Posted on by Msgr. Charles Pope

Satan Has Many Disguises

It would be easy if Satan came as he is often portrayed, with horns and a pitchfork. We would naturally flee this ugliness.

Alas, he often comes cloaked in beauty, in sheep’s clothing. He claims to offer us freedom and autonomy from an unreasonable God and Church, liberation from rules and being “told what to do.”  He cloaks himself in the false righteousness of being “tolerant” and “not judging others.” He exalts us by telling us we have finally come of age and can disregard the “hang-ups” and “repression” our ancestors had of sex and pleasure. He flatters us by extolling our scientific knowledge and inflates us by equating it with wisdom and moral superiority over our “primitive” fore-bearers. He reassures us by insisting we are merely the victims here, victims of biological urges, bad parenting, economic injustice, that we are not depraved, just deprived. He humors us by making us laugh at sin, making light of it in comedian’s routines, sitcoms, music and otherwise turning sin into a form of entertainment. He anesthetizes the pain of guilt and sin by sending us teachers who tickle our ears and assure us that what we know deep down to be wrong is actually fine, even virtuous. He affirms us by insisting that whenever shortcomings in us have been called to our attention it is simply unfair since other people are surely worse, that self esteem is something owed to us and others who lessen it are unkind.   He  sings us the lullaby of presumption assuring us that consequences and judgment will not be our lot and with this lullaby we drift off into a moral sleep of indifference and  false confidence.

But in the end, there is a wolf under the sheepskin. Satan is ugly. He enslaves, condemns, ridicules and ensnares. His “reassurances” bring pain and grief as the awful effects of sin unwind: hatred, fear, resentments, revenge, suffering, disease, addiction, bondage, strife, divorce, estrangement, war, insurrection, disloyalty, scorn, bitterness, depression, anxiety, depletion, poverty, loss and deep, deep sorrow.

Beware, Satan has many disguises and he seldom presents as he really is. The movie The Passion of the Christ brilliantly presented Satan in the Garden. At first there was almost a strange beauty. But a closer look revealed increasingly hideous details: cold, fixed eyes, sharp and discolored nails, sickly pale skin, suddenly androgynous qualities, and a disgusting maggot crawling in and out of the nose. An audible moan came from the audience in the theatre where I first saw it. Would that, beyond the movie, we could sense this revulsion and clarity as to the evil of Satan and his truest reality.

Here is a very powerful video on the disguises of sin:

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73 Replies to “Satan Has Many Disguises”

  1. There was a programme on television, this weekend in the UK as part of a hospital serial. This portrayed an “Irish Catholic” ex-nurse pleading with her friends also in the nursing profession to help her die, as she had a brain tumour.
    The storyline was full of “care and compassion” and eventually her two friends assisted in her demise with drugs acquired from their hospital.
    The event was recorded by them to show she wanted this to take place and it was without coercion etc, in order to exonerate them when proceedings take place later at the inquest.
    In the room where she died, there was a crucifix below which flowers were placed and a set of rosary beads were also included in the storyline.
    I am posting this, not particularly at it was about euthanasia which was central to the story, but the way this was portrayed as being the decision of a Catholic and removing the faith aspect entirely.
    This is the way in which the Devil promotes his philosophy through storylines such as this, giving the impression that “even Catholics will abandon their Faith in such circumstances”.
    We need to maintain our awareness of the Devil’s influence as much as we need to be aware of the presence and strength of our God to combat evil.
    Once again you have posted a truly powerful statement.
    AMDG.

  3. A very good post. Sin often shows up like a defenseless innocent, a small desire that evokes pity more than rejection, yet it grows like the noxious weed it is. O Lord give us the grace to smash sin early!

