Do Ghosts Exist?
Our first
task is to address the fundamental issue here: Do ghosts in fact exist? To
answer that question we must define “ghost.”
According to Webster’s, the word means “the soul of a dead person,
a disembodied spirit.” That seems to fit best the popular use of the term, so
we’ll accept it as a working definition. We should keep in mind, then, that in
the present discussion, “ghost” does not refer to an angel or demon, a
poltergeist or even an extraterrestrial. Rather, it’s that part of a human
being which is not corporeal (bodily), and which has been separated from the
body through death.
With this definition, Catholics should readily affirm that ghosts do
indeed exist. After all, it’s a fundamental part of Catholic belief that
the human being is a union of soul and body; that at death, the soul and body
are separated; and that after death, though the body usually decays, the soul
survives, awaiting the Last Judgment, when the body will at last be raised and
reunited with the soul.
From a Catholic perspective, then, not only the souls in hell and
purgatory, but also the saints in heaven can be called ghosts (with the
exception of Our Lady, who is not a disembodied spirit because her body was
assumed with her soul into heaven). The question for Catholics, then, is not
whether ghosts truly exist. They do. The more pressing question is whether
disembodied human souls, in the present time before the Last Judgment, are able
to manifest themselves to those still alive on earth.
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