Pope Enlists St. Michael in Reform of Curia - by Dr. William Oddie

In Crisis 

I am wondering if a little noticed—certainly little commented upon—event, which took place Friday, July 5, in the gardens of Vatican City, establishes a connection between two apparently quite different subjects about which I have written recently: the first is the frequency with which Pope Francis refers to the devil; the second is the question of what is necessary for him to achieve the long desperately needed reform of the the Roman curia.

Last Friday, in what was surely a very striking and dramatic papal act, Pope Francis blessed a dramatic sculpture depicting St Michael the Archangel battling with the devil; but he did a lot more than that: he placed the Vatican City state and all who live and work there under the archangel’s protection. This is what he said:

In the Vatican Gardens there are several works of art. But this, which has now been added, takes on particular importance, in its location as well as the meaning it expresses. In fact it is not just a celebratory work but an invitation to reflection and prayer, that fits well into the Year of Faith. Michael—which means ‘Who is like God’—is the champion of the primacy of God, of His transcendence and power. Michael struggles to restore divine justice and defends the People of God from his enemies, above all from the enemy par excellence, the devil.

And St. Michael wins because in him, it is God who acts. This sculpture reminds us, then, that evil is overcome, the enemy is unmasked, his head crushed, because salvation was accomplished once and for all in the blood of Christ. Though the devil always tries to disfigure the face of the Archangel and that of humanity, God is stronger, it is His victory and His salvation that is offered to all men. We are not alone on the journey or in the trials of life, we are accompanied and supported by the Angels of God, who offer…. their wings to help us overcome so many dangers, in order to fly high compared to those realities that can weigh down our lives or drag us down. In consecrating Vatican City State to St. Michael the Archangel, I ask him to defend us from the evil one and banish him.

Pope Francis’s focus on the devil has aroused comment in the secular press, of course, and not without reason. The secular mind thinks it shows either that he is some kind of religious maniac, or at the very least that he is quaintly old-fashioned in his language. What it actually shows is his knowledge that we are all, in our lives, in a continual battle against evil. This is a constant focus of the Holy Father’s thinking and teaching. As Sandro Magister wrote recently, Francis “refers to [the devil] continually. He combats him without respite. He does not believe him to be a myth, but a real person, the most insidious enemy of the Church.” And now he has invoked the protection of the Holy Archangel over Vatican City itself, and has prayed that he will banish the evil one from its purlieus. He sees that there is, unfolding in that place, a struggle between good and evil. I recently quoted those telling words of his: “… it is difficult. In the Curia, there are also holy people, really, there are holy people. But there also is a stream of corruption, there is that as well, it is true… The ‘gay lobby’ is mentioned, and it is true, it is there… We need to see what we can do….”

“We need to see what we can do.” The Holy Father clearly does see the banishment of the evil one from his little kingdom as a major priority. That reminds us that one of the eight Cardinals the Pope has chosen to help him in the reformation of the Roman Curia, the only one actually resident in Rome, is Cardinal Guiseppe Bertello, governor of the Vatican City State; and it should remind us, too, that the reform of the Roman curia isn’t just a matter of cleaning up its functional disorganization: it’s a matter of driving out actual evil, the “stream of corruption” which in the end overwhelmed the pontificate of Pope Benedict. Pope Francis also prayed on Friday that St Michael would intercede to help “make us victorious over the temptations of power, riches and sensuality” and keep Vatican employees strong in “the good fight of the faith.”

In my blogpost on the subject I suggested that one thing the Pope needed was what I termed a godly hit man, to identify the corrupt and drive them out. For if one thing is certain, it is that the devil is always most active where he is most threatened: and the demonic undermining of those who lead the Church at all levels has been through the ages an obvious Satanic tactic, often—and certainly today—appallingly successful within the Roman Curia itself. I am quite sure that this pope sees the corruption that has overtaken his administration as inspired by the evil one: and now, in consecrating the Vatican to the Archangel’s protection and in asking him “to defend us from the evil one and banish him,” he has invoked, on the entire process of curial reform, the archangel’s active and by no means necessarily peaceable help. I asked for a “Godly hit man”; when appointed, he will have a powerful supernatural patronage over his work.

“We need to see what we can do”: It is clear that one of the most powerful actions the Pope has already taken to turn back the “stream of corruption” within the Roman Curia is to place the Vatican and all those who work there under the protection and influence of the Holy Archangel Michael. All Catholics need to pray that in that battle he will prevail.

Holy Michael, the Archangel, defend us in battle. Be our safeguard against the wickedness and snares of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray; and do you, O Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God cast into hell Satan and all the evil spirits who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls. Amen.

Is the Pope Obsessed with the Devil? - by Dr. William Oddie

In Crisis 

Bethany Blankley writes in the Christian Post Opinion website that “The mainstream media is at it again”: “‘The Pope And The Devil: Is Francis an Exorcist?’ an Associated Press (AP) headline reads. The AP reporter writes that ‘Francis’ obsession with Satan’ is because he has mentioned the devil ‘on a handful of occasions’ within a two month period.” Ms. Blankley’s own headline expresses well the obvious rebuttal: “No, Pope Francis is not ‘Obsessed with Satan,’ He’s Just a Christian who Believes in the Devil.”

And indeed, belief in Satan, for Catholics certainly, is not an optional extra. Here’s the Catechism of the Catholic Church:

(391) Behind the disobedient choice of our first parents lurks a seductive voice, opposed to God, which makes them fall into death out of envy. Scripture and the Church’s Tradition see in this being a fallen angel, called “Satan” or the “devil”. The Church teaches that Satan was at first a good angel, made by God: “The devil and the other demons were indeed created naturally good by God, but they became evil by their own doing.”

