The Catholic Accent Podcast

Halloween Special: Part 2

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

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Prepare to transform your understanding of Halloween with us as we uncover its rich Catholic heritage alongside Father Andrew Hamilton, Father Christopher Pujol and Jordan Whiteko. You'll learn how this often misunderstood holiday, far from being merely secular or negative, can be a celebration that draws us closer to faith. From the tradition of trick-or-treating to dressing up in costumes, we explore the historical and religious origins of these customs, demonstrating how they can enrich community and family life. Discover how engaging with contemporary cultural elements provides an opportunity to evangelize, turning a modern, commercialized holiday into a meaningful spiritual experience.

Our journey doesn't stop there; we also explore the profound practice of praying for souls in purgatory, focusing on the privileged altars at St. Vincent Archabbey and St. Joseph in New Kensington. By scheduling Masses for our loved ones, both living and deceased, we fulfill the Church's call for collective prayer. As Mass books open this October, Father Andrew and Father Christopher remind us of the significance of reaching out to parish secretaries to arrange these sacred ceremonies. This episode promises a unique blend of historical insight and spiritual guidance, all while challenging us to bring deeper meaning to our Halloween celebrations. Don't forget to follow, like, and subscribe to stay connected with our conversations.

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Jordan Whiteko:

I'm Jordan W, along with Father Andrew Hamilton and Father Christopher Pujol.

Fr. Pujol:

Welcome to the Diocese of Greensburg Catholic Accent Podcast for this special Halloween edition Spooky, everything you wanted to know Catholic. About Halloween we talk about and I think today so often, mainstream Christianity will say, oh Halloween, bad Christians. Good, let's separate ourselves from it. And what this episode is all about is diving deeper to say no the roots of this come from us and let's reclaim it.

Fr. Hamilton:

Same thing with Christmas. Right, we have Keep Christ in Christmas. It becomes more of a secular holiday for some people, with buying presents and these other things, and there's good minor elements to that. But just because people wouldn't celebrate Christmas in a Christian fashion does not mean that we abdicate the day and run away from it and then just give it to the culture. Rather, we're called all the more to proclaim the truth behind it and why we ought to celebrate it in a proper manner. The big question around Halloween is how do you celebrate it well, and that's what we've been kind of going over within our talks here. And I think how you celebrate it well is things that draw your mind and hearts to heaven, and so dressing up in ways that remind us of the sacraments, that remind us of the saints, even things to aspire to. You know, children a lot of times love to dress up as vocational things Police officer, a doctor you name it, or a priest I was a priest on Halloween.

Fr. Hamilton:

Yeah, and so these things are fun little things that we can have in the midst of our society that build family life closer together and communities. One of the most difficult things I think of the modern world is we're very isolated. We live in many ways in the virtual as I talked to you on a podcast and so forth but it's good to be in touch with reality, and so trick-or-treating is a beautiful way in which children are able to go about a neighborhood and really get to know their neighbors. How many people think back to they they knew all of their neighbors and how many people today say that they even know the person that lives next to them?

Fr. Pujol:

or don't even see them.

Fr. Hamilton:

I want to talk about why it's called trick-or-treat as a historical thing. So we hear about with Halloween that there's trick-or-treating kids going around and getting candy and so forth but then also playing trickery, you know, or?

Jordan Whiteko:

You usually get tricked if you don't provide them with something.

Fr. Hamilton:

These close celebrations of All Saints and everything else like that. As Guy Fawkes tried to hatch a plot to blow up Parliament and to bring back the Catholic reign of the Church in England, essentially they caught him and then he was put to death and each year on November 5th they would essentially like do trickery things, mocking Guy Fawkes, in some sense even mocking the Catholic faith, and so that trickery became part of like what would eventually be around Halloween and then the treat. Part of it is about soul cakes. It was more common in Germanic places or even France, where little children would take cakes around and give them to people or ask for them, and if they were given one they were to pray for the dead of that family.

Jordan Whiteko:

I'm told in my notes here from Clifford Gorski, the editor of the Catholic Accent. Oh no, he said that the dressing up for Halloween actually comes from the French and jack-o'-lanterns come from the Irish, who initially carved turnips and potatoes.

Jordan Whiteko:

Those were some big turnips, but then during some Celtic celebrations villagers disguised themselves in costumes made of animal skins to drive away phantom visitors. And then the kids would go and either they would do the little dances or something to get the soul cakes. So from a religious standpoint, is that how we go from praying to trick-or-treating in the sense of today's?

Fr. Hamilton:

Yeah, and the American system of wanting to make money.

Jordan Whiteko:

So everything's commercialized. It came out in the end of summer. There was already Halloween up there. Yeah, in all the stores.

