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Archbishop Fulton Sheen on the Devil



A woman bought an expensive dress, brought it home to the husband, showed him the bill. The husband said, when you tried it on, why didn't you say get behind me Satan, she said I did, and he said it looks so good from the back.

Then another joke about a man who went down to Hell and got treated very well, until he decided he liked it so much he'd stay. But then the Devil put him into the hottest corner. When the man protested he said, before you were a tourist, now you're a resident. The point being we get treated very well now by the Devil, but when we are residents, it's a different story.

As the theologians dropped the demonic, the psychiatrists picked it up. What is the diabolic from the purely psychiatric point of view? Diabolic comes Greek words to tear apart, anything that produces discord, tears apart, reduces unity, that is the diabolic. A psychiatrist who wrote about the diabolic analyses the way it works. He mentions three characteristics - love of nudity, violence, split personalities.

Gospels also mention a man possessed by demons, with three characteristics. He was nude, violent, and his mind was split. Our Lord said to him, what is your name. He said my name is Legion. A legion in his time meant 6,000 men in the Roman army. See, he's a person yet he's split, he's 6,000 others.

Part two

The psychiatric never correlates the three characteristics with the young man in the Gospels, but Sheen is doing that, because he could not but help but notice the similarities.

So the diabolic disrupts. And when ever you get a great manifestation of the Spirit, you always get the Devil working.

The essence of the satanic or diabolic is the hatred of the Cross of Christ.

Third temptation, not to be concerned with the Divine, but only the social and political order. Which will be the major temptation, Sheen thinks, of the Church in the next 100 years.

Part three and Part four.

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