  4. Monsignor,
    I get your point, but once again I think your tone is a bit extreme. This posting could be understood by some to be a condemnation of sex, pleasure, anyone who tries to incorporate scientific knowledge about the human person into their understanding of the reality of what sin is and how it works, anyone who criticizes the workings of the Church, those who seek to be tolerant of others and non-judgmental (as in “judge not lest you be judged” or “neither do I condemn you”, or “the measure with which you measure…”) as coming from Satan.
    In light of the Gospels and of Church teaching in documents like Gaudium et Spes, condemning these outright would not be consistent with a Catholic world view. (One might even take the opposite approach that you have one some points–perhaps it is God who has elevated our self-esteem by becoming one of us and showing us our inherent value by saving us.) It seems to me that these ideas you raise require a more nuanced treatment–Salvation does not come from blindly following rules, wagging fingers, denying ourselves sex and pleasure, denying any moral relevance to scientific insights into human behavior, feeling guilt and being somber, etc. I’m learning from raising a 2 year old that sometimes it’s more effective to reinforce the positives rather than try to scare her from any possible negative experiences…

    1. Ah, and that is why you get to comment. No post get’s it all does it. Your reply, taken by itself might also be interpreted as extreme, in fact I’ll say by itself it IS extreme in my opinion and is also written in a vaccum since you take no account of my other writings here of the the fact that I do not have extreme views against pleasure, science, legitmate concerns about Church discipline and the like. But together our comments form a discussion. And I will give you what you did not give me, that your remarks are focused on something specific that, in a longer conversation you too would distinguish a bit more.. You may miss the point of a blog, which is to provoke discussion. To provoke often requires a bit of an edge. I write with an edge to start a discussion not to comprehensively cover every possible objection or extreme interpretation. That happens as the discussion unfolds. I stand by what I have written but accept that there are distinctions to be made, as you have aptly done.

      1. “Salvation does not come from blindly following rules, wagging fingers, denying ourselves sex and pleasure, denying any moral relevance to scientific insights into human behavior, feeling guilt and being somber, etc. I’m learning from raising a 2 year old that sometimes it’s more effective to reinforce the positives rather than try to scare her from any possible negative experiences…”

        I don’t think the post anywhere suggests blindly following rules, nor do I find a wagging finger in the midst of a warning that evil lurks in some fairly attractive places to our human desires. The post doesn’t advocate denying yourself sex or pleasure. And the fact of the matter is that as someone who works in the adult behavioral health field I can state with certainty that scientific insights into human behavior since the middle of the last century only serve to confirm the fundamentally “spiritual” nature of addiction notwithstanding how many “medications” we develop to “treat” the disease.

        Salvation and the truths of Scripture are not children’s stories. 1 Corinthians 13:11. In my humble reading of the Bible, God has done nothing but reinforce the positive since the beginning of time and his sinful people have done nothing but reject him at every turn in every age. Our age may be unique in that we have developed some fairly sophisticated scientific excuses for our sinfulness, but we are confronted again and again by the evil that is within us no matter how we try to explain it away.

        So if this post was an uncomfortable finger wagging…wag away, Monsignor, wag away!

    2. I didn’t gleen that from the article. Not to be critical, but sometimes we bring a bit of ourselves into these articles. I mean perhaps you view self control as sexual repression or sobriety. I may read this same thing as sex only within marriage and only a beer or two, not the whole 12 pack. I don’t know, I’m not a psychologist, but when when you said you had a two yr old it reminded me of me and my three year old…
      She was playing with her food. I said food is for eating and toys are for playing. She more or less ignored me. So said honey, what did I just say to you. She half smiled and said, “stop playing with my food”
      She was playing with her little brother and was hitting him. Fortunately, not hard. I said, he is a little guy and you need to be gentle with him. Again, lightly hitting him on the leg just one mopre time. i gently asked her, what did i just say.She said to me, stop hitting Michael.
      So what’s my point? I think a lot of times when someone tries to explain something to us, so we can learn, grow and enrich our faith, live…which includes recognizing and avoiding sin. We simply hear them saying. NO!
      That’s how many view the Church, I think. I say it with love, brother. I’m there too.

  5. From “The Farmer on the Dole”:

    “The moral of this story please attend to very well:
    Exactly who the Devil is is often hard to tell.
    He may be short and ugly or he may be fair and tall;
    he may just be the man for whom you voted in the fall.”

