October 31, 2024 β’ 10 mins
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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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Jordan Whiteko (00:02):
I'm Jordan W, along with Father Andrew
Hamilton and Father ChristopherPujol.
Fr. Pujol (00:06):
Welcome to the Diocese of Greensburg Catholic
Accent Podcast for this specialHalloween edition Spooky,
everything you wanted to knowCatholic.
About Halloween we talk aboutand I think today so often,
mainstream Christianity will say, oh Halloween, bad Christians.
Good, let's separate ourselvesfrom it.
(00:28):
And what this episode is allabout is diving deeper to say no
the roots of this come from usand let's reclaim it.
Fr. Hamilton (00:38):
Same thing with Christmas.
Right, we have Keep Christ inChristmas.
It becomes more of a secularholiday for some people, with
buying presents and these otherthings, and there's good minor
elements to that.
But just because peoplewouldn't celebrate Christmas in
a Christian fashion does notmean that we abdicate the day
and run away from it and thenjust give it to the culture.
Rather, we're called all themore to proclaim the truth
(01:00):
behind it and why we ought tocelebrate it in a proper manner.
The big question aroundHalloween is how do you
celebrate it well, and that'swhat we've been kind of going
over within our talks here.
And I think how you celebrateit well is things that draw your
mind and hearts to heaven, andso dressing up in ways that
remind us of the sacraments,that remind us of the saints,
(01:23):
even things to aspire to.
You know, children a lot oftimes love to dress up as
vocational things Police officer, a doctor you name it, or a
priest I was a priest onHalloween.
Yeah, and so these things arefun little things that we can
have in the midst of our societythat build family life closer
together and communities.
One of the most difficultthings I think of the modern
(01:45):
world is we're very isolated.
We live in many ways in thevirtual as I talked to you on a
podcast and so forth but it'sgood to be in touch with reality
, and so trick-or-treating is abeautiful way in which children
are able to go about aneighborhood and really get to
know their neighbors.
How many people think back tothey they knew all of their
(02:05):
neighbors and how many peopletoday say that they even know
the person that lives next tothem?
Fr. Pujol (02:10):
or don't even see them.
Fr. Hamilton (02:12):
I want to talk about why it's called
trick-or-treat as a historicalthing.
So we hear about with Halloweenthat there's trick-or-treating
kids going around and gettingcandy and so forth but then also
playing trickery, you know, or?
Jordan Whiteko (02:26):
You usually get tricked if you don't provide
them with something.
Fr. Hamilton (02:30):
These close celebrations of All Saints and
everything else like that.
As Guy Fawkes tried to hatch aplot to blow up Parliament and
to bring back the Catholic reignof the Church in England,
essentially they caught him andthen he was put to death and
each year on November 5th theywould essentially like do
(02:50):
trickery things, mocking GuyFawkes, in some sense even
mocking the Catholic faith, andso that trickery became part of
like what would eventually bearound Halloween and then the
treat.
Part of it is about soul cakes.
It was more common in Germanicplaces or even France, where
little children would take cakesaround and give them to people
(03:12):
or ask for them, and if theywere given one they were to pray
for the dead of that family.
Jordan Whiteko (03:18):
I'm told in my notes here from Clifford Gorski,
the editor of the CatholicAccent.
Oh no, he said that thedressing up for Halloween
actually comes from the Frenchand jack-o'-lanterns come from
the Irish, who initially carvedturnips and potatoes.
Those were some big turnips, butthen during some Celtic
(03:39):
celebrations villagers disguisedthemselves in costumes made of
animal skins to drive awayphantom visitors.
And then the kids would go andeither they would do the little
dances or something to get thesoul cakes.
So from a religious standpoint,is that how we go from praying
to trick-or-treating in thesense of today's?
Fr. Hamilton (04:01):
Yeah, and the American system of wanting to
make money.
Jordan Whiteko (04:06):
So everything's commercialized.
