Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sep 11, 2005 / 22:00 pm
Archbishop Emeritus Carmelo Giaquinta of Resistencia warned this week that the evils that threaten Christians are the same that threaten the Church, in particular, unpleasantness or “bad spirits” and “sadness.”
Regarding “bad spirits,” who Archbishop Giaquinta explained that “there are Christians who see spirits all over the place. There aren’t too many such people in the Catholic Church, but there are some. There are others don’t see them anywhere, but they aren’t aware of the bad spirit they themselves have. This problem is very widespread in the Church and we need good pastoral teaching to show it and to get rid of it, because it causes much harm to the one who is possessed by it and who flirts with it.”
“It manifests itself in various ways, and one characteristic is grumpiness. There are people who are daily communicants but yet live in a permanent state of unpleasantness regarding the Church. Nothing the Church does satisfies them, as if they were not part of it. This unpleasantness is particularly focused against the Pope and other pastors,” Archbishop Giaquinta noted.
He added that one who is suffering from a “bad spirit” is not always “aware of it, as the person seems to be normal and thinks he or she is doing good and even offers solutions for the problems he or she sees,” and he added that such individuals are not usually found among the poor and simple, but among “the educated and the consecrated.”
Referring to sadness, Archbishop Giaquinta said it manifests itself mainly in a lack of “apostolic enthusiasm,” and in the family it is apparent in “troubled marriages, where couples have forgotten about their first love and are only putting up with one another. Another characteristic is constant grumbling about the problems in the Church. They have explanations for everything, but the fault always lies with someone else. Never with them.”
Lastly, the archbishop called on Christians to seek renewal, for where “there is no joy, the Holy Spirit is absent.”