Catholic Pocket Dictionary/W

WASHING OF HANDS BEFORE AND AFTER MASS

A rubric of the Roman Missal directs the celebrating priest to wash his hands in the sacristy before he puts on his vestments.

WHIT-SUNDAY

The common English name for Pentecost.

WITCHCRAFT

Witchcraft is the art of doing things wonderful, and apparently supernatural, without the intervention of God. Perhaps a more exact definition would be a power, real or supposed, of producing, in concert with an evil spirit, effects beyond the reach of natural means and operations.

Those who deny the existence of evil spirits, and maintain that all the of demoniacal possession mentioned in the Bible and recorded elsewhere are merely of disease, are of course still less inclined to admit the reality of witchcraft. Imagination, morbid fancy, terror of the unknown, private spite, knavery, credulity, and hallucination, sufficiently account, in their eyes, for all of which witches have ever been accused, or have accused themselves. The former opinion – namely that any commerce between human beings and evil spirits is imaginary and impossible – is repugnant to Scripture and the implicit teaching of the Church, and cannot be held by Catholics. But it does not follow that because we believe that obsession is a fact, and that human beings can and do come under the influence of evil spirits, we should therefore admit the reality of any such leagues or compacts with the devil as the records of witchcraft assume.