I occasionally turn on a regular network TV station. My gorge rises and I flee back to books, cable news or DVDs.
I understand that there is now a TV series called Lucifer. I won’t be seeing that one.
However, a priest friend sent me an SMS about it:
Have you heard about this horrible new show Lucifer? I watched it last night just because I am sure that many of my parishioners will have done so. It is super new age, with all the stupid notions of the need for the existence of good and evil to create balance, etc.
Lucifer is bored with hell so he incarnates on earth to do good for humanity, and this results in a ‘lack of balance between heaven and hell’ it is basically blasphemous….
Blasphemous and stupid.
My IQ dropped a few points just learning of this show.
Let’s be clear about the Enemy of the soul and fallen angels.
“But Father! But Father!”, some numb-skulls are whimpering, “We don’t focus on these things any more! We are now happy in our faith communities and the sharing of fellowship and we all go to heaven together so we can be in fellowship and communities of sharing and be with our pets. Vatican II did away with all this devil talk and nonsense about people going to hell. That’s all people like you can talk about but you hate Vatican II! Don’t listen to Fr. Z! Everyone sing! ♫ ♫ My little pony… my little pony… ♫ ♫”
Sure, we must also talk about heaven and goodness and joy and kitties and sunshine and birthday cakes. Let’s get this Hell and Devil thing straightened out because it’s been neglected for far too long.
Priests and bishops who don’t teach about Hell will probably wind up there.
It is the job of every bishop and priest to keep as many of you as possible out of Hell.
As I have noted before, the greatest accomplishment of the Enemy of our souls is to deceive people that the Enemy doesn’t exist … that there is no Hell … that people can’t go to Hell … that no one is in Hell, … that evil is somehow a necessary component of existence… blah blah blah.
The Devil exists. Fallen angels re real, personal beings. There is nothing cute about the Enemy.
Fallen angels hate you with a malice no human can imagine. They have an intellect that surpasses our mere human faculties in a way that we can’t fathom. They never tire. They are relentless. They are real. If you don’t believe in the existence of malicious fallen angels, you are in serious risk of joining them in Hell. This is no joke.
The Devil and the fallen angels hate you.
They have angelic abilities. They never sleep, never tire, are never distracted, have no need to travel from point a to b, and they never miss what you are up to.
Think this through.
Imagine what sort of profile on you some government agency could put together. I’ve written on this before, but it bears dredging up and repeating.
Imagine that government agencies want to build a psychological profile of you, much as the FBI might when they use clues and evidence to hunt down an unknown serial killer.
These government agents, let’s call it The Agency, teamed up with a newly minted Dem President’s Domestic Security Force, are profiling Catholics. Real Catholics are, of course, terrorists and dissidents: they refuse to worship Moloch and offer sacrifices of incense to the statue of the POTUS.
Said Agency and DSF plot your movements through your mobile phone and car’s GPS as you move in and out of cells which they monitor to triangulate your location. They learn something about you through your patterns of travel. They learn about your tastes and interests through your purchasing history. They monitor your calls, where you go on the internet, what you write and read in your email and on webpages. They look at all your online transactions. Through your credit card records they hunt up the actual receipts and examine what you bought at every store… including those embarrassing things. After all, you leave amazingly information-rich and detailed trails and clues to who you are with every move and purchase. The Agency and DSF review all your library checkouts, your magazine subscriptions, your movie going habits, your DVD choices through Netflix or digital downloads through Amazon and iTunes. They watch your channel selections through your cable or satellite. All this information can be mined. They watch your every interaction with your friends… and strangers too, for that matter, with listening devices and cameras. After gathering all this information, the Agency’s profiling experts build a picture of you, get into your head. They figure out what you are about, who you are, and what you going to do next.
They are merely humans with a lot of bits of information.
How much better can fallen angels, the demons do this?
Angels, the holy angels and the fallen, have never missed anything of your lives since the instant of your conception. And they never forget. Anything.
Fallen angels, the enemy, the Devil, can’t literally get into our heads or thoughts or touch our will, but they don’t have to in order to know us really well.
And they hate you. They hate you. They hate you.
With relentless malice the “prince of this world” works to trick you into letting him have some control in your life. Demons cleverly and with perfect timing stimulate your appetites and passions based on how well they know your proclivities. They strive to twist your heart and mind away from God in order to diminish – even by a little – the love everyone will share in heaven as they shine in the magnified glory of the Trinity.
