Lucky us. We can all sleep easy tonight. Not only that, Our Lord must feel pretty silly after the whole 40-days-in-the-desert business.
Why?
Well, according to Bishop Vicente de Paula Ferreira of Livramento de Nossa Senhora in Brazil, the devil is “imaginary”.
This controversy broke out after the said bishop questioned the theological basis for consecrating dioceses to St Michael the Archangel and suggested that the Church’s greatest “exorcism” should be directed, wait for it, against “social evils” such as homophobia, femicide, racism and crimes against Indigenous peoples.
Ladies and gentlemen, I rest my case: my theory that Synodality/Modernism/Liberalism causes severe brain rot similar to syphilis has been proved.
Ferreira asked in a social-media post on August 8, “Are there theological justifications for consecration to Saint Michael?” He then added, like the good little neo-Protestant that he is, that Christians consecrate themselves to God the Father, Son and Holy Spirit, before he questioned whether “the devil we fight” might be too imaginary and proposed a different understanding of exorcism focused on what he called “this legion of evils.”
[Insert Face Palm emoji here]
Even those with only an inkling of Catholicism still left in their souls after 60 years of the postconciliar train wreck were rightly outraged, particularly those who regard devotion to St Michael and belief in the reality of the devil as important elements of our faith.
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