Father Fortea, does evil really exist?
Yes, it does. The first thing we need to know is that evil – like good – is an objective reality. Though many in today’s culture insist that morality is merely one’s personal opinion and is subjective (“what’s right for you might be wrong for me” and vice versa), this is a very grave error. Who could successfully argue that such things as illness, murder, abortion, torture, hate, poverty, and war, are not true, objective evils? Even those who are the most enthusiastic defenders of the subjectivity of good and evil find their position uncertain when confronted by such a monstrous evil as the Holocaust. When we see the film clips of the Nazi concentration camps, we can
understand that evil exists apart from all cultural values and conditioning, apart from our own opinion of it. We can see that the reasons why someone might commit these crimes do not matter, nor does it matter what percentage of the population supports such actions. Certain actions are always objectively evil, regardless of our opinion about them.
Editor’s Note: To learn more about spiritual warfare and demonology, Catholic Spiritual Direction recommends Fr. Fortea’s excellent book Interview With An Exorcist – An Insider’s Look at the Devil, Demonic Possession, and the Path to Deliverance.
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Photography for this post which asks the question “Does Evil Really Exist?”: View of the Stara Gradiska concentration camp that was formerly an Austro-Hungarian fortress, 1942, United States Holocaust Museum, PD-US This file is in the public domain, because the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website says it is public domain, courtesy of Muzej Revolucije Narodnosti Jugoslavije; detail of Padre José Antonio Fortea 2017, photographed by Elgatoconbotaselgatoconbotas, 5 May 2017 own work, CCA-SA 4.0 International; both Wikimedia Commons. Cover of “Interview with an Exorcist” used with permission, all rights reserved.