When a soul is lost to Hell, and I think that happens a lot, the Enemy crows, “That’s one more You don’t have!”
The Devil and other demons are always held in check by God. They cannot simply have their way with us or the material cosmos around us unless God permits it according to His plan. But they are devious and tireless.
Remember your Guardian Angels. Call on them to help you. Remember Our Lady, Queen of Angels. Remember St. Joseph, whom we invoke in his beautiful litany as the “Terror daemonum… the Terror of demons”.
If you don’t believe in the Enemy and Hell, you will probably wind up there. And if you choose that fate, it would be better for you had you never been born (cf Matthew 26:24).
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The real Lucifer wouldn’t make for such a cute program, would he Fr. Z? Pedophilia, child pornography, ritual abuse, murder, and slavery might not (*yet) attract a large enough audience for advertisers. Then again, perhaps I’m overestimating the American public.
In times like this I confess to feeling a deep respect–even an appreciation–for my heretical brothers and sisters in Islam. They would NEVER tolerate something like this in their countries, and yet we Christians with our fatal addiction to “religious liberty,” tolerance, and relativism sit idly by while the Devil himself is practically worshiped (yes, worshiped) in primetime.
I had seen the advertising for the show while watching the Carolina game (earning an eye roll). I guess I’m not totally shocked to read what I have. I expected one of two things. God and the Devils are equals, both are needed (I guess this is the way they went). In this view I expected the devil to perform much evil of all sins carnal and otherwise, and for this to be “badish” but generally celebrated as awesome.
The other was that the devil was really a good guy, liberator from evil oppressive God (sort of like Legion). In this view man kind is held back by repressive and backwards rules, and the Devil helps humanity discover it’s true potential.
I couldn’t imagine either option being anything other than damaging, perhaps even to a mature faith. So yeah. It’s not on my TiVo to do list. And if the networks keep it in, they might find themselves being unchecked from my available channels list in my TiVo settings.
On a purely personal level, one positive thing has already come of this abomination of a show: I’ve doubled down in my devotion to St. Michael.
May he smash this piece of garbage into bits and, by the power of God, thrust it back into Hell!
This is the latest heap in a continuous line of blasphemous garbage, including such as Harry Potter, the Twilight “Saga”, Walking Dead, et al.
LeGrandDerangement you mentioned Harry Potter – yes! People do not believe me when I tell them Harry Potter is dangerous. They blow it off saying things like, “It’s just a story.” One of our parish priests gave an excellent homily not too long ago in which he mentioned some frightening things involving Harry Potter, and what he said totally freaked me out. I don’t want to repeat what he said here. But seriously, Harry Potter is dangerous. It’s not “just a story”. If you have any Harry Potter in your house, don’t hesitate: throw_it_out.
Hamlet no less!
Maybe someone should start a fund-raising campaign to place ads for C.S. Lewis’ classic, The Screwtape Letters, on this show.
No one defined the enemy better than St Ignatius of Loyola: the enemy of human nature.
Pax Christi
A blind family member has the radio on all the time. I heard the ads for the program. However, we do not have TV reception in our home, so there was not even the temptation to check out the slimey, smarmy sounding character.
Father, thank you for your explication of the diabolical entities. I became familiar with these evil actions when I came back to the church and suffered minor torments, especially at Mass! (Unbidden thoughts entering my head, my voice cracking when reading aloud or attempting to sing.)
Increasing my prayer life with more frequent confession and more frequent Mass attendance (I’ve been fortunate to be able attend EF Masses several times a week) have helped fight off these demons. I liken them to small dark, scaley, horned, clawed, winged creatures buzzing about me like flies. (Oh yes, and there were also real flies involved before I realized who the Lord of the Flies is!)
When we pray the Auxilium Christianorum prayers we are supposed to be helping the exorcist–but these prayers have also been extremely beneficial to my spiritual self! I recommend them.
Dear LeeF –
The world could certainly use the lesson that Lewis teaches. While it is quite true that Satan has no power of his own, he and the fallen angels possess the ability to tempt and cajole our weakened nature to choose to do evil.
One of the hallmarks of Pope Francis’ homilies is his preaching about the danger that Satan poses to humanity. He certainly cannot be accused of soft-peddling as far as the Great Adversary is concerned.
@Majuscule
The angelic crown of St. Michael (aka, the chaplet of St. Michael) is another WONDERFUL weapon against the Devil and the fallen angels.
