Pope Francis said Halloween is evil?

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Hi all,

Someone I know has started a debate about whether Catholics should celebrate Halloween. She started with an article from a Protestant site saying that the Bible “clearly” states that Halloween is evil. I responded - charitably - that there are deep Catholic origins to Halloween and gave some sites. She responded with this:

“Halloween IS evil, says Vatican” dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2812605/Halloween-really-evil-says-Vatican-replaced-HOLYWEEN.html

Can anyone help me find quick authentication of this and/or what Pope Francis (or somebody else from the Vatican) said?

Jen
 
For starters, Pope Francis doesn’t make the statement that this thread’s headline says he does in the article. Further, the article focuses on occult practices and the potential uptick in experimentation of such around this time of year. For children to dress up, trick or treat, and have a fun (innocent) party…not connected to this article in my opinion. (Same goes for adults, too, I suppose, provided the intentions are good.)
 
The Pope has a point! I see alot of children at Halloween dress up as the devil! Witches! Ghosts etc…it cannot be good, especially letting out children think it’s ok to dress up as satan himself!! All saints day is the day after Halloween and kids don’t know anything about it…as catholics the 1st November should be our priority.
 
This makes me wonder how the heck people celebrate Halloween in Europe :eek:
 
I highly doubt he said that. He may have said there were problems associated with Halloween, but I highly doubt he would say All Saints Eve was evil.
 
The shops just now are … words! Yes, given over to evil . The masks and skulls etc are appallingly realistic,

On the other hand,this weekend I am at a craft fair where there is a family theme of a fancy dress parade and competition and the tiny fairies are so pretty…

But if i met one of those things on a person at night… shudders… rotting flesh… etc etc etc
 
Cor_ad_Cor said:
For starters, Pope Francis doesn’t make the statement that this thread’s headline says he does in the article. Further, the article focuses on occult practices and the potential uptick in experimentation of such around this time of year. For children to dress up, trick or treat, and have a fun (innocent) party…not connected to this article in my opinion. (Same goes for adults, too, I suppose, provided the intentions are good.)
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The original article was Daily Mail, correct? I’d advise contacting them and telling them to get their fact straight.
 
anon98328916 said:
The Pope has a point!
Click to expand...
FYI - This is the only thing the Pope said:

‘Those who perform this particular ministry, in conjunction with the bishops’ must work ‘with love and kindness from the church towards those who suffer because of the evil one’.

The rest is what passes for on-line journalism, quotes from someone else interspersed with pictures of the Pope and referencing “The Vatican”.
 
Consider the source - the Daily Mail is not reliable. As far as I’ve been able to figure out, it’s the British equivalent of The National Enquirer.
 
First off, Halloween as we celebrate it in the US is a combination of a masking/guising festival and an almsgiving-to-kids (or to neighbors, as with caroling and wassailing) festival. Both of these are totally acceptable in the Catholic tradition, and both of these things are associated with various important saints’ days and holidays in the rest of the Catholic world.

Dressing up as something scary or evil is supposed to be a sort of mockery of the scary things, and an affirmation of God’s power over them. That’s why it’s fun. Dressing up as a hero or as some anonymous holiday figure is also fun, and affirms God’s power in different ways, as a sort of celebration of God as Creator of many good things and Savior of His people.

Sending kids out to get candy and money for good causes (even if the good cause is candy for themselves and their friends, as happens in many almsgiving-to-kids festivals) is supposed to be a way for kids (and adults) to become accustomed to the idea of being generous to the poor, to people in need, and to the whole world, as well as graciously accepting help if one turns out to need it.

Now, obviously in today’s world, a lot of people have lost sight of these purposes. But it doesn’t make Halloween intrinsically evil or un-Catholic.
 
I think the media have redefined “the Vatican” as being any priest or bishop or cardinal who makes any statement within three hundred miles of Rome.

Let’s just look at this objectively. An exorcist meets in Rome for a conference on exorcism. He makes some statements. The press releases parts of them, utterly without any context, and labels them as the position of the Vatican.

Huh?!
 
I should probably add that in Ireland and Northern Ireland, guising and mumming at various times of the year had a serious Christian purpose. The usually-Catholic guisers or mummers would go around the whole area, visiting every house that would have them, and putting on a little play with musical numbers for donations.

By visiting Protestants as well as Catholics, they created a common entertainment event. The money would then be used for a dance or other event, and everybody who had contributed was invited. Even though Protestants and Catholics usually didn’t mingle socially, it was okay at the mummers’ ball.

This helped ease tensions in the area, and allowed people to get to know each other as persons instead of stereotypes.

I forgot to mention that another reason for scary costumes is that, in the mummers’ plays as in Morris dancing, sometimes there are scary bad guy characters (like a Dragon or a Turkish invader). So of course they have to wear scary bad guy costumes!

Anyway… wearing costumes (scary and not) is associated with holidays like St. Martin’s Day (November 11, Germanic countries and France), various Advent stuff (sometimes wassailing, sometimes caroling, sometimes mumming or dances), New Years’ Day, Epiphany (lots of masquerades, and Shakespeare’s play Twelfth Night is really a sort of guising play), Carnival and Mardi Gras, St. John’s Day (June 24), various local saints’ festivals, etc.

Purim is a Jewish festival that includes costumes for adults (even scary costumes, like Haman), and candy/money/sweets alms for kids.
 
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