Fr. Hamilton:

And making note of as well. What does Christianity do? But it takes on elements of paganism that can be baptized and brought into Christ and points it towards the articles of the faith and belief in Christ. So that's how Christianity spread throughout the entire globe and world. It didn't just go in and say everything that you're doing is absolutely bad and not good whatsoever. Rather, it took the very best elements from things that could be used, and then it brought those in as practices, but properly ordered them. And so that's why Catholics specifically, or even, like Orthodox, those of a more apostolic Christianity, are not so afraid of like pagan things from afar, because they're not idolatry. Rather, they've been brought properly into the faith and have been used as evangelization tools to those cultures which then brought forth, you know, great Christian saints.

Fr. Pujol:

Which is the work of the missions really to go out find God's people, take the best that they have and use that to help them find Christ.

Fr. Hamilton:

And when you do a mission or whenever you preach, you have to use what's in that culture to describe the gospel to them. The gospel was written by those that were in and around Jerusalem at the time of Jesus, in a particular time and place. But the gospel still speaks into cultures in a particular way and it needs ministers of the gospel, preachers of the gospel still speaks into cultures in a particular way and it needs ministers of the gospel, preachers of the gospel, to go to those places and make those connections.

Fr. Pujol:

Which is why this episode's so important, because we can't ever be afraid to engage the culture.

Jordan Whiteko:

So is there anything Catholic in dressing up like a ghost or a ghoul on Halloween? Is it something to remind us of the death of those who have gone before?

Fr. Pujol:

Yeah, absolutely. You know, ghosts in popular culture have become these scary figures. Right that come and try to place their influence upon you?

Jordan Whiteko:

Yeah, because I feel a lot of the times like growing up and everything. Halloween is just a time meant to scare you. You know, that's really all I remember. I couldn't like turn on the TV without being scared, so I just wouldn't watch any of the Halloween movies. Now I've come to enjoy them.

Fr. Hamilton:

Jordan still sleeps with the covers over his head.

Jordan Whiteko:

He's afraid of the lights on TV on Looks under the bed.

Fr. Pujol:

But in reality, a ghost is simply a spirit in need of prayers. God can allow a soul in purgatory to show itself. Right, he can allow that soul to manifest Now. Does this happen? Often, probably not, but it is a possibility. And Padre Pio, he would often have many mystical visions and experiences. We all know that he received the stigmata, the wounds of Christ during his life, but he would often have souls appear to him as he was celebrating Mass or he was in the Church praying, and he would say you know who are you? And they would say oh, padre Pio, I'm here, I need you to pray for me, I need you to offer a mass for my soul. And so Catholics, in the broadest sense of the word, believe in ghosts, but not as they're portrayed in TV and film, not as a big bed sheet with two eyes cut out.

Jordan Whiteko:

It is one of the easiest costumes to do. Yeah.

Fr. Hamilton:

In that way. Poor souls of purgatory are benevolent spirits. They're not there to harm you in any way. Now say that something falls off your table in your house and it breaks, that's not necessarily saying that it's, you know, a bad.

Fr. Hamilton:

A bad yeah or anything else like that. But it could be the first thing that you should do in any of those cases is look up the prayer of maybe St Gertrude the Great for the poor souls of purgatory. Pray that prayer, st Michael the Archangel, but offer maybe a novena for poor souls and I think a lot of times those different weird occurrences would go away. And we were told by long-standing tradition, the deposit of faith and popes before that, the most efficacious thing that we can do for those who have passed is to have a Mass said for them that that is the most help that they can possibly get on their way to perfection, because the Mass itself is the highest of the sacraments. It's an exact form of praise and thanksgiving and we say in the Mass to lift our hearts and minds to God.

Fr. Pujol:

And what's really interesting, here in the Diocese of Greensburg, there's an ancient custom of what's having called a privileged altar.

Fr. Pujol:

We actually have two, at least two, what's called privileged altars, and what's different about these altars than all others is the fact that the foundation of the altar from what you see up in the sanctuary of the church, the foundation of that altar, goes the whole way down through the basement down to the bedrock.

Fr. Pujol:

And so up until the mid-1970s, the Holy See would grant what's called a privileged status to these altars, and one is at St Vincent Archabbey and there's one I know of in New Kensington at St Joseph, and these privileged altars were specifically for the remission of temporal punishment due to sin for souls in purgatory, and so it's just another example of how the Church asks us and desires and really commands us to pray for those who have gone before us. And so, while, yes, it's efficacious for a living soul to have a Mass said for them if they're in some type of dire need and spiritual upliftment, but also offer those prayers for the dead. And so, if you haven't scheduled Masses for your family, it's October and Mass books have now opened across the diocese, so please give your parish secretary a call and get your Masses scheduled.

Jordan Whiteko:

What a great plug. That would be a good way to end it too, but it's true, we all need prayers. Thanks for listening to the Catholic Accent Podcast. Don't forget to follow, like and subscribe to our show.

Fr. Pujol:

We hope that these start to get you thinking, because next season we're going to start to ask what you want to know.