"Catholic Witch" - Now There is an Oxymoron If I Ever Saw 1

In Monday's edition the Washington Post had an article about a Halloween wedding. Given what happenned at the ceremony itt had the title right, For heathens' sake. But to describe the bride as a "Catholic witch" is to describe the impossible. Despite what a huge bunch of New Agers claim, witchcraft & Wicca are not compatable with Catholicism. You are either Catholic or a witch, not both.

As for the ceremony, well here is what WaPo says about that: "The black-robed high priest and priestess presiding over this sacred rite would call forth the wind, along with water, earth and fire, to consecrate the vows exchanged Saturday by Christina Dorffner and Daniel Shank, one self-described Catholic witch and one pagan."

"Linganore Winery in Mount Airy played host to the 140 costumed guests who gathered to witness the couple exchange vows in a 20-minute ceremony in an outdoor pavilion that combined Christian rituals -- the unity candle -- with pagan traditions, such as handfasting, an ancient practice in which the couple's wrists are bound with a rope." Technically the unity candle is not a Christian ritual even if it is used at Catholic & Protestant weddings.

& the reception wasn't any better. "Inside the vineyard's converted barn, family members and friends -- many of them non-pagans -- were met by a mix of sacred pagan symbols and Halloween house-party kitsch. Plastic skulls hung from wooden posts, and severed limbs were strewn throughout the dance floor. A plastic, two-headed animatronic goblin sat on the gift table, a groom's cake shaped like a zombie oozed blood (raspberry filling), and guests posed with a demon baby in a photo corner.
Before dinner was served, Shank, who leads a paranormal club that investigates hauntings, asked for a moment of silence out of reverence for the Samhain ritual of "the dumb supper," which honors deceased ancestors. An empty table was laid with a plate of Macaroni Grill pasta and a glass of Linganore chardonnay for the deceased."

Ken Shepherd over at NewsBusters shows how far away from anything Catholic this wedding was. (WaPo Highlights Wacky Pagan Wedding, Labels It a Mix of Christian, Pagan Ritual) He says that "McCarthy's feature made abundantly clear to any orthodox Christian reader than the cermony she witnessed was 100 percent pagan." He goes on to describe the use of the unity candle as the "only tenuous claim to Christian influence in the ceremony".

He goes on to show the huge flaws in how McCarthy covers the wedding. "(B)y failing to include a critical note from a Catholic priest, for example, the implication to the average reader would be that the newlywed couple in question have found a way to to reconcile their paganism with Catholicism."

Even worse was this failure: "Of course no effort was taken to explore from the Christian perspective whether there can be such a commingling, or if the notion of being a "Catholic witch" is patently absurd."

After saying "What's more, by boiling down the Christian-ness of a wedding ceremony to ritual, McCarthy forsakes the conception in Christian thought as a picture of Christ and His Church and in Catholic sacramental theology as a sacrament itself." Shepherd goes on to use the Catechism to show what the Catholic Church actually teaches about the Sacrament of Marriage. "The bottom line: Christian thought on marriage is far deeper than rituals which can be ripped out of their context in non-ecclesiastical weddings."

He goes on to look at the Christian "unity candle". He points out "that itself is a relatively new 'ritual' which is foreign to the Catholic Rite of Marriage, as the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops explains in a paper on "An Analysis of Diocesan Marriage Preparation Policies"".

Shepherd concludes by saying "religious readers have sufficient cause to complain that her story lacked any skepticism about the compatibility and/or interchangeable nature of the wildly different pictures of marriage afforded by paganism and Christianity." He is absolutely right.

The only other question I have is dis McCarthy write this out of ignorance of Christianity & authentic Catholicism that is rampant is a huge majority of the Main Stream Media? Or is this an intentional attempt to promote relativism & undermine authentic Catholic teaching?

I am not sure if NewsBusters' Shepherd is Catholic. I suspect he is, but if he isn't then he shows us the right way to cover what the Catholic Church actual teaches & does, by going to the proper sources.