  6. Dear Msgr.Charles,
    Thank you for this deeply thought provoking write-up. You hit the nail on the head as it were, by pointing to some truths that are prevailing in society today, donning the garb of consumerism,modernism leading to a complete loss of the sense of sin in society. MOst of us who are stuggling to live the gospel truths to the last bit, are termed as orthodox and refusing to live up to those values that open new vistas of thoughts and views. Satan is nicely tricking us into believing and following a lot of truths which are absolute falsehood when viewed in the ‘WAY’ the ‘TRUTH’ and the ‘LIGHT’ – Jesus. Let us ardently pray much for Jesus to prevail and Satan to diminish. I will share this with my Confirmants, here in Mumbai, India. Thank you so much and I do read all your posts, thanks to the efforts of my spiritual son, a young and holy Dominican priest who forwards your posts to me. God bless him and you.

  7. Thank you so much for this, Father. As usual, a wonderfully lucid exposition of the truths of our Faith and particularly of one so-often (dangerously) downplayed: the reality and mortal danger of Evil. This comes to my heart today in particular as a colleague, who is very dear to me, was trying to “persuade” me that all religions are ridiculous after a “documentary film” she saw which “proved” this. Nothing I could say could persuade her otherwise, which made me think that one of the most powerful weapons of the devil today is human ignorance cloaked in knowledge. Ignorance of the actual teachings of the Church and of the sheer force of good she plays in the world – note how every assailant of Catholicism focuses on the alleged “bad” things she has caused or even encouraged. If Satan is a sheep in wolf’s clothing to the world, our Church is surely a sheep in wolf’s clothing to the blinded perception of the world – I mean also a clothing which is not real but which the devil has carefully fabricated to make seem real. And the world seems unable to see beneath this cover to the real sheep beneath, the Lamb of God’s wife.
    Please, if you have any words of wisdom for me which could help me better persuade my colleague without alienating her, I would greatly appreciate it (even if this seems off topic, it actually is so relevant to the concept of evil in the world that you could argue it is very much on-topic), Thank you

    1. It occurs to me that one will be religious no matter what. That is to say, to condemn the Church is to found your own religion and what ever she would like to say of the Catholic religion will be true of her own made up one. Where human beings are present there is sin and the tendency to live short of what is required. Her made up religion will have the same problems if any human being adheres to it.

  8. Sorry, that should read “Satan is a wolf in sheep’s clothing” – mixing my metaphors! But the latter one is intentional, that the Churhc is a sheep in wolf’s clothing (the clothing being Satan’s, not the Church’s).

  9. Excellent….powerful…thought-provoking. A Must See! Thank you. N
    cucinananette.blogspot.com

  11. This is a stellar post, thank you Father. I hope and pray that the Saint Michael Prayer be reinsteited as common place especially after Mass. Notice also in our age how the sexualisation of children is gaining ground. “The devil prowls around seeking someone to devour”, everyone is fair game. A murderer and liar from the very beginning. Let us invoke the Holy Angels to assist us in our battle and the Saints who have eyes brighter than the sun to watch over us and protect us.
    God Bless you.

  12. Sorry – one more comment – I love your writing style. I like the “edginess” – though I did not feel it was heavy-handed at all.

    I once volunteered to lead a formation class at our parish. I was the only man among the too few instructors. So, they gave me the unruly bunch of 7th and 8th graders.

    The first year was great – even the nastier of the kids enjoyed themselves and, I pray, learned something about the Faith.

    The following year, they asked me again to volunteer – which I did, willingly. I figured someone had to do it – it might as well be me. But this time, we had a new pastor – whom I do love for his role in dispensing the Sacraments. But he’s a bit, let’s say, progressive and more feel-goody than our previous pastor.

    The very first class, I taught the children that Evil actually does exist. That we are called to Spiritual Warfare against the forces of Evil – and that these forces are literally hell-bent on destroying children of Christ.

    You would have think I had said something along the line that the Church permits elective abortion. One kid was so rocked by hearing this truth about the Father of Lies that he/she got her mom to complain.

    I wasn’t interested in defending myself – as I thought it would just create scandal. So, I resigned the post without even being asked.

