The Devil You Say
Through the centuries the devil has always been a player. John Milton imagined Satan as a cunning and “magnificent” fallen angel. American Puritans thought of him as a cloven-hoofed beast and dance-leader of witches. Robert Johnson told his friends the devil was an excellent guitar player. The Rolling Stones sang of Lucifer as “a man of wealth and taste” in their song “Sympathy for the Devil.”
Recently the Gallup polling organization asked Americans about their belief in the devil. Sixty-eight percent said that they believe in the devil, 20 percent said they don’t, and 12 percent said they aren’t sure. Majorities of Americans of every political inclination, region, educational level, and age group said the devil exists.
As you would expect, 83 percent of Americans who said religion is “very” important in their lives believe in the devil. The number drops to 62 percent among those for whom religion is “fairly” important. Only 22 percent of those who said religion is “not very” important said they believe in the devil. In fact, this is the only subgroup in which those who believe in the devil are in the minority.
Though Gallup polling has shown that religiosity tends to be greatest among the oldest age groups, belief in the devil doesn’t seem to be. Sixty-six percent of people between the ages of 18 and 29 said they believe in the devil, as did 70 percent of those between 30 and 64 and 65 percent of people 65 and older.
Nor does higher education appear to quash belief in the devil. While Americans with postgraduate degrees are less likely to believe in the devil (55 percent) than college graduates (68 percent) and those whose education doesn’t extend past high school (70 percent), a majority of postgraduates still believe in the devil.
And get this: Seventy-nine percent of Protestants believe in the devil, but only 70 percent of Catholics say they do. Modern catechesis, anyone?
Good Things Come to Those Who Wait
Muslims in Algeria who wish to convert to Catholicism must be patient. The Catholic Church in that country establishes three to four years of formation “to verify the truth of their [the Muslims’] quest and their solidity,” said Fr. Bernard Lapize, vicar general of the Algerian diocese of Oran. He noted that because of the strict requirements “some candidates go to other, less-exacting Christian groups.”
But he defended the Church’s long catechization as a “way to discern if the petitioners really want to be Christians or if, on the contrary, they want to leave Algerian society and go to a more permissive West. We accept the desire of those who come from Islam and wish to enter the Church, but with much attention to verify their motivations,” he said. “People who are attracted to Christianity receive much criticism from the [Algerian] media.”
The vicar general said that calm has returned to Algeria after living through a crisis that culminated in 1997 when “the Church paid the price of its solidarity with the death of 18 priests and religious,” among them Bishop Pierre Claverie of Oran.
“The country is more tranquil and more stable, and the religious life of Muslims is more civic,” he noted. The Catholic Church in Algeria “forms part of the country,” the priest said, giving as examples “Caritas, the religious libraries and women’s workshops, which are fully accepted.”
Edith Stein Asked Pius XI to Intervene against Hitler
Edith Stein addressed a sealed letter to Pope Pius XI requesting his intervention at the start of the persecution of Catholics and Jews in Hitler’s Germany. The document, dated April 12, 1933, has surfaced thanks to the opening in late February of the Vatican archives referring to Pius XI’s papacy (1922–1939).
The papal reaction that responded most closely to the “sealed letter” was articulated in Pius XI’s encyclical letter Mit Brennender Sorge (With Burning Sorrow). Published in German on March 14, 1937, the papal document on the situation of the Church in the German Reich pointed out the incompatibility between Catholicism and Nazism’s racist and pagan assumptions. After Pius XI signed the encyclical in Rome, it was taken secretly to Germany by a priest and distributed clandestinely to all parishes by priests and young people.
Edith Stein—canonized in 1998 as Teresa Benedicta of the Cross—was a Jewish convert and a philosopher who dedicated herself to phenomenology. She converted to Catholicism after studying the life of Teresa of Avila. The recently discovered letter was the last document Stein signed as a professor of the German Institute of Scientific Pedagogy in Munster, as she could no longer continue to teach at that institution.
The Nazi persecution made Stein’s scientific and teaching work impossible. Eventually she entered the convent of Discalced Carmelites in Cologne. She later was in the Netherlands. She was martyred at the Nazi concentration camp in Auschwitz in 1942.
Most in UK Still Identify with Christianity
Most people in England and Wales—71.1 percent—still regard themselves as Christians, although only about 11 percent of them go to church at least once a month. Despite the rise of secularism, 37.3 million described their religion as Christianity, according to the 2001 British census, the Telegraph newspaper reported.
