In
Catholic teaching, angels have a rational intellect, intelligence, as do we,
(though much more immense) but not bodies, as do we. What of the fallen angels?
There exists a dark kingdom, using this same intelligence and power to prevent
the spread of God’s kingdom. In the Gospel we read:
And the
devil took him up, and showed him all the kingdoms of the world in a moment of
time, and said to him, “To you I will give all this authority and their
glory; for it has been delivered to me, and I give it to whom I will. If
you, then, will worship me, it shall all be yours.”
Of
course Jesus avoids the temptation, but we tend to overlook the fact that Our
Lord does not contradict Satan’s assertion of power. With some
restrictions, the power is there. Thus the life we live on earth includes
extraordinarily intelligent, gifted, influential and murderous demons. How else
to fully explain all of the evil that
the inquiring mind seeks explain?
In my
book I recount the tale of Pope Leo XIII’s vision of Satan, which gave rise to
the prayer said after all low masses prior to Vatican II:
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 other evil spirits, who prowl throughout the world, seeking
the ruin of souls. Amen
It thus shouldn't surprise us that the Vicars of Christ on earth have discerned
diabolical opposition, given that they are the successors to the one to whom Our
Lord said:
“Simon,
Simon, behold, Satan demanded to have you, that he might sift you like
wheat, but
I have prayed for you that your faith may not fail; and when you have turned
again, strengthen your brethren.”
My book
offers a comprehensive account of Pope Paul VI’s warning about the “smoke of
Satan” in the Church. These pages have noted that Pope Francis has offered many recent remarks ascribing the persecution of Christians to the devil, urging: “Let us
renounce Satan and all his works and seductions because he is a seducer.”
Stop
and think on the tremendous advantages that
Satan has in his mission of subverting the Church—the tireless assistance of
human cronies bent on annihilating Christianity in the larger culture, sometimes
aided by well-meaning Christians, concerned for the Church to be relevant to
all who are “of the world”.
In The Smoke of Satan in the Temple of God
I break down down Paul VI’s prophetic voice concerning the Church’s need to be
defended from the Devil. It is my view that currently sex may have pride of
place as the principal way He invades the Body of Christ. Recall that the
Blessed Mother in the 1917 visions to Sister Lucy, Francisco and Jacinta Marto pointed
to “sins of the flesh” as the main cause of souls ending up in hell—fornication,
adultery, sodomy, pornography, the abortions caused by those seeking to avoid
the consequences of sex, or the use of abortifacients for purposes of “safe
sex,” etc.
In Genesis God
commands us to procreate, embedding the sexual instinct in our nature, a command
coming from within! God really wants to “fill the earth,” and
thus secular attempts to reduce procreation in ways that block God’s plan,
amount to an abominable offense against God Himself.
As I
discuss at length in Smoke, the dissent
that followed Pope Paul VI’s encyclical Humanae vitae on
contraception set the stage for the widespread sacking of papal authority in matters
of faith and morals. Even today priests at Mass think that preaching about Catholic teaching
on contraception, divorce, sodomy, etc. would reduce their numbers in the pews.
Do you suppose that silence on these mattes helps or hinders Satan in his
desire?
What to
do? Recall the warning of God about enmity from a woman, and about Satan’s head being crushed, in Genesis 3:15? Here are some of Our Lady of Fatima’s tactics in crushing the
head:
Look,
my daughter, at my Heart, surrounded with thorns with which ungrateful men
pierce at every moment by their blasphemies and ingratitude. You at least try
to console me; and say that I promise to assist, at the hour of death, with the
graces necessary for salvation, all those who, on the first Saturday of five
consecutive months, shall confess, receive Holy Communion, recite five decades
of the Rosary, and keep me company for fifteen minutes while meditating on the
fifteen mysteries of the Rosary, with the intention of making reparation to me.
For
those of us hoping for salvation in spite of a world descending into the bog, here is one solid solution to the spiritual befuddlement already mentioned. Would anyone disagree that the plea for reparation
to Mary’s Immaculate Heart has gone unheard?
In my
fifth chapter, relying on an eyewitness account, I take up the story of the
Immaculate Heart Sisters of Los Angeles, whose program of updating after Vatican II was
guided by the psychologist Carl Rogers (d. 1987), and exemplified a paradigm
for many other orders. Many religious deserted traditional spiritualties
and ministries in favor of politics, environmentalism, and secular feminism. Such
irony! Sisters dedicated to Mary’s Immaculate Heart became innovators seeking changes
far removed from the intentions expressed by Our Mother, when the surest weapon
against the onslaughts of Satan is confidence in, imitation of, and devotion to
she who is far ahead of the strategies and nefarious designs of those fallen
angels. I am writing to say that this weapon still offers us
the assurance of defeating the current subtle strategy of a superlatively evil
Mastermind. OREMUS.