    That’s my story – and more truth needs to be spoken to people about the nature of the Epic, Cosmic Battle for souls that goes on day after day. Sensibilities aside. The truth must be spoken.

    1. I am sorry you resigned so quickly I would have adivsed you to stay and fight. Perhaps the Pastor would have had to decide but you spared him. I think we priests need to be made to decide more often one way or the other. It makes us pray and choose sides.

    2. Enoch, it seems anytime a person brings out the truth about the dark one he tries to negate the effects. You spoke truth and he found a way to neutralize it, at least on the surface. You also planted a seed that will grow. If you continue to speak out expect the kickback to get stronger.

  13. I recommend the insightful and superbly written recently published book called Excorcism and the Church Militant by Rev. Thomas J Euteneuer published by Human Life International. It really has increased my knowledge and awareness of the reality of sin. If we lead Holy Lives we will lessen sin in the world and the destruction that it leaves behind. After reading this book it has become my aim to do all I can to lessen Sin in the world.

  14. Monsignor,

    thank you so much once again for a clear message. We need black and white clear messages from our priests, bishops and other pastors. The world today speaks to us in too many shades of grey and we can often rationalize anything given the lack of clear guidelines.

    Thank you!

  15. It was easier years ago when at least people acknowledged that there was such a thing as sin. When Catholics sinned they did not receive communion until they went to confession. Yoday the sense of sin seems to have been lost. What can be done to restore this loss of a sense of sin especially in GOOD people?

  16. A powerful and sobering post, especially since, in my view, society at large seems to have lost all sense of sin.

  17. I love your post, Monsignor, because to provokes many perceptions of the point of the blogs. Many are a subliminal stimuli. I do not think that blogs are not necessarily used to try to determine the writers general point of view whether the writer agree or disagree but to comment on the substance of your own view!

  18. BRAVO! A telling reminder of how quickly we can be lured into the devil’s clutches even while we think we are doig ‘just fine’.

  20. Thank you Msgr. Your post was not only accurate, but very thought provoking. It appears that in today’s society, people are so easily persuaded by sin and seem to enjoy it. Satan is a powerful foe for those who do not have Christ in their lives. If only they would repent and turn to Christ, who is our salvation and hope for life eternal. I enjoyed your post, and cannot wait for Bible study tomorrow. God Bless.

  21. I am especially aware of how a thought becomes an action … a bad little thought into a bad little action, but it is the harbinger of bigger and badder sins. We are trying so very hard to teach this to our children, that even a little lie is a very bad thing because we lose trust.

    Father, we do not go to confession weekly though we try to go regularly (about bimonthly). But all week long we can’t help but commit a bevy of sins … they are small sins, yes, but should we be going every Sat.?

    1. Well I go every week. I suppose one ought to get frequently. My own confession is a confession of devotion but frequent confession is to be enocuraged. Perhaps at least quarterly, more if one struggles with more serious sin of course.

  22. Another example of a wolf in sheep’s colthing: National Catholic Reporter…oops I mean fishwrap, or is that Distorter.

  23. Thank you for this post! Yes, Satan does work undercover, doesn’t he? In the movie the Passion of Christ, Satan was actually portrayed by a female actress, Rosalinda Celentano. Satan reminds me of Grima Wormtongue in Lord of the Rings in many ways, both in the movies and real life.

    There’s a song I like to listen to sometimes, by a rock band I like, called “Dance with the Devil.” The song is about the lead singer’s fall into drugs, and how doing drugs was like dancing with the devil. Drugs seem great on the outside, and may provide great sensations, but just as easily as they can provide the great sensations they can provide very bad ones. People who have taken a “bad trip” while on drugs have often died or had awful things happen to them. The patients I see on PCP may come in thinking that they are Superman, break handcuffs and break their wrist with it, and then the next morning when that 12 hours of high is up, they don’t remember anything that happened, let alone the fact that they have a broken wrist.

