Superstitions are actually a kind of “spilt religion”. They derive from an immature understanding of religious cults or their corruption. Superstition is to faith what fetish is to sexuality: an attempt to reduce the whole mystery to a detail of it because one is frightened of the mystery and needs to feel in control of it. Superstition is the defense mechanism of one whose heart tells him that the world of the divine is everywhere and immensely more powerful and mysterious than can be grasped by his understanding. Yet his psyche resists the humility and surrender required to serve, to worship for the sake of the honour owed to the divine, for this would be to embrace his essential poverty, his subjection to the deity. Superstition is the approach-avoidance path to the divine.
– Pastor Iuventus (Catholic Herald, Feb 2nd, 2018)
