12 Things Blessed Fulton Sheen Taught About the Devil and Spiritual Warfare
Warnings to heed from the new Blessed include his prediction of ‘a total loss of personal identity, a split personality, a schizophrenic culture.’
2 days ago
The available material contains only the headline, which says the article presents 12 teachings by Blessed Fulton Sheen about the devil and spiritual warfare. It does not include the teachings themselves, so a substantive summary is not possible.
Theological foundations of spiritual warfare and evil
In Catholic theology, spiritual warfare is real, but it is not a battle between two equal cosmic powers. God is the sovereign Creator; evil is a profound distortion of the good, not an independent force that can rival God. Christians therefore resist evil through fidelity to God—not by treating other people as enemies or by becoming fascinated with demons.
St. Augustine’s account offers a central theological foundation: evil is not a substance God created, but a privation or corruption of the good. It cannot make goodness disappear altogether, though it can damage what is good and twist human choices. Sin, for example, can disorder our loves: we may pursue a real but lesser good as if it mattered more than a higher good, such as treating people as instruments for a political or personal aim.
This rules out dualism—the idea that good and evil are rival powers of comparable strength or that evil is built into creation as an equal opposite to God. The Christian picture in these sources is different: God remains sovereign, and evil’s power is real but limited and temporary. Even Satan is not evil’s ultimate source or master; he is himself a creature who has turned away from the good.
The New Testament presents Jesus confronting temptation and evil spirits, and it portrays his mission as overcoming the “prince of this world.” Paul likewise describes Christians as engaged in a continuing struggle against spiritual evil, while holding that evil’s defeat is already assured in God’s saving work. The struggle continues, but it is not an uncertain contest between equals.
Ephesians 6 gives this conflict its best-known image: the “armor of God.” Paul names truth, righteousness, the Gospel of peace, faith, salvation, God’s word, prayer, and perseverance as the believer’s equipment. The image is therefore not a call to physical aggression. It describes the habits and gifts by which Christians stand firm against deception, sin, and despair.
The phrase “not against flesh and blood” also matters. Spiritual warfare should not become a license to label opponents, communities, or whole groups as demonic. Augustine’s rejection of dualistic thinking warns against turning human enmity into an absolute division between “us” and “them.” Human beings can do grave evil, but they remain creatures whose good has been wounded and whose actions must be judged without treating them as metaphysical embodiments of evil.
The Christian response is disciplined resistance rather than panic or triumphalism. To “stand firm” means to seek truth, practice righteousness, trust God, live the Gospel of peace, remain faithful under trial, and pray persistently. Revelation’s dramatic imagery of cosmic conflict serves, in the account supplied here, to encourage endurance amid hardship—not escapism or hostility toward the world God created.
This also calls for humility. Because sin can distort anyone’s judgment and loves, Christians should not imagine that spiritual struggle concerns only other people. The struggle includes resisting one’s own temptations to pride, hatred, self-justification, and the misuse of good aims.
The supplied materials support these broad theological foundations, but do not give detailed guidance on particular spiritual practices or the Church’s discipline concerning exorcism.