I remembered this warning when I heard about the fall of another famous icon, Brother Jean Vanier, the revered founder of L'Arche, an ecumenical community where disabled and able persons live in Christian fellowship.

Vanier, who died last year at the age of 90, has been credibly accused of an abusive sexual relationship with six non-disabled adult women to whom he was giving spiritual direction.

In other words, this was not just a one-night fling with someone met in a singles bar.

These were calculated and manipulative attacks on women under the guise of bringing them closer to God.

These accusations were investigated by an independent agency at the request of L'Arche's new leadership, which agreed with the findings and made them public.

Despite our anger, we should still congratulate L'Arche for its transparency. We must also thank the women who had the courage to come forward.

Vanier was once talked about as a possible recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, even canonization.

To discover that such a person was a fraud makes me angry.

Jean Vanier's actions were calculated and manipulative attacks on women under the guise of bringing them closer to God.

At the same time, I ask myself, why am I surprised?

History has taught us the flawed and sinful character of most famous men.

Some of the founding fathers fathered children with their slaves. History is full of bad popes, bishops and priests. European and American history is full of great leaders and thinkers who were anti-Semites and racists.

During my lifetime, John Kennedy and Thomas Merton had their affairs.

The "Me Too" movement has ripped away the curtain to expose men who are not the gentlemen they projected publicly.

Even the Scriptures describe people as flawed who played important roles in salvation history: Eve, Abraham, Moses, David and the Twelve.

It is nearly impossible to find an important figure in the Bible who is not also a sinner. In Mark's Gospel, nobody understands Jesus, not even his mother (Mark 3).

• Does that mean that we must discard everything these sinners did?
• Do we stop honouring Abraham because he pimped his wife to Pharaoh in exchange for livestock and slaves?
• Do we stop praying the psalms because David had Uriah killed so he could have his wife Bathsheba?
• Do we burn the books of Thomas Merton because he had an affair?
• Do we close down L'Arche because Vanier abused his position as a spiritual father?

The message of the Scriptures is not that these are holy men but that God can use flawed and sinful people to do great things.

We continue to see that throughout history and in our own time. Part of growing up is recognizing that our heroes have clay feet.

Forgiveness is something else

I can forgive Eve, the Twelve, Merton and sins of weakness, but I am not ready to forgive Abraham, David, Theodore McCarrick, Vanier, Harvey Weinstein and others who abused their power to prey on the vulnerable.

I will leave their forgiveness to God.

I am still angry because of the harm done to the people who were exploited by these men.

I am also angry because they have made me a cynic when it comes to great artists, politicians and religious leaders. It has gotten to the point where I even take Mother Teresa, Pope Francis and Big Bird with a grain of salt.

As a social scientist, I am never surprised by sin, corruption and conflict.

I am a firm believer in Original Sin, for which there is lots of empirical evidence, although I don't blame it on Eve and the apple.

For me, Original Sin is the reality that sins of the past provide fertile ground for sins in the present (think slavery and racism). And sins in our time will make it difficult for people to be good in the future (think global warming).

What surprises me is goodness, kindness and love, which are signs of God's grace in the world.

Many people turn away from God because they cannot resolve the problem of evil: How can there be a God when there is such evil in the world?

I have the opposite question.

Granted that we have been struggling to survive ever since we crawled out of the muck, evil does not surprise me.

I am surprised by the problem of good. Why is there good in the world?

Given where we came from and the world in which we live, why is there love?

Why is there self-sacrifice? These are miracles of grace. These are signs of the Holy Spirit, God's presence in the world.

It is the Holy Spirit that pushes us upward in our evolutionary journey beyond selfishness and sin to kindness and love.

So, if you, too, are angry and depressed by the failures of great men, if all these failures are turning you into a cynic, don't let sin blind you to the presence of grace in our world.

Be surprised by love.

• Thomas Reese SJ is a senior analyst at Religion News Service, and a former columnist at National Catholic Reporter, and a former editor-in-chief of the weekly Catholic magazine America. First published in RNS. Republished with permission.

But, of course, you know all of this unless you are more removed from civilization than, say, the Starks of Winterfell or the White Walkers who roam beyond the wall.

If you are clueless about all of this, devotees of Game of Thrones — and they are legion—might consider you as uncouth as a drunken Dothraki warrior.

But take heart because, if you are a faithful Christian, you are already engaged in a historical struggle ever so much the grander than any clash of dynasties.

Game of Thrones, the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's medieval fantasy series, is an epic dramatic struggle between the forces of good and evil.

