2289. Use of Lots.—Is it lawful to use lots in settlement of some business, when there is no intention to seek preternatural oracle?
(a) It is lawful to do this, if there is some reason of necessity or utility or amusement to justify the lots, and no injustice or prohibition of law. Hence, if there is no other convenient method of decision, one may use the drawing of straws or cards to decide how lands or goods shall be divided between claimants, or which of several competitors shall receive a reward or office.
(b) It is not lawful to do this, if there is a prohibition of law (e.g., ecclesiastical elections may not be made by lot), or if there is no necessity for the lots (e.g., it is at least foolish to use the Gospels for deciding by lot matters that could be decided by reflection), or if injury is done another person (e.g., to decide by lot when the merits of two contestants are unequal, to practise unfairness in the drawing).
2290. Vain Observance.—Vain observance is a superstition that ascribes to certain things effects for which they have no natural or communicated power.
(a) It ascribes the effects to natural things, but it supposes that in some way supernatural forces, not of religion, are at work in or through these things. Thus, just as in divination, there is in vain observance either an express or an implied invocation of the spirits of evil. The alchemists, who thought there was a philosopher’s stone able to transmute base metals into gold or an elixir that could greatly prolong life, looked to natural causes, and hence to that extent seem to be guilty of false science, rather than of superstition. Scientific materialism, though, is a crasser form of ignorance than any superstition that trusts in super-material powers.
(b) The things which vain observance makes use of are persons, acts, objects, circumstances, happenings, etc. Even sacred things may be employed as the material for vain observance, as happens when some accidental and unnecessary circumstance of a sacred rite (e.g., the size or color of candles) is given the credit of the sacred results. Here again vain observance and divination are alike, since the same means are employed by both.
(c) The effects looked for in vain observance, or the purpose had in view, is some fact or event. It is this characteristic that distinguishes vain observance from divination: the latter aims at occult knowledge, the former at supranatural results. The expected fact or event is something that surpasses the natural powers of physical or human agencies (e.g., sensation without sense excitants, mind-reading without external indications, scientific knowledge without study, bodily feats without corresponding bodily powers, detection of secret and hidden things without human means for detection), or even of the invisible world of spirits (e.g., creation, generation of new substances, evocation of the dead, internal motion of man’s will).
(d) There is no natural power in the things used for producing the substance or mode of the desired effects, that is, no inherent and sufficient force or activity. Hence, vain observance is not to be confused with scientific marvels or natural wonders whose explanation is unknown to the general public, or which cannot be fully explained by scientists themselves. Thus, the baffling tricks of white magic are due to legerdemain, ventriloquism, ocular delusions, and the like; the physiological changes (e.g., convulsions, hysteria, somnambulism, bodily cures) produced in mesmerism, hypnotism, thought healing, etc., are explained by suggestion and the motor power of images excited to produce bodily motions, passions, or changes; the mental phenomena (e.g., hyperaesthesia, wondrous visions, increased vigor of mind) of certain drugs such as hashish, mescal and opium, are caused by properties of these drugs.
(e) There is no communicated power in the things employed, that is, no instrumental virtue bestowed by a higher cause. Hence, since Sacraments, sacramentals, and miracle-working relics have from God in a greater or less degree an efficacy for results above nature, there is no superstition in their proper use, But, as was noted just above, sacred things themselves may be used superstitiously, as happens when they are regarded as principal agents, or when, contrary to fact, they are deemed to act infallibly or independently of any human cooperation or disposition.
2291. Forms of Vain Observance.—Among the forms of vain observance are the following: