Episode 1260: State of Angelic Dignity - The Gift of Religious Life

Fr Harden stated:

Although human reason can reasonably speculate that angels exist, the existence of pure created spirits requires divine revelation to make the fact absolutely certain. Indeed a fair index of sound Christianity is the acceptance of angels as created by God and now living in two states of being: those in heaven who also minister to our needs, and those in hell, who are demons and bent on the destruction of the human race through estrangement from God.

Why a catechism on the angels? Because we need one. There is such a preoccupation with human psychology and physiology as almost to exclude the whole world of reality which is at once intelligent and deeply involved in the affairs of men. Even in Christian circles, the complaint has been justly made that "the angels have taken flight from Catholic schools of thought, " with only token attention from some professional theologians.

There is another reason why a catechism on the angels is necessary. As a reaction to the prevalent secularism in so-called developed countries, an avalanche of cults and movements has gone to the other extreme. Preoccupation with the invisible powers of the world has produced scores of pseudo-religions that have also penetrated Catholic circles. The New Age movement, borrowed from the Oriental non-Christian world, has deeply penetrated Catholic thinking in Europe and North America.

The angels play a major role in the history of God's dealing with the human race. From the dawn of creation when the evil spirit successfully tempted our first parents, to the Incarnation announced by the angel Gabriel, angelic spirits are an essential part of Messianic history. Since the coming of Christ, angels are more than ever the messengers of the Good News which they first announced to the shepherds at Bethlehem.

Why a catechism on the angels? Because there are also demons who seduce human beings into sin. We had better know how to recognize when we are being inspired by the good angels and when we are being instigated evil spirits.

In the present catechism we shall cover six distinct propositions of our Catholic faith: that God created angelic world, composed of beings that are pure spirits; that among these some remain faithful to God and reached their heavenly destiny, while others, though gifted with divine grace, lost it and were thereby condemned to eternal punishment; that it is part of God's ordinary providence to have the heavenly spirits minister our needs and assist us to reach heaven; and correspondingly it is part of divine permissive providence to allow the fallen angels to try and tempt us into sin in order to keep us from our eternal destiny.

Before we enter on what our faith teaches us about the angels, it will be useful to explain some of the basic terms in what we technically call angelology. Then we should say something about the adversaries who either deny the existence of angels altogether or dissent from the Church's official teaching about the spiritual beings created by God.