It came out in the end ofsummer.
There was already Halloween upthere.
Yeah, in all the stores.
Fr. Hamilton (04:13):
And making note of as well.
What does Christianity do?
But it takes on elements ofpaganism that can be baptized
and brought into Christ andpoints it towards the articles
of the faith and belief inChrist.
So that's how Christianityspread throughout the entire
globe and world.
It didn't just go in and sayeverything that you're doing is
(04:33):
absolutely bad and not goodwhatsoever.
Rather, it took the very bestelements from things that could
be used, and then it broughtthose in as practices, but
properly ordered them.
And so that's why Catholicsspecifically, or even, like
Orthodox, those of a moreapostolic Christianity, are not
so afraid of like pagan thingsfrom afar, because they're not
(04:55):
idolatry.
Rather, they've been broughtproperly into the faith and have
been used as evangelizationtools to those cultures which
then brought forth, you know,great Christian saints.
Fr. Pujol (05:05):
Which is the work of the missions really to go out
find God's people, take the bestthat they have and use that to
help them find Christ.
Fr. Hamilton (05:14):
And when you do a mission or whenever you preach,
you have to use what's in thatculture to describe the gospel
to them.
The gospel was written by thosethat were in and around
Jerusalem at the time of Jesus,in a particular time and place.
But the gospel still speaksinto cultures in a particular
way and it needs ministers ofthe gospel, preachers of the
gospel still speaks intocultures in a particular way and
it needs ministers of thegospel, preachers of the gospel,
(05:36):
to go to those places and makethose connections.
Fr. Pujol (05:38):
Which is why this episode's so important, because
we can't ever be afraid toengage the culture.
Jordan Whiteko (05:43):
So is there anything Catholic in dressing up
like a ghost or a ghoul onHalloween?
Is it something to remind us ofthe death of those who have
gone before?
Fr. Pujol (05:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, ghosts in popularculture have become these scary
figures.
Right that come and try toplace their influence upon you?
Jordan Whiteko (06:05):
Yeah, because I feel a lot of the times like
growing up and everything.
Halloween is just a time meantto scare you.
You know, that's really all Iremember.
I couldn't like turn on the TVwithout being scared, so I just
wouldn't watch any of theHalloween movies.
Now I've come to enjoy them.
Fr. Hamilton (06:22):
Jordan still sleeps with the covers over his
head.
Jordan Whiteko (06:24):
He's afraid of the lights on TV on Looks under
the bed.
Fr. Pujol (06:29):
But in reality, a ghost is simply a spirit in need
of prayers.
God can allow a soul inpurgatory to show itself.
Right, he can allow that soulto manifest Now.
Does this happen?
Often, probably not, but it isa possibility.
And Padre Pio, he would oftenhave many mystical visions and
(06:54):
experiences.
We all know that he receivedthe stigmata, the wounds of
Christ during his life, but hewould often have souls appear to
him as he was celebrating Massor he was in the Church praying,
and he would say you know whoare you?
And they would say oh, padrePio, I'm here, I need you to
pray for me, I need you to offera mass for my soul.
(07:14):
And so Catholics, in thebroadest sense of the word,
believe in ghosts, but not asthey're portrayed in TV and film
, not as a big bed sheet withtwo eyes cut out.
Jordan Whiteko (07:27):
It is one of the easiest costumes to do.
Yeah.
Fr. Hamilton (07:30):
In that way.
Poor souls of purgatory arebenevolent spirits.
They're not there to harm youin any way.
Now say that something fallsoff your table in your house and
it breaks, that's notnecessarily saying that it's,
you know, a bad.
A bad yeah or anything else likethat.
But it could be the first thingthat you should do in any of
those cases is look up theprayer of maybe St Gertrude the
Great for the poor souls ofpurgatory.
(07:51):
Pray that prayer, st Michaelthe Archangel, but offer maybe a
novena for poor souls and Ithink a lot of times those
different weird occurrenceswould go away.