To the credit of the show's eight seasons, it has often been difficult to know who was winning and who was not.

Sometimes it was a struggle to settle upon who was good and who was bad. At times you could only see who was bad and who was even worse. Circumstances shifted, and people changed.

The only constant was that the powerful oppressed the weak.

That remained true even when the weak became the powerful.

If this explains the television series to the culturally clueless, it also explains the Christian faith to the spiritually impoverished.

Game of Thrones is a terrific drama, played out in fictional history.

Christianity's core claim is that history itself is a great drama, an epic struggle between light and darkness.

You might not immediately learn this by asking the average believer to explain the Christian faith.

Instead, you are likely to listen to a list of teachings, called doctrines, which are to be believed without evidence, and moral precepts, which are to be observed solely on the authority of those who promulgate them.

Yet the core of the Christian faith is that good and evil are at war and have been for as far back as memory goes.

Scholars call this "salvation history," but ordinary people know it as the ongoing, daily struggle between right and wrong, one that surges around and within every human being.

Moreover, just as in Game of Thrones, in the real world it is hard to know who is what and which side is winning.

Good and evil are entwined in a violent vortex.

The sole constant is that the powerful continue to oppress the weak. Continue reading

This is one of the oldest and most persistent human questions for Christian theology.

St. Augustine struggled with the problem of evil before and after his conversion to Christianity.

He experimented with a philosophy called Manichaeism, which posited two forces—one good, one evil.

This dualism between good and evil, light and dark, spirit and matter seduced many throughout Christian history.

It is, however, as St. Augustine himself came to realize, incompatible with Christian doctrine.

Christianity holds that there is only one God, that all that exists comes from God, and that God is all good.

For Augustine, the problem of evil ultimately is resolved by looking not at what exists but what is missing.

This understanding of evil argues that evil is an absence of the good.

Evil is not something God created but something missing, out of order.

In the Confessions, Augustine describes his epiphany, "I saw that it was not a substance but a perversion of the will when it turns aside from you."

Evil is created because human beings have disordered wills, we turn away from God.

All of creation is good, but we are still supposed to love God above all else.

Augustine calls this ordo amoris, or the order of loves.

Love of God, love of neighbor, love of self, love of creation—all should be ordered with God at the top.

When our loves are disordered and we choose wrongly, then evil emerges.

Selfishness, pride, lust for power, and greed are all easy to imagine through the lens of disordered love, and grave evil has been done because of each.

St. Thomas Aquinas argued that persons choose something that is perceived as good, however, often our judgments are wrong.

This is the seductiveness of evil; we are tempted because we perceive it as good. Continue reading

• Image: Studioware

What children read, what they see on the screen, can inspire them toward greater faithfulness.

Conversely, Father Robert warns, it can lead them into the sordid world of the occult, even opening them to demonic possession.

Father Robert is not exaggerating. A priest for more than ten years and an experienced exorcist, he knows firsthand the unintended consequences when children or adults open the door to demonic activity.

"Oftentimes," he says, "[demon possession] begins because kids get curious after reading Harry Potter." He explains that kids want the unusual powers that they see depicted on the screen.

One former Satanist whom Father Robert knew personally, a man who has turned away from his past life and embraced the Catholic faith, had begun his descent into Satanism at the age of nine or ten, when he began playing a game called "Bloody Mary."

From that simple beginning, he gradually became involved with others who were Satanists.

Respecting Confidentiality

An important part of Father Robert's ministry is training other priests at the Vatican's official Exorcism Institute in America.

From across the country and around the world, Catholic priests come to the Institute to learn the secrets of this ancient rite, so that they too can exorcize demons and evil spirits.

The nature of the work that Father Robert and the Institute are involved in is so hazardous that he has requested that the Register not publish his full name or reveal his location.

A Decidedly "Catholic" Horror Film

I had the opportunity to meet and talk with Father Robert at a recent media preview of New Line Cinema's latest horror production, "Annabelle: Creation", which opens nationwide on August 11.

Directed by David F. Sandberg (director of the short film "Lights Out"), "Annabelle: Creation" is actually a prequel to the highly successful 2014 release of "Annabelle" - which is itself a prequel to the 2013 cult favorite "The Conjuring" and the more recent "Conjuring 2"(2016).

Father Robert had seen them all, and he agreed that "Annabelle: Creation" was largely faithful to the Catholic Church's teachings with regard to possession and exorcism. Continue reading

Sources

• National Catholic Register article by Kathy Schiffer, a Catholic blogger
• Image: IGN

His intelligence, wit and extraordinary life were clearly displayed during an interview broadcast recently on the ABC's Compass program.

