The Reality of Satan

Today my beloved parish priest who is fairly orthodox excepting occasional slips into Liberalism. As someone who hasn't given anything remotely resembling the dedication and service he has given to our Church, I want to clarify that I'm not attacking him or his ministry, just the idea he deseminated from the pulpit.

The reading for today was Matthew 4, the Temptation of Christ by Satan. He called this episode folklore that probably resulted from Jesus hallucinating in the desert conditions but that it might have been an inward spiritual experience.

I think this line of argument is dangerous as Satan is a key player in the story of Humanity. Lest we forget, I'll just repeat some of his big moments in the annals of time:
-Primary rebel to God's reign
-author of Sin/innovater of finite good (evil) over infinite good
-chief tempter of humanity which led to our entire fall as a race
-destroyer of Job's life
-ruiner of souls
-tempter of Christ
-accuser of the saints (all Christians)
-prince of this world/this present darkness

C.S. Lewis reminds us that there is an immense danger in acting as if he and his angels (demons) aren't real. And "The Usual Suspects" (good film) reminds us that "the best lie the devil ever told was that he didn't exist".

If we fail to understand the spiritual battle around us, we will be at a loss. Christ died to destroy the works of the devil, and ransom our souls. If that whole story was folklore, someone could've saved Jesus alot of pain and told him to grow up and read Voltaire.

As Catholics we used to have a prayer at the end of our Mass, a prayer that reminded us of all these 'medieval' (*read: biblical) things we believed. I pray that Papa Benny will bring it back.



"Saint Michael the Archangel,
defend us in battle;
be our protection against the wickedness and snares of the devil.
May God rebuke him, we humbly pray:
and do thou, O Prince of the heavenly host,
by the power of God,
thrust into hell Satan and all the evil spirits
who prowl about the world seeking the ruin of souls.
Amen."

Even if the prayer isn't re-instated liturgically, I'm glad when he was still Cardinal Ratzinger, that Pope Benedict XVI has reminded us of the reality of the Devil and evil in the Ratzinger Report, and pointed out that Vatican II frequently mentions the Evil one.

On a lighter note, the new movie Richard Gere and Ethan Hawke movie preview features the St. Michael's prayer prominently, so as the Boondock Saints taught a generation the Signum Crucis, hopefully this will teach others the St. Michael Prayer

Random Ramblings

Today we watched the majority of "The Madness of King George" and I thought it was an excellent film. Some interesting things I noted from it, were George III's love for clergymen, and his comment at one point he referenced "the Liturgy of our Lord and served at the Lord's table" and used the title "parson" which all seems to indicate to me the Reformed/Calvinistic nature of the CofE in those times.

As well, the Enlightenment influence could be seen in their comment 'you shouldn't speak about the nature of the deity sir', etc. The tiniest theological point, I seem to always notice.

Ian Holm plays one of the doctors in the film, and he has been one of my favourite actors for some time now. I feel like renting every movie he is in, as I've yet to find his work disappointing.

In Latin the other day we were reading the Cena Trimalchionis from the Satyricon and one of the characters kissed the table after speaking about witches and evil spirits. Balme the translator noted in the gloss that this was a Roman superstition which they believed to ward off evil spirits. I immediately thought of the priest/celebrant in the mass kissing the altar before the liturgy of the Eucharist. Our reasoning is that this is done because of the holy relic of the saint in the altar, but much like the invocation of patron gods/saints it seems to have a double meaning. I'm surprisingly untroubled, but it gives more ammunition to the Anglican apologetic that the Reformation was about removing superstition rather than upturning doctrine. hmmm, I wonder what else I shall discover whilst doing classics.

I feel weird about it and other Catholic practices like the signum crucis, as I was raised to utterly revile superstition, and it is difficult for me to see the need for a signing both before and after prayers, but as superstition does, I'm sure it will eventually become a habit. And it is a holy superstition if you will, a sacramental practice attested to by the fathers.

Yesterday evening I had a very difficult time discussing things with a guest I had over. Our philosophies were so divergent that it seemed difficult to even talk about meaningful things. She an agnostic who claimed 'evil is a point of view' and I a believing but sinful Romanist who argued for the absolute nature of values and the meaninglessness of statehood rather than the meaninglessness of justice (we were talking about war). In the style of Thomas I thought of starting from reason and building my argument, but I realized that our individualist subjectivism has ruined everything, reason has been destroyed. And I don't like it. Watching the Enlightenment attitudes of the characters in "The Madness of King George" I (think) I realized that I prefer Modernism to Existentialism/Pietism/Individualism, at least among the Rationalists there ranks Spinoza, Liepniz, Descartes, and Kant, all theists and most Christians.