It was sometime back in the 1960’s or 1970’s. The First
Friday Club was a group pf Catholic professional men in Detroit who met for
lunch in the Book Cadillac Hotel on the first Friday of the month to hear a
speaker on a topic of interest.
On one such occasion, Father Charles Coughlin, the famed
‘radio priest’ of the depression years, who had been silenced by the Vatican
for his political views about the Roosevelt administration, came out of his
long absence from public appearances to speak to the men of the First Friday
Club.
I shall never forget his opening words. In a rather high,
strong, expressive voice he announced: “I want to speak to you men today about
a subject that is as modern as tomorrow. I am going to talk to you about the
devil.”
From those challenging words, he embarked upon a fascinating
description of myriad examples of satanic influences in human life.
Father Coughlin reminded us that the existence of the devil,
a destructive, malignant, hate-filled personification of malice, is as much an
article of our Christian faith as are the benign angels and saints to whom we
address our daily prayers and petitions.
In a day and an age of such human enlightenment that sees
men walk on the moon and explores the atomic structure of every known particle
of matter; that gathers and disseminates every scrap of information and every
discovery of science, we struggle to explain and understand everything.
Including the vicissitudes of human behavior. We want to
know why. We want to understand how a perfectly normal, mild mannered, law
abiding, 64 year old accountant and real estate investor can suddenly become
the insane perpetrator of an inexplicable massacre of historic proportions.
Stephen Paddock has been described as a very ordinary, well
adjusted, unremarkable
man; a neighbor, a landlord, a gambler, an investor. His
live-in girl friend described him in these words:
“I knew Stephen Paddock
as a kind, caring, quiet man. I loved him and hoped for a quiet future together
with him. He never said anything to me or took any action that I was aware of,
that I understood in any way to be a warning that something horrible like this
was going to happen.”
No doubt criminologists and psychologists will seek to
explain what may have caused Paddock to snap. Certainly, it was not a sudden
onslaught. He accumulated an arsenal of weapons and ammunition. He researched
various venues. The massacre was something he had planned for a long time;
something he thought about, envisioned, and prepared for.
If he was deranged, it did not affect his ability to
function. We ask ourselves. “How could
anyone in his right mind do such a thing?”
It would seem axiomatic that Paddock was not “in his right
mind” but if he wasn’t, who or what was in control of his thoughts and his
actions?
Father Coughlin would have given a ready answer: Paddock was
in league with the Devil.
It is indeed a frightening thought that the Evil Spirit can
work his will through the agency of an otherwise ordinary and unremarkable
human being. Assuming that the police and the FBI are unable to come up with a
better explanation, that may be all we will ever deduce from the Las Vegas
massacre.
It may or may not be enough. Certainly there is enough
mindless slaughter of human beings on this planet and in our beloved United
States of America to challenge our capacity to understand, accept and respond.
When a hurricane descends upon Texas or Louisiana, we accept
it as a natural disaster. We circle the wagons of our emotions and face up to
the need for collective, sympathetic response. Mother Nature forces us to come
together, to hold hands, to help each other with words, works and the soothing
oil of sympathy.
It is hard for us to accept that the work of Satan is
ongoing and is, in a very real sense, part and parcel of our lives on Planet
Earth. When someone like Stephen Paddock explodes into a demonic terrorist we
have to realize that human nature is part of Nature; that, as Shakespeare wrote,
“the evil that men do lives after them; the good is oft interred with their
bones.”
The slaughter in Las Vegas, as heart wrenching and
disheartening as it was, is only a more dramatic episode in the day to day
lives of the American people. More people are gunned down in Chicago every
month than Paddock killed in Nevada.
It may be less dramatic, but the truth of it is that the
Devil is as much in evidence in teen age gang warfare as he is in the mass
killing of the patrons of a country music festival.
Somehow, some day, the good Lord will raise up among us the
voices of men and women who will remind us that the beauty and success of
Christian civilization is founded in the eternal struggle between Good and
Evil.
No amount of arrest and imprisonment, law and order, or
probation and rehabilitation can take the place of the fire and brimstone of
classic Christianity.
Eternal damnation is the workplace and the residence of the
evil spirit. It was and still is, the best regulator of human conduct.
You and I had better believe it.
