The Invisible World

St. Michael atop Castel Sant'angelo in Rome

I'm always a bit shocked when I encounter a Christian or a Jew who does not accept the existence of angels and demons. Given the number of times this happens, I suppose I should be used to it by now. Although I have no polling data or other hard, empirical evidence, my personal experience tells me this disbelief in the spiritual world has grown in recent years. I suppose we might expect this as our world becomes increasingly materialistic and discounts the existence of anything that cannot be perceived through the five senses.

About a dozen years ago, when I was working for a Catholic college in New England, I had an interesting lunchtime conversation with a man who taught at a prestigious prep school. As our our conversation drifted from one interesting subject to another, we found ourselves talking about scary movies (I'm a fan.) when one of us brought up The Exorcist, the 1973 film about a demonic possession in Washington, D.C. We agreed it was truly a scary movie, and then he said, "Of course, nothing like that could ever happen because demons don't exist."

This surprised me because earlier in our conversation he had made it clear that he was a believing Christian. And so I asked him, "You really don't believe in demons? What about angels?"

"No," he said, "I really don't believe in them either. I can't accept the existence of thinking, sentient beings who lack brains, the physical equipment necessary for consciousness. The idea that there are all these immaterial creatures out there in their own immaterial universe...well, that just seems a bit absurd to me."

It was the kind of comment I would have expected from an atheist or agnostic, but not from a Christian. My only response was to ask him, "Do you believe in God?"

"Yes," he said, "of course."

"Well, then, I suggest you just think about that for a while." With that our waiter handed me the check and our conversation came to an end.

Even very smart people can be led astray by the constant roar of the world's voices, and my luncheon companion was indeed very smart. He held two master's degrees, one in chemistry and another in mathematics, and taught both subjects at that upscale prep school. But like so many smart people he had come to accept man as the measure of all things. He even measured God according to human standards, and in doing so placed all sorts of limitations on God's creative power. I thought it particularly interesting that he didn't recognize the contradiction in denying God, a pure spirit, the ability to create other spirits. Maybe he thought of God as some giant material being, a kind of enormous Atlas, who bore the universe on his shoulders. I don't know because we never got around to his theology.

Of course, both angels and demons are mentioned frequently in Scripture, and we Christians should not simply dismiss these occurrences as psychological constructs devised by those lacking the scientific knowledge needed to explain phenomena they can't understand. In essence this was how belief in the spirit world was "explained" to me not long ago by a respected theologian. When I asked how he explained the Gospels' (and Jesus') frequent references to both angels and demons, he said that Jesus, being a Jew, would of course believe what most Jews believe, including the existence of angels and demons. When I suggested that in his divine nature Jesus would surely know whether or not such beings existed, he chuckled and said, "Well, yeah, except Jesus didn't know he was God, at least not until the Resurrection."

Wow! So many theologians just love to pick and choose what they want to believe, and what they want us to believe, all in complete contradiction to the magisterial teaching of the Church, teaching held consistently for 2,000 years. Fortunately, there are folks out there teaching the truth and making it available to us non-theologians in language we can understand.

One recent example is the newly published book by Anthony Destefano, The Invisible World, in which the author takes us on a marvelous journey through the world of angels and demons. Mr. Destefano, the author of several other books for both children and adults, provides a clear and well-written introduction to this invisible world of spirits, all firmly grounded in Church teaching. By increasing our understanding of the spirit world, the "Invisible World" as Destefano calls it, we can better understand this journey of ours through our material world, a journey that leads to our ultimate heavenly destination. This book, along with his previous book, A Travel Guide to Heaven, aim at showing us that reality includes much more than our material world.

Discussing how reality is misconceived by so many, Destefano says,

"We live in a very secular age which actually began over two centuries ago. We have what I call the 'superstition of materialism,' where we tend to think that everything in life - our ideas, our philosophies, our religions, our accomplishments; all the notions that we have of honor, love mercy and hope; all our art and our music; all the deepest mysteries of science and faith - that all this is simply the result of random dance of molecules in our brain. This is the disease of the age."    

I can promise you will enjoy this book.