Since I enrolled in the confraternity of the scapular of St. Michael and began praying this chaplet, I have noticed a dramatic improvement in my spiritual condition. Certain sins and temptations that have plagued me since young adulthood have receded into the background. I won’t say that they are gone entirely, but I have a powerful sense of St. Michael’s defense of my soul against temptation, sin, and the near occasion of sin.
“In times like this I confess to feeling a deep respect–even an appreciation–for my heretical brothers and sisters in Islam. They would NEVER tolerate something like this in their countries, and yet we Christians with our fatal addiction to “religious liberty,” tolerance, and relativism sit idly by while the Devil himself is practically worshiped (yes, worshiped) in primetime.”
Talk to infantrymen who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Muslim men there are all about sodomy, disgusting forms of pornography, and alcoholism.
…oh, and FREQUENT confession of course! I recently discovered a wonderful group of Dominican confessors in my hometown. They are amazing!
If you have any Harry Potter in your house, don’t hesitate: throw_it_out.
I honestly, truly don’t understand this idea. The main consensus of people holding that position seems to be “any kind of fictional magic is always bad regardless of its origin and who’s using it how for what purpose because the Bible says you shall not mess with the occult.”
Which, um, I guess we need to throw out Narnia and LOTR too then, despite their source of magic being God instead of demons? This is not a logical argument to me.
acardinal, I was curious about your comment about Hamlet. Could you elaborate? I wasn’t aware of anything in the play that related to devils. To elements like purgatory, Catholicism, and Protestantism – yes – but I don’t remember anything in it pertaining to devils… Now it has been awhile since I’ve read the play back-to-back, so maybe I’m misremembering…
VeritasVereVincet, that was not the argument I made. Narnia and LOTR are different from Harry Potter in almost every way. For one, neither the Narnia series nor the LOTR books refer to real occult/voodoo practices, while Harry Potter absolutely does.
Umm, thanks for the warning, Father, but why are people still watching television at all? I have not watched regular TV since the 1970s, read what I need to know and get my news from online sources.
If all the good Catholics would simply not watch television, would it not disappear as a main tool of satan? I recall Thomas Merton’s intriguing insight that we are all made to pray, contemplating, learning to be passive before God, but that the ugly television has taken over that God-given ability. I repeat the source of this amazing insight into how satan has corrupted a place within our minds, souls and imaginations set aside for God.
http://supertradmum-etheldredasplace.blogspot.com/2015/01/if-any-catholic-parent.html
VeritasVereVincet, actually, I just noticed that you said it pretty well in your own comment: Narnia and LOTR’s source of magic is God (while Harry Potter’s is that of demons). That’s essentially the idea.
[This is getting “rabbit-holed” into a Harry Potter discussion. That was not the intent of this blog post.]
“There is nothing to prevent a Christian’s hoping (not knowing) that in practice the final fate of every human being…will be such that hell will not in the end exist.” – Karl Rahner
Supertradmum, our family doesn’t watch TV. We only watch carefully selected movies/DVDs. It gets fun when we get cold calls from AT&T trying to sell us TV services…they’re flabbergasted when I tell them I have no use for that service because we don’t watch any TV. One guy once said, “What do you do for recreation?” Heh, as though watching TV was the only recreational activity on the planet. Sometimes it does seem that way I suppose…doesn’t it?
[This is getting “rabbit-holed” into a Harry Potter discussion. That was not the intent of this blog post.]
Sorry Fr Z! My apologies.
“. . .my gorge rises. . .”
HAMLET Let me see.
Takes the skull.
Alas, poor Yorick! I knew him, Horatio: a fellow
of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy: he hath
borne me on his back a thousand times; and now, how
abhorred in my imagination it is! my gorge rises at
it. Here hung those lips that I have kissed I know
not how oft.
Act V, Scene 1
Thank you so much for this rant, Father. Yes, the devil is not some charming fellow. He is evil incarnate. He and his fallen angels hate us with the most bitterest of passions. The thought of falling into the unquenchable fires of hell is most frightening. Imagine, to suffer forever, to never see God, to experience excruciating pain, to never have one’s worm turn, what a horrendous and terrible vision! For those clergy and laity alike who doubt there is a hell, they should read “Hell and its Torments” by St. Robert Bellarmine. Again, thank you Father, for your great concern for our souls. May Our Lord bless you and Our Virgin Mary pray for you. +JMJ+
I suppose we can be grateful for the small grace that this is a FOX production rather than a DISNEY one.
