In a matter that excites the mind, as religion does, and where a large field is open for hallucination and eccentricity, it will not do to have individuals parading methods of worship of their own invention. Religious authorities must be set up, in the same way that the civil power is set up. These authorities will determine, not the object, but the outward manner of worship. 7 ib., q. 84, art. Of Superstitious Practices.
Superstition is the abuse of religion.
It is superstition, either to worship false gods, or to worship the true God with unauthorized rites, or to have dealings with wicked spirits, whether those spirits have once animated human bodies or not. Of the first head, the only avowed instance within our civilization is the Positivist worship of the Great Being, that is, of the collective Worthies of Humanity, if indeed it amounts to worship. The second head might have been meditated by Archbishop Cranmer with advantage, when he was drawing up the Edwardine Ordinal. Under the third head comes Spiritualism, which we shall here not discuss in detail, but merely indicate certain principles upon which it must be judged. There is nothing superstitious or unlawful in simply applying natural agencies to the production of certain effects, of which they are supposed to be naturally capable. . . .