Speaking of the Devil, and Aliens

The talk on social media has been about demons, and aliens.

We all know that, due to my upbringing in the Charismatic Renewal, talk of demons makes me twitchy. But this particular discourse stopped being frightening and went all the way over into broad comedy.

It seems that there was a “celebrity exorcist,” two words that shouldn’t ever go into the same sentence, in the Archdiocese of Washington, DC, who was being particularly ridiculous. Celebrity exorcists are always ridiculous. In the Catholic Church, an exorcist for a diocese is supposed to be secretive about his position, both because he’s dealing with extremely vulnerable people and because it’s a mistake when people think too much about how spooky the devil is. You shouldn’t even know your local exorcist’s name. It’s a huge red flag if they have a social media presence. This particular exorcist, Monsignor Stephen Rossetti, was canned from being an exorcist because of public remarks “linking UFOs to demonic presence.” The Diocese also disavowed Rossetti’s “Saint Michael Center for Spiritual Renewal.” And again, since Catholic exorcisms are supposed to be an extremely private and rare occurrence, I think that any exorcist who has a public “center for spiritual renewal” ought to make you want to put plastic wrap around your wallet.

I laughed at the idea of a priest saying close encounters with space aliens were actually manifestations of the demonic. But it turns out that a lot of Catholic crackpots have said the same thing. My friend Mike Lewis from Where Peter Is found many examples. It seems to be a common folk belief that UFO sightings are actually demonic activity.

This is nonsense. Why would a demon wander around looking like a flying saucer or a little green man? What would the point be in that?

In the Catholic imagination, demons are not interesting or resourceful. Demons are sulky, self-loathing fallen angels who hate their own existence.

Because they are fallen angels, and angels have a superior intellect to humans, demons are smarter or more powerful than we are. But they don’t LIKE to use their intellect because intellect is a gift from God, and they hate God. And most of the time they CAN’T cause the suffering they’d like to cause with their theoretical power, because God doesn’t let them. The Heavens belong to the Lord, but the Earth is given over to us.  We’re the ones who get to make choices. So, demons try to influence our choices.

Demons hate humans because we’re created beings and they hate God’s creation. They especially hate us because we’re made in the image and likeness of God, and we are the creatures that God wanted them to honor and serve, but they couldn’t stand that idea. That’s how they fell and became demons in the first place. So they try to do harm to us by enticing us to commit sins. That’s what demons do. They hate themselves, and they whisper temptations.

I’m not saying that my readers who aren’t Catholic have to believe all of that, but that’s the Catholic notion of a demon. The devil and his angels aren’t mischievous imps who play scary tricks. They’re about as interesting as a cloud of gnats. They keep on pestering you to commit sins, slightly different variations on the same old seven deadly sins over and over again throughout history. The forces of evil are real and do real harm, but they are fundamentally boring and deeply uncreative. God is the one who is creative. People, by the grace of God, can do all kinds of diverse and fascinating, exciting things. The forces of good are fun to learn about and full of surprises. Evil is a whisper demanding the same boring sacrifice of seven deadly sins, over and over again, forever.

What deadly sin are demons trying to get humans to commit, by pretending to be space aliens?

What do they accomplish by somebody snapping a grainy photo of a flying saucer? What sin has a person committed, if they wake up to find a crop circle on their farm? What is a human being guilty of if they get teleported inside a space ship and subjected to a medical exam? Why would a demon do that?

If aliens did land in your neighborhood one day and menace people with ray guns, and you had to run around rescuing your neighbors and helping them like the hero in a sci fi movie, that would be heroic virtue on your part. Why would a demon want you to have heroic virtue? If a little green man knocked on your door and said “Take me to your leader,” and you took them to the Vatican to visit Pope Leo and Pope Leo chatted with them about theology for several hours, that would be an exciting and happy moment in human history. Why would a demon want to cause that? If you ended up horribly misunderstanding what the aliens meant when they said “how to serve Man” and got taken into space and cooked for their dinner while you were in a state of grace, God would take your soul to Heaven. Demons hate it when a soul goes to Heaven. What would be the point?

Of course there’s demonic activity in this world, but it doesn’t look like that.

Demonic activity looks like people choosing to sin against God and their neighbor. All the devil can do is whisper, and we choose.

Demonic activity looks like the Holocaust, the Armenian genocide, the Rwandan genocide, the Holodomor, and the genocide in Gaza. Demonic activity is 9/11, the attack on Pearl Harbor, the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Demonic activity is the eugenics programs that sterilized people and forced abortions all over the world in the 20th century including here in the United States. Demonic activity is race-based chattel slavery, Jim Crow, and lynching. Demonic activity is school shootings. Demonic activity is Derik Chauvin kneeling on George Floyd’s neck.

Demonic activity is when homeless people suffer outdoors in the winter while wealthy corporations keep buildings empty to drive the rent prices up.

Demonic activity is when a priest takes advantage over a penitent, perhaps by telling her she’s possessed, and does the unthinkable.

UFOs, as far as I know, are mostly just cloud formations or a balloon that floated away. Close encounters with aliens can mostly be explained by mental illness or a hoax. There is certainly life on other planets far away from here, because God is a genius and created an impossibly vast, beautiful universe with all kinds of surprising things in it. If there is rational life like us on other planets, then God loves them and Christ became Man in order to redeem them as well. I hope we get to meet them someday.

Maybe they can beam up all the celebrity exorcists so the rest of us can live in peace.