At least we won’t be reading about “Lucifer-land” being added as an attraction at Disney theme parks in the near future.
(DNA not demons, exit rabbit hole)
This show seems to be perfectly in line with the goals of today’s society: completely reverse the polarity of morality in order to support the supremacy of pleasure. Today’s driving force is not “what is right,” but “what makes me feel good.” Anything which gets in the way of this “ideal” is demonized. Anything which supports it is lionized.
Thus we see marriage destroyed first in the name of “compatibility” and then in the name of “love”, murder lauded under the guise of “choice”, and biological reality rejected through the insistence on the superseding power of “gender identity”–but in the end, they are all houses built on the shifting sands of emotion, and not on the solid rock of God’s Truth.
Truth is abhorrent to the modernist, for it sounds his death knell. It says “You are wrong,” and he cannot abide that.
Rehabilitating Lucifer is impossible. Whatever the result is will merely be a mask of what society desires the Devil to be, and he will laugh long and hard as he hides behind it. For after all, his work is easiest when his existence is denied.
So few new shows succeed, with any luck it will be canceled and forgotten in a couple of months anyway. I don’t know how much a writer can say about such a character. The evil one decides to become an insurance salesman, I presume, and highjinx ensue…? A show like this can either take these serious matters seriously, in which case it will fall apart (as VVV said above, nobody watching this wants to think there actually IS such a thing as truth or goodness or evil), or it can fail to take anything seriously, in which case the show will become real boring, real fast.
I’m more interested in the rabbit hole. I think it’s an important question worth exploring, because unlike this show, Potter is part of our culture and not going away. Quaeritur?
So much commercial television is horrible.
I stopped watching all commercial television after Breaking Bad.
It was the best television ever, but I knew it was the end of an era. We’ll never see its like again.
I’ll do Downton for this last season, but it’s lost its panache. I want it to end because then I will be free of television forever.
I feel like the narrator in “Stand By Me,” when he said “I never had any friends like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”
I never will see any more really good television like Breaking Bad.
This show is hardly the first of its ilk. The long-running show Supernatural has been doing this stuff for quite a while.
Having said that, I think this show may well be a particularly subtle and vicious attack – making an innocuous joke of Lucifer so that more ignorant souls do not take him seriously.
I watched the first thirty minutes of “Lucifer”, after the second episode of the gripping “X-Files” reboot. “Lucifer” brought to mind something I keep in my head for such occasions:
“BOREDOM ALERT! MAN YOUR BOREDOM STATIONS! THIS IS NOT A DRILL!
Had this been a drill, we would be telling you that if this were not a drill, officials would be along with boredom alleviation instructions. Results may vary.”
I had assumed that the market for a show about a market-driven new take on Lucifer would be as small as the market for a ceramic mug bearing the legend:
“You, personally, are hated with a hatred beyond all human understanding.”
As my father liked to say from time to time, “I was wrong once before.”
“The finest trick of the devil is to persuade you that he does not exist.”
-Charles Baudelaire
It seems today that too many people have fallen for this trick.
frjim4321,
I concur with you regarding “Breaking Bad.” I’ve got them all on Blu-ray.
acard, glad we connect on this!
I agree with frjim4321 about the extraordinary merits of “Breaking Bad”. I too have the entire series on Blu-ray discs. I wonder if assuming that there will never be a better TV series than “Breaking Bad” is a sin (however minor) of despair.
Hopefully this can just be a short question and response, to avoid diverting the overall discussion
@ LeGrandDerangement
I never watched the others, but I just started The Walking Dead. I’m well aware that it is more or less amoral, and what morals it pretends to hold are based on relativism.
…but that puts it on a similar moral footing as almost every other contemporary TV show, from Firefly to ultimate fighting to The Big Bang Theory.
Are you saying there are aspects of The Walking Dead I’ve failed to notice or haven’t encountered yet which are more blasphemous than most other TV, or are you criticizing the whole body of modern television (which would be a criticism I wouldn’t care to defend against)?
That “dropped IQ” remark of yours is priceless! I will use it frequently in the future with no shortage of cause.
Re: Muslims, they don’t have a very reliable demonology. They believe that there’s no such thing as demons, but rather that there are good jinns (ie, Muslim ones) and bad jinns (ie, jinns who follow other religions). Bad jinns can convert and become good jinns at any time, and good jinns can go apostate.
