Posted on 02/22/2012 10:23:47 AM PST by cleghornboy
We can expect presidential candidate Rick Santorum to continue to come under heavy fire for warning that, "Satan has his sights on the United States of America" and that he is "attacking the great institutions of America, using those great vices of pride, vanity, and sensuality as the root to attack all of the strong plants that has so deeply rooted in the American tradition."
We read here that, "The former senator from Pennsylvania warned in 2008 how politics and government are falling to Satan. 'This is a spiritual war. And the Father of Lies has his sights on what you would think the Father of Lies would have his sights on: a good, decent, powerful, influential country - the United States of America. If you were Satan, who would you attack in this day and age? He attacks all of us and he attacks all of our institutions.' Santorum made the provocative comments to students at Ave Maria University in Florida."
We are experiencing various signs of demonic activity throughout our troubled culture and even many of our shepherds have not taken this seriously. Demonic abortion continues to be practiced even while our society rushes to embrace a culture of sodomy and same-sex "marriage." Many individuals, including some Catholic priests, have abandoned themselves to sexual perversions, violence, and drug use.
Our culture has been so secularized that any mention of the supernatural realm is greeted either with complete indifference or with ridicule.
The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, in its document entitled "Les formes de la superstition," helped the faithful better understand the Church's teaching regarding demonic spirits. The document said that, "It would be a fatal mistake to act as if history were already finished and redemption had achieved all its effects, so that it were no longer necessary to to engage in the struggle [against the Devil and demons] of which the New Testament and the masters of the spiritual life speak...To maintain today, therefore, that Jesus' words about Satan express only a teaching borrowed from his culture and are unimportant for the faith of other believers is evidently to show little understanding either of the Master's character or of his age. If Jesus used this kind of language and, above all, if he translated it into practice during his ministry, it was because it expressed a doctrine that was to some extent essential to the idea and reality of the salvation that he was bringing....Satan whom Jesus attacked with his exorcisms and confronted in the wilderness and in his passion, cannot simply be a product of the human ability to tell stories and personify ideas nor a stray survival of a primitive culture and its language...Satan's action on man is admittedly interior but it is impossible to regard him as therefore simply a personification of sin and temptation....It was for all these reasons that the Fathers of the Church were convinced from Scripture that Satan and the demons are the enemies of man's redemption, and they did not fail to remind the faithful of their existence and action..."
Pope Paul VI, in a general audience on November 15, 1972, asked, "What are the Church's greatest needs at the present time?" and provided an answer: "Don't be surprised at our answer and don't write it off as simplistic or even superstitious: one of the Church's greatest needs is to be defended against the evil which we call the Devil...Evil is not merely an absence of something but an active force, a living, spiritual being that is perverted and that perverts others....It is a departure from the picture provided by biblical and Church teaching to refuse to acknowledge the Devil's existence...or to explain the Devil as a pseudoreality, a conceptual, fanciful, personification of the unknown causes of our misfortunes....St. Paul calls him the 'god of this world,' and warns us of the struggle we Christians must carry on in the dark, not only against one Devil, but against a frightening multiplicity of them..."
Back in 2010, Archbishop Charles Chaput gave a keynote address to the Emmanuel Community of Rome's conference on "Priests and Laity in the Mission." During this address, His Excellency elaborated on a major theme of his talk - the reality of Satan and the importance of "spiritual combat," saying that, "I think we live in disappointing times, in times of confusion, and in some ways that is the result of our failure to understand that we have an enemy in the Devil, but also we have enemies in the world around us."
Then His Excellency pointed to a "great talk" from an American Protestant pastor he once heard which was entitled "We preach as though we don't have enemies," and reflected that this sentiment "is true in the United States..." adding, "I think it's important to understand the we are in a battle, we really do live in a time of spiritual combat and I think we've lost that sense of the Church," Archbishop Chaput stated.
Archbishop Chaput continued with a comparison of the temptation we face to be like "everyone else" like the Israelites from the Old Testament wishing for a king like the other nations. They wanted a king ... they got Saul and he was a good man, and then he became a politician and he lost his faith. We're just like that...In America, we don't want to be different than our Protestant brothers and sisters, or the secular forces around us. And, I think that's the great danger of our time, we don't love God enough and we don't enter into combat with the enemy enough and we need to recommit ourselves to doing that," he urged.
Those who criticize Rick Santorum for addressing the reality of Satan and the spiritual combat which we find ourselves in are not just criticizing Mr. Santorum. They are ridiculing the teaching of Jesus and His Apostles (and most notably St. Paul). They are ridiculing the Church Fathers, the Popes and the Saints who taught on the reality of Satan. They are ridiculing more than 2,000 years of Church tradition.
How is that for going "well over the line"?
Message to liberals: you all belong to Satan as you stand, and you all are going to hell, you even make music about it (Highway to Hell), get over it.
When one preaches and embraces irresponsability, laughs at not having to learn to be good, and is stuck there and cannot backtrack, one is going all kinds of problems. What is so difficult to figure about that reality.
Hence, my use of "acolyte of the Antichrist" ~ a compromise between the two views ~ and that is simply because they show up every now and then.
No matter what you believed you'd definitely want to keep your thoughts to yourself lest the emperor's minions killed you, or made your life miserable.
I suspect the news about the recent finding of First Century Mark materials will assist us in understanding Christian thought at that time.
That this is a serious matter I have no doubt in consideration of the fact that so much of the original Christian Gospel has been kept intact from that time. You don't get to do that without help ~
It’s alright if the Librats characterize their opponents as the spawn of Satan. But it’s out of bounds to name their god.
Invoking Satan is a way of saying “the devil made people do it”.
People need to be responsible for their own actions.
Wrong DNA.2012, as The Most Rev. Robert Finn, Bishop of Kansas City-St. Joseph, has said: “Our enemy is the deceiver, the liar, Satan. Because of his spiritual powers he can turn the minds and hearts of men. He is our spiritual or supernatural enemy when he works to tempt us, and he becomes a kind of natural enemy as he works in the hearts of other people to twist and confound God’s will. In our human experience people deceived by Satan’s distortions and lies may appear as our ‘human enemies.’
But, in his Letter to the Ephesians, St. Paul makes, for us, a very important distinction. ‘Draw strength from the Lord and from His mighty power,’ He tells them and us. ‘Put on the armor of God, in order that you can stand firm against the tactics of the devil.’ ‘For, our struggle,’ St. Paul tells us, ‘is not with flesh and blood but with the principalities, with the powers, with the rulers of this darkness, with the evil spirits in the heavens.’ (Eph 6:10-12).
So let’s be clear: Human beings are not Satan, but certainly they can come under his power, even without their fully realizing it. When we, in our sinfulness, put something in the place of God: pleasure and convenience; material success; political power and prestige, we open a door for the principalities and contrary spirits who war against God. They want you and me for their prize. When we forsake God and outwardly reject His law and what we know to be His will, we make an easy victory for our supernatural enemies. We fall right into their hands.”
See full address here:
http://www.catholicbible101.com/weareatwar.htm
Don’t criticize Rick Santorum for saying what many Bishops - such as Charles Chaput - have also said. Santorum is not the one making this his campaign focus. He made his comments several years ago and some are trying to use his comments for their own political agenda. But he is merely asserting what the Church believes and teaches - that which is emphasized by Sacred Scripture - that our struggle is with principalities and powers.
If you don’t like that message, that’s your problem. But Santorum has a right to his Catholic faith and his beliefs.
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