as purgatory being in some sense like an antechamber to heaven. So we're given the charge by Christ to be perfect as my Heavenly Father is, perfect, to be hallowed in some sense as my Heavenly Father is hallowed, and so in that way, if we're not perfect at the end of this earthly life, we need some purification, some being brought to a wholeness and a perfection, and that's actually a mercy of God, what we talk about in the doctrine of purgatory. And so that means that on all souls, november 2nd, we pray for our beloved dead, those that still need our prayers, helping them as they draw closer to the Lord. Because in purgatory the souls there are completely dependent upon God, because we're told that we need to become like children so as to enter the kingdom of heaven, and children are completely dependent. We can't work our way into heaven. Rather, it has to be by God's grace and the communion of saints and the help therein through God, stooping low to bring us up to the heights and glories of heaven.

Fr. Hamilton:

So with that, I just want to make mention what you see is that Halloween, as a holiday in the United States becomes detached from the religious practice of the Church, mostly because, if we remember about America, it was founded not on Catholicism but upon Protestantism, and within Protestantism and many of their churches. Protestantism is a wide body, so it's hard to describe all in one, but mostly Protestants have a problem with the teaching of purgatory and so, because of that, they wouldn't really celebrate All Souls Day. Of that right, they wouldn't really celebrate All Souls Day, and so therefore, what did Halloween become? More of trick-or-treating, and less so of something that was a religious holiday.

Fr. Pujol:

And even with that disconnect, we can find it in the history of the US. If we look at New England and the Salem Witch Trials, that was carried out by a Protestant sect of Puritans and it goes to show that once you remove good and evil and try to separate them, or once you try to separate religious practice from a lived-out cultural experience, it starts to spiral. So, yes, we have people today dressing up as witches and this and that.

Jordan Whiteko:

Is that okay to see kids running around, or even adults? You know, we see these costumes that range from Dracula, witches to mummies and werewolves.

Fr. Hamilton:

Well, I think we don't want to glorify those things, but we want them to remind us of Christian elements of what we're celebrating. So witchcraft, right, and it is a thing in the world. Even in the Old Testament there were witches that tried to do I think from one of the readings paltry things, and what it was was a divinizing of God. It was trying to. In some ways, witchcraft is voodoo, or like trying to control things because you want them to be in your power, a manipulation of elements to not follow God's will.

Fr. Pujol:

Basically.

Fr. Hamilton:

Essentially to make God do your will. Okay, the difference between that and prayer is actually extreme. Right, we have prayer in which that we align our will to God's will. So that's the difference between casting a spell and prayer. Spell is make God do what I want Him to do. For me, prayer is to align myself with what God wants me to do, so they're inversions of each other in that way, and even maybe Father Chris could talk a little bit about the word or the words, hocus pocus.

Fr. Pujol:

You know, I hear that's one of Jordan's favorite Halloween movies. It is, and it really is. It's a good movie, but ultimately that title, Hocus Pocus, comes from a mockery, because Hocus Pocus is derived from the words of institution of Christ at the Eucharist. So when Mass is celebrated in Latin, the words are Hic est enim corpus meum, this is my body. And so oftentimes the Protestants would say you know, the priest is just up there mumbling up at the altar, blah, blah, blah, hocus pocus.

Jordan Whiteko:

Well, that's one of the lines from the movie too is the kid is talking to the girl, who's like believing in the witchcraft, and he's like it's all just a bunch of hocus pocus.

Fr. Pujol:

So if you say higestetum corpus meum, very quickly, as if you're rushing, it becomes hocus pocus.

Fr. Hamilton:

Another thing that we can focus on in general is say Dracula, right, so Dracula is like you think of Halloween immediately with some of these horror stories, dracula is very much an inversion of Christ himself, right, christ says this is my body given up for you, this is my blood spilled or poured for you so that you might have eternal life. What is Dracula's phrase? Your blood essentially for me, right, right, so taking life from the other for oneself, whereas Christ is that universal donor, giver of life to all of humanity. And then there's other things too, like so most of these things. Once you see them, you can't really unsee them with how they work, with Catholic sacramentality of the inversion of good to a grotesque nature.

Fr. Hamilton:

Think of a werewolf. Right, a man during the day, at night, in darkness, under a full moon, becomes this other bestial creature. And often even in the midst of that transformation, when one says the Christian name of the individual for a second, they're drawn back and maybe they almost start to come out of it a little bit. And then the light, of course, whenever it shows up, they transform back into their regular human nature. What that shows us is what sin does to us and giving ourselves over to the darkness of sin. It makes us like the beasts rather than contemplating the beautiful things like the angels.

Jordan Whiteko:

So would that be the connection you know to Dracula? He would always be.

Fr. Pujol:

In the dark.

Jordan Whiteko:

But he would like back away if somebody would hold a cross up up and and even going back to Hocus Pocus, what happens when the sun rises?

Fr. Pujol:

The witches turn to dust, because, as scripture tells us, whatever is hidden in the darkness will come to light, and when it comes to light, it's changed and it's taken for God, and so evil cannot stand before God.

Fr. Hamilton:

We see kind of a Puritanism maybe in today's overreacting towards Halloween. Many Christians will say don't come near it whatsoever because it's completely a cult and so forth. But it's because they're not drawing back into the original roots of Halloween, in which that we don't glorify the occult in any way whatsoever, but actually look at sometimes scary images to remind us of things to stay away from and then be rather drawn into the goodness of God and so many things throughout Halloween. When you actually look at them they will be nightmarish.

Fr. Hamilton:

They're the opposite of the sacraments, opposite of God's Church, and it tells us what we would become without God's grace.

Fr. Pujol:

And so I think what we're saying, then, is Catholic best practices of Halloween is to pray, first and foremost, for everyone that has gone before us to not be afraid, because the Lord never wants us to be afraid, and even in the darkness of the night, we know that the light comes again.

Jordan Whiteko:

Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast. Don't forget to follow, like and subscribe to our show.

Fr. Hamilton:

Better kick it up a notch.

Fr. Pujol:

Kick it up a notch.

Fr. Hamilton:

Thank you, Bishop.