Fr. Z wrote: “With relentless malice the “prince of this world” works to trick you into letting him have some control in your life. Demons cleverly and with perfect timing stimulate your appetites and passions based on how well they know your proclivities.”
Last month CNN aired a pro-Satanist documentary “The Satanists Next Door” hosted by Lisa Ling. On December 15 at the Newsbusters/MRC website Katie Yoder posted a critique, with photos, titled: “Sick: Satanist Sprays Blood on Virgin Mary.”
This is an excerpt from Yoder’s critique:
At the end of her show, Ling insisted on a need for the Satanic Temple.
Young people are “rejecting traditionally held values and creating their own rules,” she said. “But passing on a Judeo-Christian faith doesn’t mean that young people don’t long to believe in something.”
“And that’s why this group is here,” she applauded. [the recent Baphomet statue ceremony in Detroit]
Here in a positive way, according to Ling.
“Nearly 700 people have turned out tonight for Satan. And are even embracing Lucifer’s look,” she said. “But mostly, this crowd is here to witness the symbol of their faith live and in person for the very first time.”
She added, “In the fight for religious freedom, Baphomet is both a symbol and a tool, and it could show up in a town near you,” she added.
End Excerpt
With catch-phrases such as “religious freedom” and “witness the symbol of their faith live”, and a pro-abortion angle, this CNN documentary unintentionally makes Fr. Z’s point about passions and proclivities.
One more excerpt from Yoder’s critique:
Later on in the episode, Ling wanted to know from [Satanist Michael] Mars, “Why Satan?”
“Why not? What actually has Satan done that is so evil besides rebel against God’s ideas and will?” he responded. “He chooses knowledge.”
According to Ling, the Satanic Temple, “promoted seven tenets designed to inspire noble action and thought where compassion, wisdom and justice always prevail.”
End Excerpt
The old tricks appear to be working today.
First it was Dominion which as a concept was bad enough. Then they took the concept and just labeled it for what it really is: Public Relation department working overtime for L.
I was happily watching Fox’s reboot of X-Files on Monday and got the slimy feeling when I just saw that work on the screen. Its like the shields went up and locked down from even watching the preview for that snake.
Really! I’m not a prude but some of these shows make my stomach turn. They are truly scraping the bottom of the shoe w/concepts recently.
And one last item: What has Hamlet to do with this show? I studied Shakespeare in college for a semester and did a paper on Hamlet. I have no recollection of Hamlet’s sole focus being on 1 entity.
BTW – I could feel the Ego dripping to name a show after him and thought – his minions that are lost to the Light are hard at work aren’t they?
I had limited TV reception up until 6 months ago when I moved (no TV now, and I’m not in a rush to get one). Back then, I caught one of the episodes of Supernatural dealing with Purgatory. Their portrayal of Purgatory was so completely skewed, that those ****-for-brains writers and producers literally distorted Purgatory beyond recognition ; which meant that it would never even enter the mind of anyone watching the show (who had no understanding [or limited understanding] of Purgatory) to pray for the holy souls in Purgatory. It took a while before I could actually get around to praying for those who make such programs . . . after my blood had stopped boiling : (
Our Blessed Lord’s words to St. Faustina from Day 8 of the Novena to the Divine Mercy
——————————–
Several weeks ago at a neighboring French parish, at Saturday morning Mass Father gave us all a heads-up during the homily saying that a TV series called ‘Lucifer’ was about to air . . .reminding us, “So, that’s where we are now in society. . . Let’s make sure we continue to pray.”
When people start denying the existence of Satan , they deny the existence of sin. Distorting the image of Satan by creating a TV personality is one effective way of moving the general public towards denial of the devil’s existence -particularly in a society who embraces an aversion to the acknowledgement of personal sin .
And if there is no such thing as sin , then why did Christ come into the world ? What did He come to redeem us from?
Dear Semper Gumby,
Lisa Ling’s comment that rejecting “Judeo-Chrisitan faith doesn’t mean that young people don’t long to believe in something” is sadly not a new thought. G.K. Chesterton provides the counterargument:
“When men choose not to believe in God, they do not thereafter believe in nothing, they then become capable of believing in anything.”