    It’s also the same principle with relationships and cheating. Having known many people who cheat, and having been cheated on, cheating is what the devil leads you to do. The devil is saying that this person will provide you with more happiness and satisfaction than your significant other. Relationships are work. They are not all fun and games. Usually the cheaters are not so happy. Look at Tiger Woods. And all the “other women” now have a bad rep for a few moments of pleasure with another woman’s man. Not worth it, don’t listen to Satan, I say.

  24. Wow. Truth certainly can be uncomfortable sometimes, can’t it. Reminds me of C.S. Lewis’s Screwtape Letters!

  25. Thank you for taking the time to do such excellent, timely homilies and reflections. I am grateful to you for your vocation, as well as for your wisdom and wit and generosity in sharing your gifts with people all over the world via this blog. You are my favorite!

  26. Re: Daniel’s quote “neither do I condemn you”,… hardly anyone keeps going with Jesus words to the woman in question … for her to go on her way but don’t sin anymore.

    1. Hi Brian,
      Thanks for reminding us not to proof-text. The entire story in John 8 is important, but I don’t think the end of the quote negates my point. I think Jesus is far more concerned in that passage with redemption and forgiveness (Good News!), while it is the pharisees and the crowd who seem fixated on her sin and it’s “necessary” consequences according to the rules–perhaps to protect their own sense of righteousness or to protect their society from the sinfulness of the woman…In the midst of the bloody mess of that woman’s sin-filled life Jesus is a positive message of change and a beacon for what is good. Conspicuously, Jesus didn’t condemn the condemners either. He left it up to their freedom and conscience to decide what to do, and it seems like their consciences may have been somewhat affected by their biological age (they left one by one, oldest first..).

  27. A great depiction of Satan in the movies is Al Pacino in “The Devil’s Advocate.” He is an attractive guy and he leads Keanu Reeves astray largely by telling Keanu to do the right thing — go home to his wife and do right by her. At the end of the film, Pacino makes a pretty compelling argument, which sounds quite reasonable, for why HE loves and respects mankind more than God does, and why God is a twisted, absentee landlord. It all comes across as quite attractive. And even at the very end, when Keanu thinks that he is defeating Satan, he actually allows Satan to win in the long run, even if his particular plan was stopped. So even then, Satan has manipulated him away from the good.

  28. Timing is everything and this entry is timed perfectly.

    My niece, 31, is battling in the courts for the future of her son, 3. I live a couple hundred miles away from her but am attempting to help her by ‘listening’ on line and gently advising. I beg your pardon if this is a burdensome post but I would appreciate any advice you or your readers could give us. This is the latest message she left for me on facebook:

    ” hey, i will never dread talking to you, ever. im am just so scared. not only is steve verbally abusing me, now he his legally abusing me. how do i get it to end? go to mass. i know. when i was in church for the funeral, i could not stop crying. not just for shaun, but for myself. will going to mass really solve my problems? why is god letting this happen to me? punishing me for not going to mass? i not saying this with the intention of not going to mass, im just wish i could see why He is doing this. I know ill see it at some point in my life, i hope. please dont give up on me aunt amy. i know you wont. and yes, liam and I will come the 26th or 27th. we can work out the details as the date nears. talk to you soon. love, meg”

    You see, I have told her a few times in the last 4 months or so that she needs to get her “spiritual house” in order before she will have the mental strength to fight this situation with confidence, hence the ‘dread’ i predicted she might be having with me.

    I have decided to answer each question separately so that I can give them the attention they deserve, and also so I could pray for guidance. I have only posted two back to her, one on “How” and another on “do”. I’m going real slow because I am afraid of the bigger ones…

    Anyhow, I mentioned the evil one in my last message to her, and I include a small portion of that here:

    “This is to say, always be careful where you seek answers. Though God is available through the love of others, too often the devil uses p.i.b.’s [people/institutions/books] to achieve his ends as well. The evil one is not obvious, if he were than he would be found out and loose his effectiveness. In other words, sometimes the devil comes leather bound with gilded pages and rave reviews… he would like nothing more than to see you loose Liam completely to steve who appears from this distance to be one of his minions. Achieving that, he knows that he’s got Liam in the bag. Don’t loose hope, though, Meg. You have love on your side, for God is Love. And he’s rooting for you even if it doesn’t feel like that right now.”