When asked what he would say to God if he happened to get to the pearly gates, Fry, a declared atheist, didn't miss a beat.

"I'll say, ‘Bone cancer in children? What's that about? How dare you? How dare you create a world in which there is such misery that is not our fault'."

He continued, "Why should I respect a capricious, mean-minded, stupid God who creates a world which is so full of injustice and pain?"

Like many others, Fry's atheism and outrage is built on the edifice of theodicy - the problem of evil. How can an almighty and all-powerful God allow bad things to happen to good people?

The question is as old as humanity and any satisfactory answer, given the scale of evil and suffering in our world, proves to be implacably inadequate and elusive.

It doesn't provide me with neat answers - far from it.

But a burgeoning interest in cosmology, the study of the origin and evolution of the universe, does give me a different ‘take' on suffering and evil as well as new insights into the mystery of God and our place in the universe.

For some time now a fresh wave of scholars have been exploring the relationship between religion and science. Authors such as Thomas Berry, Brian Swimme, Elizabeth Johnson, Sally McFague, Judy Cannato, John F. Haught, Ilia Delio and Australia's own Denis Edwards are plumbing the mystery of God with insights from the story of the universe.

I find their writing thrilling and evocative, mind-stretching and heart-warming.

These writers take seriously Thomas Aquinas' 700-year-old warning that "If we get creation wrong we get God wrong". Continue reading

• Good Samaritan Sister Patty Fawkner is an adult educator, writer and facilitator.

It must then follow that the Catholic Church is the true religion.

All others are false, no matter how sincerely they are held - they are held sincerely but mistakenly.

The greatest persecution of the Church comes not from her enemies without, but arises from sin within the Church, and that the Church thus has a deep need to relearn penance, to accept purification, to learn forgiveness on the one hand, but also the need for justice. (Pope Benedict, 11 May 2010).

We are now facing the final confrontation between the Church and the anti-church, between the Gospel and the anti-gospel, between Christ and the antichrist.

This confrontation lies within the plans of Divine Providence.

"We must prepare ourselves to suffer great trials before long, such as will demand of us a disposition to give up even life, and a total dedication to Christ and for Christ … With your and my prayer it is possible to mitigate this tribulation, but it is no longer possible to avert it" (Pope Saint John Paul II).

Bishops refuse to talk about mortal sin.

But as for cowards, the unfaithful, the depraved, murderers, the unchaste, sorcerers, idol-worshippers, and deceivers of every sort, their lot is in the burning pool of fire and sulphur, which is the second death (Revelation).

"The normal Catholic in the parish might hear a sermon on abortion once a year.

"They'll never hear a sermon on homosexuality or gay marriage.

"They'll never hear a sermon about contraception" (Cardinal O'Malley).

Why are we never told about our spiritual responsibility towards our brothers and sisters, but only to be caring about the physical and material well-being of others?

"Admonishing sinners" is one of the spiritual works of mercy.

This is Christian charity; we must not remain silent before evil.

All forms of divination are to be rejected: recourse to Satan or demons, conjuring up the dead or other practices falsely supposed to "unveil" the future. Consulting horoscopes, astrology, palm reading, interpretation of omens and lots, the phenomena of clairvoyance, and recourse to mediums (Catholic Catechism 2116).

"We see spread abroad ideas contrary to the truth which God has revealed and which the Church has always taught. Real heresies have appeared in dogma and moral theology, stirring doubt, confusion, and rebellion. Even the liturgy has been harmed. Christians have been plunged into an intellectual and moral illuminism, a sociological Christianity, without clear dogma or objective morality" (Pope Saint John Paul II).

Catholics should preach the faith "by open and constant profession of the obligations it imposes".

One of their main duties is "professing openly and unflinchingly the Catholic doctrine"; a second is "propagating it to the utmost of their power". The only ones who win when Christians stay quiet are the enemies of truth (Pope Leo XIII).

The truth is, God loves us unconditionally, but God does not save us unconditionally.

Love without truth is a fiction.

Joe Hannah

In her weekly column, Rosemary McLeod reflects on what is likely to happen later in life to young people who are cruel to animals.

McLeod contends that cruelty to animals "as a child is the first step towards a life of causing harm", and that we "shouldn't believe we can do nothing when it happens".

• Read Rosemary McLeod's article
• Image: DogsTrust

Rosemary McLeod is a columnist, cartoonist and journalist.