“[Satanism] is proud and it’s sly. It likes to be superior; it loves to horrify the innocent with things half understood, to make children’s flesh creep. That’s why it’s so fond of mysteries and initiations and secret societies and all the rest of it. Its eyes are turned inward, and however grand and grave it may look, it’s always hiding a small, mad smile.”
Iamlucky13,
I’ve actually watched episodes of Walking Dead, and find the notion of soulless humans traipsing around biting everyone to be blasphemous. (I was about to make reference to certain public figures in the news, but decided to give my Confessor a break, lol.) I don’t own a TV, but buy my own DVDs. I do regard most of what I see on TV, when a guest at others’ homes, to be redolent of garbage, when not downright filth. Big Bang Theory is a perfect example, e. g. Allegedly a comedy, with plenty of bed-hopping. Two of the “actors” in this thing are actually same-sex “married”. I’ll stop this rant now.
Fr. Z…this post has scared the hell out of me.
Fr. Z…Seriously…thank you for this post. How we need these kinds of thoughts & words for our salvation.
Yesterday, a local news station posted a video in FB of a young toddler praying for her family members (and Santa) caught on a baby video monitor. It was cute beyond belief. Apparently this video has gone viral. Though many comments expressed appreciation for the video and praise for the parents teaching, a significant number began to call it “brainwashing” and “child abuse” to teach a young person to pray and believe in God. Whan Christians objected to these comments, quickly new comments sprang up invoking prayers to satan and gleefully equating the two. Even humor or satire of this sort (if that’s what it is) would not have been spoken as little as a decade ago.
St Michael’s assistance is indeed is needed in this world.
Those faithful Christian who aren’t hounded by Satan on a regular basis had better fall to their knees and pray fervently. It may mean he thinks he already has you in his pocket.
Mary Jane, at one point in the play Hamlet is musing about whether the Ghost is really his father. His line is: “The devil hath power to assume a pleasing shape.” There are a few other references to hell and damnation. I’m not sure where they are right now, but they’re in there somewhere.
Father Z said: “They have an intellect that surpasses our mere human faculties in a way that we can’t fathom. They never tire. They are relentless. They are real. …
They never sleep, never tire, are never distracted, have no need to travel from point a to b, and they never miss what you are up to.”
Kyle Reese ( Michael Biehn ):
“Listen and understand. That Terminator is out there. It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop, ever, until you are dead.”
This helps me grasp a little the level of implacable hatred the devil has for us.
I don’t think kids are reading Harry Potter anymore. I got in the habit of asking students (4th graders) their thoughts on Harry Potter and the past three years none of them have recognized the name. Now they’re reading “39 Clues” and the “Percy Jackson” series. Please google “Rick Riordan” to get a flavor of what these books are about. But, in a nutshell, they involve children fighting evil forces. There are magical powers involved – the PJ series (with a follow up series) involves the Olympian gods. I urge everyone to read at least some of these because it’s important, imho, to be able to know what children are reading – trust me, the kids are enthralled by them. They bring them to class and pull them out in free moments. It’s amazing to see them reading books in this computer age – the PJ series in particular are pulling the boys in. As for “39 Clues”, I was talking about the catacombs one day and a girl in class started explaining what they were to everyone. I asked her how she knew about catacombs – she said she read about them in “39 Clues”.
Gerard Plourde: I agree, good quote from GK Chesterton.
It is unfortunate, but not surprising, that CNN failed to provide an opposing view during an hour-long “documentary.” Two minutes could have been provided to interview, say, Fr. Gary Thomas – the subject of Matt Baglio’s book The Rite – or the Italian exorcist Fr. Amorth.
Gracie: Thanks for the info, I’ve heard of Percy Jackson and the Olympians but not 39 Clues.
You may have heard of this already, but the Catholic novelist Michael D O’Brien wrote two useful non-fiction books examining modern fiction such as the Golden Compass series, movies such as the Twilight series, and several TV shows. One O’Brien title is “A Landscape with Dragons: The Battle For Your Child’s Mind.”
Speaking of the Twilight series, there are numerous Internet articles and video clips in which Robert Pattinson, the star vampire actor, describes being asked by a mother to “bite” her baby- which Pattinson said he did. Also, at least one young girl has approached Pattinson and pleaded for a “bite.”
The Catholic author O’Brien discusses the effect of both diabolical and pagan modern fiction, movies, and TV shows on young minds in his two books.
@ LeGrandDerangement
“I’ve actually watched episodes of Walking Dead, and find the notion of soulless humans traipsing around biting everyone to be blasphemous.”