(392) Scripture speaks of a sin of these angels. This “fall” consists in the free choice of these created spirits, who radically and irrevocably rejected God and his reign. We find a reflection of that rebellion in the tempter’s words to our first parents: “You will be like God.” The devil “has sinned from the beginning”; he is “a liar and the father of lies.”

David Mills, in First Things, quotes C.S.Lewis, not from Screwtape but from a sermon he preached during the war: “nearly all the references to this subject in the New Testament come from a single source. But then that source is Our Lord Himself. People will tell you it is St Paul, but that is untrue. These overwhelming doctrines are dominical. They are not really removable from the teaching of Christ or of His Church. If we do not believe them, our presence in this church is great tomfoolery. If we do, we must sometime overcome our spiritual prudery and mention them.”

So why don’t we? In The Screwtape Letters, Lewis has a senior devil called Screwtape impress on the mind of an apprentice tempter the vital importance of maintaining disbelief in the existence of Satan, his devils, and their activity in the world, by convincing the object of his attentions of the absurdity of any such idea.

If we disbelieve in the devil’s existence, says Lewis, then that is because Satan himself has successfully convinced us of his non-existence. It’s quite a thought. Here’s Screwtape: “I do not think you will have much difficulty in keeping the patient in the dark. The fact that ‘devils’ are predominantly comic figures in the modern imagination will help you. If any faint suspicion of your existence begins to arrive in his mind, suggest to him a picture of something in red tights, and persuade him that since he cannot believe in that he therefore cannot believe in you.”

People who write at all regularly about the Church keep one eye on the website of Sandro Magister, who is not only well-informed about events in Vatican City, but is also a regular source of perceptive comment on what’s going on.

Quite a few writers have spotted and quoted from his recent piece “Francis and the Devil,” in which he begins with the stand first “He refers to him continually. He combats him without respite. He does not believe him to be a myth, but a real person, the most insidious enemy of the Church,” and he goes on to point out how rarely we hear of the subject, despite its centrality to the biblical witness: “In the preaching of Pope Francis,” begins Magister, “there is one subject that returns with surprising frequency: the devil. It is a frequency on a par with that with which the same subject recurs in the New Testament (my emphasis). But in spite of this, the surprise remains. If for no other reason than that with his continual references to the devil, Pope Jorge Mario Bergoglio parts ways with the current preaching in the Church, which is silent about the devil or reduces him to a metaphor.”

But why, why, why? The existence of Satan and all his angels, ever since I became a Christian, has seemed to me self-evident; that prayer we all say after Mass in the Usus Antiquior (in other words that practicing Catholics without exception once said regularly) for me has a particular and vivid credibility: “Holy Michael Archangel, defend us in the day of battle; be our safeguard against the wickedness of the devil. May God rebuke him, we humbly pray: and do thou, Prince of the heavenly host, by the power of God thrust down to hell Satan and all wicked spirits, who wander through the world seeking the ruin of souls.”

This is no Catholic invention: it is fundamental to the New Testament vision of the world and therefore to the Christian faith: In the words of that unforgettable injunction of St Peter himself:  “Be sober, be vigilant: because your adversary the devil, as a roaring Lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour” (I Peter 5:8);  “Whom resist stedfast in the faith, knowing that the same afflictions are accomplished in your brethren that are in the world” (I Peter 5:9). 

It is excellent practical advice; and if you want to know more about its biblical origins, Sandro Magister reproduces an article by Inos Biffi, originally published in Osservatore Romano, called “How the Scriptures speak of the devil,” which Biffi ends by expressing his astonishment at “the absence in preaching and catechesis of the truth concerning the devil. Not to speak of those theologians who, on the one hand, applaud the fact that Vatican II declared Scripture to be the ‘soul of sacred theology’ (Dei Verbum, 24), and, on the other, do not hesitate, if not to decide on [the devil’s] nonexistence, to overlook as marginal a fact that is so clear and widely attested to in Scripture itself as is that concerning the devil, maintaining him to be the personification of an obscure and primordial idea of evil, now demystified and unacceptable.

“Such a conception is a masterpiece of ideology, and above all is equivalent to trivializing the very work of Christ and his redemption.

“This is why,” concludes Biffi, “those references to the devil which we find in the discourses of Pope Francis seem to us anything but secondary.” Precisely so.

Fieles de 40 países rezan el Rosario por la vida y contra el aborto en todo el mundo

MEMPHIS, 07 May. 10 / 11:49 am (ACI)

Católicos de 40 países, hasta el momento, comienzan hoy tres días de intensa oración del Rosario, que se extenderá hasta el domingo 9 de mayo, como parte de la campaña "Un millón de Rosarios por los bebés no nacidos". El objetivo de esta iniciativa, explican los organizadores, es rezar por la vida de quienes están bajo la amenaza de sufrir un aborto.

Esta iniciativa, lanzada por la organización San Miguel Arcángel en Estados Unidos, unirá a católicos de todo el mundo en esta oración mariana. "Estos muy agradecido por cada persona que hasta ahora se ha comprometido a participar en este millón de rosarios por los bebés no nacidos", señala Patrick Benedict, Presidente de la Saint Michael the Archangel Organization.

"En nombre de los bebés no nacidos que están, o estarán, en peligro de ser asesinados, pido a todos los pro-vida en todo el mundo que tomen sus rosarios este 7, 8 y 9 de mayo y recen al menos una vez por esta intención: por el fin de los homicidios quirúrgicos y no quirúrgicos de seres humanos no nacidos".

Tras agradecer a quienes colaboran con esta iniciativa, Benedict comenta que "todavía no es demasiado tarde para dar a conocer a otra gente sobre el rezo del Rosario del 7 al 9 de mayo. Aliento a todos a que nos ayuden de esta forma".

Más información (en inglés): www.SaintMichaelTheArchangelOrganization.org