And we were told bylong-standing tradition, the
deposit of faith and popesbefore that, the most
efficacious thing that we can dofor those who have passed is to
(08:12):
have a Mass said for them thatthat is the most help that they
can possibly get on their way toperfection, because the Mass
itself is the highest of thesacraments.
It's an exact form of praiseand thanksgiving and we say in
the Mass to lift our hearts andminds to God.
Fr. Pujol (08:27):
And what's really interesting, here in the Diocese
of Greensburg, there's anancient custom of what's having
called a privileged altar.
We actually have two, at leasttwo, what's called privileged
altars, and what's differentabout these altars than all
others is the fact that thefoundation of the altar from
what you see up in the sanctuaryof the church, the foundation
(08:49):
of that altar, goes the wholeway down through the basement
down to the bedrock.
And so up until the mid-1970s,the Holy See would grant what's
called a privileged status tothese altars, and one is at St
Vincent Archabbey and there'sone I know of in New Kensington
(09:09):
at St Joseph, and theseprivileged altars were
specifically for the remissionof temporal punishment due to
sin for souls in purgatory, andso it's just another example of
how the Church asks us anddesires and really commands us
to pray for those who have gonebefore us.
And so, while, yes, it'sefficacious for a living soul to
(09:31):
have a Mass said for them ifthey're in some type of dire
need and spiritual upliftment,but also offer those prayers for
the dead.
And so, if you haven'tscheduled Masses for your family
, it's October and Mass bookshave now opened across the
diocese, so please give yourparish secretary a call and get
your Masses scheduled.
Jordan Whiteko (09:51):
What a great plug.
That would be a good way to endit too, but it's true, we all
need prayers.
Thanks for listening to theCatholic Accent Podcast.
Don't forget to follow, likeand subscribe to our show.
Fr. Pujol (10:02):
We hope that these start to get you thinking,
because next season we're goingto start to ask what you want to
know.
I'm Jordan W, along with Father Andrew
Hamilton and Father ChristopherPujol.
Fr. Pujol (00:06):
Welcome to the Diocese of Greensburg Catholic
Accent Podcast for this specialHalloween edition Spooky,
everything you wanted to knowCatholic.
About Halloween we talk aboutand I think today so often,
mainstream Christianity will say, oh Halloween, bad Christians.
Good, let's separate ourselvesfrom it.
(00:28):
And what this episode is allabout is diving deeper to say no
the roots of this come from usand let's reclaim it.
Fr. Hamilton (00:38):
Same thing with Christmas.
Right, we have Keep Christ inChristmas.
It becomes more of a secularholiday for some people, with
buying presents and these otherthings, and there's good minor
elements to that.
But just because peoplewouldn't celebrate Christmas in
a Christian fashion does notmean that we abdicate the day
and run away from it and thenjust give it to the culture.
Rather, we're called all themore to proclaim the truth
(01:00):
behind it and why we ought tocelebrate it in a proper manner.
The big question aroundHalloween is how do you
celebrate it well, and that'swhat we've been kind of going
over within our talks here.
And I think how you celebrateit well is things that draw your
mind and hearts to heaven, andso dressing up in ways that
remind us of the sacraments,that remind us of the saints,
(01:23):
even things to aspire to.
You know, children a lot oftimes love to dress up as
vocational things Police officer, a doctor you name it, or a
priest I was a priest onHalloween.
Yeah, and so these things arefun little things that we can
have in the midst of our societythat build family life closer
together and communities.
One of the most difficultthings I think of the modern
(01:45):
world is we're very isolated.
We live in many ways in thevirtual as I talked to you on a
podcast and so forth but it'sgood to be in touch with reality
, and so trick-or-treating is abeautiful way in which children
are able to go about aneighborhood and really get to
know their neighbors.
