all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

On many levels, yes; on other levels, not at all. Some ancient gnostic practices seem to suggest that the only spritually responsible path to combat the archons was to activate and use the serpent power; the CC doesn’t really have any spiritual “enemies”, stealing Rev Max’s term. If one lives in a benign, Platonic world where there is not “evil” only “privation of light” and the universe is steered/is evolving towards perfection, then, again, occult practices could only be evil. On the other hand, I fail to see how theurgic practice could be deemed evil; this strikes me very much as evidence supporting Nietzsche’s critique of Xianity.

The Catechism on the Occult:

Divination and magic

2115
God can reveal the future to his prophets or to other saints. Still, a sound Christian attitude consists in putting oneself confidently into the hands of Providence for whatever concerns the future, and giving up all unhealthy curiosity about it. Improvidence, however, can constitute a lack of responsibility.

2116
All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to “unveil” the future.48 Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums all conceal a desire for power over time, history, and, in the last analysis, other human beings, as well as a wish to conciliate hidden powers. They contradict the honor, respect, and loving fear that we owe to God alone.

2117
All practices of magic or sorcery, by which one attempts to tame occult powers, so as to place them at one’s service and have a supernatural power over others—even if this were for the sake of restoring their health—are gravely contrary to the virtue of religion. These practices are even more to be condemned when accompanied by the intention of harming someone, or when they have recourse to the intervention of demons. Wearing charms is also reprehensible. Spiritism often implies divination or magical practices; the Church for her part warns the faithful against it. Recourse to so-called traditional cures does not justify either the invocation of evil powers or the exploitation of another’s credulity.

A condemnation, but an interesting philosophical justification for it. As a Catholic, I’ve often wondered where the line between asking Saints for their intercession and conjuring up the dead is. I know pagans who look at me funny for how seriously I take novenas, votives, etc. Some think I’m deeper in the occult than they are. Of course these protestant converts to pagan practices.

For example they perform genuine works of charity, whears Pat obertson’s operation blessing uses tax-free donations to smuggle diamonds from zaire

The CC came out against the Iraq war

They believe i evolution but not the rapture

etc

I wondered during march 2002 if the priest child-molest stuff was getting so much media play just because th epope had condemned Operation Iraqi Liberation

mebbe i’m too paranoid tho

But here in the Whacked-Out States of America, I’m coming to see the Protestant mainstream adopt ideas that, for about a hundred, two hundred years, were considered Catholic nutjobitude. Particularly, many Protestants have come to see the Pill as just as wrong as abortion. In the seventies, the general attitude was that the Catholic opposition to the Pill was just another way to fill the world with brown babies. WASPs could deal fine with birth control and evil-ution. Then something happened. The anti-Catholic Fundies got some memetic infection from the Catholic nuts.

Being raised even in a marginally Catholic environment–i.e., going to mass maybe twenty times–makes all this seem even stranger.

841 The Church’s relationship with the Muslims. “The plan of salvation also includes those who acknowledge the Creator, in the first place amongst whom are the Muslims; these profess to hold the faith of Abraham, and together with us they adore the one, merciful God, mankind’s judge on the last day.”

And also:

“Outside the Church there is no salvation”

846 How are we to understand this affirmation, often repeated by the Church Fathers?335 Re-formulated positively, it means that all salvation comes from Christ the Head through the Church which is his Body:

Basing itself on Scripture and Tradition, the Council teaches that the Church, a pilgrim now on earth, is necessary for salvation: the one Christ is the mediator and the way of salvation; he is present to us in his body which is the Church. He himself explicitly asserted the necessity of faith and Baptism, and thereby affirmed at the same time the necessity of the Church which men enter through Baptism as through a door. Hence they could not be saved who, knowing that the Catholic Church was founded as necessary by God through Christ, would refuse either to enter it or to remain in it.336
847 This affirmation is not aimed at those who, through no fault of their own, do not know Christ and his Church:

Those who, through no fault of their own, do not know the Gospel of Christ or his Church, but who nevertheless seek God with a sincere heart, and, moved by grace, try in their actions to do his will as they know it through the dictates of their conscience - those too may achieve eternal salvation.337