The census, the first to ask a question on religion, confirmed Islam as the second largest faith, with 1.54 million (3.1 percent). Other religions include 552,000 Hindus (1.1 percent), 329,000 Sikhs (0.6 percent), and 260,000 Jews (0.5 percent). About 7.7 million (14.8 percent) said they had no religion.
The census also revealed that 28 percent of Scottish people now say they have no faith, the Scotsman newspaper noted. The biggest religion there is still the Church of Scotland, with 42.4 percent of the population as members, but the census indicated a drop-off rate of just less than 5 percent, with 47 percent saying they were brought up in the faith.
The Catholic Church has also seen a small decline in numbers: Sixteen percent say they are still practicing, compared with 17 percent who were brought up in the faith.
Pope Sees Progress in Catholic-Jewish Relations
John Paul II expressed his desire to bring Catholics and Jews ever closer and called on believers of both communities to help build peace in the face of a threat of war. The Pope was addressing Riccardo Di Segni, chief rabbi of Rome, whom he received February 13 in audience together with other rabbis and Jewish leaders of the city.
It was the first time that Di Segni, who became chief rabbi a year ago, met with the Pope in the Vatican. The rabbi’s predecessor, Elio Toaff, whom the Pope remembered “with profound esteem” during the audience, was a friend of the Holy Father’s.
During the meeting, John Paul II emphasized “the intense desire that the Catholic Church nourishes to make its ties of friendship and reciprocal collaboration with the Jewish community more profound.” The Holy Father also referred to the “historic and unforgettable” visit he made in 1986 to the synagogue of Rome.
That event represented “an important stage in the path toward understanding between Jews and Catholics,” the Pope said. He expressed the hope that the path of reciprocal trust completed to date “will increment relations between the Catholic community and the Jewish community in Rome,” the oldest Jewish community in Western Europe.
The Holy Father acknowledged that in the past the two communities were hostile toward one another. But, he said, the gradual application of the Second Vatican Council’s document on the Church’s relations with non-Christians, Nostra Aetate, as well as the gestures of friendship between the two communities, “have contributed to direct our relations toward every greater reciprocal understanding.”
Di Segni officially invited the Holy Father to visit the synagogue of Rome again on the centenary of its construction, which will take place next year.
God Is Not Indifferent to Sin
According to Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, it is not possible to remove God’s judgment and punishment from the Christian faith because to do so would mean that God is indifferent to evil.
The prefect of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith said, “God combats evil and for this reason, as judge, he must also punish to do justice.” Cardinal Ratzinger clarified this point when directing a lectio divina (Latin, sacred reading) in the Church of Santa Maria in Transpontina on the Via della Conciliazione near the Vatican.
The reflection was focused on the biblical Book of Jonah, the prophet who refused to preach in Nineveh, as God had requested. When Jonah set sail for Tarshish, he was thrown into the sea and swallowed by a great fish. Three days later, he was delivered alive on dry land. According to Cardinal Ratzinger, one of the great errors of believers today is to “feel at ease with sin.”
As a result, the heart “becomes blind, ceases to seek God, does not desire grace, and does not feel any repentance.” Malice follows, which explains the outrages of Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot and their cohorts, the cardinal said. It must not be forgotten that “Christ did not come because everything is good and is under the reign of grace, but because the call to goodness and repentance is totally necessary,” the cardinal stressed.
In order to be credible in proclaiming God, “Christians must be the first in the path of penance,” which is a sign of conversion, Ratzinger said. “Conversion never ends,” since it entails a constant struggle against one’s sins.
God Also Has a Sense of Humor
Or at least someone at the Zenit news agency does. The quasi-official agency of the Vatican ran the following headline on a February 12 dispatch: “Pope Misses a Mass for the Sick Because of a Cold.”
Apparently the celebration of World Day of the Sick ended in Rome with a spontaneous procession of thousands of faithful carrying candles who went to hear John Paul II, who was suffering from a slight cold. Although the Pope was unable to attend a Mass on Tuesday in St. Peter’s Basilica, afterward he insisted on greeting those present, including some in wheelchairs, from the window of his study.
The Pope read in a hoarse voice a few paragraphs of the address he had prepared for the occasion. “In this year, troubled by not a few worries over the future of humanity, I have asked that the prayer of the rosary have, as its special intentions, the cause of peace and of the family,” he said. “You, dear sick brothers and sisters, are in the front line to intercede for these two great intentions.”