How many people think back tothey they knew all of their
(02:05):
neighbors and how many peopletoday say that they even know
the person that lives next tothem?
Fr. Pujol (02:10):
or don't even see them.
Fr. Hamilton (02:12):
I want to talk about why it's called
trick-or-treat as a historicalthing.
So we hear about with Halloweenthat there's trick-or-treating
kids going around and gettingcandy and so forth but then also
playing trickery, you know, or?
Jordan Whiteko (02:26):
You usually get tricked if you don't provide
them with something.
Fr. Hamilton (02:30):
These close celebrations of All Saints and
everything else like that.
As Guy Fawkes tried to hatch aplot to blow up Parliament and
to bring back the Catholic reignof the Church in England,
essentially they caught him andthen he was put to death and
each year on November 5th theywould essentially like do
(02:50):
trickery things, mocking GuyFawkes, in some sense even
mocking the Catholic faith, andso that trickery became part of
like what would eventually bearound Halloween and then the
treat.
Part of it is about soul cakes.
It was more common in Germanicplaces or even France, where
little children would take cakesaround and give them to people
(03:12):
or ask for them, and if theywere given one they were to pray
for the dead of that family.
Jordan Whiteko (03:18):
I'm told in my notes here from Clifford Gorski,
the editor of the CatholicAccent.
Oh no, he said that thedressing up for Halloween
actually comes from the Frenchand jack-o'-lanterns come from
the Irish, who initially carvedturnips and potatoes.
Those were some big turnips, butthen during some Celtic
(03:39):
celebrations villagers disguisedthemselves in costumes made of
animal skins to drive awayphantom visitors.
And then the kids would go andeither they would do the little
dances or something to get thesoul cakes.
So from a religious standpoint,is that how we go from praying
to trick-or-treating in thesense of today's?
Fr. Hamilton (04:01):
Yeah, and the American system of wanting to
make money.
Jordan Whiteko (04:06):
So everything's commercialized.
It came out in the end ofsummer.
There was already Halloween upthere.
Yeah, in all the stores.
Fr. Hamilton (04:13):
And making note of as well.
What does Christianity do?
But it takes on elements ofpaganism that can be baptized
and brought into Christ andpoints it towards the articles
of the faith and belief inChrist.
So that's how Christianityspread throughout the entire
globe and world.
It didn't just go in and sayeverything that you're doing is
(04:33):
absolutely bad and not goodwhatsoever.
Rather, it took the very bestelements from things that could
be used, and then it broughtthose in as practices, but
properly ordered them.
And so that's why Catholicsspecifically, or even, like
Orthodox, those of a moreapostolic Christianity, are not
so afraid of like pagan thingsfrom afar, because they're not
(04:55):
idolatry.
Rather, they've been broughtproperly into the faith and have
been used as evangelizationtools to those cultures which
then brought forth, you know,great Christian saints.
Fr. Pujol (05:05):
Which is the work of the missions really to go out
find God's people, take the bestthat they have and use that to
help them find Christ.
Fr. Hamilton (05:14):
And when you do a mission or whenever you preach,
you have to use what's in thatculture to describe the gospel
to them.
The gospel was written by thosethat were in and around
Jerusalem at the time of Jesus,in a particular time and place.
But the gospel still speaksinto cultures in a particular
way and it needs ministers ofthe gospel, preachers of the
gospel still speaks intocultures in a particular way and
it needs ministers of thegospel, preachers of the gospel,
(05:36):
to go to those places and makethose connections.
Fr. Pujol (05:38):
Which is why this episode's so important, because
we can't ever be afraid toengage the culture.
Jordan Whiteko (05:43):
So is there anything Catholic in dressing up
like a ghost or a ghoul onHalloween?
Is it something to remind us ofthe death of those who have
gone before?
Fr. Pujol (05:53):
Yeah, absolutely.
You know, ghosts in popularculture have become these scary
figures.
Right that come and try toplace their influence upon you?
