Latest / The Catholic Current / Can't Face Evil? (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 7/20/26

Transcript

Can't Face Evil? (Fr. Robert McTeigue, S.J.) 7/20/26 · The Catholic Current

• 0:00
  If you had to come face to face with evil,
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  what would you do? What would you need? What would you
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  say? We're back in my college days. There was a movie, some vampire
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  movie, and the, the young hero meets
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  the vampire with his red eyes and the pointy ears and the
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  big teeth, and the boy whips out a crucifix, and to the boy's
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  horror The vampire just laughed and he says, silly boy,
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  that only works if you believe. Apparently no one had
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  told the boy that. I think that was need-to-know, mission-critical information.
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  Now, even back then, it didn't surprise me.
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  Well, of course you have to believe or
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  the fight against evil doesn't work. And it shouldn't surprise us
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  when the worldly get that wrong.
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  But what if people who call themselves Christians
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  get that wrong? What then? Stay with me, I got a story to tell.
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  Hi, I'm Jesuit Father Robert McTeague, your host here every day of The Catholic Current,
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  coming to you from the Station of the Cross Catholic Media Network. Let's take a
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  closer look. Glad you're here.
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  Wouldn't surprise you if a dark, brooding, melancholic Irishman like me
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  told you that I've been thinking about evil lately. Well, actually,
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  I think about evil a lot. I think about it nearly all the time.
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  I've taught courses in philosophy and theology about
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  the problem of evil. It's called Theodicy. And read
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  a lot of words. I've also met evil face to face many times.
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  And it seems to me there are some mistakes that
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  are made in confronting evil. Recently, I read an essay that
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  had to do with all the movies that came
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  from Bram Stoker's classic novel Dracula.
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  And this guy had a really good insight. He said, you know,
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  the movies can't do justice to Bram Stoker's intention because
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  it focuses on the person of Dracula, either as
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  a complete monster in the 1920s movie Nosferatu,
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  or as kind of a romantic figure with Bela
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  Lugosi starting in the 1930s and all the way up to today,
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  where it's cool to have a boyfriend who is
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  the vampire. We saw that in the unspeakable Twilight series.
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  All right, and he says, here's what's wrong. Here's what
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  Bram Stoker missed. Here's what the people who drew from Bram
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  Stoker missed. Bram Stoker said all these different
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  people who were confronting the evil that Dracula represented— the
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  young women, the doctors, the young men who love the
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  young women and try to protect them, the psychiatrist, the scientist, Van Helsing,
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  they all had a limited frame of reference that
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  didn't budget for, if you will,
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  intractable evil. And in the
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  records of the letters and the journals, etc., you realize every
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  person from those different categories of Victorian life in the novel all
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  failed because they
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  weren't prepared really to deal with
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  intractable evil. And that
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  made me think back to another movie I saw in college, and I used to
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  show it to students from time to time. It's from, uh, 1990,
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  uh, stars Jeff Goldblum, and it's called Mr. Frost.
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  I'm not going to give any spoilers, but you need to see this movie if
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  you can find it. In brief, Jeff Goldblum plays a crazy
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  person. There's a big surprise. And he plays a man named
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  Mr. Frost who is arrested for having confessed
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  to murdering 24 people. He ends up in a very
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  special hospital for the criminally insane, and all the staff,
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  they're going to get through to him. They're going to break him.
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  They're going to cure him because they're scientists.
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  And not only do they practice the science,
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  they practice the social science. They know
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  about feelings. So they are ready to deal with
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  evil. So Jeff Goldblum sits down, uh, the psychiatrist and says,
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  look, here's the situation. I'm the devil,
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  he says. And Uh,
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  there was a time when people acknowledged God, they acknowledged the devil,
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  they knew they had a soul. And he said, and they would bargain, uh,
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  for their soul, you know, love or wealth or youth or,
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  you know, all that sort of stuff. And then Freud and
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  you psychiatrists came along and you ruined it because nobody
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  believes in the soul anymore. You've got all this unconsciousness
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  nonsense. No one makes a deal with the devil.
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  For his unconscious. So here's
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  what I want you to do. I want you, the famous psychiatrist, to shoot me
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  dead because you believe I'm the devil. Psychiatry will
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  be discredited. People will go back to believing again
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  in God and the devil, real good and real evil. I'm back in business.
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  What do you say? Well, of course she scoffs, and the rest of the movie
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  is what he does to prove to her that he
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  really is the devil. Now, one of the reasons I like this movie was because
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  it showed all those smug, utterly smug,
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  skeptical, cynical,
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  worldly-wise, highly credentialed scientists
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  could not deal with evil.
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  And you might say, duh, how can a Christian
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  be surprised? Well, Not so fast,
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  not so fast. The perennial wisdom of
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  the church from the time of the apostles has
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  been that the only answer to intractable
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  evil is Christ crucified
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  and risen, and that's it. And since I've
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  been working in media, coming up on 8 years now, it seems to
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  me that there are a lot of members of the Catholic Cadres of
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  the People Who Should Really Know Better Club. And people suggest that maybe
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  even senior members of that Catholic Cadre of People Who Really Should Know
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  Better Club don't have a category for dealing
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  with intractable evil anymore, because apparently everything,
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  everything can be resolved with dialogue
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  and listening. An accompaniment.
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  And apparently, as some people tell me, they say you
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  just click your heels 3 times and you say synodality, and we all live
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  happily ever after. Maybe even joining particular
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  Italian archbishop, president of Pontifical Academy, singing rousing
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  choruses of John Lennon's Imagine.
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  And it doesn't work. It's like that vampire
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  movie from the '80s, Silly Boy, That Only Works If You Believe.
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  But at least the boy who didn't believe was presenting the crucifix.
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  I'm wondering if some members of
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  the Catholic cadres of the People Who Should Really Know
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  Better club taking a bureaucratic approach rather
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  than a specifically Christian approach.
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  Bureaucrats, every time they say a problem, well, you've got to have
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  meetings and you're going to produce support and we're to need a budget.
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  Ka-ching. And we talk about talking about
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  talking about talking, and we propose solutions and we dialogue,
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  lather, rinse, repeat, and nothing,
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  nothing gets done. And Christ crucified
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  and risen is not preached, presented, or invoked.
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  And I think that's part of the mess that we're in. You say,
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  well, Father, well, what do we do about that?
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  I'm turning to you now because I'm open to suggestions.
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  This has been bothering me for a while. I've been scribbling about it, praying about
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  it, talking about it with friends, doing a lot of research. So let me know
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  how you want me to handle this idea that
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  we've forgotten to invoke Christ, him crucified
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  and risen, in confronting evil. Do you want me to write about
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  it, a quick essay online? Do you think I should write a longer essay?
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  Uh, in an old-fashioned, you know, paper magazine?
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  Should I do a brief video, a longer video, a series of videos?
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  What do you think would work best as we explore this issue together?
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  Let me know in the comments section or contact me at thestationofthecross.com/askfather.
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  Saint Paul said we preach Christ crucified.
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  I want to do that. I think we should all invoke
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  Christ. We need to stand before the world, the flesh,
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  and the devil and present Christ crucified and say,
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  Ave Crux, spes unica.
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  Hail to the cross, our only hope. I really
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  do want to hear from you. Meanwhile, think on these things today, take them
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  to prayer, and talk about it with those you love. Go in peace, and please
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  do pray for me, for I am a sinner.