    I will send her a link to your post (and pray that she takes the time to read and view it). But, I wonder if you or your readers have any other advice I can give to her.

  29. Satan glorifies power and its symbols, puts rules before mercy, disciplines and rites before love and fraternity. Makes us behave as if man was created for Saturday and not Saturday for man.

  30. Jesus meant real people who are wolves, not ideas. One comes to mind. Men who are supposed to be shepards of the flock, You know, who have on supposedly godly black robes and white collars and tear little children apart who are entrusted to them. Theres your wolf in sheeps clothing. I figured id mention it since you forgot to. Thanks

  31. From what little faith I have, I would say that we all need to go through the fire for ” Gold is tested in Fire”. Only after which we come out to be purerer then we were. To be made into beautiful ornaments. Guess Meg needs to be reasured with that.
    God bless.

  32. Thank you so much for this article, it was very timely for me. Sometimes sinful behavior is done by people who, at face value, seem so kind and nice and it seems cruel to be so harsh about what they teach and preach (I’m thinking of these people – http://www.herchurch.org/ )

    Someone mentioned their goddess ‘rosary’ which is how I found them. They seem like a genuinely kind bunch of earnest caring people but I can’t countenance what they are teaching. Yet I found it difficult to see their actions as sinful because of their kindness. They seemed to be trying to be good. I think in this society we need to be more aware of sin and its many disguises because as you say, we will not turn to the outright repulsive but be gently guided towards sin dressed as holiness or goodness.

  33. Thank you for this post. The part which hit closest to home for me was the reference to scientific knowledge and how the master of lies can trick us into equating it with wisdom and moral superiority. Our scientific knowledge has barely scratched the surface of understanding God’s universe yet we could become so proud that we use it against Him rather than as a help to learn the truth. I am grateful for those who popped my egotistical bubble when I (upon occasion) became too proud of our scientific knowledge.
    You do well to remind not to start blowing that bubble up again.

  34. Thank you ..amid all my prayer,my study…i know you are there always waiting to catch my guard down but you see my guard is CHRIST,he never sleeps and he always waits for you…beware,goodness prevails!

  35. As a conservative evangelical Protestant you hit the nail on the head with this article. I’d rather tell a fellow Christian who is struggling to find a church to attend a traditional Catholic church that takes sin, the ethics of Scripture, and the inspiration of the Bible seriously rather than a Protestant church that has given itself over to the Satanically-inspired modernism of today (if there are no conservative evangelical churches around where the friend lives, hypothetically).

  36. If I might say it here, a lot of the discussion about Tiger Woods will be put to bed now that his divorce, which we were kept in the dark about, is over and done with and he can get on with what he does best – playing golf. Go Tiger!

