• Death (7/7)
• Indulgences (1/7)
• Prayer (3/7)
• Purgatory (2/7)

Let us leave aside practices connected with magic, spiritualism, occultism or witchcraft. The position of the Church has always been strict about this kind of experience, in which it suspects a connivance with Satan and the forces of evil.

On the other hand, certain recent publications : “Les Témoins de l’Invisible” [Witnesses of the Invisible] and “Les Morts ont donné signe de vie” [The dead showed signs of life] by J. Prieur; “Les Morts nous parlent” [The dead speak to us] by F. Brune, appeal to another type of experience which occurred to the authors, to their readers or to well-known people, the most famous being Pierre Monier and Roland de Juvenel.

But the Church has still had reservations concerning such phenomena, which are difficult to explain, even if advances in the physical sciences and in para-psychology allow us to confront them more calmly.

God cannot be refused the right sometimes to give “personal signs”, recognisable only by the interested parties.

They remain, therefore, isolated and individual cases, to be received in Faith.

These exceptional facts all come down, in fact, to these essentials : it is that Eternal Life exists, and that prayer is the normal means of communication between the living and the dead, within the mystery of the Communion of Saints.

Let us stress again the fact that seeking to communicate with the dead (automatic writing, TCL (transcommunication) etc. might well interfere with the mourning process, so necessary after the death of a dear-one.