All of us who work to be saved are puzzled by the preponderance of evil in the world. It takes horrible form in abortion, in the malaria murders of hundreds of millions by the prohibition of DDT, and by the deaths imposed by leftist tyrants from Cuba to once-prosperous Rhodesia.
Hugh of St. Victor was a monk of the 12th century. Chapter 4, Book Five of his short work contains seven rules about the study and utterance of Sacred Scripture. The seventh rule concerns evil in the world: “For the apostate angel is the head of all who are evil, and all who are evil are the body of the head.”
When we consider that The Church is The Body of Christ, it makes perfect sense that those who worship lies, death, and hate rather than truth, life, and love are parts of the body of “the apostate angel”. We see that the professional liars who control the airwaves and print media are part of that body. Political figures who control them are a little closer to the source of evil that is the father of lies and corrupting viruses, though not as close to the very source of corruption as those who tell their wholly-owned politicians which lies they are to transform into legislation.
Those who tell us lies, whether the seemingly insignificant lies that obsess about the “dangerous levels of salt in potato chips”, or the far more lucrative lies, “the world is growing warmer, so we need higher taxes on energy” are part of the body of the apostate angel. We cannot change them by logic, for they have renounced logic. We cannot change them by facts, for they have renounced reality.
What we must focus on, first and foremost, is not in changing those who have willingly become part of the body of the apostate angel, but to be sure that we, ourselves, do not ruin our lives and souls by becoming like them. It is not uncommon for those who are the most critical of evil to become a part of it.
