Something Old, Something New by Wayne Glausser

Author:Wayne Glausser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2018-03-26T04:00:00+00:00

THE FRANCIS EFFECT: OLD DEMONS IN THE NEW CHURCH

In the matter of Pope Francis’s other throwback interest—his belief in Satan as a literal presence in the world, an active agent of evil—the evidence does not seem ambiguous. Here the medieval Francis does not easily yield to modern reinterpretation. Pope Francis has harped on Satan and demonic influence from the beginning of his papacy. His Vatican put out an urgent call for more exorcists to meet the increasing demand for their services.

To frame this subject, it might be helpful to recall something C. S. Lewis said in The Screwtape Letters. Screwtape was the name Lewis gave to a veteran demon who wrote letters of advice to his unproven nephew Wormwood. In the introduction to his demonic epistolary fiction, Lewis remarked, “There are two equal and opposite errors, into which our race can fall about the devils. One is to disbelieve in their existence. The other is to believe, and feel an excessive and unhealthy interest in them. They themselves are equally pleased and hail a materialist and a magician with the same delight.”32 The contemporary Catholic Church shows symptoms of both errors described by Lewis. Many modern Catholics do not believe that Satan is an actual being who causes trouble in the world. For them, references to Satan should be understood as metaphorical representations of evil; instances of demonic possession are properly explained as mental illness. At the other extreme, some contemporary Catholics believe in the devil so passionately that their interest might be considered “excessive and unhealthy,” as Lewis put it. A good candidate for this second error would be the Roman exorcist Gabriele Amorth, who claims to have performed thirty thousand exorcisms, and warns people against doing yoga and reading Harry Potter. If Pope Francis risks affiliation with either group, it would be the second one. Most of Francis’s liberal admirers both within and outside the Church would fall into the first group, those who consider Satan merely a metaphor.

The modern skeptical position gained traction in the 1960s, when the revolutionary Second Vatican Council questioned many assumptions of the traditional Church. One of the traditional ideas that lost support was Satan as a literal agent in the world. Church doctrine did not officially change: the catechism then as now explains that Satan’s influence “may cause grave injuries—of a spiritual nature, and indirectly, even of a physical nature—to each man and to society.” But according to Notre Dame historian R. Scott Appleby, “the influence of the Second Vatican Council in the early 1960s and the broader ecumenical movement, together with a greater interest by church authorities in the behavioral sciences, pushed aside much discussion of hell and the Devil.”33 A study of Catholic sermons in the 1980s showed that Satan and demonic influence “had diminished markedly” as a topic for parish priests.34 The trend to diminish or eliminate Satan became so evident that a conservative Catholic think tank felt compelled to argue against it. The Congregation for the Doctrine of

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