  37. Some of you are simply brilliant and some use logic to fight logic with no clear definable stance.
    Satan is simply much smarter than all of us . He is judicated a place in the game without any real
    Punishement until his date with hell fire . His intelligence is not to be confused with wisdom, he has an understanding of human weakness and the method in which to attack it . He is a specialized weapon
    Used to overcome our weaknesses and seek God to over come him. We must lose our lives and our
    Value in this world if we are to defeat him. Yes I believe Satan tricks all other religions into another path
    He will even fool the Christians, his IQ. Is probably unmeasurable and he’s around 6000 or 7000 years old.
    I have pondered a question that I have no real solution. I believe the image of Satan we see in church, is the actual image of Satan. The bible talks clearly about the synagoge of Satan. That is why God commands all not to worship any graven idol. My real questions are if Satan controlls the catholic church that is now controlled by real pagans, is the new covenant a real work of God ? You see the bible says in corinthians it is an offense for men to have long hair, this unisex duality is expressed in the she male baphomet. Jesus is also eptomized siting in a jewish star or what I call a hexagram or the seal of slomon.
    Trust me when I say this 6 pointed star is absolutley satanic in it’s geometry. It’s equalateral angels all measure 60 60 60 that is why the pyramid is used as a symbol of Satan. I can not explain in words why I think there might be a real new testament or the new testament may be a very complex trick . But I do not believe that only through blood a remission of sins that one can be forgiven . This either mimicks pagan sacrifice or the inverse Pagans copying Christian rituals, in any case none of us were behind the scenes to witness the real evidence. Don’t think I’m an enemy of God but rather one who sees by logic and history. Constintine a roman emperor decided to co opt the Christian religion for fear of losing the reigns of control. You have to understand I go back to the old saying there smarter than us. Really. They adapt to stay in power. They have never not been in control. In ww2 the cathedrals were bombed and beneath them were human sacrificial temples. These I’m afraid are facts . I am not taking away the fact that there is a real God I’m merely pointing out it is a very complex storyline . There is much more I could speak about but I think I have gotten the point across. In the end it would seem I think I have more questions still that I have not answered myself. I will have concluded a good answer only to find another door that opens many more questions. This then creates even more doors. So you see for me it is still unsolved. You see satan has used several layers of deceit plus the many alternate endings which combined leaves one facing a mirade of unkown factors. Many of which we disbelieve or believe by faith knowing that all the books ,66 are controlled by a pagan church that secretly worships Satan .

  38. Among the preceding replies, “Bill”s is especially erudite. It contains a diamond of a quote concerning addictions [a.k.a. drug/substance abuse, alcoholism, gambling, pornography, etc. — some-of-which have been posited as “diriment impediments” which then are used to declare marriages “invalid.”]

    Bill says: August 10, 2010 at 4:17 pm “…the fact of the matter is that as someone who works in the adult behavioral health field I can state with certainty that scientific insights into human behavior since the middle of the last century only serve to confirm the fundamentally “spiritual” nature of addiction notwithstanding how many “medications” we develop to “treat” the disease.”

    I wish I knew “Bill”s last name for his quote, but his point is still worth standing-behind: “spiritual” impediments to marriage are not insurmountable obstacles, either when they manifest before, during, or “after” [divorce] marriage vows are covenanted. Thereby, the “cure” for Tribunals is not to “set free” spouses wedded to someone suffering from these spiritual-based addictions (ie. by declaring specious annulments!)

    Rather, the cure is spiritual, to employ the marital commandment [1 Cor. 7:10-11] — allowing for separation when needed — always seeking reconciliation of the parties! How easily Tribunals give-up on the sacrament and the parties pledged to it as their lifelong vocation! Those serving in Tribunals too are charged with honoring and upholding the dignity of marriage!

    Pray that God’s Spirit would convict more of them of the dishonesty they practice and open their hearts, eyes, and minds to the pastoral SPIRITUAL guidance they owe toward those entrusting their sacrament to their scrutinies and decrees!

  39. We all must learn that Satan is powerful and we are feeding him power without even knowing it. He prays on both the strong and weak. Satan doesn’t care if you call yourself a Christian, as long as you place your own interests (desires) over and above God’s. If you keep your eyes focused on yourself, and on your own desires, you are Satan’s sons and daughters by default, even if you call yourself a Christian. Satanism is all about you, whereas Biblical Christianity is all about self-denial and the cross. Satanism can be compared to a black-hole that sucks everything in, even light, and then consumes it so nothing of benefit can return. Whereas, Christianity can be compared to the sun, which consumes itself in order to benefit others with light; only unlike our sun, we cannot be exhausted, because our heavenly supply — our God — is infinite. Is it any wonder that the Bible describes hell as eternal, utter darkness, whereas heaven has the inexhaustible eternal light of God that exists to benefit all. I pray for strength for the priest and all my brothers and sister in this world. Amen

  40. I saw Satan (figuratively) when my little boy’s best friend’s father murdered his mother. The veil was lifted from my eyes and I started doing what I should have been doing all along, believing and acting upon what the Holy Catholic Church teaches and Professes. All of it, even the hard stuff. I find going to confession regularly helps me stop sinning so much. It helps me be a better person. Thanks for writing the article. I did not find it harsh, it is what we need to hear.

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