Liberal/progressive Catholics tend to disregard Satan as a holdover from the Dark Ages, but Catholics who study their faith know the truth, that the fallen angel is as active as ever, as written about in The Catholic Thing.
An excerpt.
“In Freedom: To do What?, Georges Bernanos, the great French Catholic writer, observes: “There is in man a secret, incomprehensible hatred, not only of his fellowmen, but of himself. We can give this mysterious feeling whatever origin or explanation we want, but we must give it one. As far as we Christians are concerned, we believe that this hatred reflects another hatred, a thousand times more profound and lucid: the hatred of the ineffable spirit who was the most resplendent of all the luminaries of the abyss and who will never forgive us his cataclysmic fall”.
“He is referring of course to Satan.
“One manifestation of the hatred, according to the Catechism, is that “often men, deceived by the Evil One, have become vain in their reasonings and have exchanged the truth of God for a lie, serving the creature rather than the Creator.” This points us to two dimensions of the problem.
“On the one hand, we have lost the truth. Jesus was quite blunt in describing those who opposed him: “You belong to your father the devil and you willingly carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning and does not stand in truth, because there is no truth in him. When he tells a lie, he speaks in character, because he is a liar and the father of lies.” (John 8:44)
“These words are all the more incisive because the person speaking is the Incarnation of Truth. Here is also the key to our existence: standing in the truth. On the other hand, we fall into serving the creature rather than the Creator. If we serve the Creator, then and only then, do we really grasp what being human is all about. In America, we talk superficially – and glibly – about doing things “for the children,” as well we might since the United States has the worst child abuse and largest number of child deaths in the industrialized world.”
Lampstand Foundation website, http://www.lampstandfoundation.org/
"The sinner is at the very heart of Christianity. Nobody is so competent as the sinner in matters of Christianity. Nobody, except the saint." Charles Peguy (1873-1914)
About
- David H. Lukenbill
- I am a California native, married, we have one daughter and live close to the American River with two cats and all the wild critters we can feed. I am a management consultant to nonprofit organizations and have an Associates of Arts degree in Administration of Justice from Sacramento City College, a Bachelor of Science degree in Organizational Behavior from the University of San Francisco and a Master of Public Administration degree, also from the University of San Francisco.