ROME, Italy (CNA) – Evil exists; Satan is real and Catholics need to wake up and commit themselves to enter into combat with the Enemy or continue to live in the confusion that haunts society, Archbishop Charles Chaput of Denver told the Emmanuel Community of Rome.
At Emmanuel’s conference on Priests and Laity in the Mission, he named internet porn, divorce and the legislative redefinition of marriage as Satan working effectively in the world, adding that, “I thought that after 20 years more of my life things would change and things would be a lot better but I don’t think they are”.
“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,” he said.
He referred to an American Protestant pastor’s talk he once heard titled We preach as though we don’t have enemies, and reflected that this sentiment “is true in the United States”.
“I think it’s important to understand that 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.
“In America, we don’t want to be different from 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,” the Archbishop said.
He said internet pornography is pervasive, subtle, attractive and “totally destructive of people’s lives and there’s very little talk about fighting it”, and is a form of Satan working in the world.
“If you talk about fighting pornography in the media you’re somehow seen as anti-American, anti-freedom of speech … things that are so obviously destructive to society,” he said.
He also named divorce and the changing definition of marriage as places where Satan is holding sway.
“All of the statistical studies show us that a stable relationship between a man and a wife for the sake of children is what produces good, healthy human beings and you can’t say that today without being branded as somehow on the opposite side of freedom and truth,” he explained.
“So those kinds of basic human values – the value of chastity and the value of family life – are popularly seen as ‘old fashioned’ because of the lies, because of the deceptions of the Evil One.
“Even Catholics are afraid of standing up for the truth because we’re afraid of being branded ‘old-fashioned.’”
He said that while there had been much good done fighting this battle, “we’re not winning many of those cultural battles in terms of the formal direction of society”.
“But,” he added, “every time an individual is converted the battle has been won in a huge kind of way, because we’re not saved as a group. We’re saved as individuals and what pleases the enemy of God, Satan, is that individuals are not being faithful to their identity as children of God.
“So I think every time there’s a conversion, every time one of us turns from our sins there is a victory in the battle,” he said.
“There are lots of victories, so I don’t think we measure our success in terms of swaying whole segments of society, but it’s convincing individuals to give themselves faithfully to the call of God in their lives.”