Thank you for responding. I see where you’re coming from. This is actually something I’ve debated with myself whenever I watch an episode. On the one hand, the conscience is assuaged by the presumption that the person is already dead and has had their body effectively hijacked by something evil. On the other hand, the whole concept of zombies is a fantasy that dreams up these walking dead more or less for the purpose of having an enemy to kill with neither remorse nor pity. At the same time, even if I write off those concerns as neutral, all of the other problems with contemporary television are present.
The description of this Lucifer show, at least, leaves me no doubt that it is a terribly blasphemous.
Separately, it reminds me of the Noah movie from a year or two ago. I didn’t watch that one either, based on warnings from several Catholic bloggers who did. It did not, as far as I’ve heard, attempt to turn reality on its head the way this Lucifer show apparently is doing. But what concerned me about it was the way it appeared to treat the Bible as pure myth to be toyed with and rewritten, which it does seem to share with the Lucifer show.
Semper Gumby,
My impression is “39 Clues” is more popular with girls and “Percy Jackson” with the boys. Can you imagine my shock at seeing a 10 year boy pull a 416 page book out of his bag to read?
Ferde Rombola, thank you!
“In times like this I confess to feeling a deep respect–even an appreciation–for my heretical brothers and sisters in Islam. They would NEVER tolerate something like this in their countries, and yet we Christians with our fatal addiction to “religious liberty,” tolerance, and relativism sit idly by while the Devil himself is practically worshiped (yes, worshiped) in primetime.”
I think you need to read up on Islam a bit more. Do you realize that sodomy, including of little boys, is common in Afghan society, even among the high ranking military men, who keep little boys as sex slaves? An American military man is being punished by our government, right now, because he defended a little boy who was raped by an Afghan general or whatever they are called, and when the mother brought the poor boy in, the general laughed, and the American soldier knocked him to the ground. For defending this boy, our current government, with the help of the military enablers, are punishing this great man who defended a small child.
Women are chattel, nothing more, to Muslim men. All Western women are whores, their own women are property. Children are property. They have no rights at all. They can be beaten, stoned to death, raped, killed, as it is deemed good to the male. If there is any value to life at all, it is not obvious.
I think you are badly mistaken in the target of your appreciation and respect. I encourage you not to confuse prayer positions with piety.
“Talk to infantrymen who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Muslim men there are all about sodomy, disgusting forms of pornography, and alcoholism.”
This is a blanket statement stereotyping all Muslim men and not true. Yes, you will find many who use pornography, beat their wives and some who have homosexual relationships, but you will find an equal amount or more of such people in the United States who call themselves “Christians.” Imagine what a devout Muslim infantryman might say about the men of this country (and our culture) if his country was here to occupy the United States during a war. Strip clubs everywhere, rampant abortion, prostitution, domestic and other forms of violence, tv shows like Lucifer and Sex in the City.
Getting back to Lucifer, I have seen those billboards too and knew it would be something like this. It makes me glad I dont have a television.
For me one of the best ways of understanding what of how Satan works was reading Georges Bernanos’s ‘Sous le Soleil de Satan’ (Under Satan’s Sun).
For me one of the best ways of understanding of how Satan works was reading Georges Bernanos’s ‘Sous le Soleil de Satan’ (Under Satan’s Sun).
I gave up television, when I got married, because I can easily get sucked in and waste time, and most of it is garbage, even news has an anti- Catholic twist in what it relates or fails to relate, and because I wanted my children to be able to live without it.
After learning about suggestive imaging and getting children used to slime so that they don’t mind wallowing in it, (and that warning from the pope that letting the, then pretty innocent, television into your home was letting the world into your chapel) I decided to cut out most movies.
But I gave up movies too, when one evening, after watching a movie, that my husband and I had rented for a sort of at home date night, my husband said afterwards,”Whenever I watch a movie, I remember that passage from the Imitation, ‘Whenever I go out among men I feel I return less a man.'”. So, we mutually gave it up, because, we’re not made for this world.
People can so easily get dragged around by what they feel like doing, so it follows that the evil one would use the pleasure box to drag souls through the mud.
