It is only a rough and ready guide, but you can generally tell what kind of Catholic someone is by their attitude to the Devil. Those who downplay his existence – see Fr Lucie-Smith’s recent blog on the Superior of the Jesuits – are one kind; those who take him seriously are another. These musings are prompted by my reading a book entitled Fearless: a Catholic Woman’s Guide to Spiritual Warfare by Sonja Corbitt.
Corbitt is absolutely clear that the Devil is real and our deadly enemy and that there is always a spiritual component to our battles with psychological, societal or physical issues. As she also points out, Satan “tempts us to sin in ways that degrade the body as much as possible, especially sexual sin since it perverts the flesh’s miraculous life-giving intention.”
