Verse
Scheele, Roy
good by God but becoming evil by their own doing. The teaching of a Council, however, like that of Scriptare must be interpreted according to its intention; and the intention of IV Lateran was...
...and the intention of IV Lateran was not to teach the existence of the devil or demons but rather to condemn the unbiblical dualism of the Cathars, who, like the earlier Persians, taught that there are two creative principles, not just one...
...Christian revelation is not a divine communication of data about otherwise unknowable "somehow personal" evil spirits...
...So long as credence is given to a personal devil, there will be belief in the possibility of possession...
...More far-reaching in implications for Christian faith and practice than the material question of the existence of a personal devil is the formal issue of fundamentalism or dogmatism...
...Evil as a neuter concept is something very real, often massive, sometimes mysterious...
...Demonology is dangerous...
...his existence was never denied...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 ROY SCHEELE A FRESR SLANT After the shower the orchard slope was slick with yellow leaves...
...A Neuter Mystery The Pope, in the address mentioned above, spoke of evil as "a terrible reality, mysterious and frightening...
...The teaching Church has never made any direct, solemn pronouncement about the existence of the devil...
...Though often enough caricatured into a cartoon character or comedy routine, the symbol of the devil is not as harmless as Mother Nature or the tooth fairy...
...If there are demons to be exorcized in the Church, their twin names are dogmatism and fundamentalism...
...The cruelty and viciousness, the utter inhumanity exemplified in our time by Auschwitz, the atrocities perpetrated in Vietnam cannot be explained without recourse to the inexplicable dark side of human nature...
...Is it not striking that atheists do not seem to suffer from diabolic possession...
...But neither the mysteriousness of evil nor the authoritative teaching of the Church requires Catholics to believe in the existence of the devil as a person...
...Viewed at a glance, the entire discussion may seem trivial, a quibble over words...
...Professor Haag has described belief in the devil as unchristian, ultimately rooted in paganism...
...So long as the Bible and Church teaching are given a literal, fundamentalist interpretation, there will be belief in a "somehow personal" devil...
...Demonology can prove highly suggestive to a sensitive psyche or a hyper-active imagination like Anneliese Michel's...
...Commonweal: 75...
...The conservative Protestant who holds firmly to belief in the devil does so because of an uncritical literal interpretation of the Bible...
...Maybe he liked its look against the sky...
...The traditionalist Catholic upholding the same belief does so because of an unhistorical, literal interpretation of Church doctrines...
...What caught the eye then was the one remaining apple in the upper boughs, so ripe the color'd fallen through the skin...
...So too the Church's liturgical and devotional life, influenced by popular belief, simply accepted Satan's existence as taken for granted...
...The exorcists of Klingenberg may have been a far cry from those of Loudon or the witch-hunters of Salem, but their firm belief in the existence of a personal devil and the possibility of diabolic possession was no less real than their 17th century exemplars...
...There is a destructiveness of which we are capable, a forcefulness to hatred that cannot be weighed or measured...
...Since no one seriously regards the devil as personal in the same, univocal sense as human persons, only "somehow personal" by analogy, the issue has become: is evil a neuter force or "somehow personal...
...Maybe the picker missed it, or maybe his reach fell shy...
...All the more incongruous, therefore, is the fact that Pope Paul should feel pressed into delivering a defense for the existence of a personal devil at this time...
...It is worth noting, however, that the revised Catholic liturgies of both Baptism and the Eucharist have considerably reduced any mention of the devil...
...Christian faith is the personal response to the revelation of a personal God, preeminently through the life and person of Jesus Christ...
...Vatican Council II in its Constitution on Revelation spoke of God revealing Himself and his hidden purpose (#2...
...Both postures are essentially the same, confusing divine revelation with factual information, in this instance, about a spirit world inhabited, among others, by fallen angels...
...But moral evil proceeds from the abuse of human freedom and not from some spiritual menace outside us...
...Unfortunately, in neglecting the fantastic mythological origins of the belief, in taking the legends of the apocrypha literally, Christians, both Catholic and Protestant, bear a history of witch-hunts, inquisitions and the execution of innocent victims for sorcery and communication with the devil...
...Certainly no Catholic or Protestant, no matter how critical or contemporary, would differ with that...
...it did not have to...
...There are lessons to be learned from Klingenberg not only by bishops in Germany and leaders of the charismatic movement here in America...
...The heated, often acrimonious dispute in Germany over exorcism and the devil has come down to the question: may a Catholic see evil as neuter or must it be viewed as personal...
...There is more to heaven and earth than can be punched out onto a computer card...
Vol. 104 • February 1977 • No. 3