As for me, I might give up Fr. Z for lent… Not because he’s trash, but because he’s not God, and everything that’s not God must, eventually, give way. “I must decrease that He might increase…”
Its amazing, 50 years ago, networks were reluctant for Jesus to be included in the Charlie Brown Christmas special because it might offend non-Christian minorities, now they will happily make the Devil the hero (I was first going to say protagonist, but its possible to have an evil protagonist) without worrying about offending the vast number of Christians in this country. In addition to the many and well justified religious complaints, I am amazed at how insensitive our culture has become. The point of free speech and freedom of religion is so that men might follow their conscience, not so they can run rush shod over the beliefs of others.
Islam may not allow for a heretical television show, but many of your “heretical brothers and sisters” are slave owners.
BOOM! Excellent! Excellent! Excellent! Fr. Z
Starofthesea47-
The difference is in Islam pedaphilia is permitted. Mohamed’s wife Fatima was 9 when he married and consumated the union. In 2015, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi issued a fatwa for the Mujahideen to enjoy young “boys” if no women were available. So a Muslim man may engage in such activities and remain a ‘good’ Muslim.
In Christianity, a man acts against his faith to do these things and in Catholicism such an act automatically removes the individual from communion with Holy Mother Church entirely.
Thank you for the excellent post, Father! Now go put on your spiritual Kevlar….
Just another thought…
Something new that recently occurred to me…I don’t think they can read eachother’s minds either nor would I assume they share information….because they hate eachother also. Not that they couldn’t, but that they commonly don’t? Like no community database. So if Demon A has been on your case for a number of years, but you are successful in giving him the slip, but now you end up on Demon B’s radar, B is starting fresh, with no previous case file so to speak. I’ve never read that in any literature on the topic, that I recall.
I could be wrong.
Just a thought…
So apparently this poisonous “Lucifer” show presents him as satanists believe him to be. How much more blatant is this stuff gonna get?
In answer to a common question, how does someone become a devil-worshipper? Often, these are mislead folks who believe that Lucifer is maligned, misunderstood and unjustly punished. This fallen Seraphim simply wants back his rightful place in heaven. Devil-worshippers are assisting this ‘underdog’ in his battle against God the Creator.
This is the impression I have gotten from researching the histories of satanists who have left that evil behind.
[to clarify, the devil made his choice that instant he rebelled, and a third of the angels fell with him, there’s no turning back, and to top his punishment, it is specifically Our Lady who will crush his head, and yes, he hates us with implacable envy]
So this new horrible show seems to support this subtle, or maybe not-so-subtle, impression. When anyone watches these things [including Supernatural, that movie Michael, and other half-baked, twisted shows] whether they realize it or not, these have an effect on beliefs, understanding, and one’s Faith. And if these destructive fantasies don’t change outright one’s outlook on the Faith, these certainly set the mind to wonder – almost like tilling the soil of thought. Eventually, these twisted explanations will plant, take root, and destroy truths of the Faith in the viewer. [this is why the Church used to have an Index of forbidden works – it was well-understood the subtle effect bad books have on the Faith]
We are getting closer and closer to the last step of acceptance of Lucifer who intends to reign over us in cruel tyrannical domination. Our culture has accepted regicide, destruction of the family, growth and acceptance of other belief systems, relativity, bad science, homosexuality, on and on because of slow erosion of Truth, the slow introduction of evil, over hundreds of years. And now the denouement?
These kinds of shows and books set the soul up for acceptance of lies and misunderstanding, and ultimately loss of the complete and total unblemished Faith. Sets the stage to naively welcome the poor maligned and nice-guy Lucifer. Run from this stuff!
KateD
The army of demons are united in hatred and most certainly do work together. The angelic hierarchy they had in heaven still exists, even in their fallen hatred of God, with the tyrannical Lucifer at the top demanding exact obedience. The abilities and strength differ just the same as our good angels, but only in an evil and twisted way. They communicate instantly, intellectually as all angels do, without the interference us humans have with our bodies.
Additionally, because of the implacable hatred, they study each of us non-stop. They cannot read our minds but they watch our every movement, reaction, facial expression – everything we do. [With God’s permission – and also there are occurrences hidden from the devil – they are not all-knowing, but observant as God allows] Its all to find our weaknesses in order to defeat us. This is why we need spiritual help – our puny minds are no match for the natural abilities of the evil angels. We ARE up against Dominions and Powers.
Mary of Agreda [I believe it was] said that immediately after their defeat at the Crucifixion, a council in Hell was held with all the devils plotting the destruction of the Church that Christ had just founded. That plan is still followed and in full gear. Lucifer plans to sit at the top of the Church and tyrannize man.
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