Catholic and Enjoying It!
A reader writes:
Many thanks to you and your readers for your heartfelt prayers. My husband did not quit his job and is trying to work things out. Things are not perfect, but they have settled down greatly. Prayer always works when nothing else does. Praise be to God!
I found this piece on Halloween at “Spirit Daily” today that made me very uncomfortable. I love the holiday, that is, the more innocent aspects of it. I never liked the linking of it with splatter films and “torture porn” films. A woman from a “deliverance ministry” was calling it Satan’s birthday! According to this history of the holiday from Americancatholic.org, that’s not true.
People who read that site tend to be impressionable and a bit fearful, and making them even more fearful by telling them stuff that isn’t true is maddening.
First off, thanks be to God through our Lord Jesus for your hubby’s improved situation. Excellent news!
Second, your sensible note about the fear-mongering at Spirit Daily reminds me of a little piece I wrote back in the Pleistocene about the curious way in which the Christian supernatural worldview allows some personality types to extend their angst into immensely more vast regions than secular types can. Secularists have to confine their conspiracy theories to humdrum and prosaic earthly matters like the Bilderbergers, 9/11 and the JFK Assassination. Christians, in contrast, can allow their fears to use heaven, earth, and hell as the canvas upon which to paint. Demons can lurk in every video game, political catchphrase, or trivial cultural trends. Any quack with a keyboard can confidently state that they heard from the friend of a friend whose brother knew a guy who heard a “deliverance minister” say that a demon once said that Halloween is Satan’s birthday and, voila! Spirit Daily gives that rumor the authority of the printed word and becomes another quasi-magisterial rumor by nightfall. If you can link it to some dubious locution by some highly dubious Marian apparition, that’s all that is needed for infallibility in some people’s minds. For while I’ve never met a soul who thinks Mary is another god, I’ve met plenty of people who believe Mary is another Pope and that anything some appartionist says is more or less on a par with the teaching of the Pope and bishops in solemn conclave.
The funny thing is, since this is due to a particular personality type that hankers for “inside knowledge” and longs to get around the normal channels of revelation in order to have the true dish on what God is *really* up to, it’s not something confined only to the Catholic Church. Protestantism has its Hal Lindsey/Tim LaHaye tea leaf readers as well, only instead of putting Mary at the center of the History Decoding Mechanism, they usually put the Book of Revelation, combined with some system derived from the Scofield Reference Bible or perhaps some favorite utterances from a favority preacher, “scholar” or charismatic prophet. But the pathology is basically the same: it is the conviction that the ordinary revelation of Jesus, while fine and good for ordinary boring people, really needs to be augmented with special secret knowledge for the Extra Special Elect. If that sounds like gnosticism, that’s because it is. It’s fruits are always the same: fear and pride.
PS: “Satan’s *birthday*”? Don’t these people realize we are talking about angels who are a) incorporeal and b) not living in time and space? They don’t *have* birthdays, since there’s nobody to give birth to them. Angels do not generate other angels. Each angel is his own species, created directly by God without the mediating participation of parents. Talking about the “day” an angel was “born” is cloud cuckoo talk.
Basic word of warning to Spirit Daily readers: when somebody from a “deliverance ministry” breathlessly reports some new “revelation” obtained from a demon during an exorcism, don’t think “Wow! New information God has withheld which I can now take to the bank to complete my picture of the universe!” Think “the devil is a liar and the father of lies.”
Be not afraid. There’s no inside track. God has not withheld information from us. Everything we need is in Christ Jesus and his gift of Holy Church.
Have no anxiety about anything, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known to God. 7 And the peace of God, which passes all understanding, will keep your hearts and your minds in Christ Jesus. 8 Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is gracious, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things. – Phillippians 4:6-8
Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In