What year were you born? Are you a rat, rabbit or like me, a horse? During the Chinese New Year celebrations in Chinatown and even in some heartlands, you will be able to find the Chinese zodiac featured prominently to help you discover what’s in store for you in 2020.  It is exciting reading, isn’t it? But you don’t really believe what is written, right? What harm could it be to read it?

Bishop Donald W. Montrose of the Diocese of Stockton, now retired, wrote a pastoral letter titled Spiritual Warfare: The Occult Has Demonic Influence. In it he had this to say about astrology and horoscopes:

Jeremiah 10:2 – “Thus says the Lord: Learn not the customs of the pagans and have no fear of the signs of the heavens, though the pagans fear them.”

By studying the stars and planets an astrologer casts a horoscope on the basis of the month and the day of an individual’s birth. The horoscope is a prediction of events likely to occur in a person’s life based upon the movement of the stars and planets. Even though millions of people follow horoscopes with greater or lesser interest, this is still a type of fortune telling. Even if you say you do not believe in horoscopes, and only read your own for fun, you should abandon this practice. The daily horoscope can easily influence us from time to time. It is a way in which we open ourselves to the occult. If you want to live in the Kingdom of God, renounce horoscopes and all other means of fortune telling.

Any playing cards, Ouija boards, or other things used for fortune telling should be destroyed.

Horoscopes are a form of divination and divination is a violation of the First Commandment: “I am the LORD your God. . .you shall have no other gods before me” (Ex. 20:2–5 ; cf. Deut. 5:6–9 ). It contradicts “the honour, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone” (Catechism, no. 2116). By turning to divination, a person turns away from God. Instead of trusting God to reveal His plans and to care for His children, a person who consults horoscopes places his trust in other human beings. Someone who is involved with any form of divination also opens himself to the occult—to Satan rather than to God.

There are a few other
reasons to NOT read
the horoscopes.

In reading them, you
validate their legitimacy
and fuel demand for it.
In reading them, you may be misled into subtly accepting their ideas. In reading them, we forget to turn in hope and trust to the grace of the Holy Spirit.

Pope John Paul II urged the faithful to trust in God’s loving plan and reject horoscopes as a means of telling the future:  I would like to remind everyone of a basic principle of faith: prior to and beyond our projects there is a mystery of love which surrounds and guides us: the mystery of God’s love.

“If we want to give good direction to our life, we must learn to discern its plan, by reading the mysterious “road signs” God puts in our daily history. For this purpose neither horoscopes nor fortune-telling is useful. What is needed is prayer, authentic prayer, which should always accompany a life decision made in conformity with God’s law. ”
(Angelus address, Sept. 6, 1998)

Source: Excerpts from thecatholicexchange.com

Compiled by: Karen Roberts-Fong