It Is Most Definitely NOT In the Cards
Getting all these papal bulls from back in the day ready for the Digital Library of the Catholic Reformation isn't just work. They're full of useful advice, even if they're written in such flowery prose that they can be tough to decipher. Here's one, for instance, that completely makes sense once you work out the parts that don't make any sense. (I'm not including the original Latin, so you're going to have to sign up for the DLCR if you want to correct me. Special thanks to Karen for translation help.)
Against the Astrologers, who presume to counsel about the state of the Christian republic, or the Apostolic See, or the life of the Roman Pontiff, and who presume to make judgments of consanguinuity . . .
The inscrutable altitude of the judgments of God does not allow that the human intellect, constricted in the dark prison of the body, extolling itself beyond the stars, presume not only to explore with impious curiosity the mysteries hidden in the divine lap and unknown to those most blessed spirits but also to sell the contempt of God, the disturbance of the state, and the peril of rulers by their arrogant and pernicious example.
It is from this point that, although with civil and religious sanctions, and, in the Constitution from above of our predecessor of late, Pope Sixtus V of happy memory, there are ordinances of Astrologers, Mathematicians, Prophets, and others who dare to divine or predict future events, and whom antiquity considered as murderers or criminals, most important of those, they who would presume to bring judgments concerning the whole of the Republic or the health of the Emperor, their craft, their profession, or their practice are known to be curbed by severe punishments. But yet just as we accept, some sons of iniquity forgotten by one’s own pettiness, and perhaps with lenience, either those who are rather daring to overlook the deed and those waiting for the empty estimation of the prophets, in mourning the destruction of their own souls, and the serious scandal of those faithful to Christ, likewise concerning the ill state of the Republic and the Emperors, the solicitation of them, in fact by this rationale those having sufficient funds to bring about for these restless people the occasion of knowing things, signs of the future or predictions in word, or also they do not blush to give forth in writing.
It goes on like this for pages, but the gist is pretty simple: if the Pope sees any calls to Miss Cleo on your phone bill, you're in deep, deep trouble. It's for your own good.
Phone number redacted by papal fiat.