Jordan Whiteko (06:05):
Yeah, because I feel a lot of the times like
growing up and everything.
Halloween is just a time meantto scare you.
You know, that's really all Iremember.
I couldn't like turn on the TVwithout being scared, so I just
wouldn't watch any of theHalloween movies.
Now I've come to enjoy them.
Fr. Hamilton (06:22):
Jordan still sleeps with the covers over his
head.
Jordan Whiteko (06:24):
He's afraid of the lights on TV on Looks under
the bed.
Fr. Pujol (06:29):
But in reality, a ghost is simply a spirit in need
of prayers.
God can allow a soul inpurgatory to show itself.
Right, he can allow that soulto manifest Now.
Does this happen?
Often, probably not, but it isa possibility.
And Padre Pio, he would oftenhave many mystical visions and
(06:54):
experiences.
We all know that he receivedthe stigmata, the wounds of
Christ during his life, but hewould often have souls appear to
him as he was celebrating Massor he was in the Church praying,
and he would say you know whoare you?
And they would say oh, padrePio, I'm here, I need you to
pray for me, I need you to offera mass for my soul.
(07:14):
And so Catholics, in thebroadest sense of the word,
believe in ghosts, but not asthey're portrayed in TV and film
, not as a big bed sheet withtwo eyes cut out.
Jordan Whiteko (07:27):
It is one of the easiest costumes to do.
Yeah.
Fr. Hamilton (07:30):
In that way.
Poor souls of purgatory arebenevolent spirits.
They're not there to harm youin any way.
Now say that something fallsoff your table in your house and
it breaks, that's notnecessarily saying that it's,
you know, a bad.
A bad yeah or anything else likethat.
But it could be the first thingthat you should do in any of
those cases is look up theprayer of maybe St Gertrude the
Great for the poor souls ofpurgatory.
(07:51):
Pray that prayer, st Michaelthe Archangel, but offer maybe a
novena for poor souls and Ithink a lot of times those
different weird occurrenceswould go away.
And we were told bylong-standing tradition, the
deposit of faith and popesbefore that, the most
efficacious thing that we can dofor those who have passed is to
(08:12):
have a Mass said for them thatthat is the most help that they
can possibly get on their way toperfection, because the Mass
itself is the highest of thesacraments.
It's an exact form of praiseand thanksgiving and we say in
the Mass to lift our hearts andminds to God.
Fr. Pujol (08:27):
And what's really interesting, here in the Diocese
of Greensburg, there's anancient custom of what's having
called a privileged altar.
We actually have two, at leasttwo, what's called privileged
altars, and what's differentabout these altars than all
others is the fact that thefoundation of the altar from
what you see up in the sanctuaryof the church, the foundation
(08:49):
of that altar, goes the wholeway down through the basement
down to the bedrock.
And so up until the mid-1970s,the Holy See would grant what's
called a privileged status tothese altars, and one is at St
Vincent Archabbey and there'sone I know of in New Kensington
(09:09):
at St Joseph, and theseprivileged altars were
specifically for the remissionof temporal punishment due to
sin for souls in purgatory, andso it's just another example of
how the Church asks us anddesires and really commands us
to pray for those who have gonebefore us.
And so, while, yes, it'sefficacious for a living soul to
(09:31):
have a Mass said for them ifthey're in some type of dire
need and spiritual upliftment,but also offer those prayers for
the dead.
And so, if you haven'tscheduled Masses for your family
, it's October and Mass bookshave now opened across the
diocese, so please give yourparish secretary a call and get
your Masses scheduled.
Jordan Whiteko (09:51):
What a great plug.
That would be a good way to endit too, but it's true, we all
need prayers.
Thanks for listening to theCatholic Accent Podcast.
Don't forget to follow, likeand subscribe to our show.
Fr. Pujol (10:02):
We hope that these start to get you thinking,
because next season we're goingto start to ask what you want to
know.
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