With the return of talk about self-whipping and wearing barbed chains (cilices) that jab into the skin, the Catholic church seems to be going positively medieval these days.
So perhaps it’s fitting that one of the princes of American Catholicism, Archbishop Charles J. Chaput, has just delivered a lecture to the symposium on priests and laity in Rome in which he calls for a revival of discourse about the prince of this world and of darkness, the father of lies: Satan. As the headline about this lecture in Archbishop Chaput’s Catholic News Agency site says, the Denver archbishop is urging us to fight Satan.
. . . Who is, it seems, particularly active in our culture today, what with the undermining of marriage and attacks on the definition of marriage and so forth.
As an indicator of how much interest such discussions generate (and of how polarized American Catholics remain about the extent to which the church needs to revive medieval notions and practices in the restorationist moment of John Paul II and Benedict), have a look at Cathleen Kaveny’s “The Devil Made Me Do It” thread at Commonweal, which is where I learned of Chaput’s recent address.
I noted the revival of interest in demonology and Satanology back last April, when Archbishop Chaput’s theological and political ally, Bishop Robert W. Finn announced (as does Chaput) that we’re at war now—and we need to be clear about the identity of our enemy.
As I wrote when I blogged about Finn’s address to the 2009 Gospel of Life convention entitled “Warriors for the Victory of Life,” the address mentioned Satan five times, Jesus six. Archbishop Chaput’s recent address uses the name Satan seven times, that of Jesus three times.
And I find that disturbing. Christianity is not, at its best, devil-obsessed, but Christ-centered. As I said in my posting last April reviewing Bishop Finn’s “Warriors” statement (along with a Good Friday sermon of pro-life leader Father Thomas Euteneuer entitled “Good Friday: The World’s First Exorcism”), what’s theologically troubling about this revival of medieval fixation on the devil is its Manichean implication that the devil and Christ are equally powerful in the world.
The gospel proclamation centers on the assertion that, through his cross and resurrection, Jesus is victorious over death, sin, darkness, and Satan. The gospel centers on the paschal mystery, not on the devil and his purported power in the world.
I understand, of course—and my posting last April notes this—that the attempt of folks like Archbishop Chaput, Bishop Finn, and Father Euteneuer to drum up interest in demonology at this point in history has a political backdrop. It arises out of a sense that the church is losing an important battle—that their church is losing a political and cultural battle.
Unfortunately, that battle is being lost because the pastoral and political strategy of these and some other leaders of American Catholicism in recent years has been to ally the Catholic church unilaterally and very simple-mindedly with a single political option and a single political party. Some of the leaders of the Catholic church in the U.S. have worked hard to make being Catholic synonymous with being Republican (and neoconservative), in a way that links the fate of the church to the fate of their chosen political party.
And so if the absolutist strategy of promoting respect for life by outlawing abortion fails; if same-sex marriage is increasingly accepted in our society and LGBT people increasingly integrated into the social mainstream; if those promoting pro-life positions link the pro-life movement to economic justice for all, support for universal health care, opposition to capital punishment, etc.: then the church itself begins to falter, to lose influence in the culture at large. Because it has sought to make being Catholic synonymous with being neoconservative and Republican.
It seems a sad mistake, to me, to equate this loss of influence and this failure with Satanic wiles. It would seem wiser—and far more accurate—for those pastoral leaders now encouraging us to look at the devil’s increasing sway in our society to look in the mirror. That is, if they really want to know why the Catholic church seems unable to communicate its core values to American culture, after several decades of a monomaniacal focus among some of its leaders on the infallibility of neoconservative Republican ideology.
