Jesus said: Luke 16:8 "The master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. For the people of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own kind than are the people of the light. Satan sold our Mother Eve a pup in the Garden of Eden. On the other hand if Satan were to try to sell one of us to eat the apple we would probably have a series of nasty questions to ask ourselves., like for instance, 'Who is this guy?' 'What is he up to?' 'What is he trying to sell us?' 'What's in it for him?' 'What's in it for me?' Making it a much tougher sell for Satan. Eve was innocent, we are a fallen people and so a lot more tougher and cynical; we have lost our innocence
Even so we are subject in many ways to a false innocence which the modern world has sold us. One of the reasons why I think the Child Abuse crisis in the Church arose was a false innocence among Bishops and Cardinals and the Roman Curia about the true nature of evil. They saw before them priests and Brothers who had abused children multiple times. Instead of seeing the evil that sat before them crying and telling them how sorry they were as the total and repulsive evil it was they felt sorry for the guy and though they might somehow reform the guy. They did not treat a tiger as a tiger. They did not recognise that they were being sold a false Bill of Goods. Years ago in my cousins family there was a case of multiple child abuse that was brought to light after many years. I was scandalised that the my uncle and aunt, both very good devout Catholics , had not taken action to stop this taking place. But my mother told me that herself did not know what a homosexual was until she was 24 and would no more have known about or believed in Child Abuse than in the cookie monster. The Late great Dr Scott M Peck on his book on evil in people called, 'People of the Lie', tells a series of stories on the subject which are very instructive. One of them sticks in my mind. A very well respected and wealthy professional couple had tow sons , one aged 15 and the other 16; at the age of 16 the son committed suicide using a little rifle bought by the parents on his 16th birthday. The 15 year old boy showed signs of equal suicidal tendencies.Dr Peck was called on to give therapy he wanted the parents to join in but they balked. Anyway it became clear to Scott Peck that both parents were totally evil. They only had the kinds to pass themselves in society. They were loveless people, what you would call perfectly possessed by evil. On his 16th birthday the second child committed suicide. he shot himself with the same rifle the parents gave him that had belonged to the first son who died. Effectively they were inviting the second boy to kill himself as well.
